Egyptian Archaeology 56 by TheEES

We have a special permit from the Ministry of Antiquities for an exploration of rarely visited South Saqqara

SAQQARA SPECIAL WITH COLIN READER

Ancient History, Archaeology, and Ancient Languages Ancient Egypt and Mesoamerica Our 2020 Programme of 5-day Courses 19 sessions per course – mostly lectures, but gallery talks in the British Museum and special-access classes in the Petrie Museum where relevant. The opportunity to socialise with like-minded enthusiasts and scholars at BSS events. Reasonably-priced university accommodation available nearby.

At North Saqqara we have arranged private entry to the Second Dynasty tomb of Ninetjer

DEPARTING 10thOCT 2020 We plan four trips to North Saqqara including entry to the Step Pyramid. We also have a special permit to enter the vast Second Dynasty tomb of Ninetjer. There will be plenty of time for an in-depth look at the landscape and the various phases of development of the site. A chance to enter some of the mastabas that you have never had time for on past visits, including the subterranean galleries of the Serapeum. At South Saqqara we walk the site and view the latest work of the French Archaeological Mission. We will visit Mastabat Faroun and the Pepy Pyramid before we head to Abu Sir to view the pyramids of Sahure and Niuserre. Of course, being in Cairo we cannot leave out a visit to the Giza Plateau for the Great Pyramid, where Colin will explain his theories on the site, including the geological evidence leading to his dating of the great Sphinx and its enclosure.

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Monday 6 July to Friday 10 July READING HIEROGLYPHS: KHUFU AND THE MAGICIANS with Dr Bill Manley and Dr José R. Pérez-Accino OR ART AND ARCHAEOLOGY OF MESOAMERICA IN 100 OBJECTS with Dr Elizabeth Baquedano Monday 13 July to Friday 17 July HIEROGLYPHS FOR BEGINNERS with Dr Bill Manley OR HIERATIC: AN INTRODUCTORY CLASS TO ANCIENT EGYPT'S CURSIVE SCRIPT with Dr Luigi Prada Monday 20 July to Friday 24 July FIFTH DYNASTY SOLAR RELIGION AND THE SUN KINGS with Dr Massimiliano Nuzzolo OR THE ROYAL TOMBS OF ANCIENT EGYPT with Prof. Aidan Dodson Monday 27 July to Friday 31 July LOVE SPELLS, ORACLES, AMULETS: ANCIENT EGYPTIAN RITUALS OF MAGIC AND DIVINATION with Dr Franziska Naether OR AN A–Z OF ANCIENT EGYPTIAN STATUES with Dr Campbell Price Study Days: Saturday 4 July FESTIVALS AND CELEBRATION IN ANCIENT EGYPT Dr Campbell Price, Dr José R. Pérez-Accino, Dr Claire Malleson, and Mr John J. Johnston

+ A SPECIAL HEB-SED RECEPTION! 30 YEARS OF BLOOMSBURY SUMMER SCHOOL Saturday 19 September (RE)DISCOVERING LIFE IN THE NILE VALLEY: NEW TECHNOLOGIES FOR STUDYING ANCIENT REMAINS – HOW WELL DO THEY WORK? with Dr Lidija McKnight and Dr Iwona Kozieradzka-Ogunmakin

BSS in Egypt: Monday 19 October to Monday 26 October A unique opportunity to study at Amarna EXPLORING AMARNA: ITS ARCHAEOLOGY AND THE IDEAS BEHIND IT with Prof. Barry Kemp

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ancient world tours AWT is an agent of Jules Verne. These Air Holiday packages are ATOL Protected by the Civil Aviation Authority. VJV’s ATOL No.11234

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For a brochure please contact Kathryn E. Piquette: bloomsbury@egyptology-uk.com or +44 (0)20 7679 3622 (voicemail only) Bloomsbury Summer School, c/o The Ancient Egypt Foundation, 25 Red Lion Square, London WC1R 4RL www.egyptology-uk.com/bloomsbury

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The Distillery, Dunton, Norfolk NR21 7PG UK

Monday 29 June to Friday 3 July READING COPTIC with Dr Bill Manley OR BREAD AND BEANS! THE BOTANY OF ANCIENT EGYPT with Dr Claire Malleson

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A one week tour based in Cairo and staying at our Giza hotel. Focussing on the development of Saqqara, this exciting new tour is accompanied throughout by popular Egyptologist and Engineering Geologist, Colin Reader.

Monday 13 April to Friday 17 April COPTIC FOR BEGINNERS with Dr Bill Manley

CELEBRATING

30 YEARS

EGYPTIAN ARCHAEOLOGY No. 56 Spring 2020 www.ees.ac.uk

Editor Jan Geisbusch Editorial Advisers Aidan Dodson John J Johnston Caitlin McCall Luigi Prada Advertising sales Phone: +44 (0)20 7242 1880 E-mail: jan.geisbusch@ees.ac.uk Distribution Phone: +44 (0)20 7242 1880 E-mail: contact@ees.ac.uk Website: www.ees.ac.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 CC 2019 by Jan Geisbusch Printed by Intercity Communications Ltd, 49 Mowlem Street, London E2 9HE © 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

Editorial Our spring issue again presents a diverse mix of contributions, exploring different locations, periods and disciplines, and yet all being facets of Egypt’s amazingly multi-layered history. Elsayed Abdel-Alim’s article takes us to the Sinai site of Tell Habua and its connections to the wider eastern Mediterranean in the Late Period, as evidenced by recent excavations. Foreign influences are also reflected at the Delta city of Buto, where another Graeco-Roman bath has recently been discovered, as Hossam Mohamed Ghonim writes. At the other geographical end of this issue, Grazia A. Di Pietro revisits the archival record of fieldwork done at Naqada in the 1970s and ‘80s, exploring its potential for further research and heritage management. Heritage and its protection – in this case of Egypt’s Islamic patrimony – is also the subject of Omniya Abdel Barr’s article on the Mamluk minbars (pulpits) found in many mosques in Cairo. I am very pleased that with this contribution we can continue our coverage of Egyptian heritage dating to the period after the Islamic conquest. Classical pharaonic Egypt, on the other hand, is represented by two pieces: one, by Anna Stevens and her co-authors, reports on the Nor th Cliffs Cemetery at Amarna and the insights that ongoing excavations there provide on the lives and deaths of ordinary people; the other looks at elite statuary from the so-called Karnak cachette and the biographies inscribed on these sculptures – part of a research project undertaken by Jennifer E. Turner and supported by the EES through our Patron’s Awards. Last but certainly not least, Amin Benaissa presents a papyrological contribution, something we do not have all that often in EA, despite the EES’ vast collection of papyri fragments from Oxyrhynchus. The two texts – a sales contract and a glossary of Homer – illustrate the cohabitation of Egyptian and Greek languages at this Middle Egyptian town between the 1st and 6th centuries CE. Jan Geisbusch

Above: Work under way at KV10 (M. Ahmed, A. Stoll, L. Hassn, and E. Hart). See Digging Diary p. 24. (Photo: Amenmeses Project.) Cover: Graeco-Roman bath at Buto. See pp. 16–20. (Photo: Guy Lecuyot) EGYPTIAN ARCHAEOLOGY ISSUE NO 56 SPRING 2020

Maintenance work in progress on the minbar of Buktumur al-Jukandar. See article pp. 26-30.

Contents 4 The North Cliffs Cemetery at Amarna Anna Stevens, Gretchen Dabbs, Amandine Mérat and Anna Garnett

10 Tell Habua: new discoveries from the Saite period Sayed Abd el-Alim

16 Bathing like a Greek at Buto Hossam Mohamed Ghonim

22 Digging Diary 2019–20 26 Rescuing the Mamluk minbars of Cairo Omniya Abdel Barr

31 Two Egyptian texts from Oxyrhynchus Amin Benaissa

34 ‘Exalt my name’: self-representation on elite statues Jennifer E. Turner

40 Travelling in space and time: Naqada in the archive Grazia A. Di Pietro

44 Books

Photo: Egyptian Heritage Rescue Foundation

EGYPTIAN ARCHAEOLOGY ISSUE NO 56 SPRING 2020

The North Cliffs Cemetery at Amarna Excavations at the cemeteries of Amarna are providing new perspectives on non-elite lives and burial practices, and on urban environments in ancient Egypt. Anna Stevens, Gretchen Dabbs, Amandine Mérat and Anna Garnett present recent work at the Amarna North Cliffs Cemetery to demonstrate how collaborate approaches are helping to extract social data from these simple pit-grave cemeteries. The cemeteries of Amarna The unexpected discovery in the early 2000s of four non-elite cemeteries at Amarna spurred a long-term collaborative research campaign that has now recorded over 800 interments across these four burial grounds. Outwardly, the cemeteries are very similar. Most of the deceased were wrapped in textile and matting, and buried in a simple pit grave; there is not a lot of variation from grave to grave. Yet each burial ground also has its own character, and one of the aims of the research is to tease out the differences between the cemeteries, and what these indicate of how Akhetaten

