Egyptian Archaeology 49 by TheEES

Available from the Egypt Exploration Society and ISD (in North America) at www.ees-shop.com and www.isdistribution.com The temple of Seti I at Abydos is one of the great monuments of the New Kingdom: Rosalie David’s book, last printed more than 30 years ago, offers a guide to its magnificent reliefs and wall paintings, explaining the scenes of ritual and worship. This new edition will, for the first time, include some of the outstanding watercolours by Calverley and Broome published by the EES and the Oriental Institute between 1933 and 1958. ISBN 978-0-85698-232-3 £35 • £29.75 (EES Members’ Price)

Scenes and texts of the Ramesside temple at Amara West in Sudan, excavated by an EES expedition in 1938-39 and 1947-49.

An in-depth investigation of three sites – Tell Yetwal wa Yuksur, Kom ed-Daba, and Tell Buweib – as part of the EES Delta Survey.

OUT THIS WINTER: The 9th volume of the ‘Survey of Memphis’, presenting over 1200 objects from the late Middle Kingdom installations at Kom Rabi’a.

Excavation Memoir 114 ISBN 978-0-85698-227-9 £70 • £59.50 (EES Members’ Price)

Excavation Memoir 112 ISBN 978-0-85698-225-5 £35 • £29.75 (EES Members’ Price)

Excavation Memoir 115 ISBN 978-0-85698-228-6 £70 • £59.50 (EES Members’ Price)

EGYPTIAN ARCHAEOLOGY No. 49 Autumn 2016 www.ees.ac.uk Editor Jan Geisbusch Editorial Advisers Aidan Dodson Cédric Gobeil John J Johnston Caitlin McCall Luigi Prada Alice Stevenson John Taylor Advertising Sales Phone: +44 (0)20 7242 1880 E-mail: jan.geisbusch@ees.ac.uk Distribution Phone: +44 (0)20 7242 1880 E-mail: orders@ees.ac.uk Website: www.ees-shop.co.uk Published twice a year by the Egypt Exploration Society 3 Doughty Mews London WC1N 2PG United Kingdom Registered Charity, No. 212384 A Limited Company registered in England, No. 25816 Design by Nim Design Ltd Set in InDesign CS6 by Jan Geisbusch Printed by Page Bros Ltd, Mile Cross Lane, Norwich, Norfolk NR6 6SA © The Egypt Exploration Society and the contributors. No part of this publication may be reproduced without prior permission of the publishers. The opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the aims or concerns of the Egypt Exploration Society. ISSN 0962 2837

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Editorial Just glancing at this issue of Egyptian Archaeology, you can already tell what the big story is – we’ve had a head-to-toe layout make-over. And, of course, we hope you like it as much as we do. EA has been around for quite some time now – issue 1 appeared in 1991, and a quarter century is a long time, even more so in magazine publishing. So when the EES earlier this year decided to overhaul its logo and visual identity, we felt it was the opportunity to have a fresh look at EA, too, and how it might be part of this process. I’m very happy with the result – the new layout looks clean, spacious and contemporary, providing a great showcase for the reports that have been reaching us from the field. Some of these, as always, are updates on EES projects that you have made possible through your continued support of the Society: Anna Garnett’s article on pottery assemblages from the Amarna Stone Village or Delphine Driaux’s archive research on a 19th-century French mission at the same site. Both were recipients of EES fieldwork & research grants last year. And Sanda Heinz and Elsbeth van der Wilt bring to light some of the untapped treasures still slumbering in the EES archive. But I’m also very excited about the stories unrelated to the Society, such as Ayman Damarany and Hazem Salah’s piece on an intriguing find in the Seti I temple at Abydos, or Marilina Betrò and Gianluca Miniaci’s article from the Theban necropolis – which also supplied our marvellous cover image. Speaking of great images: the article on Coptos by Laure Pantalacci and the new EES Director Cédric Gobeil is as great to read as it is visually stunning. Wouter Claes and Dirk Huyge offer us a glimpse into Egypt’s predynastic past from an under-researched site, while David García and José M. Galán add to our knowledge of ancient weaponry. Jan Geisbusch Above: Mohammed Gamal el-Sayed, Mohammed Fadaly and Nehad Abd Elmonieum Abd Elreheem during excavation on the Wadi el-Gamal (Joanne Rowland’s EES mission to Merimde / Beni Salama - see Digging Diary, pp. 34-37). Cover: detail of a mask as found in the material deposit of room M, tomb MIDAN.05. See article pp. 29-33. Photo: Gianluca Miniaci. EGYPTIAN ARCHAEOLOGY ISSUE NO 49 AUTUMN 2016

MIDAN.05: the art of archaeological drawing (see pp. 29-33).

Contents 4 Coptos: the sacred precincts in Ptolemaic and Roman times Laure Pantalacci and Cédric Gobeil

10 Bouriant at Amarna: an almost forgotten French mission Delphine Driaux 16 Understanding pottery and people at the Amarna Stone Village Anna Garnett

20 The ‘Slaughterhouse Archive’ of the Seti Temple at Abydos Ayman M Damarany and Hazem Salah 24 An archery set from Dra Abu el-Naga David García and José M. Galán 29 The early Ramesside occupants of tomb MIDAN.05 Marilina Betrò and Gianluca Miniaci

34 Digging Diary 2016 38 Finds from Elkab: revealing the origins of the settlement Wouter Claes and Dirk Huyge

43 Buried bronzes: caches of the Sacred Animal Necropolis

Sanda Heinz and Elsbeth van der Wilt

Photo: MIDAN – Missione archeologica Italiana a Dra Abu el-Naga

47 Bookshelf

EGYPTIAN ARCHAEOLOGY ISSUE NO 49 AUTUMN 2016

Coptos: the sacred precincts in Ptolemaic and Roman times In spite of the extensive excavations of Petrie (1893–94) and Reinach and Weill (1910–11) in Coptos, the layout of the temples area remains obscure. Laure Pantalacci and Cédric Gobeil, heading the joint IFAO/ Université de Lyon mission, present new data and current hypotheses about its configuration.

Detail from the base of the ‘painted door’. See p. 7.

During at least four millennia, the city of Coptos was a major Upper Egyptian centre. Its main advantages were the width of its alluvial plain, its direct access to the mineral riches of the Eastern Desert, and above all its convenient location, on the Nile, near the entrance of the Wadi Hammamat, the shortest road between the Nile Valley and the Red Sea. We know little about its long and complex history. Scanty evidence shows that the city enjoyed a prominent position in Upper Egypt through the 3rd and 2nd millennia, though it was overshadowed by its Theban neighbour dur ing the New K ingdom and T hir d Intermediate Period. In the course of the 1st millennium BC, the city regained a major position. The religious and monumental focus of the city centre shifted from its old temple, dedicated to Min and Isis, to a southern complex of sanctuaries, called Netjery Shema (‘southern precinct’), where the whole Osirian family was worshipped. Under the Thirtieth Dynasty, the sacred city was protected by a huge mud-brick precinct wall (hereafter LP [= Late Period] wall), enclosing these different temenoi (see the map on the opposite page). Nowadays, most of the ancient monuments have been destroyed. The archaeological remains visible on the site date mostly to Ptolemaic and Roman periods. Coptos then reached its heyday, becoming an essential hub on the road network of the Indo-Mediterranean trade market. At the beginning of the Ptolemaic Period, the religious centre of Coptos was still

surrounded by the thick quadrangular mud-brick wall built under the reign of Nectanebo I (380–362 BC). Today, five openings are visible in this LP wall: three in its western part, one in the south, and at least one more in the north. The last major reconstruction of the temple, as well as some building activities in the Netjery Shema, took place during the reign of Ptolemy II (283–246 BC), by his Greek majordomo Zenon. The refurbished temple of Min and Isis included twin naoi accessed through two parallel west-east axes, on which were set two pylons with double doors, separated by a large courtyard. While the first door of Min probably existed prior to the time of Ptolemy II, the first and third doors of Isis were decorated in his reign. It might be around the same time that the main sanctuary was raised on a new platform, about 1 m above the level of its western hall. The temple of Min and Isis was later surrounded by a smaller mud-brick enclosure (temenos) built around the mid-2nd century BC, maybe following a destruction of or damage to the LP enclosure. The question remains open since we only know partially the outlines of both the LP wall and this inner enclosure. At least one door, recently brought to light, was set in its north wall (opposite page) and two in its east wall. In addition, a monumental north-south gateway must have existed to the south, connecting the main temenos with the Netjery Shema. A major piece of evidence supporting this assessment

COPTOS: THE SACRED PRECINCTS IN PTOLEMAIC AND ROMAN TIMES

Coptos: a general map of the religious centre.

Northern door

Ptolemaic temenos wall Roman colonnade

Birth-house of Ptolemy IV

Axis of Isis Axis of Min

Roman colonnade

Late Period enclosure wall

Temple of Min and Isis

3rd pylon

2nd pylon

North-easthern door

1st pylon

Ptolemaic temenos wall

Portico of Claudius

Late Period enclosure wall

Temple of Osiris

Southern Precinct (Netjery Chema) N

Temple of Geb Oracular chapel of Cleopatra VII

Late Period Ptolemaic Period

Painted door

Roman Period

Southern door 0 5 10

is the location of the newly identified birthhouse of Ptolemy IV (221–204 BC). Located in the courtyard between the first and third pylons, it was built at the end of a south-north processional alley, connecting it to the ‘temple of Osiris’ in the Netjery Shema. Later on, this processional pathway certainly extended to the southern doors of the Netjery Shema and of the LP enclosure, both of them decorated by the last Ptolemies and the first Roman emperors. This dromos passed by the new oracular chapel built by Cleopatra VII (51–30) and Ptolemy XIV, and led to the cemeteries further south. The first contact of Coptos with Roman rule was harsh, as the city revolted against Octavian and was subdued by Cornelius Gallus in 29 BC. But restorations and new constructions took place soon after. The names of Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero all appear both on Coptite monuments and along the

Ptolemaic or Roman Period 100 meters

Pathway

Western half of the northern door in the Ptolemaic temenos wall (south-north view).

EGYPTIAN ARCHAEOLOGY ISSUE NO 49 AUTUMN 2016

Lintel of the eastern door, with dedication of Parthenios on behalf of Nero.

roads to the Red Sea, showing the involvement of Roman emperors and citizens in developing the Ptolemaic desert roads. It is through monumental remains that we can still detect the numerous changes that occurred over a relatively short time – the f irst 60 years AD or so. Following the excavations of Petrie and Weill/Reinach, about 25 dedicatory inscriptions documenting lavish building programmes were collected. Nearly all of them refer to the extensive architectural activity of Parthenios, son of Pamin, overseer of the Isis temple estate between the reigns of Tiberius and Nero (17/18–65/66 AD). His stelae credit him with the construction of several walls (one is called peribolon) and doors. Our excavations to the south-east of the main temple brought to light blocks from three more limestone door frames. The bigger one, erected by Augustus, was inser ted in the eastern wall of the main temple temenos. It was later reinscribed in Greek by Parthenios, on behalf of Nero (image below). To the west, near the first pylon of Min and Isis, existed a large entrance (excavated in 1911) in the LP wall. The two doors stood at the ends of the east-west street (a kind of decumanus) running inside the main temenos along its southern

wall. Parallel to this southern street, to the north of Min’s temenos, but outside the wall, another large street (Ptolemaic?) reached the north-eastern gateway. During the reign of Claudius, Parthenios embellished the P tolemaic south-nor th processional alley with a columned portico flanking the northern doorway of the Netjery Shema. At about the same time, other colonnades were squeezed into the southern part of the same enclosure. It seems that the girdle wall of this complex was rebuilt at that time, at least in its south-western corner – maybe the peribolon mentioned by Parthenios. Access to the south-north corridor between the western wall of the Netjery Shema and the LP enclosure was now gained through the ‘painted door’ (opposite page). It was again Parthenios who dedicated this sandstone door on behalf of Claudius, but this time in demotic, maybe because that door was mainly used by Egyptian temple staff. Running along the east wall across the main temenos, another corridor was entered through a small doorway, which, given its modest size, might have been used only by temple staff. Inside the main temple temenos, Roman rule brought about yet more changes. The second

COPTOS: THE SACRED PRECINCTS IN PTOLEMAIC AND ROMAN TIMES

The ‘painted door’, dedicated by the temple estate manager Parthenios to the emperor Claudius, EGYPTIAN ARCHAEOLOGY ISSUE NO 49 AUTUMN 2016

The northern colonnade, with the north wall of the main temple to the left.

pylon was built under Nero, dividing the large Ptolemaic front court of the main temple. But the most spectacular novelty was the levelling of the mud-brick wall encircling the Min and Isis temple and the installation of long, paved colonnades (image above) on its levelled top, about 1 m above the inner floor level. At the back, these colonnades were closed by a thin mud-brick wall. They thus formed porticos or columned streets in a typical Greek style, accessible from within the temenos. Between the wall and the front columns were arranged rows of small rooms whose purpose is still unknown. Whatever activity took place there, their number suggests that the space between the temple and his girdle wall was now open to a wider public. Changes were also introduced to cultic practices. The pharaonic sanctuary of the goddess Isis was still in use. But in addition, a colossal bronze statue now stood in an open chapel inserted at the corner of the northern and eastern colonnades, overlooking the old temple (opposite page, top). The statue has now disappeared, but all the blocks of its inscribed limestone pedestal, dedicated by an Arab merchant under Vespasian (AD 70), are still preserved in situ.

