Egyptian Archaeology 40 by TheEES

No. 40 Spring 2012

Price £5.95

EGYPTIAN ARCHAEOLOGY

T he B ulletin of T he E gypt E xploration S ociety

Exploring the Ancient World Exploring the Ancient World Be inspired by our programme of superb one-week courses taught by experts. Exploring the Ancient World Be inspired by our programme of superb one-week courses taught by experts. 25 - 29 June Ancient World Be inspired byExploring our WARFARE programme UNDER ofthe superb one-week courses taught by experts. THE PHARAOHS:

25 - 29 June FROM NARMER TO AUGUSTUS WARFARE of UNDER THE PHARAOHS: Be inspired by our programme one-week courses taught by experts. 25superb - 29 June George Hart FROM NARMER TO AUGUSTUS WARFARE UNDER PHARAOHS: ORTHE George Hart 25 - 29TO June FROM NARMER AUGUSTUS VOICES FROM ANCIENT IRAQ: LIFE IN MESOPOTAMIA ORTHE WARFARE UNDER PHARAOHS: George Hart (AS REVEALED BY THE TEXTS) VOICES FROM ANCIENT IRAQ: LIFE FROM NARMER TO AUGUSTUS ORTaylor IN MESOPOTAMIA Jonathan (ASANCIENT REVEALED BY THE TEXTS) George Hart VOICES FROM IRAQ: LIFE IN MESOPOTAMIA Jonathan Taylor OR (AS REVEALED BY THE TEXTS) 2 - 6 July VOICES FROM ANCIENT IRAQ: LIFE IN MESOPOTAMIA Jonathan Taylor DAILY LIFE RITUALS IN ANCIENT EGYPT 2 6 July (AS REVEALED BY THE TEXTS) Stephen Harvey and Jan PictonEGYPT DAILY LIFE RITUALS IN ANCIENT Jonathan Taylor 2 -OR 6 July Stephen Harvey IN andANCIENT Jan Picton DAILY LIFE RITUALS EGYPT HIEROGLYPHS FOR BEGINNERS OR 2 6 July Stephen Harvey and Jan Picton José-R. Pérez-Accino HIEROGLYPHS FOR BEGINNERS DAILY LIFE RITUALS IN ANCIENT EGYPT OR José-R. Pérez-Accino Stephen Harvey and Jan Picton HIEROGLYPHS 9 - 13FOR JulyBEGINNERS OR José-R. Pérez-Accino AKHENATEN, NEFERTITI9AND THE PEOPLE THEY RULED - 13 July HIEROGLYPHS FOR BEGINNERS Barry Kemp AKHENATEN, NEFERTITI AND THE José-R. Pérez-Accino 9 - 13 July PEOPLE THEY RULED ORKemp Barry AKHENATEN, NEFERTITI AND THE PEOPLE THEY RULED READING HIEROGLYPHS: A JOURNEY WITH SINUHE OR 9 - 13 July Barry Kemp José-R. Pérez-Accino READING HIEROGLYPHS: A THE JOURNEY WITH SINUHE AKHENATEN, NEFERTITI AND PEOPLE THEY RULED OR José-R. Pérez-Accino Barry Kemp READING HIEROGLYPHS: A JOURNEY Immerse yourself in lavishly illustrated lectures; enjoy gallery-talksWITH in theSINUHE British Museum and specialOR José-R. Pérez-Accino access classes in the Petrie Museum; socialise with fellow students and distinguished academics; and Immerse yourself in lavishly illustrated lectures; enjoy gallery-talksWITH in the British Museum and specialREADING HIEROGLYPHS: A JOURNEY SINUHE ifaccess required, stay ininreasonably-priced, local university accommodation. classes the Petrie Museum; socialise fellow students and distinguished academics; and José-R.with Pérez-Accino Immerse yourself in lavishly illustrated lectures; enjoy gallery-talks in the British Museum and specialif required, stay in reasonably-priced, local university accommodation. access classes in the Petrie Museum; socialise with fellow students and distinguished academics; and ALSO in lavishly illustrated lectures; enjoy in the British Museum and specialifImmerse required,yourself stay in reasonably-priced, local university accommodation. Saturday 12gallery-talks May ALSO access classes in the Petrie Museum; socialise with fellow students and distinguished academics; and Study Day: ANCIENT EGYPT: Saturday 12 MYTH May AND HISTORY if required, stay in reasonably-priced, local university accommodation. ALSO John RomerMYTH AND HISTORY Study Day: ANCIENT EGYPT: Saturday 12 May John Romer ALSO Study Day: 26 ANCIENT EGYPT: MYTH AND HISTORY November – 4 December Saturday 12 May John Romer BSS in Egypt: ABYDOS AND BEYOND: A SACRED LANDSCAPE 26 November – 4 December Study Day: ANCIENT EGYPT: MYTH AND HISTORY Stephen Harvey BSS in Egypt: ABYDOS AND A SACRED LANDSCAPE JohnBEYOND: Romer 26 November – 4 December Stephen Harvey BSS : ABYDOS AND BEYOND: A SACRED LANDSCAPE ForinaEgypt brochure and booking forms contact Lucia Gahlin: 26 November – 4 December Stephen Harvey bloomsbury@egyptology-uk.com For brochure and booking forms A contact Lucia Gahlin: BSS inaEgypt : ABYDOS AND7679 BEYOND: 020 3622 SACRED LANDSCAPE bloomsbury@egyptology-uk.com Stephen Harvey ForBloomsbury a brochure Summer and booking forms contact of Lucia Gahlin: School, Department History, 020 7679 3622 bloomsbury@egyptology-uk.com UCL, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT Summer School, Department of History, For Bloomsbury a brochure and booking forms 020 7679 3622 contact Lucia Gahlin: UCL, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT bloomsbury@egyptology-uk.com Bloomsbury Summer School, Department of History, www.egyptology-uk.com/bloomsbury 7679 3622 WC1E 6BT UCL, Gower 020 Street, London www.egyptology-uk.com/bloomsbury Bloomsbury Summer School, Department of History, UCL, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT www.egyptology-uk.com/bloomsbury www.egyptology-uk.com/bloomsbury

EGYPTIAN

EGYPTIAN ARCHAEOLOGY Bulletin of the Egypt Exploration Society www.ees.ac.uk

The opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the aims or concerns of the Egypt Exploration Society Editor Patricia Spencer Editorial Advisers Peter Clayton George Hart David Jeffreys John J Johnston Mike Murphy Chris Naunton Alice Stevenson John Taylor Advertising Sales Rob Tamplin Egypt Exploration Society 3 Doughty Mews London WC1N 2PG Phone: +44 (0)20 7242 1880 Fax: +44 (0)20 7404 6118 E-mail: rob.tamplin@ees.ac.uk Distribution Phone: +44 (0)20 7242 2268 Fax: +44 (0)20 7404 6118 E-mail: orders@ees.ac.uk Website: www.ees.ac.uk

Published twice a year by The Egypt Exploration Society 3 Doughty Mews, London WC1N 2PG Registered Charity No.212384 A limited Company registered in England, No.25816 Original design by Jeremy Pemberton Set in Adobe InDesign CS2 by Patricia Spencer Printed by Commercial Colour Press Ltd Angard House, 185 Forest Road, Hainault, Essex IG6 3HU www.ccpress.co.uk

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Theban tomb of Djeserkaresoneb (TT 38). Colin Campbell’s early twentieth-century copy recorded a scene which has since been badly damaged. See pp. 21-24.

Number 40

Spring 2012

In Petrie’s footsteps Patricia Spencer

The Lucy Gura Archive Project - progress report Chris Naunton Recent events

EES members visit Berlin Patricia Spencer Cairo members tour Ethiopia Gillian Marie

Memphis in the Middle Kingdom: the field school David Jeffreys Inset: Rebuilding the Memphis workroom

The first archaeological field school at Quesna Joanne Rowland

The Book of the Dead in the tomb of Karakhamun Kenneth Griffin

Terracottas from Tell Basta Viet Vaelske

Workshops and urban settlement in Buto Pascale Ballet and Gregory Marouard Inset: The baths of Buto Bérengère Redon and Guy Lecuyot

Investigating ancient settlements around Buto Robert Schiestl

The Egyptological afterlife of Colin Campbell Angela McDonald and Sally-Anne Coupar

Digging Diary Patricia Spencer Inset: Discovery of a new tomb in the Valley of the Kings Susanne Bickel

The city of Avaris after the New Kingdom Manuela Lehmann

The archaeology of the ‘gold of valour’ Manfred Bietak

Bookshelf Inset: Sarah Belzoni’s grave and tombstone Ann Baghiani and John J Taylor

Pharaoh: ideal and reality Margaret Maitland

An early pharaonic harbour on the Red Sea coast Pierre Tallet and Gregory Marouard

Five minutes with Neal Spencer

Cover illustration. Quesna, the late Ptolemaic-early Roman cemetery: one of the students at the field school (see pp.7-8) excavating burial 68 of a woman who probably had osteoporosis and died aged 30-40 years. Photograph: © EES Minufiyeh Archaeological Survey.

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In Petrie’s footsteps On 8 December 2011 one of our Vice-Presidents, Margaret Drower, celebrated her 100th birthday. Peggy (as she is always known) was a member of EES excavation teams at Armant and Amarna in the late 1920s and 1930s and served on the Society’s governing Committee for many years. She has also been the EES Honorary Secretary and Chairman. Peggy was one of Petrie’s students of Egyptology at University College London, where she herself was later to teach for many years, and it was appropriate that she became Petrie’s biographer, publishing Flinders Petrie. A Life in Archaeology in 1985. While researching for the biography Peggy sorted, catalogued and transcribed many of the letters in the EES Lucy Gura Archive which is now, at last, being rehoused in environmentally approved conditions, as Chris Naunton describes opposite. Chris himself is following in Petrie’s footsteps (literally) as the presenter of a BBC Wales documentary In Search of Petrie, currently in production, tracing Petrie’s life from his first surveying expeditions in England to his death in Jerusalem in 1942. Chris and the BBC team have been filming in Egypt and Israel as well as in England. The programme will be shown in the UK on BBC Four later this year. At the end of 2011 Chris succeeded me as EES Director and while he settles in to his new role Joanna Kyffin has been appointed on a contract basis to look after the Society’s outreach and education activities. Jo is an Egyptologist who has recently completed a research fellowship at the University of Copenhagen and already teaches hieroglyphs classes for the Society. She also gave a talk on her research speciality, magical texts, at the Study Day which preceded our Annual General Meeting on 10 December 2011 (see opposite). At the AGM members elected Alan Lloyd, our former Chairman, to serve as President of the Society. Alan will need no introduction to EES members, nor to the wider world of Egyptology, and we are all pleased that he is willing to continue to help promote the Society. Members also elected a new Chair, Aidan Dodson, to succeed Karen Exell, following her appointment to a post at UCL Qatar, and a new Treasurer, Susan Royce, in succession to Paul Cove, who retired The BBC Wales TV crew setting up to film at after three years of Tanis, the first site excavated by Petrie for the service. The AGM Egypt Exploration Fund ended with the

Margaret Drower at a party with friends and former colleagues, held in north London a few days before her 100th birthday on 8 December 2011. Photograph reproduced courtesy of her daughter, Laila Hackforth-Jones

approval of new governing Articles of Association for the Society which are now available on our website (www.ees.ac.uk). This Olympic year will see many events inspired by the games, including a special evening Training, Cheating, Winning, Praising: Athletes and Shows in Papyri from Roman Egypt at the British Academy in London on 20 June with talks about the Society’s Oxyrhynchus Papyri collection. The thousands of papyri in the collection (housed at the Sackler Library in Oxford) are the only antiquities still owned by the Society, which publishes them in the Graeco-Roman Memoirs series. Two volumes appeared at the end of 2011 with a further two scheduled to appear during 2012, bringing the GRM up-to-date with the EES subscription year for the first time in a number of years an achievement which owes much to the General Editors; Nikolaos Gonis, Dirk Obbink and Peter Parsons. ‘Digging Diary’ (pp.25-28) has reports from many expeditions that worked in Egypt during the summer and autumn of 2011. Most were able to work normally despite the continuing unrest in the country, though some had to concentrate on dealing with damage to magazines or sites vandalised during the spring of 2011 and other expeditions, particularly in the desert ‘pyramids area’ were asked not to excavate. The Society’s own magazine and workroom at Memphis were not spared damage, as David Jeffreys reports on p.6, but through the generosity of Mark Lehner and the Ancient Egypt Research Associates the workroom has been rebuilt and will be used by trainees at future field schools at Memphis. Training young Egyptian archaeologists is vital for the health of the subject and the Society is very pleased to be so active now in this regard with the field schools at Memphis and Quesna (see pp.5-8) and additional training taking place at other sites, such as Tell Basta (see p.12). The spring fieldwork season is just getting under way and we will be sending teams to Luxor and to a number of sites in the Nile Delta. As usual our expeditions will be sending regular updates and as soon as they are up and running we will post details on our website, so please do check regularly for the latest news of all our fieldwork and research in Egypt. PATRICIA SPENCER

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The Lucy Gura Archive - progress report The Archive team at work in the EES Library the process along. The volunteers included Sam Taylor who took over as team leader in November when Nicola took up a post at Cambridge University. Gradually the old kitchen has been taken over by the grey boxes as more and more of the negatives are re-packed, and they are now waiting for the installation of a conservation-standard shelving system. Although it has taken longer than expected, and represents only the first stage in the very long journey towards rehousing all the material in the Lucy Gura Archive, we are delighted that this invaluable photographic record will soon be stored in conditions that will ensure its long term preservation. The Society has a duty to preserve this wonderful resource and it is very gratifying to know that thanks to our members and others we have been able to make such a good start towards reaching this aim. A more detailed report on this project can be found at: www.ees.ac.uk/news/index/159.html. CHRIS NAUNTON

For the last few months the new archive space in 4 Doughty Mews – the former kitchen of Ricardo Caminos – has slowly been taking shape. Thanks to the generous donations of EES members we were able in the summer of 2011 to refurbish the room which had been used for the temporary storage of archival material: two series of photographic negatives (mainly glass) taken, respectively, at Tell el-Amarna in the 1920s and 30s and at the temple of Sety I at Abydos in the 1920s, 30s and 70s. Improving the conditions for storing these negatives was identified as the top priority for the work to be undertaken with funds from the 2009-10 campaign. Once the originals had been measured and their number (approximately 2,500) estimated, a professional archivist Nicola Kiddle joined the team to recommend suitable storage materials and to begin the process of re-housing the originals. This requires great care and attention as every negative has to be carefully removed from the old boxes and envelopes, wrapped in the pHoton™ paper folders which are then labelled and placed into an acidand lignin-free card box, each of which contains no more than 30-40 negatives to ensure that the weight of the glass is well supported. Nicola made very good progress and recruited a willing band of volunteer specialists to speed

Recent events

10 December 2011. Chris Naunton welcoming members to the Study Day which was followed by the Annual General Meeting and Lecture, and a reception. Photograph: Robert Brown Joanna Kyffin during her talk at the Study Day before the AGM. Photograph: Robert Brown

The EES staff at the reception: Chris, Rob Tamplin, Patricia and Roo Mitcheson

Aidan Dodson introducing the Annual Lecture in which Patricia Spencer reviewed her 28 years as EES Director. Photograph: Robert Brown

The Society’s archive images are currently featuring in a free temporary exhibition Unearthed: Ancient Egypt at Manchester Museum (until 12 September 2012) with the exhibition entrance flanked by Bernard Grenfell and Arthur Hunt sitting outside their tent on site in the Fayum Will Schenck demonstrating epigraphic techniques during a Seminar at Doughty Mews on 24 September 2011

Roo and Chris making the presentation to Patricia (in front of the EES President Alan Lloyd). Photograph: Robert Brown

It is not possible in the limited space available in EA to give full accounts of all EES events and other news from the Society, but updates are posted on our website, www.ees.ac.uk, which we would urge readers to consult regularly for up-to-the-minute news about all EES activities, including our current fieldwork and research.

On the weekend of 22-23 October 2011 the Society again participated in the Bloomsbury Festival, held in Russell Square, where Alice Williams and Roo showed about 300 local children how to ‘excavate’ in a sand-box and how to write their names in hieroglyphs

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EES members visit Berlin A new venture for the EES in November 2011 saw a group of 23 members spend a few days in Berlin. We left Heathrow on Thursday 17 November and on the following afternoon met the Director, Friederike Seyfried, at the Neues Museum for a very detailed, informative and entertaining tour of the new Egyptian galleries. These include the Museum’s impressive collection of Amarna Period objects from the German excavations at the site in 1912-13, especially those from the workshop of the sculptor Tuthmose. On the Saturday we were at the EES/Free University, Berlin Delta Survey Study Day at the University’s TOPOI House research centre, for a range of talks on current fieldwork in the Delta - two of which are summarised in this issue (pp.29-33). We also had free time in Berlin and many of the group took the opportunity to visit the Pergamon Museum with its impressive large monuments - the Pergamon Altar itself, the Gate of Ishtar from Babylon and the Market Gate of Miletus. The Society is very grateful Friederike Seyfried describing an artist’s model head of Nefertiti to Dr Seyfried for giving so

The EES group outside the Neues Museum The speakers at the EES/Free University Berlin Delta Survey Study Day. Standing, left to right: Patricia and Jeffrey Spencer, Ulrich Hartung, Eva Lange, Manuela Lehmann and Penny Wilson. Kneeling: Manfred Bietak and Joanne Rowland

generously of her time, to all the speakers at the Study Day, to the TOPOI House students who helped ensure everything went smoothly and, especially, to Joanne Rowland who made many of the local arrangements for us. A longer report on the trip can be found at: www.ees. ac.uk/news/index/148.html. PATRICIA SPENCER

Cairo members tour Ethiopia From 4-19 November 2011 we visited Ethiopia on a tour organised by Faten Saleh of EES Cairo. The first week was spent in the high northern country, visiting historical and archaeological sites, and the second week in the south, visiting indigenous villages in the Rift Valley. In the north we went to the ancient Temple to the Moon at Yeha (800 BC) after traveling through the most spectacular scenery, seeing the 450 BC site of Axum with its 1,000 stelae tomb markers (the tallest is 33m high), rock-hewn churches - the earliest from AD 346 - and the royal enclosure of Gondar (AD 1630). In the Omo Valley in the south we visited tribal villages of the Mursi, Hamer, Banna, Konso and Dorzee peoples. Although extremely interesting, it had, for me, the feel of ‘cultural voyeurism’ which was mitigated somewhat when we had a local guide from the tribe accompanying us.

Yeha: Cairo members visiting the remains of the ‘palace’ at Grat Beal Gebri (first millennium BC). Photograph: Jane Kennedy

One striking feature in Ethiopia for me, aside from the spectacular scenery and open friendliness of the people, was the visible continuation there of many pharaonic traditions: in churches, leather baskets held sistra, once sacred to Hathor, and in one church there was a bed made in the low pharaonic style, while men in the south carried small low seats, the exact shape and size of headrests found in ancient royal tombs. The agricultural practices in the north, though practised on steeply-sloping hills, were also similar to those of antiquity - the type of plough and threshing by using animals were both very reminiscent of tomb scenes on the west bank at Thebes. Ethiopia is a fascinating country, well worth more than the time we had to explore it, and we are very grateful to Faten for organising such a wonderful tour. GILLIAN MARIE

Beit Giyorgis: the rock-cut thirteenth century church of St George at Lalibela in the Amhara region. Photograph: Jane Kennedy

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Memphis in the Middle Kingdom: the field school In an exciting new development for the EES Survey of Memphis the Society collaborated with colleagues from AERA and the SCA to run a field school at Mit Rahina, excavating a Middle Kingdom settlement and cemetery, as David Jeffreys describes. For the first time in the thirty-year history of the Society’s Survey of Memphis, we have entered into a truly collaborative project with colleagues, and it has turned out to be a huge success. We have just taken part in a joint programme designed to train the next generation of Egyptian student inspectors, working with Ancient Egypt Research Associates (AERA) and the Supreme Council of Antiquities to run a training excavation near Mit Rahina, the town at the centre of the Memphis complex (hence the official title: Mit Rahina Field School – MRFS). AERA, under the Director Mark Lehner, and Field Directors Ana Tavares and Mohsen Kamel, has a long and honourable history of providing beginners’ and advanced field schools for young Egyptian inspectors, as well as more intensive excavation, at the ‘lost city of the pyramids’ at Giza. The Mit Rahina excavation lies just south of the town, in a locality known as Kom Fakhry (taking its name from the oldest mosque in the town, the nearby Sheikh Fakhry). The site has been previously excavated, after being exposed by roadworks in the 1950s, and again in 1981 just as the EES Survey of Memphis began. At the request of the SCA Inspector excavating the site at that time we made a full archaeological plan of the remains. The original (1954) excavation revealed a group arrangement of burials in stone-lined, brick-vaulted tombs, with a common façade on the east side lined with offering tables and fronted with two limestone false doors, dating to the First Intermediate Period or early Middle Kingdom. The finds were briefly reported in an article

Processing finds from the Kom Fakhry excavation. Photograph: Said el-Talbeya

by the excavator, Mohammed Abd el-Tawwab el-Hitta, in La Revue du Caire but were never fully published. The subsequent (1981) excavation, by the SCA Inspector of the day Mohammed el-Ashery, lay immediately to the east and proved to be a settlement area of the Middle Kingdom, with a clearly defined street pattern, large rooms and a courtyard with a central feature of stone basins and drains. This Middle Kingdom site is the earliest recorded at Mit Rahina and potentially provides the best opportunity to study Old Kingdom occupation there. Amazingly, we still have no idea of the more extensive settlement of the pyramid age at the capital of pharaonic Egypt, and Kom Fakhry may represent our last chance to explore it. As presented, this is an extremely complicated site stratigraphically, and our work (starting in early September 2011) was hampered at the outset by the fact that it has

Preliminary cleaning and recording at the Kom Fakhry site (note new illegal building to the right). Photograph: Said el-Talbeya

EGYPTIAN Head of dwarf statue, limestone. Ob No. 0660, SCA No. 55. Photo by Yasser Mahmoud.