A view across the North Cliffs Cemetery from the approach up to the rock-cut North Tombs.

functioned as a city, and was experienced by its ancient population. The North Cliffs Cemetery From 2005–17, fieldwork targeted two large burial grounds located in wadis beside the officials’ tombs: the South and North Tombs Cemeter ies . These may have ser ved, respectively, as the primary burial ground for the Main City, and for one or more labourers’ communities. Each contains several thousand burials. In 2018, excavations shifted to a smaller burial ground, the North Cliffs Cemetery, located on the low desert below the tomb of

THE NORTH CLIFFS CEMETERY AT AMARNA

Photos: The Amarna Project

the priest Panehesy (North Tomb 6), with a follow-up season of post-excavation work in late 2019. The burials The North Cliffs Cemetery is a much smaller site, with around 900 to 1,400 interments. A sample of 72 probable graves was excavated, spread across the cemetery. In terms of approach to burial, the interments here are again very similar to those elsewhere at Amarna, and particularly the South Tombs Cemetery. Most excavated graves contained just one individual, for example, usually wrapped in textile and matting. Occasional fragments of wooden coffins were recovered, indicating that a few people had access to a more elaborate burial container. There were also pieces of at least four limestone stelae, lying disturbed on the surface of the cemetery, but presumably once used to mark graves. One stela preserved part of its upper edge, which was carved into a triangular form. This shape is familiar from stelae excavated at the South Tombs Cemetery, and is likely a solar symbol, perhaps also imitating the shape of a rock-cut tomb. Small areas of decoration can be made out on two other stelae fragments, possibly showing part of a standing human figure, and a section of an offering table. A small but varied assemblage of burial goods was also recovered. They include items of cosmetic use, such as kohl tubes and applicators, a wooden comb and a probable wooden hairpin. There are other more obvious ‘ritual’ objects, such as a model mud ball with internal cavity. One grave contained barley associated

with a piece or bag of tex tile, perhaps connected with the sustenance or resurrection of the deceased. There were also items of faience jewellery, including beads, pendants and finger rings.

The North Cliffs Cemetery lies on the low desert near the North Tombs, visible in the cliffs in the background of the image.

New insights on burial textiles Organics are particularly well preserved at this cemetery, and one of the side effects of this is the survival of a number of naturally desiccated individuals. These have proven particularly valuable for the study of burial textiles. Textile is widely represented at all of the Amarna pit-grave cemeteries, but it is usually so heavily deteriorated that little can be said about its form or function. Several of the desiccated bodies from the North Cliffs Cemeter y, in contr ast, have ver y well preserved textiles. Noticeable differences were observed here in the way the dead were prepared for the afterlife. One approach was to wrap the body in textile strips, the typical ‘bandages’. Pieces of textile filling were sometimes inserted to pad out the shape, and textile ‘ribbons’ then used to secure the bandages in place. A variation saw the body wrapped first in strips, and then enclosed in a large piece of fine cloth used as a shroud. Some individuals seem to have been wrapped only in a shroud of fine cloth, or enveloped in several large pieces of coarser textile. One individual provided the first clear evidence from the Amarna pit-grave cemeteries of burial solely in a garment, here a bag-tunic. Whether the tunic was worn by the deceased in life or was made for the purpose of burial only is impossible to know, EGYPTIAN ARCHAEOLOGY ISSUE NO 56 SPRING 2020

Photo: The Amarna Project

Sofie Schiødt excavating a grave with very well-preserved burial matting.

THE NORTH CLIFFS CEMETERY AT AMARNA

but it is a type of garment commonly worn at the time by men and women alike. Other garments were also seen on two other individuals: one headband, and a possible loincloth. In these cases, the deceased had also been wrapped in additional textile. A preliminary typology of burial textiles has now been developed and this will be applied to the Amarna cemeteries as a whole. This work shows that while there is little indication that preservatives were introduced into these burials (although no scientific testing has been done), considerable efforts were made to protect the body with textile, in some cases seemingly to preserve the original shape of the body as well. Burial in clothing is an interesting variation. Ceramic study In contrast to the quality of preserved textile, the pottery from the North Cliffs Cemetery is of consistently poor condition due to water and salt damage, meaning that much surface detail is now lost. The majority of the vessels examined to date are closed forms of Nile silt clay, including ‘beer jars’, with a smaller number of sherds from large open vessels (hearths) also present. Marl clay sherds are much rarer but include fragments of miniature vessels, a type also present in the South Tombs Cemetery ceramic assemblage. Reused sherds occur frequently in the excavated burials of varying sizes, the majority being Nile silt with significantly fewer reused marl clay sherds. Many of these sherds were probably used as ‘spades’ during periods of looting at the cemetery. A small number of Late Roman sherds may indicate the date of one of these phases of robbery. Overall, the pottery recovered from the North Cliffs Cemetery is broadly consistent with the forms excavated at the South Tombs Cemetery, as noted by Pamela Rose in her initial assessment of the material in 2018. Continued study of the assemblage will help to shed light on the socioeconomic status of the individuals interred here, and provide a dataset for detailed cross-site comparisons between this cemetery and others at Amarna. Bioarchaeological perspectives Recently completed analysis of the skeletonised human remains from the North Cliffs Cemetery is also providing important

perspectives on the site and its population. In total, the remains of 57 individuals have been analysed. While their bioarchaeological profile shares characteristics with those from both the South and North Tombs Cemeteries, the individuals buried within the Nor th Cliffs Cemeter y are distinct and suggest the population from which they derived was less biologically taxed than the parent populations for the South and North Tombs Cemeteries. The demographic profile for the North Cliffs Cemetery is consistent with what is expected for ancient cemeteries. Most of the individuals are adults (68 %), but there are some children and adolescents (32 %) ranging in age from infants to teenagers. Where it is possible to estimate adult sex, there is a nearly equal distribution of females and males (55 % female, 45 % male). Comparatively, this demographic distribution is more similar to the South Tombs Cemetery sample than the Nor th Tombs Cemetery, and the conclusion that the former was the burial ground for a wide segment of the population also holds for the North Cliffs Cemetery. The North Tombs Cemetery, in contrast, has been suggested as a burial ground for a labour force of young, predominantly female individuals. A l t houg h t he s ke le t a l r e ma ins a r e predominantly those of adults, examination of stature and teeth, which form during childhood, can provide substantial information about individuals’ growth periods. Adult stature is a measure of childhood health, as stature can be reduced when biological resources must be diverted from growth to protect against disease or when the resources are not present to begin with, such as the case of food shortage. The individuals in the North Cliffs Cemetery are taller than their counterparts in the North and South Tombs Cemeteries, by about 1–2cm. Additionally, the frequency of individuals in the North Cliffs Cemetery with deficiencies in the enamel formations known as linear enamel hypoplasias is substantially lower than at the other cemeteries (Nor th Cliffs Cemetery 52 %, South Tombs Cemetery 76 %, North Tombs Cemetery 73 %). These horizontal bands of reduced dental enamel thickness represent the slowing of enamel deposition to an imperceptible rate, caused by abnormal rates of physiological and/or psychological stress – the body’s last ditch effort to stave off death. High rates of linear enamel hypoplasia suggest EGYPTIAN ARCHAEOLOGY ISSUE NO 56 SPRING 2020

Photos: The Amarna Project

Excavations under way at the North Cliffs Cemetery in 2018, as Gretchen Dabbs, Waleed Mohamed Omar and Ahmed Sayed (left to right) define the edge of an ancient grave.

heavily taxed subadult populations. While these results do not contradict the previous findings that life at ancient Akhetaten was difficult, they do suggest that within the city’s population, there are individuals who fared better than others, and the Nor th Cliffs Cemetery is seemingly the burial ground for one of these slightly better off groups. Hallmark characteristics of the skeletal remains from South and Nor th Tombs Cemeteries include high frequency of broken bones and arthritis, and the severity of this degenerative condition is extreme. The North Cliffs Cemetery sample includes broken bones and arthritis, but the frequency, severity and distribution of these conditions is different. The frequency of trauma in the spine and other areas of the body, for example, is less than half of that observed in the South and Nor th Tombs Cemeteries. Both the frequency and severity of arthritis is also lower. Additionally, while arthritis in the South and North Tombs Cemeteries tends to be frequently distributed throughout the spine and the large joints of the limbs, in ways that suggests carrying heavy loads was a typical daily activity, in the North Cliffs Cemetery arthritis is more commonly focused on the small joints of the hands and wrists, with little represented in the larger joints of the limbs.