Many of the structures built in Ptolemaic and early Roman times were later dismantled or destroyed as the temenoi were turned into a fortress at the end of the 3rd century. In modern times, the search for sebakh caused further serious destructions in the sacred area. Nevertheless, the overall layout of the centre begins to surface slowly. Further work is planned to investigate the transformations that occurred in and around the temples, while an anastylosis programme (the reconstruction of a ruined monument using, as far as possible, its original architectural elements) aims at restoring some of the structures described (opposite page, bottom).

• Laure Pantalacci is Professor of Egyptology in Lyon and former Director of the French Institute in Cairo (IFAO). She created the Coptos mission in 2002, after many years of epigraphic work in the neighbouring temple of el-Qal’a. Cédric Gobeil, Adjunct Professor in the History Department of the Université du Québec à Montréal and formerly archaeologist at the IFAO, supervises the excavation programme. He has recently been appointed Director of the Egypt Exploration Society. All images © IFAO/Mission Coptos.

COPTOS: THE SACRED PRECINCTS IN PTOLEMAIC AND ROMAN TIMES

Top: Reconstruction of the north-eastern corner of the Roman colonnade with the statue of Isis. Left: The anastylosis of the eastern doorway in progress (2015).

EGYPTIAN ARCHAEOLOGY ISSUE NO 49 AUTUMN 2016

Bouriant at Amarna: an almost forgotten French mission Tell el-Amarna is a site closely connected to the Egypt Exploration Society: Norman de Garis Davies worked there as the Society’s surveyor in the early 1900s, and it was again active on site between 1920 and 1936, and then from the late 1970s onwards. Yet other missions have left their traces, too – sometimes shadowy – as archive research by Delphine Driaux shows. In 2010, the relocation of the Archives De pa r t me nt of t he I ns ti tu t Fr a nç ais d’Archéologie Orientale (IFAO) in Cairo resulted in an extensive stock-take of its holdings – and the rediscovery of a set of documents on the rock tombs of Amarna. The batch contains handwritten notes, sketches, 32 photographs and 244 drawings produced at the end of the 19th century by an expedition led by Urbain Bouriant (18491903), then Director of the IFAO (from 1886 to 1898). Funded by an EES Field and Research Grant, the study of these documents helps to shed a new light on early archaeological work at Amarna and provides an opportunity to learn more about a now largely forgotten mission and its activities at the site, today often overshadowed by the complete publication of the tombs by Norman de Garis Davies a few years later (1903-1908). The history of the French expedition at Amarna dates back to the very creation of the IFAO in 1880. At that time, Bouriant was one of the scientific members of the Institute (from 1881 to 1883), directed by Gaston Maspero. During his first years in Egypt the young Egyptologist had expressed a strong interest in the ‘heretic’ Pharaoh Akhenaten. In 1882, he and Maspero paid a first visit to ‘the caves of Tell el-Amarna’. After this shor t tour, Bouriant was curious to check if all the tombs in the area – most of which were unexplored – were really empty, as it was assumed. In April 1883, he took advantage of an inspection tour

with Maspero to stop at Amarna again. This was, at last, the opportunity to explore the many uncleared tombs. The pair were therefore undertaking indepth work at the site eight years before Petrie obtained permission to excavate. Focusing their efforts on the South Tombs, Maspero and Bouriant started their first day on site in the tomb of Ay (no. 25), copying the texts. Work there, however, did not take long as the tomb was already known and had been published by Lepsius: only one new inscription, located on the west side of the door thickness and overlooked by the German Egyptologist, was recorded. The two men then moved on to other tombs nearby, looking for unexplored monuments and hoping for ‘beautiful results’. Unfortunately, their efforts were not very successful. By day’s end, five tombs had been opened, but only a handful of inscriptions had been found preserved, like those of Ipy (no. 10) and Ramose (no. 11). Feeling badly indisposed, Maspero, moreover, was forced to shorten the mission. Nevertheless, before leaving Amarna, Bouriant made the most of his last day on site to continue his work in the necropolis. Seven tombs located at the top of the hill were cleared but none of them contained inscriptions or scenes, until eventually, near the tomb of Tutu (no. 8) – already known since the mission of Lepsius – Bouriant noticed part of an inscribed door, hidden by the sand. After workmen cleared the tomb (no. 9) – filled with sand but not yielding any objects that

BOURIANT AT AMARNA: AN ALMOST FORGOTTEN FRENCH MISSION

might have provided precise information about the owner – the Egyptologist discovered more inscriptions containing the name Mahu. Bouriant spent the rest of day in the tomb, recording the texts, which were published in 1889 together with the rest of the results obtained during those two days, in the first volume of the Mémoires de la Mission Archéologique Française (MMAF). This very short mission was followed by a somewhat longer one two years later. On 6 December 1884, Bouriant left Cairo with Maspero on board a steamer to reach Upper Egypt, where the two men had planned to work for several months. On their way, they visited a number of sites before mooring on the bank of the modern village of el-Hagg Qandil, located towards the southern end of the Amarna plain. From there, Bouriant hoped to be lucky enough to find new tombs dating from the reign of Akhenaten. Between midDecember 1884 and Januar y 1885, he continued his work in the South Tombs. He discovered about 20 tombs but none of them preserved any inscriptions, except one (no. 18), where he copied the remains of some

hieroglyphs situated on the doorway. Given these disappointing results, Bouriant wanted to concentrate his research on the northern end of the site. However, the ghaffirs (guards) refused to lead him and Maspero there, arguing that this part of the site was not safe after a number of murders had happened there shortly before. For a second time, Bouriant was forced to end his mission before achieving his goals. Never theless, he left Amarna convinced that future research remained to be done around ‘the North group or towards the centre itself of the cliff’. During the following years, other missions began research at Amarna. Flinders Petrie was the first to obtain permission from Eugène Grébaut, Director of the Antiquities Service, to work exclusively in the ancient city, not in the tombs. The British Egyptologist worked in several areas of the settlement from October 1891 to April 1892 and undertook a survey in the deser t, completed by the 18-year-old Howard Car ter – Petrie being unable to continue due to a foot injury. At the time, English newspapers, in particular The Times, published several ar ticles mentioning ‘the

Sample of archival material related to Huya’s tomb. Photo: Delphine Driaux

EGYPTIAN ARCHAEOLOGY ISSUE NO 49 AUTUMN 2016

recent wanton mutilation of the ancient monuments at Beni-Hassan, Tel-el-Amarna, and El-Bersheh’ and deploring ‘the culpable neglect on the part of Egyptian authorities in not having placed the monuments under such supervision as would render acts of this nature impossible’ (The Times, 17 March 1890). In the context of the political tension and national rivalry of the time, these articles were clearly intended to blame the negligence of the French at the head of the Antiquities Service, which responded by sending Alexandre Barsanti to protect the Amarna tombs, securing them with iron doors. Barsanti was also in charge of clearing the remaining tombs to make them accessible to visitors. On this occasion, on 26 December 1891, he discovered the tomb of Any (no. 23). Two days later, during a trip to explore the mountains, he ‘officially discovered’ the royal tomb, even though it seems that local people had been aware of it for a decade or so already. Working in the area, Petrie and Car ter were amongst the first European visitor s to the tomb. Car ter took the opportunity to make some drawings of the scenes, the first before the official publication of the tomb by Bouriant and his team in 1903. Bouriant, who in the meantime had become Director of the French Institute, in 1886, returned to Amarna at the end of 1893, eight years after his last stay. The main goal of the mission was to publish in full all the tombs of Amarna. Plans had been made during the winter of 1893/94, and Bouriant requested the help of the newly appointed scientific IFAO

member Georges Legrain and the Swiss Egyptologist Gustave Jéquier. The two men arrived in a dahabiya at el-Hagg Qandil at the end of December 1893. Amongst his personal memories of the mission, written down almost a decade later, Legrain remembered how the day after our arrival Mr. Jéquier and I went to recognize the tombs of Haggi Qandil that we had already seen quickly a few months earlier, made our arrangements, and organized the work until Mr. Bouriant joined us (Notes, IFAO, Archives El-Amarna 01). Bouriant, delayed in Cairo, reached Middle Egypt a few days later, accompanied by Joseph Gautier, a young archaeologist. The team star ted to work in the South Tombs, which they had begun to call ‘the tombs of Hagg Qandil’ to distinguish them from the North Tombs, ‘the tombs of Tell el-Amarna’. For most of the mission, Bouriant and Jéquier were in charge of copying the inscriptions while Legrain drew the scenes and Gautier made a plan of all the tombs. After two weeks of work, Legrain wrote in a letter that everything goes perfectly. Twenty-four tombs, of the 26 of Hadji Kandil, are done and have already provided us about fifty large plates. We came back yesterday from the tomb attributed to Amenhotep IV. We had spent two days busy drawing the scenes that decorate two of the rooms. The scenes are very beautiful and more eventful than anything I have seen so far. You

BOURIANT AT AMARNA: AN ALMOST FORGOTTEN FRENCH MISSION

Opposite page: photograph taken in January 1894 by Gustave Jéquier – ‘The tombs below the cliff of El Amarna’. Photo: IFAO. Left: map of Amarna in 1894. Drawn by the author from a sketch made by Bouriant and his team.

will also see fourteen plates that we bring back from our expedition […] We hope to finish next week the whole group of Hadji Kandil and tackle the tombs of Tell el-Amarna. The task that awaits us is not small and we do not expect to finish it in less than a month.’ (11 January 1894, Institut de France, Ms 4027) Legrain also mentioned in his letter that the team had found three new boundary stelae, ‘similar to those published by Mr. Daressy’, that were to be copied soon. If the work proceeded smoothly enough in the South Tombs, the situation was quite different in the north. In his preparatory notes for the publication, Legrain explained that at Amarna, more than at Haggi Qandil, the tombs have suf fered a lot from modern depredation and the state of abandonment in which they were left for so many years. So our task was more complicated, more difficult than in the Southern tombs. (Notes about the tomb of Huya. IFAO, Archives El-Amarna 04) At this stage of the mission, the team had to deal not only with tough working conditions and fatigue but also with Bouriant’s poor health, who had to retire to the dahabiya for some time and was not able to finish his copies in the tomb of Huya (no. 1). After a month and a half of work in the tombs of Hagg Qandil and Tell el-Amarna, the team left the site for Upper Egypt and Kom Ombo. A few weeks later, back in Cairo,

Bouriant sent a report to the French Ministry of Public Education where he explained: We have established over 300 plates all ready to be printed and which will hopefully be published during the next year, as soon as we have the time required to complete and translate them. From these 300 plates, fifty are reproductions, largely improved, of plates published by Lepsius and other scholars, others are new and will allow us to present some new insights into the period still so obscure of the heretical pharaohs. These unpublished or amended texts, of such importance for this part of the history of Egypt, have been gathered and are now being studied. (30 March 1894, Paris, Archives Nationales, F/17/4148) Archival documents show that, under the title ‘Tell el-Amarna’, two volumes had been planned, one for the South, the other for the North Tombs. The publication was entrusted to the editor Ernest Leroux, in Paris, who was then in charge of creating and printing the plates. As it turned out, these publications demanded a lot of additional time and labour from the Egyptologists: between the end of the mission and February 1898, Bouriant returned about seven times to Amarna, carefully reviewing the copied texts. Jéquier went back once, at the end of 1896, for the same purpose. The publication was also complicated by the recruitment of Legrain to the Antiquities Service at the end of 1894, followed by the departure of Jéquier to Persia and the continuing illness of Bouriant. In 1899, EGYPTIAN ARCHAEOLOGY ISSUE NO 49 AUTUMN 2016

Pencil drawing, inked drawing and printed proof of the west side of the doorway leading to the shrine in the tomb of Huya (no. 1). Image: IFAO.