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Mit Rahina Field School 2011, Kom el-Fakhry

The head and feet of a limestone ‘dwarf lamp’ statue. Photographs: Yasser Mohammed

Head of dwarf statue, limestone. Ob No. 0660, SCA No. 55. Photo by Yasser Mahmoud.

Feet of dwarf statue (see above), limestone. Ob No. 0659, SCA 56. Photo by Yasser Mahmoud.

become Mit Rahina’s dustbin: years of domestic waste have been dumped here, despite the archaeological status of the site, and needed to be removed before serious work MRFS 2011 Short End-of-Season Report to the SCA. Kom el-Fakhry. could begin. Fortunately AERA has an outstandingly competent workforce and the site supervisor Said elTalbeya organised the preparations in a way that I can only describe as0659,Herculean.There Feet of dwarf statue (see above), limestone. Ob No. SCA 56. Photo by Yasser Mahmoud. was a good deal of study and discussion involved in the early stages: it was quite clear that someone had (illicitly, but not surprisingly) been tampering with the site after el-Ashery’s excavation and we had to compare the site’s current state with our own records from 1981 and the original site photographs. This season’s results are very promising: aside from the edges of the original roadworks, which represent later phases of occupation, the team has been able to isolate discrete phases of the late Middle Kingdom, still later than the cemetery but very close in time and overall development. A clear street plan has emerged, and some of the finds are certainly significant: child burials within houses, some accomplished statuary, and perhaps most intriguingly, parts of a limestone ‘dwarf lamp’ statue of a kind otherwise known only from Petrie’s excavations at Lisht and Lahun, but in this case meticulously recorded in its archaeological context. MRFS 2011 Short End-of-Season Report to the SCA. Kom el-Fakhry.

Mohsen and Ana lead a group session for the students. Photograph: Said el-Talbeya

This site was the first to be recorded by the EES Survey of Memphis in 1981 – making it thirty years ago (almost to the day) that we returned to it this year. Rather than being back at square one, we prefer to see it (to continue the geometrical metaphor) as having come full circle: we are returning to this important site with a wealth of knowledge and informed conjecture provided by the work of the intervening years. In many ways the most satisfying aspect of the field school for me has been the knowledge that we are helping to prepare the next generation of Egyptian-born archaeologists for a career in their chosen profession.

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q David Jeffreys is Senior Lecturer in Egyptology at the Institute of Archaeology, University College London, and Director of the EES Survey of Memphis. The Survey of Memphis was also represented by at the field school by Judith Bunbury and Pedro Gonçalves (University of Cambridge Earth Sciences Centre). GPS readings for the site were kindly provided by Olivier Onnezime and Mohammed Gabr of the French Institute (IFAO). Special thanks are due to Mark Lehner, Director of AERA, and to Mohsen Kamel and Ana Tavares, co-Field Directors of the AERA projects and field schools at Giza and Luxor. Reports from the 2011 field school can be seen at www. aeraweb.org/category/blog/2011-field-season/

Rebuilding the Memphis workoom Many Egyptian field collections suffered in the aftermath of the ‘Arab spring’ early in 2011. At Memphis, the EES magazine was completely looted apart from some heavy limestone blocks that could not be carried away. Our workroom, containing all the unregistered material from thirty years of fieldwork (soil samples, animal bone, plant specimens, ceramics) was not only looted but vandalised, with fires being set inside the building.

The workroom in early 2011 after being looted and vandalised. Even the roof had been removed

With remarkable generosity, our AERA colleagues offered to pay for a large part of the reconstruction of the workroom during the field school season, reinforcing the original wooden features in steel and concrete. We hope to continue to make use of the rebuilt workroom for future collaborative ventures. DAVID JEFFREYS

The workroom after rebuilding and securing with a reinforced roof and metal window shutters

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The first archaeological field school at Quesna In Autumn 2011 the EES, with Egyptian and German colleagues, was involved in running the first field school to be held at Quesna, where the Society has been excavating for a number of years. Joanne Rowland reports on this successful new venture. The EES mission at Quesna in Minufiyeh Governorate was very pleased to host the first archaeological field school to be held at the site, from mid-September until mid-October 2011, at the same time as the Society was also involved in training at the AERA/SCA field school at Memphis (see David Jeffreys’ article pp.5-6). Since this was the first formal field school in the governorate, the training at Quesna focused on the basic principles of excavation methodology and the recording and excavation of human skeletal remains, with introductory training on the recording of ceramic finds and conservation techniques in the field. The field school ran alongside the EES team’s season of excavation, conservation and recording at Quesna, which enabled the students to participate in all stages of the work. The trainees were seven SCA inspectors from the Delta, three students from the University of Minufiyeh Faculty of Archaeology (based in Shibin el-Kom) and two students from the Free University, Berlin. The key aim of the field school was to equip students with the basic skills necessary to approach archaeological investigation: to assess the suitability of certain locations for excavation trenches, to lay out trenches correctly, and to understand the principles of single-context excavation methodology (as based on the Museum of London system). These principles, amongst others, were

Students planning coffin fragments associated with burial 76 in Trench T9

taught by the writer and Geoffrey Tassie. The emphasis was on the necessity of recording each archaeological feature (context) individually, ensuring that all excavated sediment was sieved and that the recovered artefacts and ecofacts were kept separately from other contexts. The students were taught that each archaeological context – be it a cut or the fill of a pit, including burials or parts of a structure – must be photographed, planned and recorded both on recording forms as well as in field notebooks, prior to removal. A crucial factor within the training was that all procedures could be carried out using inexpensive equipment that can be acquired locally in Egypt - the same kinds of equipment that the students would be most likely to have available in their future fieldwork. The first two weeks of training focused on excavation processes, with the students working predominantly within an excavation area to the south of the falcon necropolis. This was an area that had not been investigated previously by the current mission, and the magnetometer survey results from 2006 proved successful in detecting an area of pit and coffin burials within the Ptolemaic-Roman cemetery (see EA 28, p.32; and reports in JEA volumes 93, 94 and 96). Due to the nature of the archaeological material, the students were well trained in physical anthropology, under the tuition of Students at the Quesna field school trowelling back in Trench T9

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Lawrence Owens, learning to recognise all the bones of the human skeleton and how to assess age at death and the sex of the individual. The students also gained experience in examining human skeletal remains for evidence of disease and injury. In small groups, under regular supervision, they worked alongside more experienced colleagues on a number of individual burials, taking responsibility for all aspects of their excavation areas, including the drawing of the skeletal remains in situ. So that all participants might be engaged in the entire excavation process, everyone was directly involved with ‘in the field’ conservation, which included the consolidation of bones as well as the labelling, extraction and reconstruction of the ceramic coffins. Yasser Mohammed, our conservator from the SCA, worked with the students on the excavation when specific conservation issues arose, and during the second half of the field school the students received specialised training from Yasser in the on-site lab, on how to remove corrosion from metals, consolidate and reconstruct other fragile objects, and to join and reconstruct the ceramic coffins that they had excavated in summer 2011, in addition to those from previous seasons. As part of this second half of the field school, specialised training was also provided on ceramic analysis by Ashraf el-Senussi (who has worked with our team since 2007), and Mandy Mamedow. During this phase, in order that the students could keep in touch with the on going results of the excavation, they worked in the trench each morning until the second breakfast (about 10am), after which they moved up to the on-site research facilities to join their respective tutors. The students were able to work with ceramic material from the ongoing

SCA conservator Yasser Mohammed demonstrating the reconstruction of one of the ceramic coffins in the on-site laboratory

excavations, and also with a diverse range of ceramics of various types, dates and fabrics located during previous seasons at Quesna, including early Old Kingdom material from the mastaba tomb (see EA 38, pp.10-13), as well as ceramics from other locations within Minufiyeh. Since the aim of the field school was to train students in excavation techniques and recording, it was crucial that most of the instruction was given in the field. However, every Saturday formal lectures were held in Shibin elKom, thanks to our collaboration with Ahmed Deraz, Head of the Faculty of Archaeology at the University of Minufiyeh. The lectures focused upon the key elements of instruction from the previous week and concluded with a short test. At the end of the field school, there was a formal exam, which, I am pleased to report, was passed by all of the attending students. As this edition of EA goes to press, plans are already underway for the second field school in autumn 2012. In addition to basic archaeological field methodology, additional training will be offered in surveying techniques, including geophysical survey, drawing of small finds and the analysis of both plant and animal remains. We also hope to increase the number of formal lectures at the University of Minufyeh, which will enable more students from the Faculty of Archaeology to become involved in at least part of the field school. q Joanne Rowland is Director of the EES Minufiyeh Archaeological Survey and Junior Professor in Egyptian Archaeology in the Egyptology Department, Free University, Berlin. Thanks are due to the following colleagues who were instructors during the field school: Geoffrey Tassie (University of Winchester), Lawrence Owens (Birkbeck College, University of London), Ashraf el-Senussi (Kom Aushim Museum), Mandy Mamedow (Humboldt University, Berlin) and Yasser Mohammed Mahmoud el-Kolaly (SCA). The field-school was generously supported by the Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst and simultaneous fieldwork at Quesna was supported by the Michela Schiff Giorgini Foundation. Thanks are due to the EES Cairo Office for logistical assistance and the loan of surveying equipment, to Florian Kohstall (Free University, Berlin, Cairo Office) for his support of the field-school project, to the SCA in Tanta and at Quesna for continued support and for the use of additional rooms during the field-school, to our inspector Sara el-Said Mohammed el-Said and to the local workforce at Quesna. Photographs © EES Minufiyeh Archaeological Survey

Two of the students consolidating one of the burials in Trench T9

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ANCIENT WORLDS SUMMER SCHOOL 2012 30th July – 10th August 2012

The University of Liverpool’s Ancient Worlds Summer School returns for its third year in 2012. Learn about Egypt and the ancient world from the experts, with privileged access to their current research. This year’s Egyptology courses: •  Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced Hieroglyphs •  “From Amarna to Deir el-Medina: Current New Kingdom Research” Residential and non-residential packages are available, with prices starting from £150 for one week For further information on these and other courses, visit the website http://sace.liv.ac.uk/ancientworlds/2012-summer-school/ Or contact the organiser: Dr Glenn Godenho Office: 0151 794 2475 Email: ggodenho@liverpool.ac.uk

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The Book of the Dead in the tomb of Karakhamun In 2010 a grant from the EES Centenary Fund was awarded to Kenneth Griffin to study the Book of the Dead in the Second Pillared Hall of the Theban tomb of Karakhamun, as he now describes. The tomb of Karakhamun (TT 223), situated in the South Asasif necropolis, represents one of the earliest monumental tombs of the Late Period. Dating to the mid Twenty-Fifth Dynasty, the tomb was an innovation of the time, with its entry pylon, large open courts and shrines, marking a dramatic change from the smaller enclosed tombs of the New Kingdom. The tomb was first explored in the first half of the nineteenth century, but had since been neglected, mainly due to its poor state of preservation. Excavations, carried out over the past six seasons, under the direction of Elena Pischikova and the SCA-sponsored South Asasif Conservation Project, have resulted in the recovery from the floor of the tomb of the vast majority of the inscribed wall fragments. It is now known that the walls of the tomb were inscribed with a number of religious texts including the Book of the Dead, Pyramid Texts, and the Hours of both the Day and the Night (Stundenritual). Many of these texts were also replicated in the later Kushite and Saite tombs at Thebes, making Karakhamun’s tomb essential to the study of the evolution of these religious texts. During the summer of 2011, a project to identify, reconstruct, and record the chapters of the Book of the Dead from the Second Pillared Hall of the tomb was undertaken with the support of the EES Centenary Fund. This hall consists of four pillars and four pilasters that are all inscribed with vertical columns of hieroglyphs: seven on the long sides and four on the short sides. As a rule, the Book of the Dead chapters are written retrograde so that the signs are orientated towards the rear of the tomb while equally having the appearance of beginning from there - a practice attested in other Late Period tombs. The titles of the spells are not included and instead, each text is introduced by the phrase ‘words spoken by the

Part of the vignette of chapter 47

Osiris,’ followed by a series of titles preceding the name of Karakhamun, who is proclaimed ‘true of voice’. The first stage of the process for recording the Book of the Dead within the hall involves the identification of the chapters. The destruction of the pillars means that only a few diagnostic words from each column are preserved but, despite this, it has been possible to identify the majority of the texts from the hall, largely through the use of the online Thesaurus Linguae Aegyptiae (TLA, see: http://aaew.bbaw.de/tla/index.html). This database enables a swift identification of the texts as well as providing the transliteration and translation of each chapter. This method has been such a success that it is now possible to identify more than 25 chapters of the Book of the Dead from the Second Pillared Hall alone. The second stage of the process involves the reconstruction of the text. This is first made digitally in the hieroglyph editing program ‘JSesh’ before any dislodged fragments can be physically restored to their original location within the tomb. Facsimile drawings of the texts are later produced with the aid of a digital drawing tablet. The technique ensures an accurate and high quality epigraphic record of the text without risking potential damage to the inscription by using alternative methods such as tracing. The final stage includes the full transliteration, translation, and analysis of each text in preparation for publication. The analysis will focus on the grammar, palaeography, and arrangement of the chapters. Initial observations in the palaeography of the texts reveal that a large number of craftsmen were responsible for decorating the tomb, with the execution of the carving varying greatly from the highly skilled craftsmen to the lesser skilled apprentice. This past season, over 200 fragments belonging to the chapters within the Second Pillared Hall were identified,

Part of the vignette of chapter 15

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The north-western pilaster as found in 2010

with 39 fragments having already been restored to their original locations. This includes the re-erection of the north-western pilaster, which had been completely broken up but now measures over 1.5 metres in height. In addition, several large blocks belonging to the northern face of the first northern pillar (BD 52) were restored. A number of vignettes were also identified, including almost the entire vignette of Chapter 47 that accompanies the text of Chapter 50, and large portions of the vignettes belonging to Chapters 15 and 57. The study of the Book of the Dead from the tomb of Karakhamun promises to be a welcome addition to our understanding of such a well known religious text while the epigraphic survey and analysis of the chapters will contribute to our understanding of early Late Period tomb decoration.

The reconstructed north-western pilaster q Kenneth Griffin is a PhD student at Swansea University. He would like to thank the EES for making this project possible through a Centenary Award. He is grateful to Elena Pischikova for permission to work on the Book of the Dead within the tomb of Karakhamun. Photographs: The South Asasif Conservation Project.

Kings and gods adorn the walls of Egyptian temples in face-to-face meetings, and for two millennia these depictions have united the king OFFERINGS TO THE GODS and the divine. The king, the son of IN EGYPTIAN TEMPLES the god, presents his ancestors an offering or performs a ritual. Over two hundred offerings are divided into broad categories: purification, beverages, foods, produce from the fields, fabrics, ointments and adornments; rituals for goddesses and gods; symbolic, cosmic, funerary and defensive rituals; and royal cult rituals. All are explained, from their simple action (e.g. offering beer as a daily drink) to their symbolic meaning (beer is also a sacred drink that induces ecstasy of a divine nature which annihilates the destructive force of the daughter of Ra). A drawing and photographs illustrate each offering. The title of the offering is given in hieroglyphs to enable everyone to locate the words on the temple walls. Translations of the most significant texts accompany each of the offerings. Most of the texts in this book date to the last period of Egyptian history (Graeco-Roman period, 300 B.C. to A.D. 300) where the decoration is enriched with complex inscriptions, written in so-called “Ptolemaic” that very few Egyptologists are able to translate. SYLVIE CAUVILLE

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Terracottas from Tell Basta The Tell Basta expedition is now a joint project of the EES, the University of Göttingen and the SCA (see EA 39, pp.7-9), Veit Vaelske is responsible for study of the terracottas found during the work and summarises his results to date. John Gardner Wilkinson (1797-1875) visited Tell Basta in the early nineteenth century and later remarked: ‘In the mounds I found a few copper coins of late Roman time, some small fragments of marble, and a piece of red pottery representing the god of death or war, whose figure occurs on the columns of the Mammisi temples, usually supposed to be Typhonian.’ (Modern Egypt and Thebes; being a description of Egypt (1843), p.430). Like many of his contemporaries Wilkinson collected some of the plentiful objects from the site and brought them back to England, but of greater academic value is his reference to their place of origin, which emphasises the relevance not only of excavating this special city of the Delta but also of keeping in mind the long history of modern research at the site. Since Wilkinson’s time, Tell Basta has yielded an endless series of terracottas (clay figurines) and research on this material is especially valuable since they were very popular in Graeco-Roman times and can offer special insights into the religious and cultural conditions of Tell Basta/Bubastis. It addition to other iconographic materials such as limestone statuettes, faience amulets, etc. the Tell Basta Project has discovered almost 400 fragments of terracottas. Similar material found by earlier archaeological expeditions and collectors easily doubles this number, although many of the previously-found terracottas lack accurate find spots and archaeological contexts. In addition to studying iconography and style, modern scientific excavation helps to provenance all the material more accurately.

Upper part of a statuette of Bes. Height: 11.1cm. Third-second centuries BC.

The bulk of the fragments which we have studied on site were found during recent excavations in front of the Great Temple of Bastet. Even though the contexts of their use remain uncertain at present, the stratigraphy informs us about the chronological sequence. Therefore, it can be said with certainty that terracottas were used at Tell Basta from the pre-Hellenistic Late Period until Roman times, apparently with an emphasis on the earlier centuries. Also of significance, and chronologically in agreement with the established stratigraphy, is the technological shift from terracottas of the Egyptian Late Period and of the early Hellenistic era, which were either formed by hand or made from one single mould, to the completely mould-made figurines of later periods. Furthermore, the finding of typologically and technologically related figurines, moulds and wasters suggests that terracottas were not only imported to Tell Basta but that they were also produced in the town over a long period. Knowing this, it is even more remarkable that the main cult centre of the Egyptian cat-goddess Bastet did not initiate the reproduction of images of the goddess in clay. There is also little to no evidence that the known thousands of bronze statuettes of Bastet were reproduced for votive purposes at the main temple of the goddess. These bronzes, well known in Britain from the former Langton cat collection, were probably dedicated in the now overbuilt and vanished cat-cemeteries of Bubastis. A good contrast to the situation in Tell Basta is provided by the recently-discovered Bubasteion of Alexandria, where hundreds of feline terracottas, as votive offerings, were found in SCA rescue excavations conducted by Mohammed Abd el-Maksoud. These terracotta figurines are being studied by Mervat Seif el-Din The writer (left foreground) showing Egyptian trainee archaeologists how to record terracottas during the autumn 2011 season at Tell Basta (information: Pascale Ballet).