Analysis of the skeletal remains therefore suggests that the North Cliffs Cemetery may contain the bodies of individuals who were working in different occupations than the labourers identified in the Nor th Tombs Cemetery and the more general population buried in the South Tombs Cemetery. The North Cliffs Cemetery individuals do not have the severe and frequent spinal trauma observed in both the North and South Tombs Cemeteries, nor do they exhibit the severe and sometimes debilitating degeneration of the spine and joints of the long limbs. Instead, they exhibit very minor degeneration in the spine and in the bones of the limbs, with the exception of the hands and wrists, where degeneration is common and not previously observed in high frequencies at the other cemeteries. Amarna’s administrators? In addition to the study of materials excavated at the site, the physical context of the North Tombs Cemetery offers important perspectives on its role, and its relationship to Akhetaten and its populations. The northern location of the cemetery suggests it may have served, at least in part, populations living in the northern part of the city. The North Suburb, a large area of settlement adjacent to the Central City, seems a par ticularly good candidate.

THE NORTH CLIFFS CEMETERY AT AMARNA

There can also be little doubt that the cemetery was deliberately positioned close to the North Tombs, which belonged to some of the most important officials at Akhetaten. Panehesy, for example, was in charge of overseeing the preparation of offerings for the Aten in the Great Aten Temple. It has been suggested that many of the people living in the North Suburb may have been mid-level officials, employed especially in the Central City. It is interesting that we now have a burial ground that is a good candidate to have served the North Suburb, positioned below the tombs of officials who must have directed large numbers of administrative and other personal, and with a bioarchaeological profile suggestive of a population that was less biologically taxed overall than those buried at the larger North and South Tombs Cemeteries. Are we seeing

here a por tion of Akhetaten’s population whose working lives were geared more towards administration and related tasks, including within the core of the ancient city, than to heavy labour? These preliminary results are potentially of great value in terms of identifying variations in health, workload and experiences across the population of Ak hetaten, and for supporting ideas that the city’s settlement areas may have been, at least loosely, structured according to the occupations of their inhabitants. The results demonstrate the significant social information that is contained in outwardly uniform and simple burials, enhanced by the remarkable preservation and short-term occupation at Amarna.

The Amarna Project is a research initiative of the University of Cambridge (www. amarnaproject.com). Working with the Egyptian government and local communities, it seeks to research and protect the archaeological site of Amarna. Regular updates on work at Amarna can be found in the Journal of Egyptian Archaeology and in the Amarna Project newsletter, Horizon. To support research at the site, visit www. amarnatrust.com.

A selection of artefacts excavated at the North Cliffs Cemetery including a probable hair pin and kohl-set (left), a fragmentary stela (centre) and a frog amulet and comb fragment (right).

• Anna Stevens (Monash University / University of Cambridge) is Assistant Director of the Amarna Project and co-directs the Cemetery Project with Gretchen Dabbs (Southern Illinois University). Amandine Mérat is a freelance textile specialist and Anna Garnett is Curator at the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, UCL. The cemetery research runs as par t of the Amarna Project, directed by Barry Kemp. We thank the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities for permission to undertake the work. Excavations at the North Cliffs Cemetery in 2018 were supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the 2019 study season was funded by the Egypt Exploration Society. Any views , f indings , conclusions or recommendations expressed here do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities. EGYPTIAN ARCHAEOLOGY ISSUE NO 56 SPRING 2020

Tell Habua: new discoveries from the Saite period Elsayed Abdel-Alim reports from the site of Tell Habua in northwestern Sinai. Its three distinct sectors and their material culture reflect the varying functions and international connections of Tell Habua during the Twenty-sixth Dynasty (664–525 BCE), the last native dynasty to rule Egypt before the Persian conquest. The site of Tell Habua is located at the eastern end of the Nile Delta, on the northern limit of the present administrative province of Ismailia. The archaeological area is about 4 km east of the Suez Canal and 4 km from the city of elQantara. The archaeological site is divided into three agglomerations: Tell Habua I, II and III. For the site of Habua I, the oldest layers date back to the end of the Second Intermediate Period until the Twenty-sixth Dynasty. Habua II belongs to the beginning of the New Kingdom until the Saite period. Habua III is considered a New Kingdom domestic installation. The site of Tell Habua allows us to discover the urban architecture of the Saite period, well-known along the Nile Valley and especially from contemporary sites of Lower Egypt. Tell Habua I was investigated by the Egyptian Antiquities Organisation from 1981 onwards, seeing regular excavation campaigns under the direction of Mohamed Abd el-Maksoud. They revealed a massive fortress dating from the New Kingdom and some installations of the Second Intermediate Period. Since 2004, excavations have focused on the south-western part of the site, where there are remains of a religious complex, surrounded by a massive (temenos) wall 10 m wide, occupying most of the south-western corner of the site. It includes a large, rectangular temple, oriented east- west, a smaller palace oriented north-south and a casemate foundation platform. Investigations at Tell Habua II began under the aegis of the Franco-Egyptian team in

19 9 0 – 92 . S i n ce 20 07, a n e x t e n s i ve archaeological programme at the site, including a geomagnetic survey and several excavation campaigns, revealed large mud-brick enclosure walls, within which two other, earlier enclosures were found. In the space delimited by the inner enclosure two sets of stores were uncovered, situated to the east and west respectively, as well as a palace and religious complex including two buildings and their annexes, dating from the New Kingdom. Several architectural elements and inscribed monuments were recovered during the seasons 2008 and 2009, in particular from the central palace sector and its annexes. During the 2009 season, a geomagnetic survey and excavations at the northern sector within the fortress revealed the vestiges of domestic structures of the Saite period of varied layouts. The excavations also yielded a rich collection of Egyptian and impor ted ceramics (Greek, Cypriot and Levantine), as well as many objects of different materials. In the eastern sector, near the enclosure wall, among the most important works, we were able to unearth a cemetery containing a number of graves and modest burials of Twenty-sixth Dynasty. Tell Habua I During excavation campaigns in the southwestern part of Tell Habua I, several structures were excavated, revealing buildings surrounded by a 10 m-wide wall built of mud bricks. Two segments of a wall without bastions, considered

TELL HABUA: NEW DISCOVERIES FROM THE SAITE PERIOD

Maps: GoogleEarth

Plan: Elsayed Abdel-Alim

Top: regional map of north-western Sinai, indicating the location of Tell Habua.

Above: the Saite religious complex of Habua I.

to delineate a temenos, have been discovered: the southern measures 120 m, the western 112 m, the foundations survive to a height of between 1.35 m and 0.70 m. The excavations revealed a ver y large construction, a temple of classical plan, T-shaped and oriented east-west, 61.6 m long and 28.2 m wide. It resembles the plans of Late Period temples in some Delta areas, such as the Temple C of Tell el-Balamun or the temples of Khonsu and Horus in Tanis. This building is the first Saite temple discovered in the Sinai. It reflects the importance for the kings of the Twenty-sixth Dynasty of this border town, where they had established a religious centre. To the north-east of the temple, near the nor thern section of its pylon, stood a rectangular mud-brick structure, identified as a palace. It was constructed taking into account the entrance axis of the temple, perpendicular to it, on the right. Oriented north-south, like most ceremonial palaces, it consisted of three successive main halls, the last probably functioning as a throne room. A monumental door, whose limestone threshold rests on a layer of yellow sand, with an esplanade opened onto the central alley. Immediately to the south of the temple, the foundations of an almost square casemate platform cover an area of 20.2 m x 18.7 m. It is oriented east-west and its axis runs parallel to the temple. The outer walls have concave bases with a noticeable bent from the centre to the raised corners. Undoubtedly, these foundations were laid in pan-bedded courses and rest on a thin layer of pure sand surrounding the building. Various explanations have been put forward for the function of this type of building: Édouard Naville argued that it might have been used for storage, as mentioned in the Bible, built by the Hebrews at Pithom. But the idea of grain silos was rejected by Alan Gardiner and T. Eric Peet who thought that the storehouses he discovered are probably only the foundations of a construction similar to those found in Naukratis and Dafana. Flinder s Petr ie proposed a milit ar y interpretation because of the massive structures of Naukratis and Dafana, their remarkable height and their access ramps. However, given the lack of evidence suggesting the presence of soldiers this idea was refuted EGYPTIAN ARCHAEOLOGY ISSUE NO 56 SPRING 2020

by Friedrich Wilhelm von Bissing. In the case of Naukratis, he regarded a storage complex or a treasury associated with a temple as a more reasonable hypothesis. Recent studies, especially those by Claude Traunecker, have made it possible to better understand the function of these buildings. The inscriptions on the doorjambs of the casemate building of Psamtik in Karnak define the building as a place of preparation and storage for the offerings dedicated to the divine cults: ‘chena ouâb’ or ‘pure store’. We feel that this analysis is the most reasonable and acceptable to explain the function of this construction. It is also the opinion of Jean Yoyotte and Brian Muhs who interpret the casemate foundation platforms among the buildings as places of preparation, consecration and storage of ritual offerings. The building of Tell Habua I must be considered another example of these ‘pure stores’, perhaps explaining the soft layer of sand around the building to accentuate the pure appearance of it.