the plates were printed, but still there was more work to be done on the descriptive comments of the tombs and the general introduction to the book. Given these delays, the amount of money already spent on the research and the absence of published results, the new Director of the French Institute, Émile Chassinat, decided to contact Legrain, asking him to finish the work quickly. Legrain agreed and returned to Amarna in May/June 1902 to complete, finally, the copying of the inscriptions. In the meantime, seeing that none of the better preserved tombs at the site had been published, the Egypt Exploration Fund (later Society) asked permission to send a mission to Amarna to fill the gap. Norman de Garis Davies (1865-1941) started work there at the beginning of January 1902 in the tomb of Meryra, published the next year in the 13th Memoir of the EEF’s Archaeological Survey of Egypt. The same year, the first volume collating the work done by the French mission in the South Tombs and the Royal Tomb was eventually printed under the title Monuments pour servir à l’étude du culte d’Atonou en Égypte (MIFAO 8). The second volume, dedicated to the North Tombs, however, would never be published, nor would the copies of the new boundary stelae found by the French team or the study by Legrain on the cult of Aten – this despite the fact that Leroux had already printed proofs of the plates and a preparatory layout

was ready. Yet the texts were never finished. The unavailability of team members, the costs and time required to collate the texts and the quality of Davies’ publications presumably led to the decision to abandon the volume. Thus, all the documents related to the French mission’s work in the North Tombs are today preserved at the IFAO Archives Department. All of the or iginal dr awings and their corresponding printed proofs are accompanied by some handwritten notes by Legrain and a few photographs made by Jéquier. There are two kinds of drawings, illustrating the team’s modus operandi, and in particular Legrain’s, ‘whose talent for drawing was indispensable to carry out the complete recording of tombs of Tell el-Amarna’ (letter written by Bouriant from Lorient, 27 June 1894). Copies of the scenes were first done on paper with a pencil, on site, before being inked on tracing paper in order to be printed. These drawings are therefore not facsimiles and some of them show edits and comments. Their study reveals that they are often less accurate than those of Davies. Nevertheless, as a further publication will demonstrate, some of the copies made by the French team are totally new. For instance, in his publication of the doorway leading to the shrine in the tomb of Huya, Davies referred only to a similar text, better preserved, in another tomb and provided only two lowquality photographs of scenes, where the

BOURIANT AT AMARNA: AN ALMOST FORGOTTEN FRENCH MISSION

steward of Queen Tiye is shown facing towards the shrine and accompanied by prayers. By comparison, the drawings of Bouriant and his team give us additional details overlooked by Davies, presumably due to damage and deterioration that occurred between the two missions. Despite some issues with accuracy, these drawings and archival material testify, in so many ways, to a past now irretrievably gone.

• Delphine Driaux is an Affiliated Scholar at the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research in Cambridge and current member of the Amarna Project directed by Prof. Barry Kemp. The author would like to thank the Egypt Exploration Society for funding this study. Many thanks to Nadine Cherpion, former archive keeper of the Institut français d’archéologie orientale (IFAO) in Cairo for her support, and to her assistant, Mazen Essam. The author is also indebted to Emmanuel Jambon, who brought the existence of the two letters written by Legrain to her attention, and to Anna Stevens. Thanks are finally due to Hélène Carrère d’Encausse, secrétaire perpétuel of the Académie Française and the Committee of Libraries and Archives of the Institut de France for the permission to quote from Legrain’s letter.

Above: watercolour. Detail of the chariot driven by the Queen. Tomb of Meryra (no. 4). Image: IFAO.

Left: folder containing the drawings and one watercolour made in the tomb of Parennefer (no. 4). Photo: Delphine Driaux. EGYPTIAN ARCHAEOLOGY ISSUE NO 49 AUTUMN 2016

Understanding pottery and people at the Amarna Stone Village Above: Trench 4 during excavation. Photo: Courtesy of the Amarna Project.

Through the analysis and interpretation of pottery sherds excavated from the Amarna Stone Village, Anna Garnett traces the possible social structures and urban geography of an enigmatic New Kingdom workers’ settlement. I under took my first two-week season at Amarna in April 2015 to study the ceramic assemblage excavated from the Amarna Stone Village, with the support of an Egypt Exploration Society Fieldwork and Research grant. The Stone Village is a workers’ settlement located in a shallow valley in the desert to the east of the Main City at Amarna, around 20 minutes’ walk south-east from the Workmen’s Village. The survey and excavation of the Stone Village was undertaken during 2005–9 directed by Anna Stevens, and subsequently published

as EES Excavation Memoirs 100 and 101. Nine trenches were opened across the site, spanning likely settlement areas, burials, a quarry, rubbish deposits and peripheral structures that may be connected with the policing of the area (see the maps on the opposite page). The hub of the Stone Village, the ‘Main Site’, presents at surface level as a roughly rectangular scatter of limestone boulders and low mounds of crumbled desert clay, sherds and other debris. Excavations here revealed evidence of structures that were once roofed (see image

UNDERSTANDING POTTERY AND PEOPLE AT THE AMARNA STONE VILLAGE

Top right: map of Amarna showing the location of the Stone Village.

Maps by Barry Kemp and Helen Fenwick, modified by Anna Stevens, courtesy of the Amarna Project.

p. 18) and external areas, probably partly used as residences, but not laid out in the same planned arrangement of buildings seen at the Workmen’s Village. At least part of the Main Site was also surrounded by a perimeter wall. However, this was much less substantial than the one at the Workmen’s Village. Also in contrast to the Workmen’s Village, no chapels, animal pens or garden beds were found at the Stone Village, which perhaps hints at a comparatively modest quality of life. Neither village seems to have had a well. The most prominent remains beyond the Main Site are two denuded stone structures to the south (Structures I and II) that may have been connected with the administration, supplying and/or policing of the site. A smaller stone emplacement, perhaps a guard post (Structure III), was identified on the plateau to the north of the Main Site, and a cemetery has also been located to the south-east. Several ancient stone-marked roadways encircle the Stone Village, which seem to have defined the territorial limit of the site and may have also been patrolled by foot soldiers or police – potential users of the ‘guard post’ in Structure III (perhaps to monitor the movements of individuals entering and exiting the site). While the precise function of the Stone Village remains uncertain, the two most likely hypotheses are that the site was home to a community of labourers who worked on the quarrying of the Royal Tomb (and perhaps also non-royal tombs) at Amarna, and/or that the site played a role in provisioning and supporting desert-based workforces, including the supply of food and water. For the latter, parallels have been drawn with the so-called ‘Workmen’s Huts’ on the plateau at Deir el-Medina. The presence of what seems to be a concentrated bakery area along the east edge of the Main Site, unparalleled at the Workmen’s Village, might also support this. A detailed study of the pottery from the excavated trenches may help to build a clearer picture of the function of the Stone Village and shed further light on the spatial distribution of

Bottom right: map of the Stone Village indicating the nine excavated trenches and the roadways surrounding the site. EGYPTIAN ARCHAEOLOGY ISSUE NO 49 AUTUMN 2016

Trench 2 post excavation. Photo: Courtesy of the Amarna Project.

types, fabrics and ceramic technologies at Amarna. The issue of trade and exchange of goods across Amarna, particularly between the Stone Village, the Workmen’s Village, and the riverside city, is also a key research theme of this project. As in the main Amarna ceramic corpus, the Stone Village assemblage comprises a majority of Nile silt sherds, with a smaller percentage of sherds from marl clay and imported vessels in the form of Canaanite and Oasis amphorae. Blue-painted Nile silt and, less commonly, marl sherds occur in relatively few numbers, mainly from carinated bowls and jars (see opposite page). The relatively low percentage of fine, decorated sherds, compared to the vast numbers of coarseware sherds from more utilitarian-type vessels, could also support the idea that the Stone Village was largely functional in outlook. This initial study suggests that the Stone Village assemblage presents a distinctive signature: an abundance of sherds from Nilesilt, thick-rimmed water jars (zirs) and large ovoid-shaped jars with characteristic ‘holemouth’ rims can be observed. One approach to tracing commodity movement through the ceramic record is via water supply. Barr y Kemp’s work at the Workmen’s Village on behalf of the EES in the 1980s showed that, to compensate for the absence of a well, water was brought directly from the Main City, the route between the

two sites marked by a trail of broken amphora sherds. Upon delivery, the water was then transferred into static zirs, which were installed in two cour tyards just outside the walled village, kept upright and cemented into place with heaps of mortared stones. This designated ‘zir emplacement’ area meant that the villagers could transfer water back to the privacy of their homes for their personal requirements and those of their animals. Since there appears to be no well at the Stone Village, water must also have been brought in from outside on a regular basis. No obvious zir emplacement or sherd trail has been identified at the site, allowing for the relatively small scale of the excavations. We might look to the relative abundance of zir and hole-mouthed jar sherds as hints of water supply and storage. Could the hole-mouthed jars represent the transportation vessels for water coming into the village and/or perhaps being transferred again beyond the site to desert-based workforces? Canaanite and marl amphorae, which seem to have been used principally as water delivery vessels at the Workmen’s Village, based on their frequency in the sherd trail, appear very infrequently at the Stone Village and so are perhaps unlikely to have been used for this purpose here. We must also consider the extent to which the corpus at each village represents delivery vessels as such, which would often have been

UNDERSTANDING POTTERY AND PEOPLE AT THE AMARNA STONE VILLAGE

Left: selection of Nile silt and imported sherds from the Stone Village assemblage

Below: selection of finewares, including blue-painted Nile silt and marl sherds, from the Stone Village assemblage

removed from the site as soon as the water was decanted. This might strengthen the case that the hole-mouthed jars are containers linked to the distribution of supplies from the Stone Village. However, further consideration of supply distribution at other desert sites is needed to shed further light on this issue. The abundance of zir sherds across the Stone Village assemblage proves that these storage vessels were also being used there. Their large size would mean that they were permanently or semi-permanently installed, potentially to contain water and other commodities. It is not yet clear, however, whether these zirs had a grouped, communal emplacement that remains to be identified or whether they were kept privately within individual households (or perhaps both). If there is indeed no communal water storage area at the Stone Village, this would be a signif icant hint of different pat terns of commodit y supply and inter nal water distribution at the site, compared to the Workmen’s Village, and could also have a bearing on the broader role and position of the Stone Village within Amarna. Fur ther recording and spatial analysis of the ceramic corpus during a second 2016 season, combined with statistical analysis of vessel types, will seek to elucidate this question of where and how the zirs were used, and the issue of supply and distribution at the Stone Village.

• Grateful thanks are due to the Egypt Exploration Society for their sponsorship and administrative support, and to the Amarna Project for the oppor tunity to under take this study. I am indebted to Anna Stevens and Pamela Rose, whose support of my work over the past years has been invaluable, and I would also like to thank Kate Spence, Isabella Welsby-Sjöström and Campbell Price for their encouragement and advice. EGYPTIAN ARCHAEOLOGY ISSUE NO 49 AUTUMN 2016

The ‘Slaughterhouse Archive’ of the Seti Temple at Abydos Ayman M Damarany and Hazem Salah report on the surprise discovery of an archaeological deposit in the so-called Slaughterhouse section of the Seti temple, sealed off until recently.

Workmen Talaat, Ahmed and Dahshour (left to right) sifting through the mass of papers.

Abydos is one of the oldest cities of ancient Egypt, and today one of the most important archaeological sites in the country. Located in the low desert west of the Nile some 300 miles south of Cairo, in ancient times it was the capital of the eighth nome of Upper Egypt. It is no surprise that this magnificent site has attracted the attention of archaeologists since the second half of the 19th century: what is

surprising is that Abydos is still giving up its secrets a century and a half later. Though probably best known as the main cult centre of Osiris, king of the netherworld, Abydos – Ancient Egyptian Abdju, Coptic Ebot, modern Al-Araba al-Madfunah – is home to archaeological remains from all periods of ancient Egyptian history. The site is notable for the Early Dynastic royal cemetery of Umm

THE ‘SLAUGHTERHOUSE ARCHIVE’ OF THE SETI TEMPLE AT ABYDOS

el Qa’ab, located at the mouth of the main wadi in Abydos, that contains the tombs of the first Egyptian rulers. With the rise of the Osiris cult at the end of the Old Kingdom, the cemetery, specifically the tomb of Djer, was reinterpreted as Osiris’ burial place. As such, the site became an impor tant pilgrimage destination, and it remained so throughout the rest of the pharaonic period. When arriving at Abydos, the first monument visitors see is the New Kingdom temple built by king Seti I. This structure is famous for its king list, inscribed with the names of 76 kings from the 1st to the 19th Dynasty, not including Seti himself. The temple, mainly built as a memorial to the king, was further dedicated to Osiris and Isis along with Ptah, Ptah-Sokar, Nefertem, Re-Horakhty, Amun, and Horus. Mariette first excavated it in 1869, followed by Calverley working there since the late 1920s. In more recent years, explorations have mainly focused on epigraphy, the theology and graffiti of the temple, in addition to smaller archaeological excavations. Most Egyptologists would probably assume that in a temple so thoroughly investigated, nothing could possibly remain to be discovered. However, while working as inspectors at Abydos in 2012, we were invited to photograph some scenes in the so-called Slaughterhouse. This section of the temple had been closed off for some time, and we expected to find it sitting unused, with nothing of interest inside apart from the wall decorations. Upon entering, however, we were surprised to discover that the southern rooms of the Slaughterhouse suite were not empty at all, but were filled to a height of about 1.5 m with a mix of old papers, ceramics, and stone fragments. Our first task was to move this mountain of material. Because there were clearly archaeological objects present, we decided to do a preliminary inventory to see what we were dealing with and quickly realized that we had a potential treasure trove on our hands. The ceramics included not only sherds ranging in date from Predynastic to Roman times, but also complete vessels. In addition, we counted more than a thousand stone pieces – statue and stela fragments, and blocks from the Seti I temple and from the temple of Ramesses II to the north. Many of these pieces still retain a large amount of colour, and are beautifully preserved. There are also a number of objects that post-

date the pharaonic period and may shed light on the later history of the site. These include eleven spherical limestone pieces that are most probably catapult projectiles, and which may indicate that there was unrest at the site in early modern times. None of these artefacts has ever been registered or studied. The second surprise was the nature of the mound of papers recovered from the room. This collection of documents turned out to be an archive of the temple’s modern history. It comprised old survey maps, official letters and permissions for exploration, and correspondence between archaeologists, inspectors, and other officials from the 19th century until the present day. In addition to elucidating the modern history of exploration of the temple, this archive may provide information on the historical situation in Egypt and offer insight into the way the site of Abydos was developed and managed over the last two centuries. The information contained in these documents is as much a part of the history of Abydos as any pharaonic artefact, and it deserves to be preserved for future generations. Here, on the right and the following pages, we present a small selection of the objects that we discovered lying unrecognized in the Slaughterhouse. As these pieces show, the temple of Seti I in Abydos still has a lot to give to the archaeological community. The current brief overview is the first presentation of what we have found in the Slaughterhouse; we hope that not only will more pieces be published in the future but also that we will be able to curate, publish, and make available to the public the documents related to the modern history of the temple.