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Statuette of a ‘Persian Rider’. Height: 9.7cm. Fourth to third centuries BC

One of the few depictions of Serapis from Tell Basta, with the god’s bust shown on the handle of the lamp. The scene on the body shows the abduction of Europa. Length: 11.2cm. Second century AD

Obviously other deities were equally important at Bubastis, even though reverence for them might have been linked to the cultic worship of Bastet. This could be the case with Bes, whose depictions are found on at least a quarter of the recently-discovered terracottas. Some of the more elaborate figurines, showing the god naked, with a raised sword in his right hand, and a strangled snake in his left, can be dated to the early Hellenistic Period. The red paint covering some of them recalls the quotation of Wilkinson (above) whose ‘Typhon’ may have been Bes himself. Equally common at Tell Basta is the relatively homogeneous group of early horses and riders of distinctively foreign appearance (the so-called ‘Persian Riders’) which have been found at other sites such as Tanis and Memphis, and also at Tell el-Herr by the French-Egyptian Mission under the direction of Dominique Valbelle. The latter are still unpublished (information: Pascale Ballet). Concerning other iconographic clusters, the question arises as to whether they are directly connected to especially Bubastite circumstances, for example the rites described by Herodotus (Book II 60), or if they reflect other Egypt-wide customs. That is the case with the numerous figurines of Harpokrates and of women disrobing themselves (so-called Anasyrmenai). As tempting as it would be to see a connection between these ladies and the descriptions of specific rites at Bubastis, terracottas of the Anasyrmenai are known from all over Egypt. Even though the temple of Bastet itself may no longer have been in proper use in the Roman Period, religious life did not cease (see article in AfP 55 as quoted below). There is, however, a distinct lack of the Roman terracotta types familiar from elsewhere in Egypt; there are, for example, only a very few figurines representing Serapis or Isis lactans. The religious character of Roman Bubastis still remains unclear, but the continuing use of Aphrodisian iconographies

during this period may indicate that in her home town Bastet had not yet lost the reputation as a protectress of love, pregnancy and childhood for which she had become famous throughout the Mediterranean area. Sculptures bearing the provenance ‘Tell Basta’ or ‘Zagazig’ point in the same direction and among them Aphrodite seems to have been of special importance. Further research and archaeological work by the Tell Basta Project will inevitably provide more information about religious and cultural evolution at Bubastis in the later periods of its history. q Veit Vaelske is a Classical Archaeologist at Humboldt University, Berlin. He is indebted to his German and Egyptian co-workers of the Tell Basta Project and would like to express his appreciation of the Egypt Exploration Society’s long-standing engagement at Tell Basta and to EES members for their support of the current expedition. For a discussion of Tell Basta during the Roman Period, see: Veit Vaelske, ‘Bubastis/Tell Basta in römischer Zeit’, in: Festschrift für Günther Poethke zum 70. Geburtstag (P. Poethke). Archiv für Papyrusforschung 55 (2009), pp.487-98. Photographs: ©Tell Basta Project/Veit Vaelske.

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Statuette of the goddess Aphrodite. Height 12.0cm. Hellenistic Period

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Workshops and urban settlement in Buto EA 24 (pp.18-19) contained a report on the 2001-06 University of Poitiers fieldwork at Buto focusing on the activities of potters at the site in the Graeco-Roman Period. Since 2007 the team has been investigating the relationship of the workshops and the city as Pascale Ballet and Gregory Marouard report. To understand the development of the settlement of Buto and to identify the different functions of the town during the latest periods of occupation, from the end of the Late Period until late Roman times, an area of 1200m2 was opened on the north-east fringe of Kom A in sector P5. This area is close to the bath building first excavated by the EES expedition, led by Veronica Seton-Williams, in the 1960s and now reinvestigated by our mission (see further p.16). The sector was partly covered by the geophysical survey conducted by Tomasz Herbich, offering the possibility of comparing the remains identified on the ground with the anomalies visible on the geophysical map. Extensive cleaning allowed us to determine the location of some pottery kilns and various buildings and, above all, to understand the history and development of this urban area in which the kilns were constructed. Deep stratigraphical trenches were made in the open areas, streets, lanes and courtyards where most of the layers and closed deposits (pits, dumps, ashes, etc.) were found. As the buildings themselves were preserved only at the level of their foundations, their occupation history had to be determined by excavating the exterior stratigraphic sequences and by investigating the domestic equipment set up outside the buildings. The ceramic evidence from these different contexts provided a chronological framework for evaluating the phases from their construction and occupation to their abandonment. Combining extensive survey work and large-scale cleaning with the excavation

Area P5. The enclosure wall and the early Ptolemaic buildings on the east slope of Kom A. View to the west during the 2009-10 excavations. Photograph: Gregory Marouard and Martin Pithon

of the trenches, three main phases of the evolution of this densely urbanized quarter were highlighted. The main and the oldest element of the first phase is an enclosed area, excavated in 2009 and 2010, previously detected by the magnetic survey, which is located in a depression between the bath area (P10) and the eastern fringe of Kom A. The area’s enclosure wall, which had been built at the end of the Late Period, shows an irregular polygonal plan, with thick foundations and a circulation area alongside its exterior western face. It was probably built on the eastern side of an urban sector, and it seems possible that it was still in use during the Ptolemaic Period, when the first buildings of the second phase were constructed. Two phases of construction had been recognised during our previous excavations in P2 in the northern section of the wall. A second phase is characterised by the development of a domestic quarter, dating from the end of the fourth century BC or the beginning of the third to early first century BC, excavated between 2007 and 2010. The first buildings in the west of the enclosure wall appear to have been built at the very beginning of this period on the east slope of Kom A. They are followed by a second phase of buildings on a terrace upon the slope, probably during the third century BC. In the two cases, the same mud-brick construction techniques were employed, using concave brick courses and the so-called ‘casemate foundation’ system, which is very common for settlements in the Delta. This construction technique was not, as often previously thought, restricted to very specific

Area P5. The Ptolemaic quarter on the terrace, east part of Kom A. View to the east during the excavations of 2007-08. Photograph: Gregory Marouard and Martin Pithon

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Location of the various sondages (2002-11) conducted by the University of Poitiers. The areas shown in grey are those of the joint DAI/University of Poitiers magnetic survey by Tomasz Herbich (Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology, Polish Academy of Sciences)

All these buildings (at least 15 have been identified) are set up in a regular street pattern. The houses themselves contributed to the formation of a circulation network, consisting of various streets of different types and sizes. This phenomenon is well known from other areas in Buto, and the geophysical survey revealed further

types of buildings such as cult installations, administrative buildings and storage complexes, but was also used in domestic architecture for the so-called multi-storeyd â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;tower-housesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; (also attested at Tell el-Daba, see pp.2931), as illustrated by clay or limestone models known from this period. 15

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examples to the west of Kom A which look very similar, being built according to the same techniques during the Late Period. This last observation underlines very well the characteristics of the settlement and the fact that Egyptian towns did not see a radical architectural change with the arrival of the Greeks. The urban tradition of the end of the pharaonic period is still influential in terms of settlement development. The Ptolemaic domestic quarter was deserted at the end of the Hellenistic Period and was reoccupied in the Early Roman Period by several kilns, producing red fine ware, similar to those excavated in P1 from 2002 to 2004. This main change in function on the north-east fringe of Kom A, characterised by a decrease in the number of domestic installations in favour of industrial activity, is not yet attested elsewhere on the kom and remains to be verified. At least five of the pottery kilns of the early Roman workshop are particularly remarkable due to the use of a radiance firing process for the pottery production. In this peculiar bipartite type of kiln, smoke and heat were conducted through columns of tubes set into the upper chamber (continuously oxidizing firing) and the complex ventilation system in the lower part, which has been found in two of the ovens, underlines the highly elaborate technique used by the local potters and their desire to imitate as closely as possible the more prestigious production of sigillata. The kiln constructions and the

Area P5. The complete ventilation system of kiln 5280, Early Roman Period. View to the north-west. Photograph: Gregory Marouard

firing technique, as well as the typology of the Fine Red Wares produced in this sector, provide evidence that the beginning of activity must have been relatively early in the Roman Period, around the very end of the first

The baths of Buto in the destroyed areas and then to explore new parts of the building. A series of old photographs of the excavations, kindly provided by Peter French (a member of the EES team in the 1960s), helped us to understand better the plans of the excavation reports published in the JEA. In addition to the presence of an industrial zone on its periphery, these baths have the peculiarity of having, in a single location, a sequence of construction and evolution of bath building over a long period, and thus the potential to illustrate the transitional mechanisms from Greek to Roman baths in Egypt. Excavations between 2008 and 2011 have uncovered the remains of the early Ptolemaic bath (phase 1), the building of phase 2, dated to the transition between the Ptolemaic and Roman periods, and the third reconstruction (phase 3), which probably occurred during the second half of the second century AD. Most of the work focused on phase 2, of which the layout demonstrates the originality: while it is still a Greek-style bath with tholoi (rotundas) and hip-bathtubs, it also shows the presence of latrines and, in a final stage of ‘modernisation’, of a hypocaust room, both features of Roman baths. Latrines have already been observed in Greek baths in Egypt, at Tell el-Herr (North Sinai), dated to the first century AD. However, the Buto baths, with not only latrines but also a heated floor (hypocaust), appear to be quite innovative and unique in Egypt at the beginning of our era. BÉRENGÈRE REDON and GUY LECUYOT

The focus of the French mission at Buto on pottery production of Greek and Roman times and its place within the urban fabric of the city has naturally led us to re-examine the work made on the site by archaeologists from the Egypt Exploration Society in the 1960s, in particular on a small kom, in the north-east part of the site, now known as ‘the English kom’. The EES team uncovered there a very interesting group of kilns and baths, identifying several architectural phases dating from the second century BC to the second century AD. The interest of the building and its particular context led us to start re-excavating the baths in 2008. After more than forty years of neglect, much of the building complex has gone, especially the remains corresponding to the last reconstruction of the Greek tholoi baths into Roman thermae. However, this state of ruin allowed us to make in-depth research

q Bérangère Redon (IFAO, Balneorient) and Guy Lecuyot (CNRS ENS UMR 8546) are conducting the excavations in the bath building. They will be publishing a report on the Buto baths in Boussac, Denoix, Fournet and Redon (eds.), Balaneia, thermes et hammams: 25 siècles de bain collectif (ProcheOrient, Égypte, péninsule Arabique), IFAO-IFPO, forthcoming.

Area P10. �� The baths from the south at the end of the 2011 campaign with, in the background, the overlying tholoi (phases 1 and 2). Photograph: Guy Lecuyot and Bérangère Redon

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century BC or the beginning of the first century AD, to the end of the first century AD. These workshops in Buto provide the first examples of this technique for the Near East and may be evidence for connections with the eastern Mediterranean workshops producing Eastern Sigillata A and the Western Roman workshops (Arezzo or La Graufensenque). During the late Roman Period, from the second to the third centuries AD, this pottery production continued on a relatively modest scale and Buto then became a local centre specialising in the production of common wares as shown by the kilns which have been discovered on the north fringe of Kom A - in areas P11 and P3. A small trench in P6 (near P5) also revealed information about urban occupation during the Late Roman Period (third to fourth centuries AD). To complete the extensive examination of the relationship of the workshops to the settlement, some checking, by means of trenches, was also undertaken in the southern part of the city. In the depression between Kom A and Kom C (Sector P7) a group of circular anomalies detected by the magnetic survey revealed an occasional production of lime, which can be dated to the late Byzantine and early Islamic Periods, attesting the exploitation of the site for its raw materials, probably after the final abandonment of the settlement. In the south of

Kom C (P9) a reddened surface proved in fact to be the result of a building having caught fire, and not traces of a workshop. Nevertheless, the sondage made in this area provided interesting data on artefacts from the end of the late pharaonic period and the early Ptolemaic era. Further fieldwork is planned for the coming years (2012-15) to enable us to understand better the latest developments of the city of Buto, through new detailed survey techniques and cleaning methods, on a more extensive scale. It will shed more light on the vast urban installations of the Late Period that have been detected to the west of Kom A by the geophysical survey down to the latest occupation of the site (Late Roman and Byzantine Periods) which are clearly visible on the surface of the southern part of Kom A. These archaeological works will be augmented by research on the historical and written sources relating to Buto to build up a more complete picture of the city’s development. q Pascale Ballet (University of Poitiers, HeRMA) has directed the Poitiers work at Buto since 2000. Gregory Marouard (Oriental Institute, University of Chicago, HeRMA), with Martin Pithon (INRAP), has conducted the archaeological work since 2007 (in areas P5-9, P11). The University of Poitiers team works as part of the German Archaeological Institute’s concession with the support of the French Foreign Office and IFAO, Cairo. Several preliminary reports of these results can be found in MDAIK 59, 63 and 65.

If you are enjoying reading this issue of EA and are not already a member of the Egypt Exploration Society, you can make sure you receive every issue by joining us and helping us to continue exploring Egypt’s past, so that we can inspire future generations interested in one of the world’s greatest civilisations. Membership of the Society allows you access to a wide range of services: The Ricardo Caminos Library at the Society’s London base is the only major Egyptological Library in the UK open to anyone with an interest in ancient Egypt. It contains over 20,000 books (most of which can be borrowed, including by post within the UK), journals and periodicals. We can also photocopy journal articles and mail them to you. Egyptian Archaeology is published twice a year and is included in your full membership. Each issue has reports on EES and other fieldwork in Egypt and on the results of the latest Egyptological research. The EES Newsletter will keep you up-to-date with all the Society’s events, conferences, publications and news. It is mailed to members three times a year. E-newsletters are also sent regularly to members. Reduced prices on tickets to all EES events, held throughout the year in the UK. We also have a lecture programme in Cairo with members’ visits to archaeological sites in Egypt, and members’ tours to Egypt from the UK. A 15% members’ discount on the purchase of all EES publications which can be purchased from the Office or at our online shop: www.ees-shop.com. The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology is the foremost English-language Egyptology journal and an annual subscription can be added to your membership, as can a low-cost annual subscription giving access to digital copies of the JEA on JSTOR. The Graeco-Roman Memoirs publish mainly Greek papyri excavated by the Society at Oxyrhynchus. Subscription to the Memoirs can also be added to your membership. Most importantly, you will know that your subscription will help the EES to continue its important fieldwork in Egypt and to carry out research into all aspects of the ancient Egyptian civilisation. Find out more about the EES, including full details of membership benefits and subscription rates, at our website: www.ees.ac.uk

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Investigating ancient settlements around Buto

The German Archaeological Institute has been excavating the major Delta city of Buto (Tell el-Farain) since the early 1980s. In 2010 a new project was launched, directed in the field by Robert Schiestl, to survey the surrounding area and investigate settlement patterns

The site of Kom el-Gir, view to the north-west

Following the work of the EES in the 1960s at Buto, the site has been under investigation by the German Archaeological Institute (DAI), Cairo for around 30 years. This work has provided ample archaeological confirmation for the written sources referring to the important Predynastic and Early Dynastic town of Buto. The existence of the settlement in the Old Kingdom can also be documented archaeologically. The very impressive tell, which is still well preserved, is dominated by structures from the Late Period to the Roman era. What remains something of a mystery, however, is the period of about 1,500 years from the late Old Kingdom to the late Third Intermediate Period. While the temple of Wadjet seems to have been in use in the New Kingdom, so far no traces of settlement have been found at the site for the First Intermediate Period, the Middle Kingdom, the Second Intermediate Period and the New Kingdom. Based on current evidence, this major town would seem to have been abandoned for 1,500 years. As odd as this may seem from a modern perspective, the abandonment, transfer and (re-)founding of settlements, both large and small, was probably not so uncommon in ancient Egypt. However, it can be assumed that it was not done without good reason, and it is not clear what occurred at Buto or what the specific implications were of such a process for the site and the region. In 2010 a new project was, therefore, initiated by the DAI with funding provided by the Thyssen Foundation, to investigate the settlement history of the region

surrounding Buto. One of the first research questions to answer is whether patterns of settlement activity similar to those documented at Buto are observable on a regional basis. To date three seasons of surveying have been completed. The project coordinator is Stephan Seidlmayer, while in the field it is directed by the writer. The area surveyed to date measures about 22km x 25km and lies mostly to the north, east and south of Buto. Previous surveying activity in parts of this region has been conducted by Thomas von der Way, Pascale Ballet, Jeffrey Spencer, Penelope Wilson and Joanne Rowland. In order to gain as complete a picture as possible of the settlement history of the region, the entire scope of archaeological sites is being documented, ranging from recording free-standing large tells to tracing evidence of destroyed sites. A position somewhat in between is taken by ancient sites partially or completely overbuilt by modern cemeteries or settlements. Some examples of these different categories of sites documented in the course of the survey will be presented here. Large tells (or koms) with surfaces free of constructions are found mainly to the north and north-east of Buto. �� The site of Kom el-Gir (31 13 25 N/30 46 25 E��; SCA 090118, EES Delta Survey No.331�� ) lies �� about 4km northeast of Buto. The tell is currently about 20ha in extent, but the steep borders which rise sharply up to over 1m from the surrounding fields indicate that the edges have been cut away from a formerly larger site. In the north-west part the tell rises to a maximum height of about 5m above 18

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sites which seem to be entirely lost today, but with the help of these maps and satellite images they can often be relocated in the field with the aid of surface surveying, auger core drilling and magnetometry. �� Many villages, or parts of them, in the Delta are built on elevated ground, indicating the existence of underlying ancient tells. Sites covered by modern constructions can be separated into partially and completely built-up tells. While in the former some open areas are still accessible for archaeological research, the latter are more challenging to investigate and subsurface work at such sites can often be achieved only with auger core drilling. The large village of Shabas Umayyir (31 06 07 N/30 47 27 E) lies about 11km south-east of Buto. �� North-west of the village are two large modern cemeteries situated on top of tells, which have a height of up to 5m. Together the two cemeteries cover about 2.5ha. The edges of the tells and the fields surrounding them are very rich in Roman pottery, indicating that there had formerly been a substantial ancient site here. Two maps (see below) provide clues as to when they ceased being ancient settlement mounds and started being used as cemeteries. A cadastral map from 1884 shows the tell north-west of the village, with a small pond at its southern edge. The pond was probably the result of material having been removed from the tell, either to make bricks or to be used as fertiliser. At this time the surface of the tell was free of graves but by the time of the 1913 survey map, it had been established as a burial ground and the pond was much larger – presumably directly connected to the growth of the village. At a later point the pond was filled

the surrounding fields. Most of the surface seems to be undisturbed by recent activities, and in good condition. Pottery sherds, as well as glass fragments, are found on the surface of the entire site, with concentrations around pits left by robbers. Some small pieces of limestone, mostly very soft and corroded, are also found on the surface. In the first investigation of the site in the spring of 2010, eight boreholes were drilled along two transects. The boreholes cut through very thick settlement layers which provided large amounts of pottery sherds. Based on the dating of the sherds from the auger core drillings and the pottery from the surface survey, the site would seem to have been founded in the Late Ptolemaic or Early Roman Period (first century BC) and was mainly occupied during the Roman Period (until the fourth century AD). One auger core drilling provided some Late Roman material. In the western part of the tell, regularly laid out buildings can be detected on satellite images so it was decided to investigate this site more intensively by magnetometry. The first part of this work was executed by Tomasz Herbich in the autumn of 2011 and furnished very good results. The work will be continued in 2012 and the results will be presented in a future article. An important role in locating ancient sites is played by historic maps and satellite imagery, both in preparation for the survey and during the seasons in the field. Because of land reclamation, settlement growth and industrialization, archaeological sites keep disappearing in the Delta, as is documented comprehensively by the EES Delta Survey (http://ees.ac.uk/research/delta-survey.html). Maps from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries show

Shabas Umayyir. Above: on a cadastral map of 1884 (District de Kafr el-Zayat), original scale 1:40.000. Below: on the Survey of Egypt map, 1913 edition (VI-1 NW), original scale 1:50.000. Right: satellite image showing the two tells in the north-west covered by cemeteries. The Survey’s drillcore holes are marked as white dots ©GoogleEarth

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construction. However, a remarkable source provided further confirmation for this tell and its given name. In 1871 the famous Egyptian geographer and cartographer El-Falaki issued the first topographic map of Egypt. The region in question was published at a scale of 1:100.000 and numerous ancient tells are shown. Three categories of sites are differentiated: ancient tells are represented as brown mounds with an empty plateau on top, modern villages are shown in red, and modern villages on elevated ground are marked as a combination of a brown mound with red village on top. Buto is shown as two distinct mounds under the name of Tell el-Farain. While �� the village of Shabasia did not then exist, a long narrow tell, roughly parallel to the Bahr Masraf Nashart, called Kom el-Ahmar, is shown in the location of Shabasia. The name, the ‘red mound’, is provided only in this source. Thus another Kom el-Ahmar, one of the most popular names for ancient settlement mounds, can be added to the list of Egyptian sites. In conclusion, it is the relatively young sites, Roman and later�� , �� which are affected most severely by levelling. At the investigated sites of Roman or at the earliest Late Ptolemaic date, no older settlements were found beneath them. They all seem to be foundations of that period and were not continuations of pharaonic settlements. The earliest settlement in the region investigated to date is Kom el-Asfar, a foundation of the Third Intermediate Period. So far there is no new evidence for settlements around Buto of the fourth, third and second millennia BC.