Aerial photo of the residential area of Tell Heboua II

Tell Habua II The Saite fortress is almost rectangular, with a thickness of about 12–13 m. The enclosure was supported by substantial buttresses, 10.9 m x 3 m wide. The four angles were reinforced by bastions of the same type. In total, the fortified city ran to 385 m in the east, 375 m in the west, 286 m in the south and 293 m in the north. These external dimensions take into account the width of the buttresses. A door, modified several times, was noted on the north side, perhaps taking into account an earlier enclosure. A second door to the Photo: Elsayed Abdel-Alim

enclosure seems to have existed in the middle of the southern side. A residential area has been uncovered in the northern sector. The plan produced for Tell Habua II shows a very close juxtaposition of quadrangular structures of very variable but generally modest sizes, arranged and oriented on two general east-west and northsouth axes. Two main sections were identified, divided by a central road opening onto the north gate of the fortification. Several houses with annexes are contiguous to each other or separated by narrow streets, often leading to dead ends. The general plan of this set tlement is ver y similar to that of contemporary Delta agglomerations, such as Tell el-Ghaba in nor th Sinai, Tell Dafana, Nebesheh (Tell Faraon) and Naukratis. The architectural features of Tell Habua I and the discovery of an Egyptian temple inside the enclosure allow us to interpret the site as a temenos belonging to the Saite period. A comparison with structures discovered in Naucratis, for example, and the similarity to other late temene of the Delta confirms this interpretation. On the other hand, at Tell Habua II, the architectural features such as the bastions give the appearance of a genuine fortress at the eastern gate of Egypt. Moreover, the location of Tell Habua II on the eastern shore of the Pelusiac branch of the Nile, which separated the two sites in ancient times, is significant. Since the Eighteenth Dynasty, Habua II was located at the start of the road to Palestine, conf irming the militar y character of the establishment designed to protect the eastern border of Egypt, a role it still maintained in the Twenty-sixth Dynasty. By contrast, the site of Tell Habua I, on the western bank, seems to have lost the military function it had during the New Kingdom. This probably explains why the two sites, while adjacent, show different characteristics for the Saite period. Thus, the presence of remains dating back to the Saite period constitutes a major contribution to the history of the eastern border of Egypt before the occupation of the region by the Persians. We can now say with cer tainty that these two sites played an impor tant role as militar y, religious and administrative centres of the eastern Nile Delta. They may have continued a strategic function similar to the one they had during the

TELL HABUA: NEW DISCOVERIES FROM THE SAITE PERIOD

New Kingdom, since they were situated at the site of the former frontier town of Tjaru, at the beginning of the coastal road linking Egypt to Palestine.

Left and below: imported pottery.

Drawings / photos: Elsayed Abdel-Alim

The material culture Due to its geographical location, North Sinai is a particularly important region for the study of the commercial networks between Egypt, Palestine and the Aegean world in the Late Period. This region offers a continuous land route to western Asia and sea routes to the Greek islands. Indeed, the material culture of late occupation in nor thern Sinai reflects cultural exchanges and ties between various civilisations in the eastern Mediterranean. The study of the ceramic assemblages of Tell Habua I and II sheds new light on the material culture at the beginning of the Late Period. It includes significant pottery ar tefacts that illustrate several types previously studied and provides useful additional data for the Saite period in north-western Sinai. The pottery assemblages collected during the excavations of the two sites confirm a dating of the occupation phases between the 7th and 5th centuries BCE, with most of the material belonging to the Twentysixth Dynasty. The excavations in different sectors of the two sites yielded large quantities of both complete and fragmentary local Egyptian pottery of the Saite period. The major types of common alluvial clay ceramics include various kinds of food containers and tableware. There is also coarse ware of domestic and artisanal nature, such as basins, dokka trays, bellows, oven lids and three legged stands. Containers for the transpor t or storage of various foodstuffs come in the form of large storage jars. Cooking vessels are represented by hemispherical bowls, lids, spherical and cylindrical jars. Tableware, probably for local use, such as plates, dishes, cups and goblets is also attested, as well as some forms for more specific uses, such as censers, torches, miniature vases, pigeon pots and Bes vase. Some marl clay vessels were also found, almost all of them small containers, such as pitchers, carinated bowls and flasks. Oases clay has been identified, used in the manufacture of small flasks. Our finds can be compared to those from Saite sites in Upper and Lower Egypt. On the whole, the characteristic material of Tell Habua I and II appears markedly homogeneous and

Egyptian Saite pottery.

EGYPTIAN ARCHAEOLOGY ISSUE NO 56 SPRING 2020

Above: bronze arrowhead.

Above: bronze amulette of the god Harpocrates. Above right: iron arrowheads.

allows comparisons with material from other contemporary sites in the Delta, like Dafana, Tell el-Maskhuta, Tell el-Balamun, Naukratis, Buto, Kedua, Mendes, Kom Firin and Plinthine; in the Memphite region: Saqqara and Abusir; in the Theban region of Upper Egypt: Kurna, Karnak-North, the chapel of Osiris Wennefer Neb-Djefau near the temple of Ptah; and at the southern end of Egypt at the site of Elephantine. The sites of Tell Habua I and II have revealed several artefacts of foreign origin. Among the main imports are commercial amphoras of Phoenician origin used in sea trade, known as ‘torpedoes’. In addition, wine containers from the Aegean world are well represented. From northern Ionia: Chios and Klazomenai; from southern Ionia: Samos, Miletus and Lesbos. Attic vessels and Corinthian (type A) amphorae have also been identified. In addition, some fine tableware, such as Ionian cups, are also at tested. Cypro-Levantine goods were common, and include Basket-Handled jar types and flat-based bowls. This rich collection of Greek, Cypriot and Levantine pottery illustrates a well-known development and the extension of commercial relations throughout the entire eastern Mediterranean Basin, especially after the Saite kings pursued a foreign policy that freely opened up to the Greek world. Many small artefacts have been collected at both sites, including the temenos of Habua I and the residential area in the fortress of Habua II. The objects were obviously related to specific economic activities at both sites. They were scattered among large amounts of copper slag as well as drops of copper and scraps. These finds, coupled with pot bellows, clearly suggest a local workshop producing copper

and bronze tools and weapons. Excavations have indeed yielded bronze arrowheads, weaving weights made of limestone and bronze, lead fishing sinkers, and human and animal figurines made of clay and limestone. We also recovered a scarab inscribed with the name of king Psamtik, the only inscribed material yet found at the site. The presence of bronze and faïence amulets of various deities and Egyptian religious symbols should not be interpreted as an indicator of funerary practices, but rather of domestic cults. These artefacts have their clearest parallels in other contemporary sites, which effectively provide a glimpse into the material culture of the Saite period in northwestern Sinai.

• Elsayed Abdel-Alim is working in the North Sinai region; he has been a member of the excavation at Tell Habua since 1999. The author would like to thank Mohamed Abd el-Maksoud, former Secretary General of Antiquities, and Dominique Valbelle, Emeritus Professor of the Faculty of Arts at Sorbonne University, for their effor ts and suppor t. The new discoveries presented here are the subject of a doctoral thesis defended at Sorbonne University in February 2019 under the direction of Dominique Valbelle.

TELL HABUA: NEW DISCOVERIES FROM THE SAITE PERIOD

Above: fragments of iron scales from body armour..

Faience scarab with the name of king Psamtik.

Photos / drawing: Elsayed Abdel-Alim

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EGYPTIAN ARCHAEOLOGY ISSUE NO 56 SPRING 2020

Bathing like a Greek at Buto A new bath complex has been discovered in Buto / Tell el-Fara’in. It comes after similar finds in recent years, again illustrating the impact of Greek culture on the daily lives of Egyptians in a large Delta city during the Ptolemaic and Roman Periods, writes Hossam Mohamed Ghonim. The archaeological site of Buto The site of Buto, about 95 km east of Alexandria in the Nile Delta, hosts several archaeological missions: the German team (under the auspices of the DAIK) works on the formative periods of the pharaonic state; the French team (Université de Nanterre / IFAO) on the remains of the Graeco-Roman Period; while Egyptian (SCA) team, led by Dr. Hossam Mohamed Ghonim, focuses on the site of the temple of Wadjet, the tutelary goddess of Lower Egypt (image below). Buto, the ancient Per-Wadjet, was an important holy city throughout ancient Egyptian history. As a religious centre, its origin is said to reach back to mythical times when it existed as the twincities of Pe and Dep. It was in their surroundings,

in the marshes of Chemmis, that Isis took refuge from Seth and gave birth to her son Horus. Today, few remains are visible within the large mud-brick enclosure that once defined the perimeter of the temenos , the sacred temple precinc t. Subs tantial layer s of occupation, of rubble and debris accumulated here during the Late Period and after the end of pharaonic Egypt, when the area likely served as a refuge for the townspeople during phases of unrest that resulted from the rivalries of the local dynasts of Sais, Mendes, and elsewhere, and invasions by Assyrian, Persian, Greek, and Roman forces. If the temple still had religious significance in the Graeco-Roman Period, it is cer tain that it lost its function with the establishment of Christianity and simply

Buto: temple of Wadjet, general view to the south-east. On the right, the excavations of the new bath complex.