• This work would not have been possible without the help of our colleague Ahmed Abd el-Kader and the support of the director of the Sohag inspectorate, Mr Gamal Abd el-Nasser, as well as the directors of the inspectorate of Abydos, Ms Aziza el-Sayed, and later Ms Sana Samy, Mr Mohamed Abd el-Motagally and Mr Ashraf Okash. We are also grateful to Dr Kate Liszka for providing additional wooden boxes for storage of the archives. We would like to extend our hands to thank Dr Jessica Kaiser for the editing of the article, and to our foreman Mr Ahmed Abu el-Tapl Shekh el Ghafar and the temple workmen Talaat Sayed, Ahmed Hassan, Dahshour Abu el-Ela and Ghazal, for putting in over time to help us with our preliminar y inventory.

Object no. 12\229. Granite. H 90 cm, W 77 cm. Weight: close to 1 ton. Upper part of an Osiride statue with back pillar. Head and lower body missing. Unprovenanced. No inscription. A similar statue of Senwosret I in the Cairo Museum.

EGYPTIAN ARCHAEOLOGY ISSUE NO 49 AUTUMN 2016

1: Object no. 12\22. Sandstone. H 34 cm, W 25 cm. Part of a sandstone wall relief, showing a god holding crook and flail, only face and beard preserved. Sunk relief, New Kingdom, some red paint preserved on the face. 2: Object no. 12\25. Limestone, H 56 cm, W 55 cm. Stela or relief showing the deceased on a bier surrounded by mourners and, in the lower register, introduced to Osiris by Anubis. Unprovenanced, tentatively dated to the Graeco-Roman Period. Crude style, perhaps a teaching piece.

3: Object no. 12/146. H 12 cm, W 47 cm. Wall fragment, showing the figure of a prince or princess in sunken relief. Colours well preserved. Ramesside Period. 4: Object no. 12\10. Limestone. Varying sizes, diameter 24â&#x20AC;&#x201C;44 cm. Spherical objects, maybe used as catapult projectiles. Eleven pieces found in total. The first recorded use of catapults in Egypt is 350 bc. 5: Object no. 12\23. Limestone. H 71 cm, W 11 cm. Doorjamb with the royal offeringformula and the name of the owner of an unknown tomb, Huy. 6: Object no. 12\250. Clay. H 50 cm. Blacktopped pottery, complete. Likely Naqada II period (pre-dynastic). Unprovenanced.

THE ‘SLAUGHTERHOUSE ARCHIVE’ OF THE SETI TEMPLE AT ABYDOS

7: Object no. 12\11. Limestone. H 50 cm, W 50 cm, D 9 cm. Stela showing some gods and goddesses. Possibly Old Kingdom. Sunk relief, unprovenanced.

8: Object no. 12\68. Alabaster. H 18 cm, W 25 cm. Triangle inkwell, with one indentation for ink and two for the wooden pen or quill. Broken at the top, consolidated. Date and provenance unknown. 9: Object no. 12\117. Red Sandstone. Consolidated from three pieces, showing hieroglyphic signs; maybe from a cartouche. The kind of red sandstone is unique to the Osireon foundation. Date and provenance unknown. 10: Object no. 12/79. Limestone. H 12 cm, W 17 cm. Maybe part of a cartouche of Seti I. In good condition, colour well preserved. Date (Nineteenth Dynasty?) and provenance? 11: Object no. 2\30. Limestone. H 24 cm, W 12 cm. Ankh-cross with seven inscribed lines of Coptic script, bearing the name of (Patriarch) Theodoros. 12: Object no. 12\78. Limestone. Irregular shape. Part of a limestone wall, showing a god holding a stick, only beard and left hand preserved, one of a total of eleven pieces found. Sunk relief. Ramesside period. Unprovenanced.

EGYPTIAN ARCHAEOLOGY ISSUE NO 49 AUTUMN 2016

An archery set from Dra Abu el-Naga Even a looted burial can yield archaeological treasures: David García and José M. Galán describe a remarkable set of bows and arrows from an early Eighteenth Dynasty burial at the necropolis of Dra Abu el-Naga, on the West Bank of the Nile at Thebes. Extraordinarily well preserved, it reveals detailed information about the style and use of these antique weapons. The Spanish archaeological mission has been working in the central area of the necropolis of Dra Abu el-Naga, around the early Eighteenth Dynasty tomb-chapels of Djehuty and Hery (TT 11–12), since January 2002. The first seasons concentrated on the inner part of the monument and on their open courtyards. Since 2011 the excavations have focused on areas south-west of the open courtyard of Djehuty’s tomb-chapel, bringing to light mudbrick structures and burials, for the most part dating to the Seventeenth or early Eighteenth Dynasties, which were covered by the modern village that was demolished in 2006/07. Two adjoining shafts laid out in parallel were recorded during the 2015 season. Ancient robbers had already broken down the separating wall between the shafts and also connected them through two large holes with earlier rock-cut tombs located at either side. One of the shafts was left unfinished when the stonemasons ran into the burial chamber of the neighbouring shaft. It is uncertain if the

Archery set as found, after removing the debris that filled the chamber.

former was ever used. The other shaf t measures 2.70 m by 1.14 m, and is 5.20 m deep. The burial chamber opens at the northwest end, measuring 2.50 m by 0.97 m and 2 m in height. The tomb was robbed, and both the shaft and burial chamber were filled with debris, alternating sandy layers with other material, including large stones. Mixed within the debris were mummified human remains and fragments of funerary equipment, such as coffin fragments, shabtis, amulets, cartonnage and linen, mostly dating to the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Dynasties. However, despite severe looting, an ensemble of two self bows and 20 arrows (see images below and opposite page) were found in a good state of preservation, lying on the ground of the burial chamber along the north-east wall, under the debris mentioned above. Luckily, the robbers did not notice the archery set when removing the coffin and funerary equipment, probably because it would have been covered by dust and the erosion of the rough rock wall above it.

AN ARCHERY SET FROM DRA ABU EL-NAGA

Burial chamber with the archery set lying on the floor along the northeast wall.

The two bows still preserve a stretch of twisted gut bowstring fastened to one of the tips. The string was looped around the tip eleven times, and the opposite tip has a notch to attach the bowstring. It was common to leave the bow untensioned until the moment it was used to keep the bowâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s tension and avoid wood deformation. The two bows are round in section, double curved and with rounded tips. The different

tones of the wood used indicates that they were made from different species. The darker example has a small splintered area in the centre, by which the species could be identified as sidder wood (Ziziphus sp.). It is 174 cm long, with a diameter of 2.4 cm at grip and 1.2 cm at the tips. The other is of a lighter tone, but the species is yet to be identified. It is 169 cm long, with a diameter of 2.3 cm at grip and 1.4 cm at the tips. EGYPTIAN ARCHAEOLOGY ISSUE NO 49 AUTUMN 2016

Detail of the bowstring fastened to one of the rounded tips of the self bow.

Composite image showing the nock cut directly into the reed and strengthened at the top by a short tang (above) and the junction between the main part of the shaft and the footing, similarly strengthened by a tang (below).

A bundle of seven arrows was found wrapped inside a linen cloth, 26.5 cm by 21.3 cm, of the type defined as â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;towelâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;, decorated with a geometric pattern of framed zigzags, embossed, made from different types of threads and without selvedge on any of the four sides (image on the next page). Inside the bundle was a second linen, 59.5 cm by 34 cm, of a finer quality, wrapping around a calcite vase, 6.9 cm in height with a maximum diameter of 6.4 cm

(page 34), that contained kohl (galena powder). The arrows have an average length of 72 cm. They are all footed arrows, with cylindrical, composite shafts made of reeds of around 54 cm in length and 0.7 cm in diameter, and hardwood footings of 0.5 cm diameter, most probably acacia, spliced into the reed, with the foreshafts projecting from the reeds around 18 cm. The junctions of the main part of the shafts and the anterior end are bound with short tangs. The nocks, designed

AN ARCHERY SET FROM DRA ABU EL-NAGA

to receive the bowstring before shooting, are carefully carved directly into the reeds and strengthened at the top by a short tang. The arrowheads were originally ‘narrow lunate barbed’ (see below), formed by three small microlith flints: two triangular barbs attached to both sides and a third trapezoid, transverse tip. The end of the footing has three notches to insert the flints and keep them in position. Arabic gum (acacia resin) was then used to reinforce the joint. However, only three arrows preserve all three flints in place. Out of 20 arrows, only two arrowheads were not made of flint, but had only the wooden footing

tip sharpened. The shaftment of the arrows is featherless, although several preserve a thin and elongated trace of gum that could have been used to fix a vane of feathers. The archaeological context helps to date the archery set to the end of the Seventeenth Dynasty, c. 1570 BC. It is actually the second find of a set of bows and arrows by the Spanish mission at the site. In 2008 a trench was opened in the middle of the cour tyard of Djehuty’s tomb-chapel (TT 11), and 1 m below floor level an intact burial of the Eleventh Dynasty was found (see EA 35). A redinscribed coffin was pushed inside a rock recess Detail of the ‘towel’ wrapping a bundle of seven arrows and a calcite vase.

Detail of a ‘narrow lunate barbed’ arrowhead.

EGYPTIAN ARCHAEOLOGY ISSUE NO 49 AUTUMN 2016

of soldiers of Nebhepetra Montuhotep’ in 1923. A similar ‘towel’ was also found there, and two more in tomb No. 813 excavated in 1930-31. In tomb No. 812 an archery tackle was found, which included a small calcite vase containing traces of kohl. Finally, in the British Museum there is a group of five self bows made of sidder wood, the same species we identified in one of our bows. This find illustrates that the basic archery set (see image below) was composed of two bows (most of the time of two different woods), arrows, a ‘towel’ and a small calcite vase containing kohl. The documentation of the archaeological context, although disturbed, is also a significant contribution to the study of archery sets in ancient Egypt.

Top left: The calcite vase was wrapped in a second linen cloth of finer quality. Top right: The calcite vase contained traces of kohl.

All Photos courtesy of Latova/Proyecto Djehuty

and partially buried in sand. Next to the head end, five arrows were found intentionally broken in half. They were about 82 cm long and fletched, with three vanes of feathers. The footing was made of acacia wood around 20.5 cm long and 0.5 cm in diameter, projecting from the reed around 13 cm. Inside the coffin were three curved staves and two self bows of 152 and 162 cm respectively, one of acacia and the other of tamarisk. They are circular in section, double curved with rounded tips. They both have the gut bowstring tied to one of the tips, looping around it at least nine times. Further archery sets are known from ancient Egypt: in the area of Deir el-Bahari, the Metropolitan Museum of Art found a number of bows and arrows of similar type in the ‘tomb

The archery set including two bows, 20 arrows, two linen cloths and a calcite vase.

• The research was conducted at the Spanish National Research Council in Madrid, as part of the project HAR2014-52323-P within the Spanish National Programme for Scientific Research, Technolog y and Innovation. The Spanish Archaeological Mission was sponsored by Union Fenosa Gas.