Detail of the El-Falaki map of 1871, republished 1911, showing Tell elFarain (Buto) and the site of Kom el-Ahmar, today the village of Shabasia. Original scale 1:100.000

in to expand the village, which has spread out and is now directly adjacent to the cemetery, as can be seen on the satellite image. Parts of the tell have been flattened and a school built there. An auger core drilling (marked as a white dot on the satellite image) on the slope of the south-western cemetery revealed settlement layers to a depth of about 3.5m below the surface level. The pottery dates predominantly to the Roman Period, beginning in the Late Ptolemaic or Early Roman Period and lasting to the Late Roman Period. While cemeteries and settlements built on top of tells limit access to the ancient settlements below, it is still possible to gain a certain amount of archaeological information through auger core drilling. Thus, these villages and cemeteries - in a very real sense just the continuations of the ancient tells - also serve as a form of protection for the layers below. By contrast, ‘empty’ sites - that is, sites not overbuilt by villages or cemeteries and surrounded by open fields - are at greater risk of being levelled, either to increase agricultural land or to build industrial installations. A crucial question regarding such levelled sites in the survey area was whether any traces of settlements are still extant under the surface. The village of Shabasia (31 09 54 N/30 47 59 E) lies 6km south-east of Buto, on the west bank of the Bahr Masraf Nashart. At �� the western edge of the village lies a cemetery on a small tell. Surface surveying of the fields to the west of the village provided large amounts of pottery, of Early to Late Roman date. Two pieces of Early Islamic glazed Aswan ware were also found. The site is about 700m long and 300m wide and satellite images show the outlines of a long narrow tell, marked by borders of fields, oriented approximately north-south. Parts of the tell remain under the western edge of the village and, in particular, the cemetery, while the greater part in the fields to the west had been levelled. Auger core drilling in the fields did not show any traces of remaining settlement layers and the tell must be considered lost here. The area chosen for drilling in the village, near the cemetery, was unfortunately massively disturbed by modern

The village of Shabasia showing the former tell of Kom el-Ahmar (red outline) under the western part of the village and fields. © GoogleEarth q Robert Schiestl is an Egyptologist based in Berlin for the German Archaeological Institute (DAI) Cairo. He is field director of the Regional Survey Buto. Photographs © The Regional Survey Buto/ DAI Cairo.

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The Egyptological afterlife of Colin Campbell Colin Campbell made his name with early publications of celebrated Theban tombs, but his facsimile paintings from some of them are largely unknown. Angela McDonald and Sally-Anne Coupar have been working to conserve the paintings and to uncover the history behind them. Three years ago, while foraging through the collection of Glasgow University’s Hunterian Museum to identify items that might inspire students, we came across a series of thirteen facsimile paintings that had been quietly gathering dust in storage. The name of the artist – the Reverend Colin Campbell – was immediately familiar as the author of several important studies, including a critical re-appraisal of a contemporary publication of the tomb of Nefertari (1909), the first – and until recently, only – detailed description of the scenes and texts in Menna’s tomb (1910), and a pioneering photographic publication of the complex divine birth scenes in Luxor Temple (1912). However, so far as we knew, his collection of paintings was relatively unknown. Attracted by the paintings’ vivacity, we decided to make them the focus of a summer lecture in Glasgow in 2009. The lecture, which culminated in a dramatic unrolling of three of the paintings, excited a lot of interest, not only in the Theban tomb scenes, captured life-size and in colour on the canvases, but also in the artist himself. We were asked about how Campbell had managed to make his paintings, what materials he had used, whether he had worked in the tombs themselves, where he had studied Egyptology (never an easy task in Scotland!), and so on. Since the paintings were in a rather fragile state, we decided that conservation should be a priority, but we also wanted a better understanding of the man behind them who, after an illustrious ecclesiastical career, had re-fashioned himself into an Egyptologist. Born in Campbeltown, Argyllshire, in 1848, Colin Campbell was the son of a local tailor. He quickly distinguished himself as a student at Glasgow University, winning some 35 academic prizes for compositions, oral readings from Latin and Greek, and performance

Colin Campbell in 1889. Courtesy of the Local History Centre, Dundee Central Library

in examinations. After completing his Masters degree in 1874, he went on to obtain a Bachelor’s degree in divinity, and at the age of 30 he took up his first position as minister of St Mary’s church in Partick, Glasgow. Four years later he moved north to another St Mary’s, in Dundee, where he spent the remainder of his ecclesiastical career, occasionally moonlighting to preach at Crathie Parish Church on the Balmoral estate where his sermons were greatly enjoyed by Queen Victoria. Ill health forced his retirement in 1904. Although this was the end of one chapter of his life, it was also the beginning of another. It was as an undergraduate at Glasgow University that Campbell was first introduced to ancient Egypt by Edmund Law Lushington, a Professor of Greek who later became the University’s Rector and gave his inaugural address on the wars of Ramesses II. But it was an interest in Egyptian religion in particular that he instilled in Campbell. This was an interest Campbell began to indulge fully one year after his retirement, when he made his first trip to Egypt. Coming across a loose block in the Temple of Luxor inscribed with the distinctive, distorted face of the heretic king Akhenaten, he immediately recognised the significance of his find, and published it in The Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archaeology the following year. Thus began his passion not only to discover Egypt for himself but to share his findings. He returned to Luxor for eight successive winters, initially probably for his health but latterly to soak up the art and atmosphere of the past. Steadily, Campbell published descriptions of six Theban tombs that particularly appealed to him. From the time of his first visit, perhaps for his own pleasure, he had been making facsimiles of his favourite scenes, starting with an amalgamation of images from the tomb of Ramesses III’s young son Amenherkhepeshef that showed the

Campbell’s facsimile (D.1925.42/2) of a scene in the tomb of Menna

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D.1925.42/2 (detail). Gods in shrines from the tomb of Menna, showing damage to the facsimile

After conservation: a scene from Pasheduâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s tomb which Campbell annotated (D.1925.42/10). It is dated to 1909

A man pouring a libation from the tomb of Menna. His image has been pasted on to the background. Detail of D.1925.42/2

D.1925.42/9. A scene in the tomb of Djeserkaresoneb that has since suffered great damage, showing the value of Campbellâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s facsimiles. In the top register (see also p.1) the two ladies seated side-by-side at the far right have been completely destroyed while the two women in front of them and the serving girl survive only in fragments in a private collection. In the middle register, the upper bodies of both the lute- and pipe-players have been destroyed. See: http://tinyurl.com/7y53fcp 22

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A scene from Mennaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s tomb (D.1925.42/1) before conservation and cleaning, unrolled to its full extent of 4.25m x 1.72m

D.1925.42/13. Menna and his wife adoring the god Osiris. Note Campbellâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s distinctive signature in the bottom right-hand corner

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boy’s introduction to the god Imsety. From the tomb of the prince’s brother, Khaemwaset, he painted a similar scene and an image of the god Osiris. His eye was also caught by a scene from the tomb of the Deir el-Medina artisan Pashedu which shows the tomb owner bending down to take a sip of water in the shade of a luscious palm tree against a backdrop of crisp black hieroglyphs. He also made a copy of the famous scene of a priest with an Anubis mask leaning over the mummified body of Sennedjem, another inhabitant of Deir el-Medina. From the tomb of Djeserkaresoneb, he painted three scenes variously depicting the official’s duties as well as his preparations for the life to come. Campbell’s imagination seems to have been especially captured by the tomb of Menna, from which he painted five complete scenes, three of which represent the entirety of the inner chapel – the facsimiles of its long walls are each over 6m in length. Perhaps he sympathised with the damage inflicted on Menna’s eyes by some ancient vandal, rendering him unable to see the splendours of his own walls - in his publication of the tomb, Campbell noted the pain of ‘watching without being able to see’. Campbell made no notes that have so far come to light on his techniques. However, clues are present in the paintings themselves. Working on thick paper, Campbell seems to have first drafted in pencil, and then applied paint on top of his sketched outlines. The very large paintings were managed by patchworking cut-out paper panels on to a cotton fabric background. Some of his notes on colours and textures survive on the fronts and backs of the paintings and all are marked with his distinctive signature. From the high degree of accuracy, it seems likely that he spent a great deal of time working in the tombs themselves. The First World War may have put an end to Campbell’s trips to Egypt, but he did not give up his passion for Egyptology. Between 1916 and 1922, as Gunning Lecturer for two consecutive terms, he gave a series of well-received talks on Egyptological subjects at Edinburgh University. The final lectures in the series were devoted to the Egyptian afterlife.

Campbell’s notes on the side of his facsimile (D.1925.42/9) of a scene from the tomb of Djeserkaresoneb

In 1925 Campbell wrote to Glasgow University to offer its museum part of his antiquities collection (comprising, he said, several ostraca, fragments of the Book of the Dead, and ‘a few genuine antikas’). Almost as an afterthought, he added ‘I venture also to offer some facsimile reproductions in colours of scenes from Tomb Chapels which I was permitted to make by the kindness of the late Sir Gaston Maspero, Chief of the Service des Antiquités of Egypt’. University records note that his gift was accepted with ‘high appreciation’, and a temporary exhibition of them was mounted in the Hunterian. For a time, two or three of the paintings remained on display pinned to a board. Gradually, however, as space became more limited, the paintings on display were rolled up and joined their fellows in the museum’s storerooms. Their time on display wreaked some havoc and between July 2009 and December 2010, an extensive programme, thanks to funding from Museums Galleries Scotland, was undertaken in three phases to clean away accumulated grime and to reverse some of the damage done to them. As part of the conservation process, the paintings were relaxed with humidity, then tension-dried to remove creasing and wrinkles. Repairs were made to tears and weaknesses using Japanese paper and wheat starch paste. This process helped to heal old holes made when the paintings were pinned up. Now that the paintings are conserved, various uses, including new displays, are possible, and we anticipate increased use for teaching and research in the future. The paintings are more than a teaching tool, however, although they perform that task marvellously. They are a reminder of what passion and determination can accomplish - and not just in the energetic blush of youth. One of the ostraca that Campbell donated to the Hunterian contains a little hymn in praise of ancient Thebes, in which the author exclaims: ‘I will make for myself a productive stay on earth until the last days of my lifetime!’ It is not certain that Campbell could read hieratic himself – he entrusted the first translations of his ostraca to the redoubtable Alan Gardiner, working with Jaroslav Černý - but it is certain that he would have appreciated the sentiment: it was the story of his later life. q Angela McDonald teaches Egyptology to adult learners at the University of Glasgow and Sally-Anne Coupar is the Curator of Archaeology at the Hunterian Museum. Photographs courtesy of the Hunterian Museum, Glasgow University.

Detail from one of the scenes from the tomb of Khaemwaset (D.1925.42/7), showing the superimposition of two smaller sheets of paper on to a larger linen background

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Digging Diary 2011 Summaries of some of the archaeological work undertaken in Egypt during 2011 appear below. The sites are arranged geographically from north to south with the oases at the end. Field Directors who would like reports on their work to appear in EA are asked to e-mail a short summary, with a website address if available, as soon as possible after the end of each season to: patricia. spencer@ees.ac.uk PATRICIA SPENCER Abbreviations: ED Early Dynastic; OK Old Kingdom; FIP First Intermediate Period; MK Middle Kingdom; SIP Second Intermediate Period; NK New Kingdom; TIP Third Intermediate Period; LP Late Period; GPR Ground Penetrating Radar; GR Graeco-Roman. Institutions and Research Centres: AERA Ancient Egypt Research Associates: AUC American University Cairo; BM British Museum; CFEETK Franco-Egyptian Centre, Karnak; CNRS French National Research Centre; DAI German Archaeological Institute, Cairo; IFAO French Institute, Cairo; HIAMAS The Hellenic Institute of Ancient and Mediaeval Alexandrian Studies; MSA Ministry of State for Antiquities, Egypt; OI Oriental Institute, University of Chicago; SCA Supreme Council for Antiquities; Swiss Inst Swiss Institute for Architectural Research and Archaeology, Cairo; UCL University College London; UMR, USR research groups of the CNRS; WMF World Monuments Fund. SUMMER 2011 (May to September) Lower Egypt Tell el-Daba: The Austrian Archaeological Inst continued its work, directed by Irene ForstnerMüller. In the late summer/autumn Manfred Bietak, on behalf of the Austrian Archaeological Inst, excavated the middle Hyksos Period palace,

attributable in its later phase to King Khayan. Of particular importance was a double entrance gate and pits with sawn-off right hands in front of the palace façade (see further, pp.32-33). The plan of the palace seems to be Near Eastern and its size is c.10,500sq m. In front of the palace a wide cultic building with remains of four columns was found. Below the palace earlier stratigraphic levels were investigated - probably late MK palatial buildings. Of particular importance was a magazine destroyed by a large fire. Among the finds were amphorae filled with Egyptian blue artefacts, Middle Cypriot pottery made in Egypt and magic knives of ivory. Other finds included a sistrum made of ivory, faience and copper and an ivory (mirror?) shaped like a djed-pillar. http://www.auaris.at/ Giza: The SCA team, directed by Zahi Hawass and Adel Okasha, continued excavation of a large cemetery c.2km S of the tombs of the pyramid builders. The tombs of this cemetery, which is surrounded by a large wall, are larger than, and different from, those of the pyramid workers and are probably those of middle-class priests. Tomb 2110 belongs to Rudka, a priest of the pyramid complex of Khufu (see EA 38, p.26), and Tomb 2109 to Kaemnofret, a scribe of the temple. To the W of 2109 are other tombs and separate shafts. Altogether 13 interconnected tombs were found, mostly built of limestone. www.drhawass.com/ Saqqara: The SCA team, led by Zahi Hawass and Abdel Hakim Karara, continued work in the OK cemetery at the Gisr el-Mudir enclosure, excavating the rock-cut tomb of Shepsespuptah, whose titles include Inspector of the Royal House, Priest of Djedkare Isesi, and Priest of the Pyramid of Unas. The tomb (late 5th Dyn/beginning of the 6th Dyn) has a unique biographical text in which Unas orders the cutting of a sarcophagus for the deceased, as well as scenes of agriculture, music

and dancing and the making of statues and metal beds. www.drhawass.com/ Upper Egypt Medinet Madi: The site and visitor centre are now open to the public at the end of the second phase of the Medinet Madi Development Project, directed by Edda Bresciani, and supported by the SCA, The Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Univ of Pisa. A buffer zone has been created around the ancient site to protect it and to limit agricultural encroachment and Medinet Madi, Wadi el-Rayan and Wadi el-Hitan are now connected by 28km of unpaved panoramic track. Visitors now approach Medinet Madi from the S along the ancient processional route and can visit c.280 m of the site as far as the large Roman town square on its N side. The visitor centre provides a history of the site and the whole Fayum area through replica statues, information panels and photographs. It also has a café, library, conference area and an eco-lodge for overnight stays. Karnak: Archaeological research and restoration programmes continued in the precinct of AmunRe under the auspices of the CFEETK (SCA/ CNRS USR 3172) directed by Mansour Boreik (SCA) and Christophe Thiers (CNRS). At the Ptah temple (see EA 38 pp.20-24) excavation, supervised by Christophe Thiers and Pierre Zignani, focused on the SW area of the temple, close to the mud-brick precinct wall linked with the first Ptolemaic gate. In the SW part of this enclosure, the gate associated with two granite column bases was studied. Inside the courtyard, clearance brought to light limestone roofing slabs reused as pavement. Excavations also revealed mud-brick walls beneath the foundation sand of Tuthmosis III’s temple. They seem to be associated with pottery sherds from the end of the SIP/

Egypt Exploration Society Expeditions SUMMER/AUTUMN Sais (Sa el-Hagar): The EES/Univ of Durham team, led by Penny Wilson, completed the recording of 150 ‘bags’ of pottery collected by the SCA from the waste water project in the village of Sa el-Hagar and the material was repacked for storage in the magazine. Research also continued on the material from Excavation 11, a Late Ptolemaic-Roman pottery dump, perhaps from a kiln, to prepare it for publication. All the excavated material was recorded and important pieces were reconstructed and drawn.

(www.ees.ac.uk)

www.dur.ac.uk/penelope.wilson/sais.html.

Minufiyeh Governorate: The EES/Free Univ Berlin team, directed by Joanne Rowland, conducted a GPR survey at Quesna, on the N edge of the gezira, focusing on the area immediately around the OK mastaba tomb. Trench 9, S of the falcon necropolis, located the burials of 25 individuals - some very disturbed - with ceramic sherds of the LP-Roman Period. Three double-vessel type coffins were excavated and reconstruction continued of coffins excavated in previous seasons. Trenches 10 and 11 investigated linear features shown by the GPR survey and located LP and Ptolemaic ceramic sherds, but no structural remains. A field-school was held simultaneously (see pp.78). In Khatatbah, investigation of this area along the W Delta desert edge continued, with a pedestrian survey targeting 18 available areas, all but one on the stretch of land W of the Nasiry Canal and E of the asphalt road from Khatatbah

Tell Basta: Moving blocks in preparation for epigraphic recording. Photograph: The Tell Basta Project to Giza. Palaeolithic and Neolithic material was identified, together with some Late Ramesside ceramic sherds in one area. Following drill-coring in the spring (see EA 39, p.4) pedestrian surveys were also carried out at Kom Usim, where surface ceramics were predominantly Late Roman with a small amount of Byzantine/Islamic material, and at el-Rimaly, close to Quesna, where most ceramics are LP, with a few examples of Late Roman and modern material. http://minufiyeh.tumblr.com. Tell Basta: The season of the EES/Univ of Göttingen/SCA mission, directed by Eva Lange, was dedicated mainly to the documentation and analysis of pottery, small finds and glass excavated in previous years (see pp.12-13). The work on the pottery focused on the studying of fabrics and types of the LP and Ptolemaic Period, both Egyptian and

imports. The glass fragments were documented and revealed an unexpectedly large corpus of ware-types, dating from the second century BC to the early seventh century AD, which is unique for the E Delta. Complete epigraphic documentation began of all the decorated blocks of Osorkon I in the entrance hall of the temple of Bastet, revealing numerous hithertounknown reliefs. Documentation of fragments of temple statues, started two years ago as part of a dissertation project, was almost finished. Three trainees from the SCA were trained in the documentation of finds and pottery and in epigraphic work. http://tellbasta.tumblr.com/. Memphis: The Survey of Memphis team, directed by David Jeffreys (UCL), carried out a field-school season in collaboration with AERA (see further pp.5-6). The main purpose was to train young Egyptian inspectors in field surveying and recording methods, drawing on the skills acquired by graduates of earlier field-schools at AERA Giza. The site chosen was the early MK cemetery and adjacent MK settlement at Kom Fakhry, just S of the modern town of Mit Rahina - which offers the earliest in situ stratigraphy. After preliminary cleaning, excavation revealed settlement details including large rooms and a clear street pattern. Several sculptural pieces were found, including a limestone group statue and parts of a dwarf lamp statue similar to those found by Petrie at Kahun. www.aeraweb.org/category/blog/2011-field-season/.