Photo: G. Lecuyot

BATHING LIKE A GREEK IN BUTO

disappeared. It fell victim to spoliation, being stripped down and used as a quarry, leaving only a vast open space behind in the area once covered by built structures. Herodotus (II, 155) reports that temples of Apollo and Artemis existed at Buto, as well as a temple of Leto that housed an oracle. The latter was noteworthy for its tall and wide walls and its roof with its wide cornice. Archaeologists of the Egypt Exploration Society, in the 1960s, and a later mission from the University of Tanta sought the remains of the sanctuary described by Herodotus, but discovered little. The EES team uncovered a nilometer composed of double stairs and wells. The Tanta mission found a beautiful stela dated to the reign of Thutmose III (1479–1425 BCE), some Ramesside statues (c. 1292–1075 BCE), and fragments of architecture from the Saite Period (664–525 BCE). If the soil in the temenos on either side of the old temple rose steadily over the centuries of occupation, then the sanctuary, provided it was more or less regularly maintained, should have remained essentially at its original level. Bathing complexes in the Graeco-Roman city It was during the two last excavation seasons in the temenos that the Egyptian team, comprising several inspectors and about 20 workers, discovered and studied a new bath

complex. Located on the southern side, it is positioned quite high relative to the ground level of the old temple, just a few centimetres below the present-day surface. It is in fact the sixth bath complex found in Buto. It consists of traditional Greek baths with a hip bathtub (with a seat for washing) and an immersion bathtub. This type of public bath first appeared in Greece in Olympia in the 5th century BCE, later spreading throughout the wider Mediterranean. In Egypt, the first hip bathtub, found on Nelson’s Island near Alexandria, dates to the 3rd or 4th century BCE. The type survived in Egypt for a long time, as is illustrated by evidence from Athribis where a 2nd century CE bath of that kind was found. By this time it had been abandoned elsewhere in the Mediterranean world in favour of the so-called Roman thermal baths with hypocaust rooms, the earliest of which, in Fregellae in Italy, dates to the 2nd century BCE. Between 2008 and 2014, a French team led by Bérangère Redon and Guy Lecuyot resumed the excavations of the baths discovered by the EES in the 1960s, known since then as ‘kôm des Anglais’ (sector P10). Several other baths were uncovered at the entrance to the temenos during the EES excavations in 1966 and by the SCA teams in 2010 and 2011, during the construction of the modern wall built to protect the site: these include an individual hip bathtub, a

Photo: G. Lecuyot

The bath complex: service courtyard, the immersion bathtub room and corridor, tholos with hip bath (from foreground to background).

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tholos (i.e. circular) bath with immersion bathtub room, and at least one large double tholos bath. Only those in sector P10 range across several architectural phases, from the 2nd century BCE to a last reconstruction as Roman baths in the 2nd century CE.

The circular room The circular room, or tholos (approximately 1.5 m in diameter; image opposite page, top), opened to the east into the room with the immersion bathtub and to the north into the corridor. To the north-west, a deep niche (0.80–1.18 x 0.55 m) housed the hip bathtub, a roughly trapezoidal space separated from the tholos by a high threshold (h: 20; w: 23 cm). A step at the back allowing the bather to sit down (h: 10-12; d: 27 cm; image opposite page, centre). The acute angle of the trapezoid shows a circular depression where a water container for the bather’s toilet would have sat, carried in hot or cold by servants. An oval basin (50 x 35 cm) is set in the north wall. While is original height is not preserved, a drain hole (diam. 4 cm) is visible at ground level.

Photogrammetry: L. Mazou

Plan view of the bath complex. From left to right: tholos, room with immersion bath (south) and corridor (north), service courtyard.

The newly discovered bath The bath complex runs about 5 m east to west and 3 m north-south, edging against the slope on its northern side (image p. 17 and below). The building in which it was located has only been partially cleared, but it is understood that it expanded south and nor th, where its entrance may have been located. Fur ther excavations to the south have brought to light more recent mud-brick structures, but it has not yet been possible to determine precisely the building’s point of access. In its current state of clearance, the bath includes, on the western side, a circular room, a kind of small tholos, an immersion bathtub room to the east and, to the north, a corridor probably leading to the entrance. There is an open space on its eastern side, perhaps a cour tyard, with a ‘well’ in the nor th-west corner, most likely of a later period, since it cuts into the bath complex.

The corridor From the corridor (3.4 x 8.2 m), a passage of about 0.5 m in width gives access to the circular room. At its eastern end, an opening at the bottom of the wall, close by the southeast corner, allowed water from the baths to drain away. A rectangular basin with rounded corners (34 x 46 cm) and a drain hole (4 cm) had been fitted in the masonry between the east wall of the hip bathtub and the west wall of the corridor.

BATHING LIKE A GREEK IN BUTO

In some parts, the walls of the circular room are preserved up to a height of 50 cm. This room was once neatly decorated with alternating panels of red and white, the white ones rendered in slight relief. The room of the immersion bathtub Access to this large rectangular room (1.6 x 1.92 m) was from the circular room through a passage (w: 0.54 m) in the middle of its western wall, the eastern side being occupied along its entire length by a large rectangular immersion bathtub with rounded corners (1.43 x 0.50 m; image right, bottom). The inner wall of that tub (11 cm thick) is still preserved to a height of 38 cm, with a drain hole (diam. 4–5 cm) set at its centre near the floor. The inside of the tub was painted red. It must have held a fairly large quantity of water, raising the question of how it was supplied and heated. The southern boundary wall of the room has completely disappeared.

Photogrammetry: L. Mazou

Construction The structure is built of fired bricks of different shapes and sizes: square (22 x 22 x 4.5-5 cm), rectangular (22 x 12 x 5 cm), and various fragments probably re-used from an older building. The foundations of the building consisted of only few raw of bricks set directly onto the ground. Walls (25–40 cm thick) and floors were covered with hydraulic plaster and painted red. The wall plaster consists of two layers: a primer coat (approx. 1.5–2 cm thick) of lime mor tar, loaded with fireclay granulate ‘chamotte’, and a top coat (approx. 0.5 cm thick) on which paint was applied. The floors consisted of a bed of pebbles covered with a layer of hydraulic mortar.

Photos: G. Lecuyot

Service area To the east, a space of 1.95 x 2.02 m was paved with fired bricks, covering a hollow dug into the ground at its northern end. This must have been used to collect waste water, which flowed through an opening at the bottom of the wall against the corridor. The corridor would have served to channel water from the entire complex: the immersion and hip bathtubs as well as the basins. At the nor th-west corner, at the level of the hip bathtub, a ‘well’ (external diameter 86 cm, internal diameter 65 cm) adjoins the structure, cutting into its west wall.

Top: tholos with a basin to draw water in the foreground and a hip bathtub to the back.

Centre: hip bathtub with a bench. The hole in the top left corner would have held a water container.

Bottom: the immersion bathtub, its inner walls painted red.

EGYPTIAN ARCHAEOLOGY ISSUE NO 56 SPRING 2020

Wall decoration of the tholos and the adjacent room, showing red panels alternating with slim, slightly raised white pilasters.

Photo: G. Lecuyot

A decoration of very slightly protruding pseudo-pilasters enlivened some of the walls, in particular in the circular room (image above). Conclusions During the troubled phases of the Late Period, the strong mud-brick walls of temple enclosures seem to have offered refuge to the population. Urban complexes thus developed ar ound shr ines , the bes tdocumented example in Upper Egypt being the temple of Ramesses III at Medinet Habu, dating to the Third Intermediate Period. In the Delta, where competing dynasts fought for primacy and conquerors passed through, the temple of Wadjet in Buto saw the same development. At least from Graeco-Roman times, part of the temenos was occupied by civil structures. The newly discovered complex is reminiscent of the two small baths excavated by Gisèle Hadji-Minaglou at Tebtunis, both of which feature a round room, hip bathtub and immersion bathtub. The north bath at Tebtunis still shows traces of decoration in red and yellow. Hadji-Minaglou dated these two baths between the end of the 2nd century BCE and the beginning of the 1st century CE, and this date range might also apply to the bath described in this article. While small, it has a refined decoration scheme, with red as the dominant colour. Red is almost always found

in Greek baths as far away as, for example, the bathrooms of the houses of Ai-Khanoum in Central Asia. The bath of the temple of Buto illustrates in its own way Greek bathing practices with its hip bathtub used for personal toilet and an immersion bathtub for relaxation. It probably dates from the end of the Ptolemaic Period, or even the beginning of the Roman Period (c. 30 BCE), when these practices became very popular throughout Graeco-Roman society. Given its size and quality of decoration, it probably belonged to an elite private residence or perhaps a public building owned by an association, and as such was probably intended only for a limited number of users.