The early Ramesside occupants of tomb MIDAN.05 Marilina BetrĂ˛ and Gianluca Miniaci continue the exploration of tomb MIDAN.05 in the Theban Necropolis. Discovered in 2004 by the archaeological expedition of the University of Pisa at Dra Abu el-Naga (= MIDAN: Missione archeologica Italiana a Dra Abu el-Naga) and under investigation since 2005, it turned out to be the largest and oldest among a cluster of rock-cut tombs, laid out around its forecourt. With the exception of TT 14, all of them had been unknown and unrecorded until then. Explorations at Dra Abu-el Naga since the early 19th century have brought to light a number of royal as well as non-royal burials dating from the Second Intermediate Period into the Saite Period. MIDAN.05 is located on the main hill of this area, just below the recently re-discovered pyramid of Nubkheperre Intef, one of the kings of the Seventeenth Dynasty. As our work shows, MIDAN.05 was used, re-used and occupied until the Graeco-Roman period. Its first phase, however, is datable to the very beginning of the New Kingdom, as attested by the presence of several rishi coffin

fragments (funerary coffins adorned with a feather design, t ypical of the Second Intermediate Period), found inside its burial rooms. A prolonged use of the structure, until the mid-Eighteenth Dynasty, is indicated by the surviving painted scenes on the walls, which can be stylistically dated no later than Thutmosis IV. However, the traces of the original occupants of this period are very scant, and at the moment the identity of the original owner or owners of the tomb is still unknown. In the Ramesside Period, the forecour t underwent some structural and functional

Below: plan of room M. Drawn by Gianluca Miniaci and Emanuele Taccola.

EGYPTIAN ARCHAEOLOGY ISSUE NO 49 AUTUMN 2016

Above: plan of the MIDAN.05 complex. Drawn by Paolo Del Vesco and Emanuele Taccola.

Below: section of the shaft P3 with its three funerary rooms (K, L, M). Drawn by Emanuele Taccola and Gianluca Miniaci.

changes, and on its southern side, Huy, a priest attached to the cult of Amenhotep I during the time of Ramesses II, decided to cut his tomb into the rock (TT 14). Other architectural tr ansfor mations af fec ted the or iginal morphology of the funerary complex in the following centuries. Once the tomb was abandoned – after the Roman period – the whole area was buried under five metres of debris, gradually transpor ted here and deposited by a number of flooding events. Eventually, during the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, plunderers dug their own way through this deposit, adding modern anthropic disturbances to the ancient ones and to natural events. In 2011, in the south-western corner of the courtyard, the opening of a funerary shaft (P3) was brought to light. It was found completely filled with loose sand, limestone chips and debris; scattered materials of different epochs, spanning from the New Kingdom to Coptic times, are evidence that the shaft had been entered – more than once – and pillaged in the past, and in all probability also in modern times. However, in one of the rooms (M) at the bottom of the shaft, these ravages were interrupted at a certain moment in ancient times, when its entrance was blocked by the deposition of other burials. Three reed-mat burials tied together with ropes and strings, wrapping the bodies of three mummified individuals, were laid in

Focus: Shaft P3 The shaft is 6.33 m deep. On the eastern and western sectors of its longitudinal walls there are climbing holes, grooved at regular intervals one above the other. At the bottom of the shaft, two chambers open on the western and eastern sides, respectively labelled rooms L and M. Another chamber labelled room K opens half-way along the shaft (at 3.26 m from its mouth) on its western side, just above room L.

THE EARLY RAMESSIDE OCCUPANTS OF TOMB MIDAN.05

front of the entrance to room M, obstructing its access. The mat burials were found completely intact and no sign of disturbance was recorded on them. Just below, thick ropes and a group of thicker and longer palm sticks were discovered. They probably represent the remains of some sort of litter used to transport the burials and lower them down into the shaft. Therefore, the archaeological context in room M is the result of the last human action taking place in this space before it was sealed by the installation of the matburials in the shaft. At the deep end of room M, a heap of material had been amassed, including a large amount of coffin and other wooden pieces, many bones – human and animal (specifically, those of an ibex)– fragments of reeds, bandages, but only a few fragments of pottery. The objects were piled up unsystematically against the north-eastern corner of the room. A semicircle of boulders, limestone/sandstone rocks and chippings, intentionally arranged in the middle of the chamber, might have been intended as a divider against the heap of objects on the opposite (eastern) side, effectively creating a new funerary space. Inexplicably, this space was never used for other burials but filled with debris pouring in from the entrance of room M. Blocked by the semicircle of stones, this did not spill over into area beyond. A row of fragmentary mud bricks was placed at the upper reach of the entrance to room M, above the heap of loose material, in order to close the passage in a somewhat rough fashion. The symbolic obstruction of the entrance to room M probably occurred at the time of the installation of the reed-mat burials in the shaft. Hundreds of coffin par ts and fragments were found in the deposit piled up in the eastern par t of the room. The state of preservation of these pieces, disassembled but not forcibly broken, without traces of fire or violent destruction, points to deliberately planned and carefully executed actions. The pieces all clearly belong to a homogeneous type, sharing the same decorative pattern, colouring, and manufacture. The surviving coffin fragments, mainly small (short-pieces, foot-ends/-boards, hands, masks) and curved (par ts of the wig, collars), and the almost complete absence of long planks (such as floor-boards, side-walls, planks of the lid)

suggest ‘selective’ plundering, aimed at larger and longer pieces of wood suitable for reuse. These would have been dismantled in the tomb and taken outside to be reassembled or reused for new equipment or furniture, while the shorter pieces and fragments would have been left behind in the tomb. The preserved pieces suggest that at least eleven coffins had originally been placed there. In addition, fragments of the same type were found all over other funerary rooms of the shaft, although in a very disturbed context and in considerably smaller quantities. Most of the coffin fragments found in P3 belong to the ‘yellow type’, well attested for the Ramesside period. Notwithstanding the relatively scant quantity of well-preserved inscribed and decorated fragments, their rather sober features provide a solid base for a more precise dating, as they are characteristic

Three reed-mats inside the shaft P3 at the time of discovery; note the row of bricks loosely placed over a heap of debris, blocking the entrance to room M. Photo: Gianluca Miniaci.

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Above: east side of room M at the moment of discovery, showing a pile of coffin pieces, fragments of wood and human remains. Photo: Gianluca Miniaci.

Below: foot-end with drawn feet. Photo: Claudio Benedetti.

of the transitional period between the late 18th and the beginning of the Nineteenth Dynasty. No fragments were found showing the rich and relatively ‘crowded’ iconographic repertoire already typical of the second half of the Nineteenth Dynasty. The presence of sculpted and painted feet is a clear evidence of the ‘daily life dress’ iconography, attested from the end of Eighteenth Dynasty to the reign of R amesses II . Fur ther more, a characteristic black (or blue), white and red frame for the text-bands appears on some inscribed pieces: this is a rare feature on Ramesside coffins, which finds a parallel only on the earliest examples of the yellow type. A preliminary pottery investigation also seems to confirm our dating of the deposit to the late Eighteenth Dynasty/early Ramesside period, as do the few surviving objects of the heavily pillaged burial equipment. In some of these coffin fragments evidence of reuse from earlier coffins, possibly dating to the beginning of the New Kingdom, is visible. The painted plaster of the Ramesside period was applied over coffin types with carved decorations, including hieroglyphic texts. This probably indicates a reuse of Eighteenth Dynasty burial equipment during the early

THE EARLY RAMESSIDE OCCUPANTS OF TOMB MIDAN.05

Ramesside phase of occupation. Later on, also the early Ramesside burials of shaft P3 suffered acts of plundering, which deprived the mummies of their valuable funerary equipment and personal ornaments. Only a few scattered amulets, one painted wooden shabti, and one carnelian hair-ring, which might belong to the original Ramesside burial equipment, have been found in the lowest layer. Unfortunately, the coffin fragments do not preserve the name of their Ramesside owners, who remain unknown to us. Only the identity of one of them emerges from darkness: a woman, Taweretemheb, whose name is painted on the foot-end of a coffin lid and on the sur viving painted wooden shabti, accompanied by her title of ‘Musician of Amun’.

Top: painted wooden shabti belonging to Taweretemheb found in room M (under the lowest layers at the room entrance). Photo: Claudio Benedetti. Above: left edge of a lid with lateral longitudinal inscriptions. The drawing shows the reuse of a piece belonging to the beginning of New Kingdom. Photo: Claudio Benedetti.

• Marilina Betrò is Full Professor of Egyptology at the University of Pisa and Director of the archaeological expedition of the University of Pisa at Dra Abu el-Naga (MIDAN). Gianluca Miniaci is Senior Researcher in Egyptology at the University of Pisa and Chercheur Associé at the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris. He is co-director of the archaeological mission at Zawyet el-Sultan (Menya). All photos and drawings are copyright of MIDAN. EGYPTIAN ARCHAEOLOGY ISSUE NO 49 AUTUMN 2016

Digging Diary 2016 Summaries of archaeological work undertaken in Egypt since spring 2016. The sites are arranged geographically from north to south, ending with the oases. Field Directors who would like reports of their work to appear in EA are asked to e-mail a short summary, with a website address if available, to the editor: jan.geisbusch@ees.ac.uk | Jan Geisbusch LOWER EGYPT Tell el-Farkha (Ghazala): Marek Chlodnicki and Krzysztof M. Cialowicz of IAJU and PCMA worked at Tell elFarkha in Feb/Mar. At the Western Kom, work still concentrated on the brewery discovered three years ago. It appears the structure had three distinct phases of use: the oldest is probably connected with the first Naqadan occupation (Naqada IID), a younger one is connected to Naqada IIIA1 and was established after catastrophic fire, which destroyed the settlement at Tell elFarkha. Central Kom: Already during the 2016 season, in the S trench, we started to explore a younger phase (beginning of Naqada IID) of the so-called Lower Egyptian ‘residence’, surrounded by a mud-brick wall about 1.2 m thick. Remains of the wooden constructions were discovered both outand inside the ‘residence’. In the N trench we explored remains of the settlement dating to Naqada IIIB. A few graves were also discovered on this area. Eastern Kom: Five graves were discovered during the campaign. Three of them were very poor childrens’ graves, two belonged to much more richly equipped adults. All graves are connected to the second half of the 1st Dyn. www.farkha.org

Tell Basta: The joint Würzburg Univ / MSA mission under Eva Lange continued its work between Oct 2015 and Mar 2016. The autumn season was dedicated to the study and documentation of finds of earlier digging seasons in Area A, the Ptolemaic settlement site in front of the temple of Bastet. The geomagnetic survey in the area of the ancient city of Bubastis at the E Tell also continued, alongside geomorphological investigations to reconstruct the palaeolandscape of Bubastis. In the cemetery area at the N Tell the ongoing documentation of the architecture of the elite tombs was resumed. In spring 2016 first core drillings delivered most interesting results regarding the early hydrogeography of the site, pointing to the existing of an elongated, N-W to S-E oriented gezira and an ancient water channel at the N side of the Tell. www.aegyptologie.uniwuerzburg.de/wissenschaftforschung/ tell_basta_project Naukratis (Kom Geif): The fifth British

Museum fieldwork season in April/May 2016, led by Ross Thomas and Alexandra Villing, concentrated on three areas: the region of the Greek sanctuaries of the Dioskouroi and the Hellenion in the N part of the site, the silted up remains of the LP riverbank in the W of the site and the sanctuary of Amun-Ra.

Tell el-Farkha: remains of the brewery. Photo: IAJU / PCMA

Excavations in the N, supervised by Astrid Lindenlauf, investigated the relationship between a mud-brick platform with the W gateway to the Hellenion. Around the platform votive offerings to the Dioskouroi and remains of sacrifices were discovered, dating from the late 7th to the 6th century BC and including Greek-style inscribed pottery and animal bones. This provides important information on the ritual practices, construction techniques and changing layout of the earliest Greek sanctuaries in Egypt. Trenches supervised by Edwin de Vries and Ashley Pooley along the ancient river bank yielded sequences of early 3rd century BC to 6th century BC domestic dumps, with a series of surfaces and banks, including one constructed with 5th century BC amphorae over a flattened reed bank. Finds include architectural elements as well as much local Egyptian and imported pottery, both for transport and for domestic use. Together with the rich faunal assemblage they shed light on changing consumption practices at Naukratis during the Saite to Ptolemaic periods. The limits of the 17 m wide S wall surrounding the sanctuary of Amun-Ra were discovered in 2016 by Jeff Spencer, linking up with previous work on Saite to Roman period occupation within this area. A number of structures within the sanctuary

Athribis: Hathor capital. Photo: Athribis Project.