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Alexandria, Cape Lochias: The threshold of a monumental door c.5m in height. Photograph by Myron Dimou © HIAMAS beginning of the NK. In the Amun-Re temple the restoration programme is continuing, mainly inside the chapels, and the epigraphic survey of the barque-shrine of Philip Arrhidaeus continued. At the entrance to the Open Air Museum the rebuilding of the Netery-Menu shrine is nearing completion. www.cfeetk.cnrs.fr/. Western Thebes: 1. In the Valley of the Kings, the SCA mission, led by Zahi Hawass and Ahmed el-Leithy, relocated KV 53 (owner unknown), which had been cleared in 1905-06 by Edward Ayrton. The tomb has a square shaft leading to a single chamber which the team re-excavated, finding four canopic jars with human heads surmounted by a scorpion. A V-shaped fragment of gold (15cm long) was found, as well as part of a Canaanite amphora. Disturbed human bones in the chamber belong to three individuals, one c.45 years old and two c.2023 years. www.drhawass.com/ 2. An SCA team, directed by Zahi Hawass, Abdel Ghafer Wagby and El-Taib El-Khodary, undertook rescue excavation NW of the temple of Amenhotep III because of the construction of a new sewage system on the W bank. A large cache of statues of Amenhotep III was discovered, made of various stones: red granite, basalt, black granite, quartzite, limestone and sandstone. The find included double statues of the king with ReHorakhty, Amun, Horus and Khepry, and four red granite statues of Thoth as a baboon. There are also remains of alabaster and basalt statues, a red granite sphinx and the lower part of the back stela of a double statue. www.drhawass.com/ AUTUMN 2011 (October to December) Lower Egypt Alexandria (Cape Lochias): The HIAMAS mission, directed by Harry Tzalas, continued its underwater survey at the Silsileh promontory. The threshold of a monumental red-granite door was raised from part of the Ptolemaic Royal Quarters. It has four circular cavities (for the hinges) in pairs - a larger and a smaller - at each of its surface extremities and it may have been reused for a smaller door. Unfinished carvings on the rear surface suggest a further later re-use. Another eight architectural elements (seven made of red granite and a triglyph of granodiorite) were raised from the same area. E of Silsileh the divers traced many broken amphorae, probably remains of the cargo of one or more ancient ships that hit the El-Hassan Reef, then a treacherous shoal. Three amphora types prevail: one produced in Spain (c. first-third centuries AD); another from Campania, (c.first century BC to first century AD) and an Egyptian type widely used for the trade of wine (c.first-fourth centuries AD). The dwarf tower of a red granite pylon raised two years ago is now on display at the Kom el-Dikka archaeological site. Buto: 1. The teams from the DAI and Univ of Poitiers, directed by Ulrich Hartung and Pascale Ballet,

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continued excavation and research. The DAI team concentrated on ED building remains N of the modern village of Sekhemawy with excavations revealing further structures dating to the beginning and first half of the 1st Dyn, comprising several rooms, round silos and three kilns probably for bread-baking. Two unfired bread moulds were found in one of the kilns. These structures are earlier than the palace-like building complex excavated previously. The finds – mainly pottery, stone vessel fragments, flint implements and some fragments of seal impressions – illustrate daily life in the settlement. A large quantity of fish bones points to the importance of fish for nutrition. Study focused on GR, LP and ED pottery from previous DAI seasons, as well as on Ptolemaic/Roman coins from the Univ of Poitiers excavations (see pp.14-17). www.dainst.org/buto. 2. The DAI Regional Survey around Buto, directed by Robert Schiestl, continued with analysis and drawing of pottery collected in the last two seasons of surface surveying in the region and from auger core drillings. Tomasz Herbich (Inst of Archaeology and Ethnology, Polish Academy of Sciences) carried out c.4.5ha of magnetometric prospection at Kom el-Gir (see also pp.18-20), a site c.4km NE of Buto, which, based on the results of the auger core drilling and the surface surveying, was founded in the late Ptolemaic or Early Roman Periods and occupied during the Roman era, though with very little Late Roman material. The very clear results of the magnetometry show the layout of a densely built-up Roman settlement.

monument of Khaemwaset is located in NW Saqqara. Work concentrated on the restoration (by Hiroko Kariya) and documentation of the sarcophagus of Isisnofret, which was found in 2009 (see EA 36, pp.1-14). In addition, they worked on the studies of faience objects and NK painted pottery from the site. www.egyptpro.sci.waseda.ac.jp/ index-e.html.

2. Due to the present political circumstances and as recommended by the SCA Permanent Committee, the Louvre Museum season, directed by Guillemette Andreu and Michel Baud, was limited mostly to conservation, site protection and site management. A large part of the team’s activities was dedicated to putting things in order after the acts of vandalism which occurred in the early days of the 2011 revolution, when the expedition’s magazine was severely wrecked and several tomb-shafts were opened. Improved access to the mastaba of Akhethetep was designed and a part of the N side of the Unas causeway was cleaned, where a 7.50m strip of compacted tafla running along the causeway at the same level was used as a ramp for transporting heavy loads. OK structures, such as the terraced rows of rock-cut tombs on the S side of the causeway (the upper one of which seems not to be mentioned in the literature), the deep shafts possibly connected to Djoser’s ‘dry moat’ and various Coptic remains were also mapped - a further step towards a detailed plan of this complex area. www.louvre. fr/les-fouilles-du-departement-des-antiquites-egyptiennessaqqara-egypte-saison-2010.

www.dainst.org/en/project/surveykafreschscheich?ft=all.

Kom Firin: A study season was undertaken by the BM team, led by Neal Spencer (see also p.44). The typology and chronological framework for the ceramic assemblages were refined, along with the collation of small finds ahead of publication of a second monograph. Material from the 200708 Citadel excavations was re-assessed, proving to be largely restricted to the sixth and fifth centuries BC, with a high proportion of ‘pigeon-pots’ (open-mouthed jars with holes in the base). These vessels seem to have been produced in the small kiln excavated in 2008. Other material includes imported transport amphorae (Phoenician, Chian). Ongoing destruction of the N edge of the site was noted, exposing a long stretch of the LP enclosure wall. This was mapped and planned; pottery retrieved from deposits beneath the wall are consistent with the dating of this temenos. www.britishmuseum.org/research/research_projects/kom_ firin.aspx.

Upper Egypt Dime (Soknopaiou Nesos): The Archaeological Mission of the Centro di Studi Papirologici of Salento Univ, Lecce, directed by Mario Capasso and Paola Davoli, carried out study and restoration on objects found in past seasons as, following the events that occurred after the 2011 revolution and the isolation of the site, the SCA did not grant permission to excavate for security reasons. Several typologies of objects were studied and documented to prepare the catalogue for publication. Restoration focused on bronze Ptolemaic and Roman coins and on hundreds of fragments of statues in local limestone and basalt found in the temple. Compositions of many of the fragments allowed the recognition of ten statues, in Graeco-Egyptian style and of various dimensions. In addition, emergency intervention was necessary to secure some walls and structures in Dime, damaged by illicit excavations after February 2011, both inside and outside the temenos and in the vast cemetery around the settlement. Major damage had been caused to the temple with the destruction of some floors, walls and of a doorjamb. In the naos the illicit excavation reached the gebel and exposed the foundations of the building, endangering it. Reliefs within the temple were also damaged. www.museopapirologico.eu/snp El-Sheikh Ibada (Antinoopolis): After the interruption of the spring campaign, excavation resumed under the direction of Rosario Pintaudi and sponsored by the Istituto Papirologico «G.

Qantir: In Autumn 2011 the long-term funding of excavations, at Qantir-Piramesse by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, Bonn, came to an end. Since then UCL Qatar, with its director Thilo Rehren, has joined the Pelizaeus-Museum, Hildesheim, as the academic home of the project, with the aim of securing a new long-term funding basis. Work at Qantir, led by Edgar Pusch, will continue with pottery studies in spring 2012 and it is hoped that several volumes of the series Forschungen in der Ramses-Stadt will be completed in the near future. They will contain the presentation and analyses of magnetic surveys, inscribed architectural pieces from the region and different sites as well as further pottery studies and detailed studies of results in high temperature technologies (metal, Egyptian blue), animal bones, weapons and other artefacts. www.ucl.ac.uk/qatar. Saqqara: 1. The Waseda Univ team, led by Sakuji Yoshimura and Nozomu Kawai, worked at the site magazine to study and conserve objects recovered from their fieldwork at the rocky El-Sheikh Ibada: The reconstructed Ionic column in church D3 at outcropping in the desert where the Antinoopolis. Photograph: Peter Grossmann

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the site. The SCA are managing the Koptos: most endangered areas but next year’s Fragment of a work will need to focus on further relief block with protection measures. detail of a royal Koptos: The main result of the Univ head. Photograph Lumière Lyon2/IFAO season, led by © IFAO Laure Pantalacci, was the identification of a small chapel decorated by Ptolemy K93.12 to the main road, and was presumably IV Philopator (240-205 BC), in the used during great religious festivals such as the NW area of the precinct dedicated to ‘Beautiful Feast of the Valley’. This route, and thus Min and Isis. The chapel is located the transverse N-S axis of the complex, was created on the axis of the processional path by the High Priest of Amun, Ramessesnakht and running from the S cemeteries through subsequently resumed by his son Amenhotep. the S enclosure (Netjery Shema). The The architectural survey and detailed architectural Amarna: View of the excavation trench in the cemetery, across the wadi sandstone pavement of the building is study of both rock tombs was continued as well floor. One pit, on the right of the image, has been enlarged to allow for well preserved, as are the door lintel as the conservation and documentation of nine consolidation of the fragile decorated wooden coffin. Photograph: The and several architraves. Although the badly-preserved 22nd Dyn wooden coffins which Amarna Project stones of the wall seem to have been were discovered two seasons earlier in the inner smashed to pieces, c.250 decorated fragments were Vitelli» of the Univ of Florence. Excavation was court of K93.12. The coffins probably originate recovered. The iconography emphasizes the theme concentrated at Deir Sumbat, a probable police from the secondary instrusive shafts cut along the of birth and childhood, featuring prominently the post in the quarries E of Antinoopolis (the name tomb’s façade. www.dainst.de. figure of Harpocrates being suckled by Isis. Hathor apparently refers to the monastic occupation of 2. At Qurna, OI epigraphic documentation by is also mentioned several times. www.ifao.egnet.net/ the neighbouring quarry caves) and in the church senior artists Margaret De Jong and Susan Osgood archeologie/coptos/. D3 in the S part of the town where the clearance resumed, directed by Ray Johnson, at the tomb Karnak: of the atrium was continued. As anticipated a of Nefersekheru (TT 107). Work concentrated on 1. The many archaeological research and restoration series of small rooms was found on the N side, the inscribed N wall of the tomb’s sunken court. programmes continued inside the precinct of equal in size to the S rooms and having served The reliefs that depict Amenhotep III’s Steward Amun-Re under the auspices of the CFEETK the same purpose as enkoimeteria for incubants of his jubilee palace at Malkata are of very high (SCA/CNRS USR 3172) directed by Mansour joining the healing centre of the church. Only quality and significance, but were carved in poor Boreik (SCA) and Christophe Thiers (CNRS), the foundations of the partition walls survive with quality limestone whose condition was made worse with continuation of the work at the Ptah the rooms proper added later. At the W entrance by a series of floods that filled the court in later Temple (see above) and excavations restarted in side of the atrium a long entrance hall with an antiquity. http://oi.uchicago.edu/research/projects/epi/ front of Amun temple (quay and baths). outer colonnade was unearthed. The intact Ionic 3. At Gurnet Murai as part of the project ‘The 2. Excavations at the Treasury of Shabaka, column from the E end of the S colonnade of the Power Elite during Dyn XX’, José F Alonso led by Nadia Licitra (Paris IV-Sorbonne Univ) church was re-erected during the season and now (Univ of Deusto, Spain) carried out a preliminary continued work in the area in front of the inscribed forms a visible landmark on the site. investigation of the recording and documentation and decorated gate, discovered in spring 2011, to Amarna: The Amarna Project expedition, of the Ramesside tomb of Horimin (TT 221). The locate the storerooms. Two inscribed sandstone directed by Barry Kemp, worked at the N hall and chapel, where some paintings are preserved, doors (door-jambs, lintel and cornice) found on Palace, completing the current phase of repairs were measured, photographed and studied. Some the floor in front of the entrance to two parallel that began in 1997 and has covered the NE part ceramics and six funerary cones of the Viceroy rooms confirmed the location of the storerooms in of the building: work concentrated on the three Merymose (18th Dyn) were discovered in a cavity the central area of the Treasury. Fragments of the animal houses along the N side. Excavation was of the chapel. They had probably been deposited wooden ceiling decoration were discovered, fallen also carried out at the S Tombs Cemetery. Here, there in the 1920s. on to the floor in front of the gate, including some at the Lower Site, a trench laid out across the 4. At Medinet Habu, the OI epigraphic team, with hieroglyphic signs and two decorative motifs. wadi floor confirmed that the cemetery extended directed by Ray Johnson and led in the field www.cfeetk.cnrs.fr/. in this direction, showing the same close packing by senior epigrapher Brett McClain, resumed Luxor Temple: Architect Jay Heidel (OI of graves as found elsewhere, except for a strip in documentation in the small Amun Temple of expedition, directed by Ray Johnson) continued the centre. It remains to be established whether Hatshepsut and Tuthmosis III, in the barque study, documentation, and collation of blocks this marks an original clear pathway along the sanctuary ambulatory (interior and exterior) and from a dismantled sixth century AD basilica (‘The centre line of the wadi or an erosion channel. An on the façade. The conservation team, supervised Church of St. Thecla’) in front of the Luxor extension to the Wadi Mouth site also confirmed by Lotfi Hassan, resumed work in the new Temple pylons. To date 118 decorated sanctuary that this is the best-preserved part of the cemetery blockyard built along the S Ramesses III enclosure blocks have been inventoried and will be studied found so far; parts of at least 40 skeletons were wall, continued to prepare an open-air museum for possible reconstruction on the original site. recovered overall. The most significant find (at the component of the facility along the front exterior, WMF-supported conservation and monitoring Lower Site) was of a decorated wooden anthropoid and constructed additional protective roofing resumed in the blockyard, supervised by coffin on the sides of which were figures including inside the blockyard. The inventorying and conservator Hiroko Kariya. The joined fragment a jackal-headed god. www.amarnaproject.com. documentation of the miscellaneous fragmentary groups and displays in the open-air museum (see Wadi Hammamat: A second survey season of the architectural and sculpture fragments continued, EA 39 pp.12-14) were condition-surveyed, and ancient greywacke quarries, directed by Elizabeth supervised by Julia Schmied. The transfer of cleaning was initiated on selected fragment groups. Bloxam (Monash Univ), headed by the Inst of material from the old blockyard was finished Ray Johnson, Hiroko Kariya, and the Chicago Archaeology, UCL and in co-operation with the last season and the walls of the old blockyard House workmen moved 120 blocks of Ptolemy I SCA Ancient Quarries and Mines Department, were demolished, exposing the original walls to a special mastaba platform for photography and continued to document the material culture of of the king’s formal palace on the S side of the study. http://oi.uchicago.edu/research/projects/epi/. this extensive quarry landscape. Two Predynastic Western Thebes: to ED settlements/workshops were identified, 1. The DAI Project in Dra Abu el-Naga, where greywacke was worked into fine bracelets. directed by Ute Rummel, continued work This provided information not only about the in K93.12, the tomb of the High Priest technologies used in the production of the bracelets of Amun, Amenhotep, concentrating but also concerning the extent to which such on the S Access - the lateral pylon and products were actually finished in the quarries. A the adjoining processional causeway previously undocumented area of LP settlement discovered in 2010. This ascending associated with copper mining was located, and causeway, lined with rock boulders and provided further evidence of the extent to which consisting of compacted limestone debris, fire-setting of the stone was a key technology in is more than 7m wide, and had an original extracting blocks for sarcophagi and other large length of at least 60m, 40m of which has objects. Additional Predynastic to ED palette been traced so far. It leads up from a small and vessel quarries were located, together with wadi to the S which opens to the W on Dra Abu el-Naga: The eastern limestone lining of the causeway previously undocumented inscriptions and rock the main processional road of W Thebes. leading from the southern wadi up to the double tomb complex art. Frequent flash-floods, the need to reinforce The causeway forms the final stage of a K93.11/K93.12, of the High Priest of Amun Ramessesnakht and the main road against this threat and increasing processional way connecting K93.11 and ‘safari’ tourism continue to affect the integrity of his son and successor Amenhotep. Photograph © DAI

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first court. Stonemason Frank Helmholz and the Chicago House workmen successfully dismantled the last courses of the sandstone Domitian gate threatened with collapse due to groundwater salt decay of the lowest courses – and will start shaping replacement blocks and constructing a new, reinforced concrete foundation for the gate in the new year. http://oi.uchicago.edu/research/projects/epi/. Armant: The joint mission of IFAO/CNRSUniv Montpellier 3, directed by Christophe Thiers (CNRS, USR 3172-CFEETK), continued the archaeological survey. Beneath the kom of debris above the area of the pronaos many loose blocks were uncovered, some of them with great interest for the history of the temple from the MK to the GR period. In the E part of the pronaos, a large number of blocks was found, most of them in good condition. Noteworthy are blocks with the name of the Emperor Hadrian. Sébastien Biston-Moulin (USR 3172-CFEETK) continued the epigraphic survey of the reused and loose NK blocks (Ahmose, Hatshepsut, Tuthmosis III, Amenhotep II). With the help of Hassan elAmir (restorer, IFAO), it was possible to remove one well-preserved block from the foundation - it shows Tuthmosis III facing a goddess ‘the daughter of Ra, who lives in Armant’. After cleaning, the E part of the pronaos was uncovered and it was possible to see NK blocks, including large architraves, beneath the ones already known in this area. Reused blocks bearing the dedicatory inscription of the upper part of the pylon in the name of Ramesses I were recorded. Hassan elAmir continued the restoration programme of the scattered blocks. The lion-gargoyle and the huge architrave of Cleopatra VII were moved for their protection. Scattered sandstone blocks and many blocks uncovered during the cleaning of the kom of debris were restored, with a silicate treatment. http://recherche.univ-montp3.fr/egyptologie/ermant/.

Tell Edfu: The OI mission, led by Nadine Moeller and Gregory Marouard, focused on finishing the excavation of a late MK administrative building complex. It has been possible to confirm the presence of a second columned hall, N of the previous one, which seems to have been one of the principal features of this building. Here c.330 new mud sealings, all of them from the same layer, have been found - 44 show the cartouche of the Hyksos king Khayan and nine name Sobekhotep IV. Two new areas have been prepared for future excavation: a large area with OK settlement remains near the N-E side of the tell, close to the Ptolemaic temple, and several FIP and early MK granaries and buildings built along the inside of the town wall along the N end of the site. El-Ghonameya: The OI Tell Edfu team, led

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document blocks deriving from the NK temple of Khnum, focusing on the polygonal columns of the festival court of Amenhotep II. Study of Arabic ostraca confirms for the first time an Islamic population on the island in the eighth/ ninth centuries AD. The Swiss team continued investigating the town wall and excavation of houses from the Late Antique Period. Rebuilding of the Roman temple of Osiris-Nesmeti began. www.dainst.org/en/project/elephantine?ft=all

Aswan quarries: Discussing Middle Kingdom rock inscriptions at Gebel Tabyat el-Sheikh. Photograph by Dajana Drozdowski © DAI by Nadine Moeller and Gregory Marouard, also continued the cleaning of the small 3rd Dyn step pyramid located near the village of el-Ghonameya c.5km SW of Tell Edfu. A conservation and site-management programme is currently being prepared to protect this last surviving example of a provincial pyramid. Aswan: 1. The joint team of the Swiss Inst and the SCA Aswan, headed by Cornelius von Pilgrim and Mohamed el-Bialy, and directed in the field by Wolfgang Müller, focused work in Aswan town on Area 2 at Birket Damas where substantial remains of the town wall were cleaned and recorded as well as remains of Ptolemaic and Roman houses inside the town. Additionally, Area 2 was protected with an enclosure wall on its E side. Three limited rescue excavations were conducted in the area of the modern suq N of the ancient town (Areas 72-74). In all these areas excavation revealed the extension of the workmen’s site of the 5th Dyn and 13th Dyn which was excavated in nearby Area 23 in 2005. www.swissinst.ch 2. On Elephantine island, the DAI/Swiss Inst mission, directed by Stephan Seidelmayer, Felix Arnold and Cornelius von Pilgrim, initiated a new project on daily life in the MK, to reconstruct, by investigation of a single case-study, household activities with special interest in different strategies to keep certain spaces within the house clean. In a separate project, a renewed effort was begun to

3. A joint SCA/DAI project, directed by by Fathy Abu Zeid and Stephan Seidlmayer and led in the field by Adel Kelany and Linda Borrmann, began study of a group of NK royal rock stelae in the ancient quarry area S of Aswan. In the centre of a square plaza enclosed by modern houses are two groups of massive granite boulders with nine rock inscriptions, mainly of the NK. Four of them - large royal stelae - are famous not only for their size and the figurative decoration of their lunettes but also for the content of their extensive and detailed texts about military expeditions to Nubia. Although they have been documented, published and discussed, it is necessary to check and revise older copies and, for the first time, to reproduce them in facsimile. Apart from epigraphic work carried out at the site, a fence was constructed to protect the inscriptions. In addition, recording of MK rock inscriptions at Gebel Tabyat el-Sheikh in the S part of the quarry area was continued. Hisn el-Bab: The concession for this site at the S end of the First Cataract has now been granted by the SCA to the Austrian Archaeological Inst, Cairo, after a survey season in 2007 by Pamela Rose and Alison Gascoigne under the auspices of the Univ of Cambridge. Pamela Rose, director of the new mission, undertook a brief campaign to establish a topographical map of the area as a starting point for further activities on this important site. http:// www.oeai.at/index.php/hisn-al-bab.html

Kharga Oasis: The North Kharga Oasis Survey of the AUC, directed by Salima Ikram, worked on the restoration of a mud-brick Roman pigeon tower at the site of el-Dabashiya, under the supervision of Nicholas Warner. Work was also carried out on processing the ceramics from the area, as well as those from other locations that have yet to be examined. Archaeological and geological surveying was carried out in the northernmost part of the oasis, together with portions of the W parts, leading toward Dakhla. New Neolithic sites as well as rock art sites have been located in the N and W respectively. Thanks to Peter Grossmann, Barry Kemp, Eva Lange, Laure Pantalacci, Ute Rummel, Stephan Seidlmayer and Harry Tzalas for providing photographs.