• Hossam Mohamed Ghonim is Director of the Tel el-Fara’in / Buto Inspectorate. Thanks are due to Guy Lecuyot (UMR 8546 CNRS-ENS) and Loïc Mazou (Université de Poitiers / HeRMA and UMR 7041 ArScAn) for their help with this article.

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Digging Diary 2019-20 Summaries of archaeological work undertaken in Egypt since autumn 2019. Sites are arranged geographically from north to south. 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 Sais (Sa el-Hagar): The main aim of Sais

Dime es-Seba Qarara Sharuna Zawyet Sultan Tell el-Amarna

Dendara Deir el-Ballas Thebes Luxor / Karnak Armant

Elephantine

the season (Sep 2019) was to investigate the relationship between the two ‘city’ phases of the site dating from the Late NK to TIP. The Durham Univ (EES) mission, led by Penny Wilson, had already discovered the crushed pottery remains of an early city, but now found a more extensive layer of smashed pottery vessels next to a silo within the main storage area of the lower city. We have also confirmed that the builders of the upper city left their own archaeological traces in the form of hearths and deposits of discarded pottery, as well as material such as a bead necklace that may have been rescued from the earlier levels. A number of complete but fragmentary amphorae were reconstructed with the help of our conservators from the MTA. Further survey work in the area at Sa el-Hagar also added to the magnetic prospection of the site as we work towards a systematic survey of the whole area in order to map sub-surface features from many different periods of the history of Sa el-Hagar. www.community.dur. ac.uk/penelope.wilson/sais.html

UPPER EGYPT Qarara: In Nov/Dec 2019, the mission of the Univ of Tübingen (Inst of Egyptology), Germany, under Béatrice Huber dug one test pit in the W part of the Coptic cemetery, as until now no archaeological excavation had taken place there. Underneath layers (150 cm) containing the remains of looting, especially textiles from burials, the sondage revealed several untouched inhumations of men, women and children. The funerary wrappings tied with criss-cross coloured tapes are similar to those found in other parts of the cemetery. It was not possible to unwrap the bodies due to the bad conservation of the textiles. The textiles scattered in the looting layers date to the inhumations of the 6th to 7th centuries CE. www.ianes.uni-tuebingen.de/forschung/ aegyptology/projekte/index/html El-Kom el-Ahmar / Sharuna: In May 2018, drainage works uncovered several decorated blocks from a temple built by Ptolemy I and II, similar to those found

DIGGING DIARY 2019-20

Zawyet Sultan: Bird’s eye view of the pyramid. Photo: Joint Mission MTA / Univ of Cologne / Pisa Univ

Sais (Sa el-Hagar): White amphora. Photo: Durham University (EES) Mission.

over years throughout the site (MDAIK 48, 1992, 11–35). In Nov/Dec 2019, a joint Egyptian-German mission directed by Luis Gonzálvez, Museu Egipci de Barcelona, worked in the area of the May 2018 discovery. Excavation was difficult due to groundwater and pumping was necessary throughout the season. A first trench of 12 x 15 m revealed the basement of a building with a regular basilica plan. The foundations of the building include many reused, partly decorated and inscribed limestone blocks from the destroyed and totally dismantled Ptolemaic temple. Various elements of the superstructure have been preserved, such as the pavement and fragments of columns. Most of the Ptolemaic blocks are elements of the roof and belong to a Hathor frieze or are cornice elements. www.ianes.unituebingen.de /forschung /aeg yptolog y/ projekte/index/html

Zawyet Sultan (Zawyet elMayyitin): In the first season of 2019

(Feb/Mar), the joint mission of MTA / Univ of Cologne / Pisa Univ under field directors Richard Bussmann and Gianluca Miniaci the survey and dating of surface material continued. The documentation of test trenches around the small pyramid was completed. It has been established that the E casing of the pyramid was directly set on the desert rock, which slopes steeply towards the river. A first photogrammetric model of the pyramid has been produced. Shafts of the

rock tomb cemetery, including of the upper terrace, which has disappeared, have been located in order to estimate the original size of the necropolis. Pottery from the shafts in the OK rock tomb of Khunes dates to the LP, Roman and LR Periods. The material either derives from intrusive tombs or has slipped in from destroyed, later tombs originally located higher above the desert slope. The pottery scattered around one of the shafts in the recently discovered early OK cemetery consists predominantly of beer jars typical of this period. A wooden staircase was built for visitors. During the second season (May/ Jun), several fixed points were set across the site, using GNSS. Digital contour models of the site and a photogrammetric model of the tomb of Khunes have been developed. www.aegyptologie.phil-fak.uni-koeln.de/ zawyet.html?&L=1

Tell el-Amarna: Excavation of the

Amarna Project under Barry Kemp and Anna Stevens resumed for one month at the Great Aten Temple. It covered further areas of the earlier ground level and their structures, a re-examination of the mud platforms and gypsum-lined basins of the SIP and the clearance of more of the foundation trench of the N wall of the stone temple. A group of burials within the trench date to the LR Period. The new stonework that defines the front of the temple was finished. Beyond the rear of the temple, part of what remains of the ‘slaughter-court’ was exposed. The lower part of a stone pillar embedded in the floor is probably the lower part of a tethering-stone. A team of specialists studied various categories of finds stored in the magazine, including material from the high-temperature workshop in house M50.14. Funding from an EES Fieldwork and Research Grant also supported a period of study of human remains, textiles, pottery and other artefacts from the Amarna cemeteries. www.amarnaproject.com

Dendara: The aim of the archaeological

mission of the IFAO at Dendara is to gain the widest possible knowledge of the different components of the environment

of a regional metropolis around its main sanctuary. Between Oct and Dec, the study of pharaonic monumental architecture under the direction of Pierre Zignani (CNRS, UMR 5060 LMC) continued the survey of the Roman mammisi. Part of the team also worked on the technology of the sandstone ashlar masonry. An excavation on the N side of the perimeter wall of the Hathor temple (which was abandoned while still under construction) made it possible to clarify part of the preparatory work on the blocks. In addition, as part of the project led by Sibylle Emerit on sound perception of space, an analysis of the acoustics of the Hathor temple was conducted in collaboration with Ircam (Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique / Musique) to determine the acoustic properties of such architecture. Inside the Hathor temenos, excavations conducted by Lilian Postel and Andrea Pillon in the W sector continued on the structure consisting of reused blocks of Thutmose III and in the area where a foundation would usually be expected (so far without archaeological evidence), associated with the chapel of Montuhotep II in the Cairo Museum (JdE 46068). We hop that this will improve our understanding of the chronological development of the area. A new investigation was launched under the supervision of Sylvain Dhennin on the animal catacombs, which were excavated in 1898 by Petrie. Filling gaps in Petrie’s documentation, initial work shows that older structures have been reused. At the same time, the remains of the camp established by Petrie for the exploration of the necropolis were also excavated. In the Dendara cemetery research led by Yann Tristant (Macquarie Univ) focused on the so-called ‘Abu Suten’ area, perhaps the oldest pharaonic mastaba of the site, in order to understand how this central area of the necropolis was structured, to substantiate the validity of excavations carried out previously by Petrie and Fisher, and to study tombs that have never been excavated before. www.ifao. egnet.net/recherche/archeologie/dendara/

Deir el-Ballas: The objectives of the mission of the Ancient Egyptian Heritage and Archaeology Fund under Peter Lacovara for the Dec/Jan season were the continuation of conservation work begun last season at the South Palace along with the houses the W of the North Palace and the North Palace itself. The houses in particular were threatened by the expansion of the modern cemetery, which had already destroyed a number entirely. We restored one domestic structure designated House D and began cleaning and planning Houses E and F. These buildings had been excavated by the original expedition under Reisner in 1900/01, but still had areas of intact original deposits. At the North Palace, we also began the reconstruction of the S part of the main enclosure wall

EGYPTIAN ARCHAEOLOGY ISSUE NO 56 SPRING 2020

of the palace in order to protect the area. We further began reconstruction of the SW corner of the casemate core of the North Palace, which is in danger from a neighbouring roadway. In addition, we had the area around the North Palace cleared of modern trash. Finally, we initiated the construction of a brick and concrete barrier wall to protect other parts of the site. www.ancientegyptarchaeologyfund.com

Luxor: This season (Dec/Jan), the CEFB

mission at the Temple of Millions of Years of Amenhotep II under Angelo Sesana continued the restoration and study of materials from prior seasons. Restoration focused on the second pylon and the walls of the S economic annexes, with some work at the Holy of Holies. Pylon and wall restoration was carried out in a reversible way, with modern mud bricks readily distinguishable from the ancient ones. At the Holy of Holies we positioned sandstone blocks to suggest its walls and the columns of the hypostyle hall and help visitors understand the site plan. Study activity focused on the decorated sandstone blocks recovered from the dismantled temple, the human and faunal remains. We are creating a database of the blocks, with the aim of establishing their original positions within the walls. Human remains from tomb D21 and pit A22 were

Deir el-Ballas. Photo: Ancient Egyptian Heritage and Archaeology Fund. Valley of the Kings: canopic jar.