DIGGING DIARY 2016

UPPER EGYPT Athribis: The Athribis Project of the

University of Tübingen and the MSA, led by Christian Leitz and directed in the field by Marcus Müller, continued its work in the Repit temple of Ptolemy XII. In the 14th season (Dec. 2015 – March 2016) three rooms were excavated, one with important new inscriptions with well-preserved colours, two were without texts or scenes. The excavation of the northern ambulatory was finished, so that the unique rear entrance is fully visible. Near the north-western corner of the temple two more columns appeared. The secondary blocking of the door to the western court also revealed important inscribed blocks. A newly discovered, uninscribed crypt consists of one room with a niche and had no finds inside. All rooms contained finds of daily life dating post 642 A.D. when the temple was used for domestic purposes, dumping ground, and as animal shelter. Epigraphic work focused on collationating many texts in various rooms and the recording of newly discovered texts. Consolidation and restoration was undertaken at numerous spots throughout the temple, on collapsed blocks, and single

finds, mainly on polychrome reliefs. Next to the temple the re-erection of a Hathor capital was finished (photo), and the rearrangement of architraves of the pronaos was continued. http://www.athribis.unituebingen.de/

Karnak : The CFEETK (MoA/CNRS USR 3172) programmes of archaeological and epigraphic research and conservation continued at Karnak, under the direction of M. Abdel Aziz and Chr. Thiers. G. Dembitz and M. Abd el-Ghassul continued the epigraphic survey of the Pinudjem’s inscriptions of the Sphinx, focussing on the geographical list (god/goddess associated with a toponym) inscribed on the front base. The deep sounding opened to the South of Ptah Temple by G. Charloux, M. Abady and A. Nasseh reached MK levels, but has been stopped by water table. To the East of the Ptah Temple, B. Durand, continued the excavation of a Late Roman house. The restoration and conservation programme of the Northern storerooms of Tuthmosis III was completed under the supervision of Camille Bourse and M. Abd el-Nasser. Many limestone blocks previously belonging to the eastern and western walls of the court of the 7th Pylon (“Cachette courtyard”) were consolidated, and brought in the court of the 7th Pylon before starting the reconstruction of the walls. In the Open Air Museum, the barkchapel of Thutmosis III is now ready for visitors. The online archives of the CFEETK were opened, and the Karnak online project continued under the supervision of S. Biston-Moulin (http://www.cfeetk.cnrs. fr/karnak/); a PDF preliminary inventory is available online. http://www.cfeetk. cnrs.fr/ South Karnak: Excavations took place in two squares west of the Taharqa Gate. The

first, closer to the gate, linked two previously excavated sections of the Dynasty 25 paving leading west from the gate. The second, near the precinct’s west enclosure wall, attempted to find the western extent of paving, but was unsuccessful in achieving that goal. The second area was filled with pottery dumps ranging from the 3rd to the 1st centuries BC, with a few intrusive earlier and later pieces. A new inventory of the site’s Sakhmet statues was carried out to bring the catalogue done in 2001 up to date. As to restoration, a section of the face of the north enclosure wall was rebuilt to protect sculptures in front of it from drifting dirt. www.brooklynmuseum. org/features/mut

Luxor-West Bank : In Jan 2016, the Italian CEFB team, led by Angelo Sesana, concluded the 18th archaeological expedition at the Temple of Millions of Years of Amenhotep II. After completing the survey of the temple structures, it focused on two funerary contexts preceding the construction of the temple: an MK-SIP corridor tomb named D21, and a niche-tomb located in sector A15, under the remains of the temple service rooms. In tomb D21, the complete excavation of chamber D has brought to light very few artefacts but enabled us to identify a new passage in the S-W corner, defined by narrowing walls and leading to an additional chamber (F). During the expedition, we also cleaned up the remains of a TIP coffin from chamber E, discovered at the end of the last mission, in order to document it through a 3D modelling. The small niche-tomb A15 housed two coffins of very peculiar workmanship, placed next to each other in the westernmost part of the niche, filling the entire space. The coffins were composed of an outer anthropoid part, probably in wood, of which only few traces and rests of charcoal were preserved, and an inner part, also of anthropoid shape,

Luxor-West Bank: tomb A15 – the two coffins under excavation. Photo: Tommaso Quirino, 2016.

were revealed in magnetometry undertaken by Ellie Maw, including the casemate building first excavated by Petrie but seemingly still well preserved under the fields. Important new data on the ancient landscape was gained from an associated geological auger survey undertaken by Ben Pennington with the help of an EES grant. This revealed an early river bed to the E of the site that had ceased to flow before Naukratis was founded and highlighted the relatively homogenous, flat terrestrial landscape on which Naukratis was built. http://www.britishmuseum. org /re s e a rc h /re s e a rc h _ projec t s / all_current_projects/naukratis_the_ greeks_in_egypt.aspx

Karnak: chapel of Tuthmosis III. Photo: CNRS / CFEETK EGYPTIAN ARCHAEOLOGY ISSUE NO 49 AUTUMN 2016

consisting of a unusual kind of cartonnage made of mud. The preserved portions of it still showed traces of decoration. Wrapped around the body of the N skeleton, we found a net of beads in faïence of different colours, still arranged according to the original weave. www.cefb.it, www.facebook. com/C.E.Francesco.Ballerini

Thebes (Dra Abu el-Naga): The CSIC

excavation continued at the S-W of the open courtyard of TT 11. Three 17th/early 18th Dyn shafts were dug. At the bottom of one of them were found fragmentary inscriptions bearing the name of prince Intefmose, as well as cartouches of Montuhotep Nebhepetra, Senwosret I and Sobekemsaf. A second shaft, carefully hewn and of larger dimensions, was reused by six individuals in the 22nd Dyn. A stela of this period and faience fragments with cartouches of Osorkon II were found elsewhere. Near another shaft, the mummy of a ram was found on the ground in a 13th-17th Dyn context. Moreover, analysis continued of the animal mummies and bones (mostly of ibis and falcons) that were deposited in the burial chambers of the funerary shaft of Hery (TT 12) and of the neighbouring tomb-chapel (-399-) in the 2nd century BC. Epigraphy and restoration of the inner walls of both Djehuty and Hery’s tomb-chapels (TT 11-12) is in progress. www.excavacionegipto.com

(Elephantine): The joint DAI/Swiss Inst team directed by Stephan Seidlmayer, Felix Arnold, Johanna Sigl and Cornelius von Pilgrim continued fieldwork on Elephantine Island in three seasons between Oct 2015 and May 2016. In the N-W town of Elephantine excavations for the achaeometric project ‘Realities of Life’ revealed remains of two houses, built at the beginning of the MK, their use continuing through the whole period. Miniscule splinters

Thebes (Dra Abu el-Naga): fragment. Photo: CSIC.

Aswan

and roughly shaped pearls of carnelian and amethyst indicate the use of one of the rooms for jewellery production. The study of metal remains by pXRF confirmed the small-scale recycling of scrap metals or repair of objects in the vicinity of the buildings. The architectural remains were be assessed for their provision of privacy and protection from olfactory and other disturbances from the streets. Preliminary results seem to indicate a rather high level of such protection in the inner rooms of MK houses on Elephantine. Further investigations of the relief decoration of the NK temple of Khnum revealed blocks that could not be attributed to the barque sanctuary of Hatshepsut, discovered in the past season. Beautifully decorated, they must have come from a building dating to the reign of Thutmosis I. If so, it would make this the first of this king to be found in the area of the first Nile cataract. However, further blocks show decorations attributable to Thutmosis II, and it remains uncertain if they derive from a different building or the same one. The depictions show especially the gods Anuket and Khnum-Ra next to offering scenes. The themes of the decoration highlight the role of the king, a possible hint that the building was intended to serve the rejuvenation of the king in some manner. Thanks to the permission and support of the Ministry of Antiquities an open day for about 150 school children from five public schools in Aswan could be held in the Nubian Museum in Nov 2015. Inspectors and curators of the Nubian and Aswan Museum as well as several inspectors of the Pharaonic and Islamic inspectorates in Aswan organised this day after a week’s training in museum education. Further training sessions and events are planned to take place annually, aiming to assist our local colleagues to raise awareness of the historic heritage of the area through contact with local people. http:// www.dainst.org/project/25953

OASES Tell Umm el-Baragat (Tebtunis): In 2015 the joint mission of Ifao and Milan University, directed by C. Gallazzi, worked at Umm-el-Breigât, in the ruins of Tebtynis, from September 2nd to November 2nd. As planned, the excavations took place in the two areas where the mission is usually working: in the large garbage mound east from the Soknebtynis temple, and in the settlement to the north-west of the same temple. In the depository area more than 160 texts in hieratic, demotic and Greek have been collected. In the settlement, the mission continued the excavation of the buildings discovered in 2014 and found new courtyards used as bakeries, as well as a series of shops and workshops. Furthermore, soundings were made in the temenos of the temple and brought the best results for the season: the enclosure of the temple of Ptolemy I was discovered under the ruins of the visible temple, that must be dated to the 1st century BC and not to the 4th/3rd century BC. In the same area, a small silver crocodile statue and seventy papyri with demotic oracular questions were collected. www.ifao.egnet/ archaeologie/tebtynis Abbreviations: EDP Early Dynastic Period; OK Old Kingdom; FIP First Intermediate Period; MK Middle Kingdom; SIP Second Intermediate Period; NK New Kingdom; TIP Third Intermediate Period; LP Late Period; GR Graeco-Roman; ERT Electrical Resistance Tomography; GPR Ground Penetrating Radar; pXRF portable X-ray fluorescence. Institutes and Research Centres: AEHAF Ancient Egyptian Heritage and Archaeology Fund; AFAS Academy of Fine Arts Seville; AKAP Aswan-Kom Ombo Archaeological Project; ARCE American Research Center in Egypt; AUC American University, Cairo; BA British Academy; BM British Museum; CEFB Centro di Egittologia Francesco Ballerini; CFEETK Franco-Egyptian Centre, Karnak; CNRS (USR) French National Research Centre (Research Groups); CSIC Spanish National Research Council; DAI German Archaeological Institute, Cairo; FNRS National Fund for Scientific Research, Brussels; IAJU Institute of Archaeology Jagiellonian University Krakow; IFAO French Archaeological Institute, Cairo; IOS RAS Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of the Sciences; ISMEO International Association of Mediterranean and Oriental Studies; MMA Metropolitan Museum of Art; MSA Ministry of State for Antiquities, Egypt; NVIC NetherlandsFlemish Institute, Cairo; OI Oriental Institute, University of Chicago; PCMA Polish Centre for Mediterranean Archaeology, Warsaw; RBF Rockefeller Brothers Fund; SwissInst Swiss Institute for Architectural Research and Archaeology, Cairo.

DIGGING DIARY 2016

Missions of the Egypt Exploration Society Merimde Beni Salama and the Wadi el-Gamal: This season comprised two

key areas of work: 1) the Wadi el-Gamal adjacent to Merimde Beni Salama (MBS, and 2) the protective wall and guardians’ building on the registered site of MBS. 1) The Wadi el-Gamal site was examined through test excavation trenches following test pits and geophysical survey in autumn 2015 confirming the presence of sub-surface Neolithic and Middle Palaeolithic finds. A number of excavation trenches were located on the Wadi el-Gamal northwest terraces this spring and they revealed evidence for Neolithic structures via the presence of often mud-lined postholes with ceramics and stones still in place over the mud, also four flexed Neolithic burials, and a large number of refuse pits and hearths close to the surface. In addition a large amount of new evidence came to light for in situ Middle Palaeolithic finds, including, but not exclusively, of Levallois technology, including evidence for tool working. Geological investigations revealed the presence of migrating channels across the site in the Pleistocene. The excavations were greatly aided by a strong presence by the Ministry of Antiquities, our team from Quft led by Rais Omer Farouk, and our local workers. The excavations were funded by the National Geographic Society and the American Research Center in Egypt. 2) The foundation trench for the protective wall was dug along a further two sides of the registered site, and revealed dense occupation deposits in one location, extending out on either side of the wall – this will be investigated in a future season. A concrete foundation was then laid and the low brick wall erected around the site and painted. The on-site building for the guardians was also completed. This has been funded by the American Research Center in Egypt’s Antiquities’ Endowment Fund. www.imbaba.tumblr.com

Tell Mutubis: During the Mar/Apr

season, the geophysical survey of the site under Penelope Wilson (Durham Univ) was completed – a total of 27 hectares of magnetic susceptibility work and three smaller areas using GPR. The preliminary results enabled us to identify several specific events in the life of the site. The S and W sides had suffered much depredation by sebakhin who used light railways to take away

Nabil Abd el-Moniem Osman el-Daleil and Rais Omer Farouk during excavation of a Neolithic posthole on the Wadi el-Gamal northwest terraces.

the earth from the site mound and also lived in small structures built on-site. Two large structures were identified within the mound: one on the N side about 80 m in length and another on the W part of the top of the mound, around 60 m in length. A series of smaller buildings on the N flat area had no distinctive surface evidence, but pottery from the ditches on that side was mostly LR1 amphorae and Egyptian storage jars. Further pottery recording was undertaken including a dipinti (painted monogram), drill augering identified an old waterway to the E of the site and mosaic flooring was noted for the first time in an exposed building. Publication of the results in a monograph is now underway as the survey work has reached a conclusion. www.community.dur.ac.uk/penelope. wilson/Delta/Mutubis.html

to provide additional information on the regional palaeo-landscape of this area. The boreholes were complemented by a series of four ERT transects. Future study of the ceramic fragments from the boreholes will help to clarify the chronology of the deposits encountered and enable the project to link up the various depositional events across the Ay-Horemheb transect. It will also enable us to relate the deposits of to those from the ‘Ramesseum transect’ conducted in 2014-15.