Discovery of a new tomb in the Valley of the Kings Although it relates to fieldwork undertaken after the period covered by ‘Digging Diary’ in this issue, in view of the many media reports about the new tomb in the Valley of the Kings, Susanne Bickel has kindly sent a brief report from the season which is still in progress. In January 2012, during its current season, the University of Basel Kings’ Valley Project, directed by Susanne Bickel and Elina Paulin-Grothe, revealed an undisturbed tomb, now numbered KV 64, in the Valley of the Kings. Three sides of a man-made feature had been discovered in 2011 by the team while preparing the protective structure around the shaft of KV 40. The shaft of KV 64 is rather small and shallow, leading to a single burial chamber and the tomb was obviously used twice. Pottery in the shaft and remains of an earlier blocking of the passage show that a burial took place in the mid18th Dyn, after which the tomb was probably robbed and then filled with debris. Upon this thick layer of debris, a secondary burial took place in the Third Intermediate Period. The sarcophagus and wooden stela of NehemesBastet, a Chantress of Amun, were found in their original position. The carefully wrapped mummy is well preserved. Further investigation will concentrate on the New Kingdom remains underneath the debris. An article by Susanne Bickel on the discovery and excavation of KV 64 will be published in EA 41 (Autumn 2012).

The coffin and stela of Nehemes-Bastet in KV 64. Photograph © University of Basel Kings’ Valley Project

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The city of Avaris after the New Kingdom The site of ancient Avaris at Tell el-Daba is well known as Egypt’s capital under the Hyksos rulers and as a major city in the Middle and New Kingdoms. At the EES/Free University, Berlin Study Day in November 2011 Manuela Lehmann reported on investigations of the site’s later history. walls built as a grid, and the spaces between the walls being filled with rubble. The ground plan of the mudbrick buildings is usually square or slightly rectangular. This type of solid foundation can support several storeys, and such structures are often referred to as ‘tower houses’ - a building type which was still in use in Ptolemaic and Roman times. Several preserved examples are known, for instance from Soknopaiou Nesos, Karanis and Elephantine. However, tower houses from the Late Period are not as well preserved and their remains consist mainly of the casemate foundations. Examples are attested in the Delta at sites such as Tell Balamun, Nebesheh, Buto (see pp.14-17) and Mendes. Another source of information for the appearance of tower houses is given by models of such houses, which are usually dated to the Late or Ptolemaic Periods. They are made of stone or terracotta and show a square groundplan with up to five or six storeys. They have a flat roof, square windows with a window grille and slightly concave brick courses. The ancient term - πύργος - for a tower house or watchtower is attested in many Greek papyri from Ptolemaic times. In 2009 new excavations in Area A/II on the main tell at Daba shed light on the structure of one of these

Excavations over many years at Tell el-Daba, site of the ancient city of Avaris, have revealed the remains of temples, palaces and settlements of the Middle Kingdom, the Second Intermediate Period (see further pp.32-33)and the New Kingdom. The extended settlement of the Late Period is, however, less well known since detailed investigation of these remains started only in 2009, increasing our knowledge of settlements of this period which is still in its infancy.The Late Period remains are spread widely in the surrounding area of Tell el-Daba, from Ezbet Helmi in the west to Khatana in the south, but the main evidence for the settlement is preserved on the tell of el-Daba itself as this is the area where these late layers have not yet been destroyed. Earlier excavations, from 1966 onwards under the direction of Manfred Bietak, revealed a domestic quarter with the remains of several houses, and a magnetometry survey, conducted on the tell area in 2006, 2007 and 2010 by Irene Forstner-Müller, Christian Schweitzer and Michael Weissl, revealed more of these layers of the settlement. The houses can be seen very clearly in the magnetometry, especially on the eastern part of the tell. They have very solid mud-brick casemate foundations, with the casemate

Magnetometer scan of Tell el-Daba (Avaris)

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tower houses. Here the Late Period building has cut directly into the underlying level, with the magazine of the New Kingdom temple of Sutekh (Seth). The walls A/I of the magazine have been partly integrated into the foundation of the building, which A/II is divided into three chambers. The external form is rectangular, measuring 11m x 12.5m and is, therefore, a rather small example of this type of house, compared with some from Buto which measure 22.5m by The magnetic scan of the main tell, showing the location of area A/II in the centre 22.5m. The foundation of the house is about one metre deep, while the thickness of the walls is from 1.30m to 1.70m, so that the walls in the foundation level are c.40cm wider than at ground level. Felix Arnoldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s reconstruction of a house of this type at Elephantine, and his calculations show that a wall 1.15m wide can support up to five floors. This would have been possible for the building in Tell el-Daba, where we also find the typical pan-bedded brickwork. While Late Period casemate buildings are often only preserved as foundations, in the higher western part of the tell the remains of standing walls are still preserved, with the ground level indicated by a large limestone threshold in the middle of the western wall. Many of the house models show an elevated entrance with a staircase, but in our building the entrance was at the same height as the ground level both outside and inside the building. In the inner north-western corner of the house an interesting assemblage of material was found, including an

The plan of the excavated tower house in Area A/II

A pan-bedded mud-brick wall of the tower house in Area A/II

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Three views of one of the clay oval objects

evidence of the Persian invasion and the establishment of a Persian administration at Tell el-Daba, the available data do not as yet allow such a far-reaching conclusion. The pottery confirms the dating of the Twenty-Sixth/ Twenty-Seventh Dynasties and shows the usual mix of local and imported clay vessels. Particularly noteworthy among the local types are storage jars of a coarse Nile clay with two or four handles and a curved base, but there are also bottles, beakers, footed cups and pilgrim flasks. A complete globular storage jar was found in the foundation trench of a Late Period house, which also provides good dating. The few marl-clay types are of a higher quality and are well-known forms of plates or beakers. The imported pottery consists mainly of amphorae from the Levant or the Aegean as, for example, from Chios, Clazomenae, Corinth, Samos and Attica. All these imports show that Tell el-Daba was well integrated into the trading system of the Mediterranean Sea at this time. The most recent season of excavation in Tell el-Daba, on the highest preserved part of the tell, also brought to light Ptolemaic dwelling-houses on top of the Late Period settlement, thereby extending the range of the settlement even further into the Ptolemaic dynasty. Here further work is required to clarify the exact dating. Roman amphorae sherds in the upper layers also suggest occupation of that date, but no archaeological features have been preserved.

The assemblage of material in a ground-floor room of the tower house preserved above its foundation level

almost complete bottle of a very typical Late Period type. A large grindstone, measuring 43cm by 28cm, was found beside the bottle and slightly deeper in the ground. This assemblage also contained an iron knife as well as 11 oval objects made of coarse burned clay lying more or less in a semicircle. Their bottom surfaces are flat and sometimes show hand-imprints from manufacturing, while the tops are slightly convex and smoothed. Their approximate size is 16cm x 10cm x 3cm. The purpose of these clay objects is still unclear but the presence of the grindstone makes a baking-related function possible. Not only were the casemates themselves filled with rubble but so was the space between the houses, in order to create an easy walking surface that functioned at the same time as a levelling layer for the uneven substratum. Quantities of small finds and pottery came from this layer, and range in date from the Middle Kingdom to the Late Period. This shows that older parts of the existing settlement in Tell el-Daba were reused for the construction of the foundations of the Late Period tower houses excavated in Area A/II. The same can be said for the bricks of these buildings, which also contain older material. Typical small finds from the Twenty-Sixth/ Twenty-Seventh Dynasties are wedjat eyes and faience amulets of gods such as Bes, Anubis and Taweret as well as Isis with the Horus-child. Several Persian trilobate bronze arrowheads were found, as well as a seal impression from the Achaemenid Period showing traces of papyrus on the rear. A parallel to the seal impression is known from the Apries Palace at Memphis. As tempting as it is to interpret these finds as

q Manuela Lehmann is a member of the Tell el-Daba Project of the Austrian Archaeological Institute, and a doctoral candidate at the Free University, Berlin, studying the material culture (architecture, small finds, pottery) of the Late Period in Tell el-Daba. She would like to thank her PhD supervisor Manfred Bietak, and Irene Forstner-MĂźller (Director of the Austrian Archaeological Institute Cairo Branch) as well as all the Tell el-Daba team members for their help, especially Christian Schweitzer for the magnetometry survey in the tell area, David Aston and Pamela Rose for their help with the pottery and Dominique Collon for the dating of the seal impression. Photographs and plans ÂŠ Austrian Archaeological Institute. Photographs of the small finds are by Axel Krause and excavation photographs by the writer.

Small finds of the Twenty-Sixth/Twenty-Seventh Dynasties from the fill both inside and outside the tower houses: (left to right) divine figures of Isis with Horus, Anubis and Bes; wedjat-eye amulets; an Achaemenid seal and Persian trilobate arrow heads

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The archaeology of the ‘gold of valour’ At the EES/Free University Delta Survey Study Day in Berlin in November 2011 Manfred Bietak described his latest work at Tell el-Daba, including a discovery which provides archaeological evidence for a practice previously known only from texts and wall scenes. Ahmose, son of Ibana, left us in his tomb at Elkab a narrative of his very successful military career during the late Seventeenth and the early Eighteenth Dynasties. His writing style is very direct and in giving an account of the conflicts in which he participated he mentions specific battles against Detail of the inscription the Hyksos at Avaris and at of Ahmose son of Ibana. Sharuhen. After each battle he Photograph © The British presented a hand (as a trophy) Museum Elkab Expedition and received as a reward the ‘gold of valour’. In the following campaign against the Nubians – the formidable Kingdom of Kush – after another very successful battle he brought away three hands and was rewarded with a double measure of gold. The hieroglyphs of the severed hands in his text show an unusual realism and deviate from the canonical rendering of the hand. The taking of a hand as a trophy is also recorded at Elkab in the autobiography of Ahmose’s namesake, Ahmose Pen-Nekhbet, who had a long career from the reign of King Ahmose to that of Tuthmosis III. Later New Kingdom representations provide further evidence of severed right hands being presented as trophies, counted and put in a heap. On a block from a battle scene in the Theban mortuary temple of Horemheb is a depiction of Egyptian charioteers attacking Asiatic foes who have right hands missing. One has been slain and is depicted lying on the ground while another, seen full-face, seems still to be standing upright. Clearly the severing of hands was a feature of Egyptian battle scenes, with soldiers being rewarded in accordance with the number of hands they had severed.

As narrative battle scenes show, the right hands had to be presented after the battle, as proof of slain enemies, in a ceremony in front of the king or the commander in chief. There must also have been, however, a symbolic connotation in the act of severing the hand. The Amada and Elephantine stelae of Amenhotep II mention the hanging of the corpses of six princes of Takhsy, slain by the pharaoh himself, in front of the walls of Thebes and their hands likewise, meaning that the hands were separately exposed on the outside of the walls. It would not make sense for counting, but it could have been that severing the right hand deprived the miserable princes once and forever of their power. Until now no archaeological evidence of this gruesome custom has been found, as no battleground of ancient Egypt has been identified with precision and investigated. Now, by mere chance, evidence of the presentation of right hands has come to light in the most recent excavation at Tell el-Daba, ancient Avaris, in the late summer and autumn of 2011. Investigations were resumed in the northern part of a Hyksos palace which can be attributed in its late phase to King Khayan of the Fifteenth Dynasty (see: EA 38, pp.38-41). The north-eastern palace façade, with a monumental gate, was uncovered and outside the palace, in front of what seems to be the severely destroyed throne room, were found two pits, each containing a single right hand. In the later palace phase, these pits were covered by a building added to the outside of the palace

Block from the temple of Tutankhamun and Horemheb in western Thebes (after R Johnson, Asiatic Battle Scenes, 170, no. 50)

Hand-counting after a battle as shown on the back of the first pylon (northern tower) of the temple of Ramesses III at Medinet Habu. Photograph: Bettina Bader

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Pits with severed hands in front of the palace of the Hyksos Period at Tell el-Daba

served for the reward-ceremony during the later phase of the palace. If this interpretation of the evidence is correct some preliminary conclusions can be drawn. The severing of the hands of enemies as trophies for reward was not a custom restricted to the soldiers of the Upper Egyptian Seventeenth Dynasty against their enemies in the north and south but was already being practised c.60-80 years before the Thebans made (according to the Elkab narratives) their final assault against Avaris. The Hyksos would seem already to have been at war with the Upper Egyptians from c.1600 BC during the reign of Khayan - the third or fourth king of the Fifteenth Dynasty. Whether this gruesome practice was native to ancient Egypt or was introduced from elsewhere is difficult to say at present. The mutilation of the bodies of slain enemies is attested in Egypt from the time of Narmer (reverse of the famous palette) but in our case it seems to be a more practical affair. A severed right hand was usually proof of a kill but even if the enemy happened to have survived the loss he would no longer have been an effective soldier. The origin of the Hyksos was most probably in northern Canaan and such customs are not attested in that region. The contact of Avaris with Nubian cultures, especially the Kerma culture (the Kingdom of Kush), is known from both textual and archaeological evidence as Nubian and Kerma pottery has been found in Hyksos Period contexts at Avaris in sufficient numbers to be taken as evidence that southerners were present at the site and even in the palace. They may have been employed as mercenaries and could have introduced this kind of trophy-taking but there is no evidence of this having been a Nubian practice. For the moment, the severing of hands and their presentation for rewards must be assumed to have been an Egyptian custom, adopted by the Hyksos.

façade serving as an annex to a four-columned ‘broadroom’ - a building north-east of the palace which may have had a cultic function. Beyond this building, on top of a former extra mural silo courtyard of the early palace phase, two more pits were found containing altogether 14 severed right hands. Some of them were of extraordinary size and robustness. Putting together the texts, the temple reliefs and the new archaeological context it seems logical to explain the pits in front of the palace as evidence for a ceremony in front of the throne room where Hyksos soldiers may have received rewards for the taking of hands. After the ceremony the trophies were buried on the spot in individual pits. When additional buildings were added to the palace the ceremony had to take place beyond them and a room was added to the north-east of the four columned ‘broad-room’. At its north-western wall there was a sand-filled rectangular pit which may have been the foundation of a stone built podium which, very close to the two bigger pits with severed hands, may have 27

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q Manfred Bietak founded the Austrian Archaeological Institute in Cairo and was its Director from 1973 to 2009. He is Professor Emeritus of Egyptology at the University of Vienna and currently Chairman of the Commission of Egypt and the Levant at the Austrian Academy of Sciences. Since 1961 he has excavated in Nubia, at Luxor and at Tell el-Daba and is at present project- and field director of the excavations of the Hyksos Palace at Tell el-Daba for the Austrian Archaeological Institute. He is grateful to Vivian Davies for use of the photograph from the tomb of Ahmose. Illustrations, unless otherwise indicated, are from the joint archives of the Austrian Archaeological Institute and the Austrian Academy of Sciences. Graphics by Nicola Math.

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Phase Str. c/1 Phase Str. c/2 Position of the pits with the cut hands

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The northern part of the Hyksos Palace at Tell el-Daba, with the positions of the pits with the severed hands (shown in red: plan of autumn 2011)

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Tine Bagh, Finds from W. M. F. Petrie’s excavations in the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek. Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen, 2011 (ISBN 978 8 7745 2323 9). Price: DKK 125. Writing in 1931, Petrie expressed regret that so many of the assemblages that he and his colleagues had excavated had since become fragmented and dispersed around the world. Yet as he outlined in his Aims and Methods in Archaeology (1904), through the diligent recording of contexts and with the careful numbering of individual finds the archaeologist could ensure that in the future ‘a fit curator may succeed in reuniting the long-severed information’. Tine Bagh, of the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen, is one such curator who, through several years of painstaking research, has successfully reconnected the objects held in the Glyptotek with their original contexts of discovery (see also EA 37, pp.30-32). This sumptuous catalogue represents the results of her labours and it accompanied the exhibition ‘In the Shadows of the Pyramids’, at the Carlsberg Glyptotek in Copenhagen from 11 November 2011 to 25 March 2012. This full-colour catalogue brings together more than 250 objects, from large architectural elements and tomb walls, to smaller artefacts from burials and town sites. All were located during the work of Petrie’s British School of Archaeology in Egypt (BSAE), either between 1908 and 1913, or between 1920 and 1922. Represented in this collection, therefore, are the sites of Memphis, Meydum, Hawara, Gerzeh, Shurafa, Tarkhan, Riqqeh, Harageh, Lahun, Sedment and Abydos. Each site is introduced in its own section, alongside original plans and maps, while each object is described and provided with a wealth of contextual detail, drawn from the excavator’s own field records where available, and pictured alongside some of the objects with which they were originally found (primarily those held in British museums). Many similar items in other catalogues are often featured as ‘masterpieces of art’; it is refreshing to see such pieces framed as part of sets. A notable example is provided by the elegant Old Kingdom wooden statuettes of Meryrahashtef from Sedment, one of which is in Copenhagen while most of the remaining assemblage is housed in the British Museum. Also very successful is the depiction of the chapel of Nefert at Meydum, with the various fragments now in different museums clearly highlighted. Three brief sections precede the central catalogue. The first introduces the Glyptotek’s founders – Carl Jacobsen and Valdemar Schmidt – together with the museum’s first assistant, Maria Mogensen, and the nearby National Museum. The second chapter provides a succinct overview both of Petrie’s life and of some of the students whose careers he helped to launch. The final section draws on correspondence held in the Glyptotek’s own archives to provide further biographical detail on the acquisition of artefacts. These offer a lively insight into the competitive