Photo: Amenmeses Project.

Valley of the Kings: This season (Sep/

Nov), the Amenmeses Project KV10 / KV63 led by Salima Ikram completed the documentation of the tomb’s architecture and decoration, discovering the remains of several layers of tomb use. The team also completed the documentation of the KV63 pottery and worked on documenting small finds from both tombs. In addition, the team completed the conservation and restoration of the red granite sarcophagus and two of the canopic jars belonging to Takhat who reused the tomb in antiquity.

Luxor: detail of a sandstone relief from the decorated walls of the temple. Photo: CEFB.

reassembled where necessary, measured, photographed and studied to establish age, sex and pathologies, Study of faunal remains focused on the bones from the economic area with the aim of establishing the types of animals reared and used in the area. www. cefb.it

Thebes: The EES / Uppsala Univ Theban

Harbours and Waterscapes Survey led by Angus Graham had a study season (Nov) at Karnak. Aurélia Masson-Berghoff (BM) and Marie Millet (Louvre) studied c. 12,000 ceramic fragments from a number of boreholes made using a percussion corer and hand auger in and around the Karnak complex in 2018 and spring 2019. This has enabled the project to clarify further the geomorphological history of the complex of temples.

Thebes: Aurélia Masson-Berghoff (British Museum, left) and Marie Millet (Louvre) studying ceramics from Karnak boreholes. Each tray represents fragments ≥ 4mm from samples taken every 10 cm. Photo: THaWS.

Armant: The joint IFAO / CNRS-Univ Montpellier 3-LabEx Archimede mission directed by Christophe Thiers (CNRS UMR 5140-ASM) continued the archaeological survey in Armant (Nov). The area of the rear (N) wall of the temple was heavily used as a quarry during Roman-Byzantine time. This huge foundation was built with 11 courses of stones (approx. 5.25 m deep). Because of the very high level of the water table, the excavation was stopped when reaching the foundation sand layer. Lilian

Postel (Univ Lyon 2) continued the study of the MK blocks. Sébastien Biston-Moulin (CNRS UMR 5140) studied the NK blocks, focusing on a Thutmose III set of stones removed from the pronaos, one of them bearing the remains of a historical text with a scene of ‘smiting the enemy’. He also studied sets of talatats. About 200 blocks had previously been stored to the N of the site, probably following clearance in this area in the 1980s. 67 decorated sandstone and limestone blocks were documented. Most

DIGGING DIARY 2019-20

of them show a secondary decoration from the Ramesside period (Ramesses II) with sometimes Amarna decorations on other sides. The blocks were stored upon a new bench. Sylvie Marchand (IFAO) studied the OK (4th–6th Dyns) pottery from the site. She also highlighted the presence of a 13th Dyn occupation. A sounding was led by Yasmin Bourhim around the SW corner of the NK pylon. Mud-brick walls previously (some of them already seen by Mond and Myers) can be dated to the MK. A very narrow access to the foundation sand of the Pylon did not yield a deposit. Pierre Zignani (CNRS UMR 5060-IRAMAT) completed the plan of the foundation of the N part of the naos. Jules Jacquemet (MEAE-CFEETK) and Émilie Saubestre (CNRS, SR3172-CFEETK) made photographic and photogrammetric surveys of blocks and areas uncovered. Hassan elAmir (IFAO) continued the conservationrestoration programme, also leading a fieldschool for MTA conservators.

Elephantine: The work of the DAI

mission on the town and temples at Elephantine, directed by Martin Sählhof, could only begin at the end of Nov, due to delayed security permission. A small team was working for a short period of three weeks in autumn on two subjects: restoration of the Aswan Museum (begun

Work on the small finds of the Realities of Life Project will also continue. www.dainst. org/projekt/-/project-display/25953

OASES Dime es-Seba (Soknopaiou Nesos), Fayum: The 2019 excavation

(Oct/Dec) of the CSP under Paola Davoli and Mario Capasso was carried out in the temenos of Soknopaios, in an area N and W of the contra-temple ST 203 and in building ST6. The contra-temple was completely surrounded by paving in blocks of local limestone, which is fairly well preserved. On this floor, fragments of stone statues and capitals of columns have been recovered. The current floor and the revetment of the lower courses of the external walls of ST 203 were made during a restoration phase probably in the 2nd century CE. We began the investigation of another building located in the NW corner of the temenos, a short distance from the contra-temple, labelled ST6 and built in mud bricks against the temenos walls. Room A is exceptionally wide (12 x 5 m, 8 m height) and furnished with 15 large niches arranged symmetrically on the walls. Monuments and cult objects have been found: a dozen pine cones in excellent condition, decorative elements in limestone

Elephantine: east elevation of the Aswan-Museum after restoration of the wooden components. The colours correspond to the original design of the building according to the results of restoration analyses. Photo: M. Sählhof (copyright DAI Kairo).

in spring 2019) continued, while work on the Nubian pottery could also be carried on. Restoration works of the old museum building should be completed in spring 2020 with the repair of its elevations stone parts. At the same time, preparations will be started for the planning of new site management. For this purpose, a new asbuilt plan of the site of Elephantine will be produced, showing the current situation with all archaeological as well as modern structures, visitor paths, entrances and exits.

and stucco (perhaps originally placed inside the niches to create chapels for worship with small columns and capitals in Alexandrian style), incense burners in terracotta and stone, an altar decorated with four lions’ heads, painted wooden tablets, and Greek papyri. The room certainly had a ritual function but its structure differs from that of a temple. www.snproject.org

Dime es-Seba: Room ST6. Photo: Centro di Studi Papirologici (Univ of Salento, Lecce, Italy).

Abbreviations: Technical terms: PD Predynastic; 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; PP Ptolemaic Period; GR Graeco-Roman; ER Early Roman; LR Late Roman; ERT Electrical Resistance Tomography; FTIR Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy; GPR Ground Penetrating Radar; pXRF portable X-ray fluorescence. Institutes and Research Centres: AEHAF Ancient Egyptian Heritage and Archaeology Fund; AUC American University in Cairo; BM British Museum; CEAlex Centre d’Études Alexandrines; CEFB Centro di Egittologia Francesco Ballerini; CFEETK Franco-Egyptian Centre, Karnak; CNRS (USR) French National Research Centre (Research Groups); CSIC Spanish National Research Council; CSP Centro di Studi Papirologici (Univ of Salento, Lecce, Italy); DAI German Archaeological Institute, Cairo; IAJU Institute of Archaeology Jagiellonian University, Cracow; IFAO French Archaeological Institute, Cairo; MEAE Ministère de l’Europe et des Affaires Etrangères; MMA Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; MTA Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, Egypt; NCAM National Corporation for Antiquities and Museums of the Sudan OI Oriental Institute (University of Chicago); PCMA Polish Centre of Mediterranean Archaeology, Cairo; SwissInst Swiss Institute for Architectural Research and Archaeology, Cairo.