Thebes: Auger site 86 with a Memnon colossus in the background. Photo: THaWS/Angus Graham.

Thebes: The EES / Uppsala University

Theban Harbours and Waterscapes Survey, led by Angus Graham, focused on further investigation of the West Bank floodplain in Jan-Feb 2016. Twenty-three hand-augered boreholes and two percussion cores were drilled along a new 3.2 km-long transect, the ‘Ay-Horemheb transect’, with a maximum spacing of 200 m. The work started close to the front of the Funerary Temple of Ay and Horemheb and extended to the village of Geziret el Bairat on the West Bank of the Nile. The aim was to map the upstream position of the New Kingdom channel that was found in front of the Ramesseum and EGYPTIAN ARCHAEOLOGY ISSUE NO 49 AUTUMN 2016

Finds from Elkab: revealing the origins of the settlement It is one of the best accessible early settlements in the Nile Valley, yet Elkab has remained under-researched for a long time. Wouter Claes and Dirk Huyge report on new findings that help to complement our understanding of Egypt’s earliest urbanism.

Elkab was an important provincial centre during the early stages of Egyptian history. Despite over a century of intensive archaeological research, our knowledge of its occupational history is still limited and biased. Past research has focussed primarily on the large funerary and religious monuments, with little attention devoted to the study of the settlement. Since 2009, the Royal

Museums of Art and History in Brussels have been carrying out new excavations in the settlement area of Elkab. These excavations have yielded impor tant new information regarding the early occupation of the site and the origin and establishment of the town. The ancient town of Elkab is situated within the large Late Period ‘Great Walls’, immediately

Image: Google Earth

The settlement area of Elkab situated within the Late Period ‘Great Walls’.

FINDS FROM ELKAB: REVEALING THE ORIGINS OF THE SETTLEMENT

View of the Old Kingdom silo complex excavated in 1955 by the Belgian Mission.

west of the temple area, and it is bordered to the north by the remains of a curved double wall that dates to the late Old Kingdom. A large tell once stood in this area, which was almost entirely destroyed by the sebakhin (diggers of sebakh, organic compost often formed from mud-brick and settlement debris, which can be used as fertiliser) in the course of the 19th century. Based on descriptions and drawings by early travellers and Egyptologists, this tell was roughly oval in shape, at least 30 m high and covered an area of about 300 m by 170 m. This settlement area never received great attention from archaeologists working at Elkab due to the extreme extent of disturbance and destruction. However, several previous archaeological finds attest to the presence of Old Kingdom, Early Dynastic and Predynastic settlement remains. Already in 1903, the British archaeologist Frederick W. Green demonstrated the presence of in situ archaeological remains to a depth of almost

4 m below the actual surface in the area where the tell once stood. In 1938, Jean Capar t excavated a number of granaries in the temple area, revealing a large number of Second Dynasty seal impressions mentioning the title ‘Inspector of Elkab’. Immediately west of the temples, a large Old Kingdom storage facility was excavated in 1955 (see image above), which contained, in addition to the Old Kingdom material, several reused Predynastic objects (see image on the next page). Finally, in 1968–1969, black-topped and rippled sherds were found in the same area, the latter indicating the presence of the early Predynastic Badari culture at Elkab. These finds suggested that substantial in situ remains of the original settlement could still be found. Moreover, they also hinted at the possible Predynastic origin of the settlement. Since 2009, the Belgian mission has excavated over 15 test trenches and pits, spread out across different locations within the habitation EGYPTIAN ARCHAEOLOGY ISSUE NO 49 AUTUMN 2016

Ellipsoid Badari palette found in silo N of the Old Kingdom silo complex.

area. They revealed the presence of a vast settlement, possibly 4â&#x20AC;&#x201C;5 hectares, with wellpreserved mud-brick buildings and other settlement remains, dating from the final phases of Egyptian prehistory to the early phases of pharaonic civilization. The archaeological material, supported by a series of radiocarbon dates, indicates that the origin of the settlement goes back to the Badari period. The Badari settlement at Elkab may or may not have been of a seasonal character, but there is no doubt that from the Naqada I period onwards, the site was continuously inhabited until GraecoRoman times. The horizontal distribution of the different archaeological featur es and the geo -

Elizabeth Hart Skarzynski documenting the different Predynastic occupation phases in the sand dune.

morphological study of the surrounding landscape indicate that the earliest phases of occupation (Badari through Naqada periods) were spatially restricted to a large sand dune that emerged above the floodplain and which protected the settlement against the annual Nile flood. Six test pits revealed stratified habitation remains, dispersed over a depth of almost 3 m and dating to all the different phases of the Predynastic period. Preliminary analysis of the archaeological and faunal material indicates that this small community based its subsistence primarily on farming and fishing, but there is also ample evidence for specialised workshops (for instance, bone or wood working). Moreover, the rare discovery in a

FINDS FROM ELKAB: REVEALING THE ORIGINS OF THE SETTLEMENT

Naqada II context of a small fragment of obsidian of Ethiopian origin hints at Elkabâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s involvement in long distance contacts at a very early stage in Egyptian history. During the Early Dynastic period and early Old Kingdom, the settlement expanded into the floodplain, undoubtedly as a result of increasing population pressure. The most substantial architec tural remains were discovered in trenches 2 and 3, situated on the alluvial plain close to the Nile, where several well-preserved mud-brick buildings clearly attest to some degree of urban planning. Although the functional analysis of the archaeological material unambiguously points to household activities, illustrating daily life at the site, one building, given a stone foundation and dating to the Second Dynasty, is unmistakably of special importance. Indeed, the use of stone in such early Egyptian architecture is exceptional and almost exclusively reserved for tombs, temples and large state-controlled buildings. This building, which was in use for a very long time, also determined the orientation of contemporary and later constructions of the Third-Fourth Dynasties that where built in its immediate vicinity. Its oldest floor level was covered by a layer of debris containing several large and well-preserved burnt wooden beams, which most likely belong to the collapsed roof of the building. On top of this floor level, several intact objects were found, including two pots, several sickle blades and unworked stones, a crucible, a Clayton disk and a large fossilized bone. The crucible, together with the discovery of a small furnace for copper melting in the nearby trench 2, clearly indicates the

Small obsidian fragment of Ethiopian origin found in a Naqada II context.

Clayton disk, found on the floor level of the 2nd dynasty building.

presence of specialized workshops for metal production. This is among the earliest direct evidence for ancient Egyptian metallurgy and furnishes additional proof for state-controlled activities at Elkab. The oldest occupation level in this area consists of a thick and compact layer of mud bricks that originally belonged to a solid wall almost 30 cm thick, which

Crucible with traces of copper particles, found on the floor level of the 2nd dynasty building. EGYPTIAN ARCHAEOLOGY ISSUE NO 49 AUTUMN 2016

Top: view of the Second Dynasty building with part of the stone foundation exposed and the wooden beams of the collapsed roof.

Above: small furnace for copper melting from trench 2.

Bottom: First Dynasty occupation level found below the foundation of the Second Dynasty building.

subsequently collapsed. Based on the associated ceramics and confirmed by the radiocarbon dating of a small fireplace, this oldest building phase dates back to the First Dynasty. Below this level, excavations reached the top of the sterile floodplain deposits. Our cur rent k nowledge of Eg yptian set tlements can at best be def ined as theoretical, biased and incomplete. Settlement patterns, organisation and transformation are still poorly understood. This state of affairs is the result of several factors, including the foci of previous researchers, and the locational aspects of the sites, which are often in positions t h a t h a m p e r o r eve n p r eve n t t h e i r archaeological investigation. Earlier work and the preliminary results of the new excavations indicate that Elkab is one of the largest known Predynastic and Old Kingdom settlement sites in Egypt. Furthermore, it is also one of the best accessible early settlements in the Nile Valley (since the later strata of the town have been removed by the sebakhin). With few exceptions, most other sites in the region have been completely destroyed by the sebakhin or expanding cultivation. Others are covered by a very thick layer of Nile alluvium or modern towns and cities. Elkab may be the only site in the Upper Egyptian Nile Valley where a continuous occupation, from the Badari period (c. 4500 BC) through the early Old Kingdom (c. 2600-2500 BC), can be studied in great detail. As such, the site presents a unique opportunity to document the gradual transition from a prehistoric village lifestyle to a fullydeveloped Old Kingdom urban society.

â&#x20AC;˘ Wouter Claes is field director of the Belgian Archaeological Mission to Elkab and chief librarian at the Royal Museums of Ar t and History in Brussels, Belgium. Dirk Huyge, curator of the prehistoric and Early Dynastic Egyptian collections at the same institution, is the current director of the Belgian Archaeological Mission to Elkab. Funding for this research was provided by the Belgian Ministry of Science Policy, the Egyptology Endowment Fund of Yale University and the German Gerda Henkel Stiftung. In addition, the Netherlands-Flemish Institute in Cairo and Vodafone Egypt offered administrative and logistic support. The authors would like to express their gratitude to all the team members, our local workmen and the MSA administration and inspectors. All photographs ÂŠ the Belgian Archaeological Mission to Elkab. 42

Buried bronzes: caches of the Sacred Animal Necropolis The caches of the North Saqqara Sacred Animal Necropolis are the last major group of unpublished material from the 1964â&#x20AC;&#x201C;1976 EES mission. Since 2014, all documentation concerning the work and objects has been kept at the EESâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Lucy Gura Archive in London. As Sanda Heinz and Elsbeth van der Wilt argue, the quality of the material in the caches is often spectacular and deserves full treatment, although for practical reasons their project is currently based on excavation records. Here, they discuss the archive and their plans for publication of the caches. Caches in Saqqara Caching is the burial of sacred items after their removal from display. Saqqara is exceptional due to the number of caches discovered (68), the wealth of material preserved in them, and its detailed archaeological records. The caches were secondary deposits placed around the temple complex and catacombs. Most comprised bronze statuettes of deities and kings, and/or bronze ritual equipment. Other materials, such as wood, faience and stone, were found in lesser quantities. Significantly, these items were decommissioned and then buried, rather than being melted down, despite their economic value. The practice of offering bronze statuettes gained frequency in the Third Intermediate Period, flourished in the Late Period, and continued under the Ptolemies. The Sacred Animal Necropolis in North Saqqara (SAQSAN) was active for hundreds of years during this time, and the caches of statuettes perfectly illustrate this trend. Certain well-dated animal mummy burials provide a chronological framework for the site, from the Saite Twentysixth Dynasty through the Ptolemaic Period. The archive H. S. Smith and S. Davies returned the archive of the SAQ-SAN finds to the EES in 2014. It contains daybooks, object registers, photo documentation, drawings, museum

distribution lists, facsimiles of inscriptions, and co r r e s p o n d e n ce . I t a l s o co m p r i s e s documentation on the inscriptions, the D e m o t i c a n d A r a m a i c p a py r i , t h e i r transcriptions, and other material from research that is now published. Smith and Davies consider the caches the most important remaining category of finds to be published, and so they put considerable

Fine child god statuettes from Cache 2 (1968/9): nos. H5-1028 and H51029 (wrapped).