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jostling amongst institutions for the finest pieces which they could display in their own galleries from those objects exhibited at Petrie’s post-season exhibitions in London. The Glyptotek’s early desire for larger monuments rather than ‘trifling antiquities’ is evident from these letters and Jacobsen’s wealth ensured that Copenhagen could secure a striking collection. These opening chapters relate important and intriguing background information, which is presented in a very straightforward manner. However, the narrative is, on occasion, perhaps overly colloquial and the final section ends somewhat abruptly. More satisfying for the reader might have been a closing summary statement. Nevertheless, this does not detract from the marvellous production quality of this volume and Bagh’s meticulous research highlights the great potential that still exists for enriching our understanding of collections procured over a century ago. ALICE STEVENSON John H Taylor, Egyptian Mummies. British Museum Press, London 2010 (ISBN 978 0 7141 5058 1). Price: £9.99. Released to coincide with the British Museum’s acclaimed temporary exhibition about the Book of the Dead, this publication provides a concise but extensive insight into many aspects of ancient Egyptian funerary beliefs and practices. Chapter 1 explains how mummification was regarded as a means of enabling the deceased to attain the afterlife and thus ensure personal immortality, and describes how the study of mummies can provide information about life expectancy, health, disease, nutrition and embalming techniques which are not generally available in inscriptional or pictorial sources. The author shows how the Egyptian belief in an afterlife was closely associated with a complex interpretation of the human personality, and how their distinctive burial customs, defined by the practice of mummification, were an important demonstration of the Egyptian collective identity. In Chapter 2 Dr Taylor looks at the technical

procedure and historical development of mummification, explaining how the funerary rituals cleansed the deceased of the impurities associated with death, and raised him to a sanctified status. The evidence for mummification - Egyptian and Greek literary accounts and preserved human remains - is discussed, and the preparation of the mummy is explained, along with interesting insights into the embalmers’ working practices, including errors and carelessness which radiography has only recently revealed. Jewellery provided important magical protection for the deceased and Chapter 3 describes the range and symbolism of the various amulets that adorned the body, and explains how funerary jewellery attracted robbers who often destroyed mummies in their quest for treasure. The fourth chapter traces the historical development of coffins, including the diversity of styles for royalty and commoners and how changes in coffin design reflected developments in mummification. Chapter 5 looks at the religious rituals which accompanied mummification and burial, and the role of the tomb, not simply as a place of burial but as an eternal bridge between the worlds of the living and the resurrected dead. The structure of the tomb is explained, and the arrangements for ensuring a perpetual supply of food offerings for the deceased. The various mechanisms employed to gain access to the next world are considered, including the requirement to possess sacred jewellery and funerary spells such as the Pyramid Texts, Coffin Texts or Book of the Dead, as well as the importance of a satisfactory assessment by the divine judges at the Weighing of the Heart Ceremony. The chapter concludes with a survey of the various concepts of the Egyptian afterlife. Chapter 6 summarises some important aspects of animal cults and mummification, particularly the association between animals and gods, and the four main types of animal mummification. Radiography has sometimes revealed unexpected contents within animal mummies, and has provided insights into religious practises such as periodic animal culls

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to meet a demand for votive offerings. Changing attitudes towards the study of mummies are summarised in Chapter 7, from their acquisition and unwrapping as curiosities in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to modern, multidisciplinary investigations which provide new information about lifestyle, disease, nutrition and the mummification process. The advantages and limitations of these diagnostic techniques are outlined, as well as possibilities and strategies for future research. The book ends with a chronology, a brief but useful list of further reading suggestions, web resources, and a glossary. This book provides an authoritative summary of Egyptian funerary beliefs and customs, effectively pulling together information which, in some instances, is otherwise accessible only in academic or scientific publications; appropriate references are provided to enable the reader to pursue more detailed accounts of scientific analyses or archaeological discoveries. The book is lavishly illustrated throughout with a selection of papyri, coffins, mummies and tomb scenes, mainly drawn from the British Museum collections, accompanied by very informative captions. Good use is also made of radiographs to clarify particular points of discussion: CT-scans (Figures 44 and 45) effectively demonstrate embalmers’ methods. As an excellent introduction to the subject area, this book is highly recommended for those with a general interest in Egyptology, and for teachers and first-year undergraduate students of Egyptology and ancient history. ROSALIE DAVID

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Agathe Legros and Frédéric Payraudeau (eds), Secrets de Momies. Pratiques funéraires et visions de l’Au-delà en Égypte ancienne. Éditions Errance, Paris, 2011 (ISBN 978 2 87772 471 5). Price €15. This small but attractively produced book accompanied an exhibition held at the Musée archéologique at Jublains, which focused on funerary practices in the first millennium BC. The exhibition sought to contextualise the findings from the CT scanning of two mummies belonging to the Besançon Museum, which was undertaken by the radiologist Samuel Mérigeaud in 2007. In addition, a number of the regional museums of France – Amiens, Angers, Besançon, Nantes, Roanne, Soissons and Chateau-Gontier – contributed objects from their collections. The multi-authored book comprises a series of short essays and a catalogue. The essays discuss the Egyptian collection of Besançon, the myth of Osiris and his cult, funerary beliefs and practices and the historical background to the period under consideration. The core – and most original part – of the publication is the description of the scanning at the university hospital at Besançon, and what this revealed. The aim was to gather data non-destructively under three headings – anthropology (sex, age, height), palaeopathology (especially of bones) and methods of embalming. The two mummies, both from Thebes, date from the beginning and end of the Third Intermediate Period. The earlier, that of Seramun, a highranking priest of the temple of Amun, has been dated by the style of his coffins to the early Twenty-First Dynasty; the later one,

of Ankhpakhered, can be attributed to the Twenty-Sixth Dynasty. Unusually, this man, though buried at Thebes, was the son of a priest of the goddess Neith, a circumstance which might suggest that he belonged to a family originating in the Delta where the cult of Neith was prominent. CT slices and 3-D reconstructions from the data provided answers to the main questions, confirming that both bodies were male, an assumption which can never be taken for granted, since mummies and coffins were frequently transposed by 19th century purveyors of antiquities. Seramun had died in his sixties, Ankhpakhered in his thirties, and both suffered from the severe dental problems which were endemic in ancient Egypt on account of the attrition which resulted mainly from gritty contaminants in bread. Seramun, as might be expected of an older man, also

Who Was Who in Egyptology Fourth Edition. Edited by Morris Bierbrier First published in 1951, edited by Warren R Dawson, Who Was Who in Egyptology is a standard reference work for anyone interested in the history of Egyptology. From the earliest travellers to scholars and excavators of more recent times, the book contains biographical details of the lives and careers of those who have shaped the discipline, with photographs of many of its subjects. The second edition, edited by Eric Uphill, was published in 1969 and the third, edited by Morris Bierbrier, in 1995. The Egypt Exploration Society will shortly be publishing the fourth edition, again edited by Dr Bierbrier and containing many new and revised entries and a wider range of photographs than in previous editions. Publication of this volume has been made possible by the generous donations of EES members. If you would like to help the Society in this way, please go to: www.ees.ac.uk/support/index.html The fourth edition of Who Was Who in Egyptology will be published early in 2012. If you would like to be notified when it is published please contact rob.tamplin@ees.ac.uk

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had arthritic changes in the cervical vertebrae, knees and feet, and his scans also highlighted bone demineralisation. The scanning revealed some of the differences which occurred in high-quality mummification procedures over the period of about 400 years which separated the lives of these two men. Seramun’s brain had been extracted via the nasal passage in the classic manner described by Herodotus, and his body cavity eviscerated through an incision in the left flank; the preserved heart could not be located by the CT scanner but four packages of viscera, each accompanied by a wax figure of one of the Sons of Horus, were detected. Artificial eyes had been inserted into the sockets to replace the desiccated eyes, and packing materials had been pushed under the skin of the face, neck and penis to restore these crucial body-parts to a lifelike appearance. Typical of Twenty-First Dynasty mummification, several objects were placed within the wrappings – an amuletic necklace, a heart scarab, a winged pectoral plate of metal and a wax figure of the mythical benu bird. Advances in the technology of CT scanning now enable clear 3-D reconstructions of these small objects to be made, even registering the incised inscriptions on the base of the heart scarab. Reliable information about the distribution of such funerary trappings on the mummified body is still scarce, so the documentation of Seramun’s amulets in situ is one of this project’s most valuable contributions to knowledge. The embalmers who treated Ankhpakhered’s body about four centuries later also removed his brain, but this time via the foramen magnum at the base of the skull – a less common alternative to the nasal route. The liver, lungs, stomach and intestines were extracted via the usual left flank incision. Although the scanner revealed packages located within the body cavity, the dense granular material inside them appears not to contain the desiccated organs but perhaps instead natron used to absorb the body’s fluids. In this mummy too the all-important heart was missing, and in its place was a resin-soaked bundle of cloth, perhaps placed there to act as a symbolic substitute for the organ. No amulets were placed under Ankhpakhered’s bandages but a winged scarab and figures of the Sons of Horus were threaded into a network of faience beads which was laid over his outer wrappings. The second part of the book is a catalogue of the exhibition, consisting mostly of small objects – figures of deities, the trappings of the mummy (bandages, fragments of coffins and cartonnage) and tomb equipment, such as stelae, an offering table, canopic jars, shabtis, a funerary cone, a New Year flask and a scribal palette. The majority are objects of common types; the most striking is the beautiful calcite canopic jar of Ptahmose, one of two men of that name who held the post of High Priest of Ptah in the middle years of the Eighteenth Dynasty. This piece, part of the collection at Chateau-Gontier, serves as a reminder that the smaller museums of France hold many wonderful artefacts that deserve to be better known. JOHN H TAYLOR

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Ivor Noël Hume, Belzoni: The Giant Archaeologists Love to Hate. University of Virginia Press, Charlottesville, 2011 (ISBN 978 0 8139 3140 1). Price: $34.95. It is over half a century since the last good book on Giovanni Belzoni was published (Stanley Mayes, The Great Belzoni, 1959). Here, written by a noted archaeologist and former Director of Colonial Williamsburg’s archaeological research programme, is a splendid and upto-date story of the, literally, giant (2m tall) pioneer Egyptologist. Many writers of recent years have had a tendency to denigrate Belzoni and his achievements, but Howard Carter noted that his work in the Valley of the Kings was the first large scale excavations there, and said ‘we must give Belzoni full credit for the manner in which they were carried out … on the whole the work was extraordinarily good’. Belzoni’s detractors often fail to recognise the ethos of the time in which he worked, and they should not judge him by modern standards. Noël Hume’s new biography puts Belzoni firmly in his place as a pioneer who really thought about his discoveries – he was no rabid collector like

his rival Drovetti, without any thought for interpretation or context. From humble beginnings in Padua via the fairgrounds of Europe fate cast him into Egypt where, against all initial adversities, he found a calling and followed it. Some of the finest sculptures in the British Museum, notably the colossal 7½ ton head of Ramesses II, together with the sarcophagus of Seti I in Sir John Soane’s Museum and the lid of the sarcophagus of Ramesses III in Cambridge are all due to his endeavours. Added to that, he retrieved for William John Bankes the Philae obelisk (now at Kingston Lacy) whose inscription was to be vital in Champollion’s decipherment of hieroglyphs in 1822. He was the first European to enter the Second Pyramid at Giza, and the first to find the entrance to the Great Temple at Abu Simbel and, five years before Champollion deciphered hieroglyphs, he realised that the ‘hero’ depicted on the walls there was the same as the one he had seen in Thebes - Ramesses II. Noël Hume brings Belzoni, and the world in which he carried out his explorations, to life in his own words, and adds much new insight into that life as well as his own pertinent observations. He particularly puts more flesh onto the person of Belzoni’s long-suffering but devoted wife, Sarah. It is often remarked that on excavations the best finds turn up on the last day, and Noël Hume has been similarly bedevilled. Belzoni died at Gato in Benin in 1823, and Sarah in Jersey in January 1870. Mayes (1959) did not know where she was buried and both Noël Hume and the reviewer (unbeknownst to each other) have for years been trying to locate her grave via Jersey local newspapers, radio and personal contact, to no avail. As, literally, the book was finished and published word came that her grave and inscribed tombstone had been found (see below). Now the chase is on for details of who provided for her burial, and how. Egyptological research, even after a couple of centuries, always has surprises and goals to pursue. PETER A CLAYTON

Sarah Belzoni’s grave and tombstone Many people before us had searched for the final resting place of Sarah Belzoni and we ourselves had almost given up the search when, by serendipity, Anna stumbled upon her name in the records of the Channel Islands Family History Society in the Jersey Archive. This was an erroneous entry by an unknown subscriber but it provided us with the date and place of burial. With the help of Vic Geary, the cemetery supervisor, who has a detailed plan of the burial sites from that time, we have now been able to find the grave. John had often walked past the stone on bright sunny afternoons when it is in deep shadow but on sunny mornings the much-weathered inscription is partly legible showing that this is the grave of ‘Sarah, widow of Giovanni Baptista Belzoni’. We are now seeking permission to clean the stone and restore the lettering, some of which is obscured by the original footstone which reads ‘S. B. 1870’. ANNA BAGHIANI (Education Officer) and JOHN J TAYLOR (Tutor in Egyptology), Societé Jeriaise, St Helier, Jersey.

Sarah Belzoni’s gravestone on Jersey

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Pharaoh: ideal and reality A current British Museum exhibition, which is touring museums in the United Kingdom, explores the nature of kingship in ancient Egypt over 3,000 years of history, illustrated by many major pieces from the national collection, as Margaret Maitland describes. ‘The sun god Ra placed (the) King in the land of the living for eternity and all time; for judging men, for making gods content, for creating truth, for destroying evil’ – the King as Sun-priest (EA 9953B.1).

Some rulers felt justified in erasing their predecessors from history when they did not fit with the standard ideals of kingship; the extent of the official persecution of the female pharaoh Hatshepsut is visible from the defaced cartouches on several monuments in the exhibition, including her joint stela with Tuthmosis III found as far south as the Second Cataract (EA 1131). Although a number of Egyptian texts refer to the king as having ruled ‘from the egg’, numerous pharaohs came to the throne unexpectedly as either younger sons, brothers, female relatives, usurpers or invaders. One of the objects in the exhibition – a door jamb from the tomb of Horemheb at Saqqara (EA 552) – demonstrates that after his accession to the throne, Tutankhamun’s former army general was not satisfied with building a new royal tomb for himself in the Valley of the Kings; he also felt the need to edit his original private tomb by adding royal uraei to his depictions there. The royal duties which gave kings their purpose were highly idealised: to act as pious priests, devoted to serving

The concept of truth – known as maat by the ancient Egyptians – underpinned much of their worldview, beliefs and ideals, and it was the duty of rulers to uphold and maintain it; but how much truth was there in the image that the kings of Egypt tried to project to their subjects? The new British Museum touring exhibition Pharaoh: King of Egypt uses 130 objects to explore both the ideals and realities of kingship in ancient Egypt over 3,000 years of history, from one of the earliest rulers of Egypt, King Den, to the Roman Emperor Tiberius. It is the largest UK loan of Egyptian material from the British Museum, including objects such as a granite colossal statue of Ramesses II, exquisite faience and gold palace tiles, and one of the oldest papyri in existence from the Fifth Dynasty Abusir temple archive. Iconic objects include a beautiful green siltstone head of Tuthmosis III, a statue of Senenmut with Princess Neferure, and an Amarna shrine stela depicting Amenhotep III and Tiye. The exhibition curated by Neal Spencer, Keeper of Ancient Egypt and Sudan, in partnership with Tyne and Wear Museums and Archives, is making its way around the UK as part of the British Museum’s commitment to share its collection with as many people as possible. Having already visited Newcastle-upon-Tyne and Dorset, it is currently on display at the Leeds City Museum (until 17 June 2012), and will then travel to Birmingham Museum (7 July - 14 October 2012), the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum in Glasgow (3 November – 24 February 2013) and Bristol Museum (15 March – 9 June 2013). The exhibition also aims to make the collection accessible by sharing written entries on all of the objects online, featuring both scholarly and contextualised information for the general reader, through a dedicated website rather than an exhibition catalogue. The display highlights the ideals that defined the role of the king in ancient Egypt, and also throws light on how often these were contradicted by their own nature and actions. Despite maat being one of the central tenets defining the role of the king, many pharaohs had no compunctions about playing fast and loose with the truth: they re-wrote their origins, ‘improved’ accounts of their deeds and battles, and even denied their own parents.

Granite statue of Ramesses II (EA 67) in the Pharaoh: King of Egypt exhibition at the Great North Museum: Hancock, Newcastle-upon-Tyne

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the gods, and as mighty warriors, extending Egypt’s borders as well as safeguarding order within them. The k i n g ’s p r i e s t l y role involved the building of temples, but often an easier shortcut to fulfilling this duty was appropriating EA 1102. Granite temple inscription of Senwosret III, reinscribed for Ramesses II. the monuments of Bubastis, originally dated to c.1874-1855 BC earlier kings; one of the most impressive examples of this features in the exhibition, a huge Bubastis temple block with the cartouche of Ramesses II clearly superimposed over that of Senwosret III (EA 1102). The other defining role of the king as the ultimate warrior is exemplified by scenes of single-handed smiting and the symbolic representation of the pharaoh as a fearsome sphinx (EA 54678). However, surviving bureaucratic evidence, such as the Amarna letters, demonstrates that in the increasingly interconnected Mediterranean world, diplomacy was, more often than not, chosen over smiting. These diplomatic exchanges range from the grovelling submissiveness of a small city-state, Irqata (E29825), to the courteous discourse of equals with a ‘brother’ King of Babylon (E29787). The defence of Egypt’s borders was not always as successful as these kings hoped or portrayed; foreigners held the throne for roughly a third of ancient Egyptian history and the manner in which they pr esented themselves to audiences in Egypt as opposed to their home EA 854. Wooden tomb guardian figure of countries often Ramesses I, from his tomb in the Valley of the differed greatly. Kings. c.1294 BC

EA 58953. A faience and gold tile with part of the titles of Amenhotep III. c.1390-1352

The Roman Emperor Tiberius contributed to the construction of the temple of Hathor at Dendera, and a stela in the exhibition depicts Tiberius as a typical Egyptian pharaoh offering to Mut and Khonsu (EA 398). Despite such depictions of piety, Tiberius abolished the worship of Egyptian cults in Rome. Even beloved pharaohs who were worshipped in the manner of medieval saints after their deaths were subjected to a much more prosaic reality once deified. They could, for example, be called upon in their subjects’ prayers to give judgement in price disputes or in cases of stolen cows or missing shirts, ‘The chisel-bearer Kaha called to King Amenhotep, l.p.h., saying “My good lord, come today, because my two garments have been stolen!”’ It is difficult to reconstruct how kings might have been perceived by their subjects; we can only guess how individuals would have reacted to an elderly King Pepi II performing the ritual sed-festival, allegedly to prove his strength and ability to defend the borders of Egypt, but other sources, such as literary texts, provide a different view of kingship from that found in official documents or on formal monuments. The Teaching of Amenemhat (EA 10182.2) is one of the pieces of literature featured in the exhibition that questions the role of the king and explores his fallibility. Such stories and poems continued to be read for centuries and shaped the way that individual rulers were remembered, whether as a hero-king like Senwosret III or as a cruel tyrant like Khufu. Today these texts and objects are the only memories of the kings that remain. The huge wooden guardian statue in the exhibition (EA 854), found by Belzoni in the tomb of Ramesses I, stood watch there in vain as the tomb’s precious contents, and even its own gilding, were stripped; its size may have saved it, but the pharaoh’s power could not extend beyond the grave. Now, conservators at the British Museum have painstakingly cleaned and consolidated the statue of native sycamore wood for its tour around the UK. Pharaoh: King of Egypt features objects that testify to the grandeur and absolute power of Egyptian kings, and others that reveal aspects, which they would never have wanted to be seen, but which, nevertheless, give us greater insight into the lives of these rulers and their subjects. q Margaret Maitland is a Trainee Curator in the Department of Ancient Egypt and Sudan at the British Museum. Full details of Pharaoh: King of Egypt can be found at www.britishmuseum.org/whats_on/ uk_tours/pharaoh_king_of_egypt.aspx. Photographs © The Trustees of the British Museum.