EGYPTIAN ARCHAEOLOGY ISSUE NO 49 AUTUMN 2016

W. B. Emery with a bronze Osiris statuette, standing in the courtyard of the dig house that came to be known as Beit Emery (date unknown).

effort into compiling information about their contents from the daybooks and site register. Their work was detailed, organized and extraordinarily thorough. In addition to a written record of the finds, Smith entered the cache locations on a site map, while Davies started a catalogue of the bronze statuettes, which encompassed those found up to halfway through season 1968/9. Project aims and methodology Our work began with a one-week study season at the EES archive in February 2015 and continued with a two-week season in August 2016, with the support of the EES Excavation Fund. The primary purpose of these sessions was to review the archive material, assess the photographic documentation of the caches’ contents, and initiate digitization of the records. By supplying a complete visual presentation of the finds, our goal is to compare the content and the diversity of individual caches with each other in Saqqara as well as to set the Saqqara finds within the context of the practice across Egypt as a whole. In our time at the archive, our aim was to understand better the chronology of the caches and their exact location on site through the excavation notes and site photographs. With this in mind, we recorded information from the site register; searched the archive for site photographs, particularly those related to the find spots of the caches; and digitized the

photographs of the largest and most complete caches as a priority, totalling at least 500 bronzes. For data management, we created a database of the objects in the caches for seasons 1966/7–1968/9 and stored the photo files with the EES and on separate hard drives. Our ultimate goal, after fur ther study seasons, is to produce a searchable digital archive for the individual objects in the caches as well as a traditional print book with analyses. The photographic record is comprehensive, with most objects having an image, so that this is a possible endeavour. Preliminary findings and future research Davies and Smith’s overview includes 68 caches that were recorded or have been reconstructed from the daybooks, with a total of 2261 objects registered and described. Some seasons produced more than others: season 1968/9 witnessed the discovery of 19 caches (more than 788 objects), 9 of which were found in the space of two weeks in December 1968 – no doubt to the despair as well as the delight of the excavators. This contrasts with season 1974/5, for which only 2 caches are recorded, with a total of 43 objects. This large number of caches, supplemented by many in nearby Mit Rahina (Memphis), attest to the central role that the Memphite region played in this practice of dedication and deposition. A review of the caches as a whole therefore opens up important research questions. For instance, as we placed the caches in a loose chronological framework, we noted that some of the earliest ones (Cache 2, 1968/9 and Caches 1 and 2, 1974/5), from the early 4th century (Phase IIa), were the most carefully laid and prepared, as well as being closely associated with specific building construction phases. Loose caches in debris and construction fills appear in all phases but dominate from Phase IIb (ca. 380–360 BC) onwards. The evidence thus seems to suggest that the practice of caching changed over time at Saqqara. Smith and Davies also discovered that the caches are divided predominantly by type or material (statuettes, temple equipment, wood, faience). As we continue our research, we are looking to define any spatial and temporal patterns related to these groupings. The caches from Saqqara are also striking for what they do not contain. Recent work at Thonis-Heracleion, the underwater site at the

BURIED BRONZES: CACHES OF THE SACRED ANIMAL NECROPOLIS

Statuettes and temple equipment in a storeroom, 1965/6.

Elsbeth van der Wilt (left) and Sanda Heinz (right) working in the Lucy Gura Archive in August 2016. Photo: Carl Graves.

EGYPTIAN ARCHAEOLOGY ISSUE NO 49 AUTUMN 2016

mouth of the Canopic branch of the Nile, has uncovered a stunning range of finds, of which vast amounts of lead items are the most surprising, including Egyptian lead statuettes and amulets. In the Saqqara caches, lead is not present in any significant amount, which suggests either that Thonis-Heracleion is unique in Egypt for its use of the material for sacred items, or that if it was used at Saqqara, it was not cached and was instead confined to public areas where it was melted and recycled. When we started work at the archive, our seasons were primarily intended as a time for data collection, but the insights described above have already proven valuable. The caches exhibit a wide variety between them, in terms of their size, the number and quality of their contents, and the type of material they contain – variety that Davies and Smith have rightly emphasized in past publications. Other scholars have tended to focus on the large caches with the nicest and most carefully buried material, such as Cache 2, 1968/9, near Gate D (see image p. 43), creating the impression for the non-specialist that caching practice was uniform. Many of the caches, however, were loosely scattered, with broken elements and statuettes of varying quality, such as those found in Cache 4, 1968/9. As we move forward with our project, we will finish fully documenting the largest caches. From there we will move to the lesser-known, smaller, and unpublished caches, for which the known context is generally much less secure. We hope to reveal just how diverse the practice of caching was and how unusual the largest caches are. Our work aims to quantify that variety and to make it visually accessible, while keeping in mind fac tor s such as chronology and find location.

Sample of Osiris statuettes from Cache 4 (1968/9), H5-1154-1157.

• Dr Sanda S. Heinz, Dar tmouth College. Research interests: Egyptian statuary, cult in the first millennium BC, and Greek-Egyptian relations. Dr Elsbeth van der Wilt, Freie Univerität Berlin. Research interests: ancient economy, Egyptian temples, and Egyptian-Greek trade. We would like to thank the EES and the Metropolitan Museum of Art for funding towards the study seasons. Thanks are also due to Sue Davies and Harry Smith, Marsha Hill and John Baines, and Carl Graves for all of their help along the way.

Bookshelf

Bob Brier, Cleopatra’s Needles: The Lost Obelisks of Egypt Bloomsbury, 2016 ISBN 978 1 474 24293 6 Price: £19.99

Salima Ikram, Divine Creatures: Animal Mummies in Ancient Egypt AUC Press, 2015 ISBN 978 977 416 696 9 Price: £16.95

It has been nearly forty years since the last book on Cleopatra’s Needles, so we were well overdue for a new one. Despite its title, however, Bob Brier’s book does not confine itself to the two obelisks usually known by this name, those now in London and New York, but sets itself the ambitious task of covering all of the obelisks outside Egypt, what Erik Iversen called the ‘obelisks in exile’, as well as how they were originally quarried and moved, in only 238 pages. Published as one of the Bloomsbury Egyptology series, it is well produced, on good quality paper and with plenty of well-chosen illustrations. The sections covering the original quarrying of obelisks and their transportation and erection in Egypt are strong on the practical aspects of these processes, as are those on transporting the obelisks now in Paris and New York, and moving the Vatican obelisk within Rome. However, coverage of the obelisks outside Egypt is not comprehensive, and there are curious omissions. The Istanbul obelisk is briefly mentioned, but it is surprising that there is no mention of the obelisk from Philae now at Kingston Lacy in Dorset, the first moved out of Egypt since ancient times, which also played an impor t ant par t in the decipherment of hieroglyphic script. The chapter on Rome’s obelisks omits those now in Urbino and Florence, and fails to mention the Lateran obelisk, the largest surviving Egyptian obelisk.

Bearing in mind how many obelisks ther e ar e in Rome , i t is per haps understandable that coverage of some of them is short. Still, it is disappointing that the section on the London obelisk is very brief compared to those in New York and Paris. It focuses on the final and successful campaign to bring it to England, although the first attempt in 1802 is covered very briefly in the chapter on the Luxor obelisk taken to Paris. Brier commendably recognises the major financial commitment made to the transpor t of Cleopatra’s Needle by John Dixon, and the role of Benjamin Baker in the design of the obelisk barge in which it was transported, as well as the so-called ‘Battle of the Sites’ over where it should be placed, but again there are some surprising omissions. There is no mention of the role of General Sir James Alexander, who campaigned for eight years to bring the fallen obelisk at Alexandria to London, even though one of the illustrations (Figure 5.1) actually shows Alexander inspecting the Needle in Alexandria. There is also no mention of the Metropolitan Board of Works, which played a crucial role in the siting of the Needle. Overall, despite its somewhat misleading title and lack of detail in a number of areas, this is an attractive and very accessible title which should particularly appeal to a non-specialist readership. CHRIS ELLIOTT

This paperback edition, released ten years after the original publication, focuses on the four types of animal mummies from ancient Egypt: pets, food (victual) mummies, sacred animals and votive mummies – classifications now accepted by scholars the world over. Ikram describes, in detail, her research experiments to produce animal mummies, ref lecting techniques mentioned by Herodotus for the preparation of human cadavers and using information gleaned from her interpretation of the animal mummies themselves. The scope of the publication is strengthened by the addition of six chapters by specialist contributors based upon specific archaeological sites and animal species found in the mummy record. These chapters are well-written and informative, providing valuable insights into the complexities of animal mummification and of fer ing sound, thought-provok ing archaeological, theological and scientific analysis. Ikram’s closing chapter summarises her pioneering research on the animal mummy collections of the Cairo Museum which ultimately led to their re-interpretation and re-display. Greatly limited by the facilities available to study the artefacts in Egypt at the time, her interpretations rely solely on X-rays which, while useful, yield limited

information. The application of more advanced imaging technology would build upon these initial findings, bringing research on the Cairo collection in line with that conducted by Ikram and others elsewhere. Ikram begins the brief postscript by stating that the study of animal mummies has ‘moved more into the mainstream of Egyptology’ since the original publication. This is certainly true, due to an increased awareness of the material itself and the heightened interest in the subject. It is perhaps slightly disappointing that the postscript is as brief as it is, as there are many projects currently underway (and indeed completed and published) that merit m e n t i o n . U n d e r s t a n d a b l y, I k r a m concentrates on those of which she has first-hand knowledge. Although a reprint rather than a new edition, selected new information has been added either in the text or as footnotes throughout. A more thorough review of the recent publications would have proved useful and would have helped to update the publication in the light of recent research. Still, the volume remains the ‘goto’ book on the subject. It conveys the many reasons behind and techniques used for animal mummification and provides a starting point for further reading. LIDIJA McKNIGHT

EGYPTIAN ARCHAEOLOGY ISSUE NO 49 AUTUMN 2016

Jason Thompson, Wonderful Things. A History of Egyptology, 2: The Golden Age: 1881-1914 AUC Press, 2015 ISBN 978 977 416 692 1 Price: £24.95

Immediately prior to writing my review of Vol. 1 for EA 47, I had the privilege of hearing Jason Thompson lecture about his aspirations for the Wonderful Things fourpart series. This time I managed to better this when I enjoyed a catch-up session with him in my local pub. What, I asked him, was the reason he had sub-titled the present volume – which covers the 33-year period from the death of Mariette in 1881 to the First World War – as the ‘Golden Age’? Having indulged in a few minutes of silent reflection, Thompson justified it as a time when it was possible to ‘go anywhere and do anything’ in Egypt – a kind of ‘Dahabiyeh Egyptology’. In Vol. 2, we undoubtedly glimpse Dahabiyeh Eg yptolog y at its bes t: businessman Charles Wilbour wintering on the Nile aboard the Seven Hathors (the title of Chapter 3), British Assyriologist Archibald Sayce on his equally well-named Istar. The two men often spent their days copying inscriptions together, studying them in the evening with the help of Wilbour’s reference books. Indeed, both vessels housed incredible working libraries. A n ot h e r A m e r i c a n b u s i n e s s m a n , Theodore Davis, set tongues wagging by travelling in the company of his long-term ‘companion’, his wife’s cousin Mrs. Emma Andrews. Thompson praises her as a meticulous diarist (kept 1889-1913), and Kate Shepherd recently extended the picture drawing attention to Andrews as an Egyptologist in her own right with ‘just as much money as Davis (if not more), and just as much field training’. Yet Thompson does not hesitate to take us into the darker side of the ‘Golden Age’ either: the long-running feuds

between some Egyptology’s greats; the strained relations between the EES (then EEF), the British Museum, and University College London; not to mention the bitter dispute between the London Committee of the EEF and William Copley Wimslow of its American branch. We are left wondering just how much more could have been achieved without all this reciprocal ill will. This was the era of the giants of Egyptology. Thompson epitomises it as an era when ‘the foundations of ancient Egyptian historiography had been laid and great por tions of its edifice erected’. Cleverly framing this volume around the French Directors of the Antiquities Service and burgeoning Egyptian nationalism, he rightly acknowledges that the successful launch of the newly established EEF was totally down to Maspero’s encouragement of foreign excavators. Leaving aside the male giants, I was constantly on the look-out for the pioneering women of our discipline who have so often been marginalised in the historical record. Pleasing attention is given to Margaret Murray and Caroline Ransom, both of whom are generally short-changed because of their association with their male mentors (respectfully, Petrie and Breasted). Indeed, Ransom still only has a German Wikipedia entry. On the other hand, the indomitable Hilda Petrie is notable for her absence, whereas her husband appears a ver y great deal. Thompson assures me she will enter the stage in Vol. 3. We await this volume which will take us up to the present day with much curiosity. ROSALIND JANSSEN

Scenes and texts of the Ramesside temple at Amara West in Sudan, excavated by an EES expedition in 1938-39 and 1947-49.

An in-depth investigation of three sites – Tell Yetwal wa Yuksur, Kom ed-Daba, and Tell Buweib – as part of the EES Delta Survey.

OUT THIS WINTER: The 9th volume of the ‘Survey of Memphis’, presenting over 1200 objects from the late Middle Kingdom installations at Kom Rabi’a.

Excavation Memoir 114 ISBN 978-0-85698-227-9 £70 • £59.50 (EES Members’ Price)

Excavation Memoir 112 ISBN 978-0-85698-225-5 £35 • £29.75 (EES Members’ Price)

Excavation Memoir 115 ISBN 978-0-85698-228-6 £70 • £59.50 (EES Members’ Price)

EGYPTIAN ARCHAEOLOGY ISSUE 50 • SPRING 2017 • £5.95

Living colour: The early temple The Met Museum’s of Ptah Temple of Dendur at Karnak Page 4

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Matariya 2016: Ramesside dynasties at Heliopolis Page 16