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EA 34178. Faience shabti of Pinudjem I, a high priest of Amun who laid claim to the throne; his name is written in a cartouche. c.1054-1036 BC

EA 10182.2. Papyrus Sallier 2 featuring the poem The Teaching of Amenemhat, describing the night-time attack on the king, with corrections by the scribeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s teacher. c.1295-1186 BC

EA 60006. Gold-plated silver figurine of Amun-Re. Karnak c.1293-1185 BC Right: EA 54678. Forepart of an ivory sphinx holding a captive. Abydos c.1985 â&#x20AC;&#x201C;1795 BC

EA 5620. Limestone ostracon depicting Ramesses IX with a vizier and the crown prince. Valley of the Kings c.1126-1108 BC

EA 1015. Sandstone stela with the cartouches of Hatshepsut (erased) and Tuthmosis III. Wadi Halfa, Sudan c.1479-1457 BC

EA 1516. Limestone stela of Neferhotep, a foreman from Deir el-Medina, adoring Amenhotep I and Ahmose-Nefertari. Karnak c.1241-1210 BC

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An early pharaonic harbour on the Red Sea coast The first season of fieldwork conducted in June 2011 at Wadi al-Jarf has focused on the exploration of a large-scale installation on the Red Sea coast dating back to the Fourth Dynasty. Pierre Tallet and Gregory Marouard report on the discovery of the oldest harbour remains found in Egypt. During the past ten years, our knowledge of seafaring expeditions through the Red Sea towards the Sinai or the distant land of Punt has been increased considerably because of fieldwork conducted at port sites such as Mersa Gawasis. Along the Gulf of Suez, excavations by the French Institute (IFAO) have provided evidence of another important harbour complex at Ayn Sukhna (60km south of the town of Suez) which was used during the Old and Middle Kingdoms to reach the mining zones of copper and turquoise exploitation in south Sinai. Ayn Sukhna saw a peak of activity during the Fifth and the Twelfth Dynasties, as confirmed by several inscriptions left by pharaonic expeditions, and as a

point of departure from the Egyptian coast it was certainly linked to the small fortress at Tell Ras Budran on the west coast of the Sinai, south of Abu Zenima. Mainly occupied during the Old Kingdom and on a smaller scale during the Middle Kingdom, this latter site was used as a landing point on the Sinai coast on the way to the regions of Serabit elKhadim and Wadi Maghara, emphasising its logistical role for expeditions. It may also have had a strategic function in view of its defensive architecture. The discovery of the harbour of Wadi al-Jarf complements this general scheme. The site is on the Egyptian coast, 90km south of Ayn Sukhna and 25km south of Zafarana. It is situated at the mouth of the Wadi Araba, a major corridor

The location on the Red Sea coast of Wadi el-Jarf, showing its main installations

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Zone 1. Gallery G4 before excavation

of communication between the Nile Valley and the Red Sea, through which the expeditions passed. In this region the narrowness of the Red Sea means that the western coast of the Sinai Peninsula lies only 50km from Wadi el-Jarf, which is exactly opposite the small Sinai fortress of Tell Ras Budran (excavated by Gregory Mumford for the University of Alabama) and the connection between these two is now beyond doubt. John Gardner Wilkinson and James Burton first reported the existence of the site in 1823 and it was rediscovered

in 1954 by the French scholars François Bissey and René Chabot-Morisseau, who carried out initial investigations that were prematurely stopped by the Suez crisis. In 2008 the notes left by Bissey and Chabot-Morisseau (Ginette Lacaze and Luc Camino, Mémoires de Suez, 2008), and remote sensing work conducted on the Zafarana area with GoogleEarth satellite images, helped to re-identify the site’s location. Wadi el-Jarf consists of four groups of installations along the coast and at the foot of the mountains near the spring of St Paul’s monastery. Ceramic evidence shows that they all date back to the Fourth Dynasty and probably to the early part or the first half of it, with traces of occupation extending into the beginning of the Fifth Dynasty. Five kilometres from the seashore lies a sizeable complex of 25 to 30 galleries (Zone 1). The excavations conducted at four galleries confirmed their use as storage facilities, as at Ayn Sukhna and Mersa Gawasis. They vary in length from 16m to 34m with an average width of 3m and a height of 2.5m. All were carefully cut into the limestone bedrock following a pre-planned layout, which is reflected by their

The galleries in Zone 1

Zone 1. Gallery 3 during excavation

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Zone 1. The end of an oar discovered in gallery G3

Zone 1. The entrances to galleries 5 and 6 with the causeway of monumental stone blocks

relative uniformity and synchrony. Long ‘causeways’ made of stone blocks of monumental size, each measuring more than 2m-3m, protected their access, and the entrances were closed by a system of ‘portcullises’ similar to those known from royal funerary installations of this time. At the entrance to the largest gallery remains of an inscription have been found showing an official named as ‘The Scribe of the Fayum, Idu’, holding a staff. The use of the galleries as storage facilities is underlined by the discovery of fragments of ropes, textiles, pieces of wooden boxes and hundreds of fragments of worked wood. Among the latter were several tenons of acacia and large pieces of wood, including the end of an oar, several fragments of Lebanese cedar beams, and a complete piece of boat timber, 2.70m wide. These finds clearly indicate the presence of boat elements on the site, probably stored as dismantled pieces in the galleries. Thousands of fragments of large globular storage jars have also been discovered in situ in several galleries. These jars were used for water and food storage and their surfaces are frequently marked by large-scale hieroglyphic inscriptions

Zone 1. Parts of boats in the filling of the entrance to gallery G5

Zone 1. Part of a typical local jar (marl fabric with brown angular inclusions) with a red ink inscription, from gallery G23

Zone 1. Crushed locally-made jars in gallery G15b

Zone 1. The portcullis block at the entrance to gallery 6

Zone 1. A pottery kiln during excavation

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Zone 6. Complete view of the mole at low tide

in red ink, giving the names of teams of workmen, crews or even of the boats themselves. These jars were produced locally in very large quantities, as can be seen from the excavation of the first large pottery kiln at the site. Characterised by a very particular marl fabric, this local production has been found at all the various installations at Wadi al-Jarf. These jars have also been identified in small numbers in Fourth Dynasty contexts at Ayn Sukhna and in large quantities at the fortress of Tell Ras Budran, where they have been mislabelled as ‘Sinaitic Ware’. The presence of this specific production on both sides of the Gulf of Suez confirms the close association of Tell Ras Budran with the Wadi al-Jarf installations. Three groups of camps and surveillance installations were noted (Zones 2 -4) 500m north of the galleries area. Situated on top of a long promontory, the most important has a complex of rectangular constructions organised into cell-like rooms which served as dwelling places. Another isolated construction (Zone 5) - the largest pharaonic building discovered to date along the Red Sea coast - has been identified on the coastal plain between the galleries and the seashore facilities. It consists of a rectangular building 60m long and 30m wide, divided into 13 elongated rooms whose precise function is not known yet. The last component of the site is situated directly on the coast. At 200 m from the shore, an artificially created mound made of limestone blocks forms a reference point, a sort of visual landmark (alamat) measuring 10m in diameter and 6m in height, surrounded by light camp installations. The main element of the coastal site is a long L-shaped

mole starting from the beach and extending under water in an easterly direction for over 160m. It then runs in a more irregular way towards the south-east for another 120m. The constant winds and the force of the coastal north-south currents emphasise its role as a breakwater structure built to protect an anchorage zone covering more than 3ha. The use of the site as a harbour has been confirmed by the discovery of at least 21 limestone anchors, and some complete storage jars of local production. The anchors, often found in pairs, measure 60cm to 80cm in height and 48cm to 62cm in width. They appear in triangular, rectangular and cylindrical shapes; all of them have a rounded top and a simple hole in the upper part without any vertical groove. It is possible that these anchors were placed permanently in the water for mooring boats in transit. This is the first discovery of pharaonic anchors in their original context of use in Egypt and it constitutes the oldest and largest concentration of this type for the early Bronze Age. The group adds considerably to the number of ancient Egyptian anchors previously known (c.35 examples, mainly discovered in Mersa Gawasis exclusively in contexts of secondary use and dating to the Middle Kingdom). The recent discoveries at Wadi el-Jarf demonstrate once again the complex and extensive logistical organisation of seafaring expeditions during the Old Kingdom. They emphasise the determination of the Egyptians, from the early Fourth Dynasty, to control the Red Sea coast and access to the resources of the Sinai by constructing a network of strategic installations on both sides of the Gulf of Suez. One can only wonder whether a port constructed on such a large scale was used only for crossing the sea to the Sinai or whether it would also have been used by expeditions travelling to the southern part of the Red Sea and the distant land of Punt. q Pierre Tallet (University of Paris IV La Sorbonne) is co-Director of the Wadi el-Jarf excavations with El-Sayed Mahfouz (University of Assiut). Gregory Marouard (Oriental Institute, University of Chicago) is Senior Archaeologist at the excavations at Wadi al-Jarf. The French Foreign Office, the CNRS, the IFAO and the generosity of the Aall Foundation support this work. Damien Laisney (Maison de l’Orient et de la Méditerranée) carried out the topographic recording of the site. The illustrations and photographs are by the authors.

Zone 6. A selection of anchors, and a storage jar, shown in situ

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Five Minutes with Neal Spencer When did you first encounter the EES?

Neal on site at Amara West in January 2012. Photograph: Mat Dalton

As an undergraduate at the University of Cambridge in 1994 I became familiar with the Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, and, of course, Egyptian Archaeology, and soon applied for membership – encouraged by attractive student rates! My first experience of fieldwork in Egypt was with an EES project, where I was immediately put to work by Barry Kemp planning part of the main gateway in the North Palace at Tell el-Amarna. While participating in EES fieldwork at Sais and Qasr Ibrim as a doctoral student I gained experience of different landscapes, archaeological environments and periods, and it was through an EES Centenary Fund Award that I first directed a project, on the fourth century BC temple at Samannud

epigraphy projects: in the Sudan at Dangeil, Kurgus, To m b o s , J e b e l Dosha, Kawa and Amara West and in Egypt at Elkab, Hagr Edfu, Hierakonpolis and Kom Firin. It is also important that we do not see Egypt or Sudan only as ancient places but that we also research and disseminate information on the whole history of the Nile Valley, up to the present day; something our collection allows us to do. Finally, engaging with scholars and colleagues in Egypt and Sudan – through training and supporting research – will become increasingly important. That 50 per cent of the readers of our online journal, British Museum Studies in Ancient Egypt and Sudan (see EA 37 p.16), are in Egypt is one illustration of how the future of Egyptian Egyptology is very bright.

What do you think should be the role of the EES in the Twenty-First century? As with many institutions, the EES faces considerable financial challenges, but, even with reduced funding, I hope that supporting and instigating new field research in Egypt will remain its principal role. Collaboration with other institutions will be increasingly important in the future, allowing specialists from a broad range of fields to be involved in EES research. The revolution in digital technology should make the dissemination of fieldwork more cost-effective and make it easier to reach out to new audiences – especially young researchers in Egypt for whom access to good libraries is not always possible.

Can you tell us something about your own current fieldwork and research?

How do you see the Department of Ancient Egypt and Sudan, and the British Museum as a whole, changing in the coming years, especially in relation to ancient Egypt?

Our fieldwork at Kom Firin finished last autumn (see p.26), and I hope to complete the second monograph in the next year or two. This will bring together the excavations in the Ramesside enclosure, the Saite town, and studies on zoology and the ancient river landscape in the area. My research and fieldwork time will then be dedicated to Amara West, the administrative centre of occupied Kush in the Ramesside era, first excavated by the EES in 1938-39 and 1947-50. The presence of both a well-preserved town and its cemeteries, in an area with little modern development, affords a rare opportunity to investigate the lived experience – especially the health and diet – of ancient inhabitants in a colonial town, and how they interacted with the indigenous population. Our interdisciplinary research goes on well beyond the field season each January-February, with scientists and specialists working on various samples and other aspects of the work – in the Museum, and also in Durham, Manchester and Aberystwyth, and, in the USA, at Purdue and Santa Barbara.

We are increasingly both a physical and digital museum. While providing people – schools, families, scholars, all visitors – with access to objects from past cultures will always be at the heart of what we do, we can now reach whole new audiences through the web. Our entire collection database is available online (www.britishmuseum. org/research/search_the_collection_database.aspx), with high resolution photographs free to use for non-commercial purposes, and Online Research Catalogues can integrate ‘live’ collections database records with scholarly essays – starting with The Ramesseum Papyri (excavated by Flinders Petrie). I would like to see university Egyptology departments engage more with our collections, archives and library, particularly for collaborative research. In terms of the museum galleries, our next big challenge is the renovation of the Sculpture Gallery on the ground floor – quite an undertaking given that some objects weigh over seven tonnes! A broad programme of fieldwork is essential to placing our collection in the context of the latest research – and this is reflected in our excavation and

q Neal Spencer is Keeper of the Department of Ancient Egypt and Sudan at the British Museum and Director of the projects at Kom Firin and Amara West. Updates from Amara West are posted at: www. britishmuseum.org/AmaraWest

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The Egypt Exploration Society New and recent publications E E S

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Texts from the Baboon and Falcon Galleries. Demotic, Hieroglyphic and Greek Inscriptions from the Sacred Animal Necropolis, North Saqqara. By J D Ray

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Texts from the Baboon and Falcon Galleries Demotic, Hieroglyphic and Greek Inscriptions from the Sacred Animal Necropolis, North Saqqara

EES Texts from Excavations 15. 2011. ISBN: 978-0-85698-205-7. Full price: £90.00. EES Members’ price: £76.50. This volume features all the graffiti from the Baboon and Falcon galleries at the Sacred Animal Necropolis, North Saqqara, excavated by the Egypt Exploration Society between 1966 and 1971. The graffiti include dedications, lists of workmen and minor priests, a stela dedicated to the god Imhotep with an important historical content, and masons' marks which show some of the construction history of the galleries. There is also a Greek graffito listing the contents of dreams or visions, and a series of dedications on bronze temple furniture which mention a hitherto unknown god. Jars with hieroglyphic signs shed light on one of the main characters found in the Greek Hermetic literature, and a selection of ostraca give insights into the management of the animal cults.

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The Sacred Animal Necropolis at North Saqqara. The Mother of Apis Inscriptions Volume I. The Catalogue. Volume II. Commentaries and Plates By H S Smith, C A R Andrews and Sue Davies

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26th Dynasty, but it also had fore the EES/Durham e. This volume is the final ried out in the Northern m Rebwa, funded by the gypt Exploration Society

esearch Council. Excavations ered levels dating between the ermediate Period. The of part of a house, whose er kiln, used for firing faience uded Old Kingdom material, ntains invaluable information the different layers, the nd animal bones.

emple of Edfu, for her PhD iquities, Fitzwilliam Museum,

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Volume I. The Catalogue E E S

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The Ramesside-Third Intermediate Period at Kom Rebwa

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The Mother of Apis Inscriptions Volume II. Commentaries and Plates

H. S. Smith, C. A. R. Andrews and Sue Davies E G Y P T

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H. S. Smith, C. A. R. Andrews and Sue Davies E G Y P T

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EES Excavation Memoir 98. 2011. ISBN: 978-0-85698-202-6. Full price: £65.00. EES Members’ price: £55.00 Sais was Egypt’s capital in the 26th Dynasty, but it also had an earlier history, unknown before the EES/Durham University/SCA work at the site, during which excavations, between 2000 and 2004, uncovered levels dating between the 20th Dynasty and the Third Intermediate Period. The report contains invaluable information about everyday rural life in the Delta, with anlayses of the different layers, the pottery and the small finds, as well as plant remains and animal bones.

Penelope Wilson E E S

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Qasr Ibrim: The Textiles from the Cathedral Cemetery 17/8/11 10:58:28

The dry height of the site of Qasr Ibrim above the Nile river has resulted in superb preservation of organic material. The textile collections from the excavations have already become one of the largest from any site in the middle Nile valley. They are unique as an unmatched sequence, dating from the Twenty-Fifth Dynasty to the Late Ottoman Period and ranging from the domestic remains of town life and tiny exotic imports of the site’s great years to the cast-off garments and furnishings, pitifully mended and remended, from ages of disaster and decline. The important textiles from the Cathedral cemetery at Qasr Ibrim, including those from the burial of Bishop Timotheus, are published here with detailed descriptions and a photographic record of the most significant pieces.

EES Excavation Memoir 96. 2011. ISBN: 978-0-85698-199-9. Full price: £35.00. EES Members’ price: £30.00

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Qasr Ibrim: The Textiles from the Cathedral Cemetery

Elisabeth Grace Crowfoot

Qasr Ibrim: the Textiles from the Cathedral Cemetery By Elisabeth Grace Crowfoot

E E S Qasr Ibrim: The Textiles from the Cathedral Cemetery

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The Sacred Animal Necropolis at North Saqqara

Sais I. The Ramesside-Third Intermediate Period at Kom Rebwa By Penelope Wilson

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Penelope Wilson

ian Archaeology in the s worked on excavations and sr Ibrim, Tell el-Balamun and Director of the EES/Durham surveys of sites throughout urban and landscape religious life in Egypt and

Sais I The Ramesside-Third Intermediate Period at Kom Rebwa

diate Period

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The Mother of Apis Inscriptions

The Mother of Apis inscriptions (534-41 BC), found in 1966-71 in and outside the Mother of Apis Catacomb at North Saqqara by the Egypt Exploration Society, comprise the stelae and graffiti of the masons who constructed the catacomb and of the priests who oversaw the work and conducted the burial and other rituals for the cows. The texts include genealogies of the masons and some accounts of their work and rations. This study includes transliterations, translations and explanatory notes on all the texts found, together with commentaries and indexes. E E S

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The Sacred Animal Necropolis at North Saqqara

EES Texts from Excavations 14. 2011. ISBN: 978-0-85698-200-2 Full price: £90.00 (two volume set). EES Members’ price: £76.50 (two volume set)

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Elisabeth Grace Crowfoot was an expert on ancient textiles and in 1976 she was invited

The dry height of the site of Qasr Ibrim above the river has resulted in superb preservation of organic material and the textile collections from the excavations have already become one of the largest from any site in the middle Nile valley. The important textiles from the Cathedral Cemetery at Qasr Ibrim, including those from the burial of Bishop Timotheus, are published here (edited for publication by Nettie Adams) with detailed descriptions and a photographic record. to join the Egypt Exploration Society’s expedition to Qasr Ibrim, after having worked in Cambridge on textiles from the Ibrim seasons in the 1960s. She worked with the

expedition until 1984, analysing, sorting, washing and cataloguing textiles as they were excavated, assisted in the field by Nettie Adams. Miss Crowfoot had completed this text before her death in 2005 and it has been edited for publication by Nettie Adams.

Elisabeth Grace Crowfoot

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The Oxyrhynchus Papyri 76. Nos.5072-5100 By D Colomo and J Chapa (eds)

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9/3/11 11:23:51

EES Graeco-Roman Memoirs 97. 2011. ISBN: 978-0-85698-203-3. Full price: £85.00. EES Members: £72.25 This volume publishes texts presented at the colloquium ‘New Greek Texts from Oxyrhynchus’ held in London in June 2009, and related finds. The texts include Greek drama, new sayings of Jesus and a series of Platonic dialogues. The Oxyrhynchus Papyri 77. Nos.5101-5126 By A Benaissa (ed.) EES Graeco-Roman Memoirs 98. 2011. ISBN: 978-085698-204-0. Full price: £85.00. EES Members: £72.25 The first section of this volume publishes what is probably the earliest extant copy of the Septuagint Psalms. Section II collects fragments of five hexameter poems and Section III contains a miscellany of documents of the Roman and Byzantine periods. EES publications can be purchased from: The Egypt Exploration Society 3 Doughty Mews, London WC1N 2PG, United Kingdom. Telephone: +44 (0)20 7242 2266. Fax: +44 (0)20 7404 6118. E-mail: rob.tamplin@ees.ac.uk On-line shop: www.ees-shop.com

5th -18th November 2012 Escorted by EES Director Chris Naunton

An exclusive tour for members of the Egypt Exploration Society

THEBES AND UPPER EGYPT

This exciting new itinerary has been designed to take our members to many rarely visited sites and current excavations From our base in Luxor, we plan special permit access to some incredible sites. These include the temples of Khonsu and Mut, and the new excavations at Karnak. We visit Mo’alla, el Tod, Dendera and Abydos, where we have complete access. Then to Akhmim and Beit Khallaf followed by the Red Monastery, where as guests of ARCE we see the superb renovations. We also plan to visit Wanina, Hawawish and view the incredible rock inscriptions at Wadi Hammamat. Our southern explorations en-route to Aswan take time to visit, El Kab, Esna, Edfu and Gebel Silsila. We will also visit Kubbet el Hawa, Elephantine, Sehel, the Obelisk and Philae before returning to Luxor. Our last two days are devoted to the West Bank, and are very special. We have been invited to view KV5 with Kent Weeks before the walk out of the valley over the Mountain of Meretsegar on the path of the ancient workers. We hope to view the ongoing work at Kom el Hitan and at Asasif. Our hotel in Luxor will be the Old Winter Palace Garden Pavilion Wing and in Aswan the Movenpick on Elephantine Island. Accompanied by Chris Naunton and a senior guide throughout, this unique tour promises in-depth Egyptology, adventure and privileged access to many rare sites.

Price per person: £3,175 Single supplement: £270 CALL NOW TO BOOK: 0844 357 9494 Ancient World Tours is an agent of Bales Worldwide Ltd. The air holiday show is ATOL protected by the Civil Aviation Authority and provided by Bales Worldwide Ltd. ATOL 2882. ATOL protection extends primarily to customers who book and pay in the United Kingdom. Bales Worldwide Ltd is a member of ABTA. ABTA Number V7047.