EGYPTIAN ARCHAEOLOGY ISSUE NO 56 SPRING 2020

Rescuing the Mamluk minbars of Cairo In 2018, the Egyptian Heritage Rescue Foundation (EHRF) launched a two-year project to document the minbars of the Mamluk period that can be found in many religious monuments in Egypt and museum collections worldwide. Omniya Abdel Barr describes the efforts to restore, conserve and protect these pulpits. A minbar (pl. manabir) is a stepped pulpit located at the central point of a mosque to the right of the mihrab, the prayer niche directing to Makkah. It provides a raised structure for preachers to be better seen and heard at a distance during their sermons (khutba) before Friday and Eid prayers. However, pulpits were present in Egypt long before Islam. One example survives in the Coptic Museum and shows a raised seat with six steps – or seven if we count the seat – and two columns on both sides. This white limestone pulpit was made in the 6th century CE for the Monastery of Jeremiah. James E. Quibell, who excavated the pulpit in Saqqara in 1908, and K. A. C. Creswell both suggested that it could have served as a prototype for the Islamic minbar. After the Prophet Muhammad built his mosque in Medina, he used to preach next to the trunk of a palm tree, which supported the roof. Later, he ordered a raised wooden seat with two steps to be made. It is believed that the carpenter who made this structure was Coptic or Byzantine, and so it is thinkable that the first minbar in Islam was influenced by the Egyptian pulpit. The Prophet used the minbar to deliver his sermons and to answer queries. During the first decades of the caliphate period, this minbar became a permanent reminder of the Prophet’s presence. It was the symbol of state power and religious authority. With the early Muslim conquests, more minbars were built in the new provinces and installed in every mosque. The design and form developed under

the Umayyad dynasty (661–750 CE), and more steps were added. The grand structure also served to designate a special area for sultans and caliphs to pray. Today, these minbars have impor tant spiritual and historic as well as artistic value. The Mamluk minbars Cairo was the capital of the Mamluk sultanate (1250–1517), a period representing the golden age of medieval Egyptian art and architecture. The countr y regained its position as an international economic centre and secured links between east and west. The Mamluks were important art patrons and generously financed their religious and funerary complexes. The minbars in these foundation were mainly made from imported and local wood, with finely carved panels and inlaid with ebony, ivory and mother of pearl. A few examples were made from polychrome marble and stone. The design of the Mamluk minbars shows advanced use of geometry in decoration and highlights its development in Egypt. The Mamluk minbars are appreciated for their fine craftsmanship. Almost every international collection on Islamic art acquired a piece: panels from the minbar of Sultan Lajin, made for the Mosque of Ibn Tulun in 1296, are today present in twelve museums and three private collections. An entire minbar made during the reign of Sultan Qaytbay (1468–1496) was purchased in 1867 by the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and has been on display ever since. It can be found in the Museum’s Jameel Gallery.

RESCUING THE MAMLUK MINBARS OF CAIRO

Minbar thefts, past and present

The uprising in January 2011 created a security void and attacks on heritage multiplied. Illicit digging took place on archaeological sites, museums and cultural institutions were damaged and historic buildings stripped of their precious architectural elements. While security improved again 2013, this did not put an end to the many acts of vandalism and looting that are still targeting Egypt’s heritage and cultural identity. Historic Cairo has been subject to neglect and vandalism before. Some significant thefts took place in 2007, 2008 and 2010. However, the number increased noticeably after 2011. Therefore, in 2012 we started documenting and identifying thefts from the monuments and historic buildings in the medieval centre (as registered on the World Heritage list in 1979). Most of these attacks were targeting minbars: a total of 13 were affected by partial or total losses. Usually, door leaves were first to disappear, whether from the entrance portal (bab al-muqadim) or the sides (bab alRawda). The minbar of the Mosque of Amir Qanibay al- R ammah (built 1503 – 0 4), overlooking the Citadel Square, disappeared entirely. It was obvious that the looters knew the value of what they were stealing and that were feeding a new demand emerging on the international art market.

Photos: EHRF

Left: detail from the minbar of al-Ghamri in the funerary khanqah of Sultan Barsbay. The doors were looted in 2007.

But already in the mid-19th century the Mamluk minbars became subject to looting. Old photographs of the Cairo mosques show these structures stripped of their carved and inlaid panels. In an 1882 article for The Academy, Amelia Edwards mentioned how precious architectural elements in historical buildings, such as wooden ceilings, ceramic tiles and

The minbar of the Mosque of Sultan alMu’ayyad Shaykh (built 1415–1421 CE).

carved woodwork were pulled out, replaced and sold to tourists and bric-à-brac dealers. Islamic art collectors started acquiring these pieces found on sale in Cairo, which is how many private and museum collections were formed. After the establishment of the Comité de conservation des monuments de l’art arabe in December 1881, historic buildings were EGYPTIAN ARCHAEOLOGY ISSUE NO 56 SPRING 2020

listed and systematically restored. The minbars were given great care and attention and only the best carpenters were hired to replace the missing parts. No further looting took place until recent decades. As the latest thefts caused concern, we started checking catalogues and sales records of auction houses, focusing on the three prominent London auction houses of Sotheby’s, Christie’s and Bonhams that have dedicated departments of Islamic art. After assessing sales from 2000 to 2017, we found that a total of 52 carved wooden panels, possibly dating to the Mamluk period, had been sold. A noticeable surge in the sales appeared in 2008, with 15 lots, and in 2011, with seven. In every year except for 2006 at least one lot containing Mamluk wooden panels was offered.

Right: the minbar of Sultan Lajin, restored by the Comité de conservation des monuments de l’art arabe in 1913. Underneath: its architectural documentation by the Rescuing the Mamluk Minbars Project.

Side flank of the minbar in the funerary complex of Sultan al-Ashraf Qaytbay, looted in 2013.

Photo: Richard Wilding

KEY PLAN

RESCUING THE MAMLUK MINBARS OF CAIRO

Photo: EHRF

Documentation and Conservation Project

Owner:

MINISTRY OF ANTIQUITIES

Funded by the :

CULTURAL PROTECTION FUND

Supervised by :

Historic Cairo Department Implemented by :

Egyptian Heritage Rescue Foundation ARCHITECTURAL DOCUMENTATION MINBAR OF LAJIN AT IBN TULUN MOSQUE (index no. 220) Reviewed by:

Drawn by: Maryam alTouny Ahmed Sayed Mostafa Sedky Noha Badr Nourhan Ahmed Walaa Hassan Hajar muhammad

Maryam Abd el-Aziz Hana el-Masry Mona el-Shahed

Dr. Omniya Abdel Barr Eng. Ibrahim Bahaa

DETAILED BLOW-UP FOR ELEVATION-RIGHT OF IMAM IT_220_ARCH_007 Scale : 1:5

Photo: Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities

Above: the minbar of Ganim al-Bahlawan after having been looted in 2008.

This demonstrates a steady demand for these artefacts on the art markets since 2000, their intricate design and exper t craftsmanship appearing to be key selling points. The most expensive panel was sold at Christie’s in April 2000 for £531,750. All lots were attributed to the Mamluk period and only four were linked to architectural elements other than minbars.

In some cases, catalogue descriptions attributed provenance to known private collections, suggesting that they were acquired before the 1970s and possibly as far back as the 19th century. However, most of the lots were not linked to a specific collection. As all three auction houses are reputable businesses known for their expertise and checks on their lots’ authenticity, the lack of provenance for these objects was worrying. It highlighted the vulnerability of Mamluk heritage at risk from looters and collectors’ demand. Since the pieces in question could not be linked to their original minbar, it was impossible to stop thefts or sales. This is how the idea of the ‘Rescuing the Mamluk Minbars Project’ developed. We immediately decided to start a full architectural survey and create photo documentation of the minbars still in place in Egypt.

Photos: EHRF

RESCUING THE MAMLUK MINBARS OF CAIRO

Mechanical and chemical cleaning under way of the minbar of Amir Abd al-Ghani alFakhri.

The project The project prepared a complete record of 42 minbars in Cairo, one in Fayyum and one in Qus. For each minbar surveyed, a full set of architectural drawings was created along with a detailed photographic catalogue. All minbars were Mamluk except for one: the minbar of the Mosque of al-‘Amri in Qus, the military and administrative centre of Upper Egypt in medieval times. Built in 1155–56, during the Fatimid period, it is the earliest surviving example from Islamic Egypt. It was included in our sur vey because of its historical importance and artistic value, representing a masterpiece of Islamic woodwork. Once the architectural drawings were complete, we undertook a condition survey of every minbar to assess its current state. Additionnal layers were applied to the minbar drawings to show dirt and dust, partial or total loss of elements, cracks and strcutural weaknesses, corrosion and discolourations as well as decay. This was essential to identify the necessary interventions for every minbar. In addition, a risk assessment was done, taking into consideration the minbar itself as well as its surroundings: the greatest risk after theft is fire, as nearly all these minbars are made of wood. Fire can be caused by bad wiring, as all minbars are connected to audio systems for the delivery of the khutba. Other electric installations on or near the minbars include fans and lighting units. In most cases, wiring runs directly on the body of the structure, usually set up by the mosque keepers, who are hired by the Ministry of Awqaf (religious endowments). Fire hazards are fur ther increased by the presence of rubbish and inadequate storage. Unfor tunately, many mosque keeper s lack awar eness and appreciation of the value of the minbars and they are not usually concerned about their protection. Other risks are neglect and structural problems, including earthquakes: if the structure of a mosque is not properly maintained, a collapsing roof can easily destroy the minbar beneath. Based on these studies, the project created a list of priorities. Mitigation actions were applied to 13 minbars, maintenance to 14. Four minbars were selected for full restoration, including the minbar of Ganim al-Bahlawan (built in 1478). It had been entirely looted on EGYPTIAN ARCHAEOLOGY ISSUE NO 56 SPRING 2020

public. In addition, a group of junior architects joined a three-day seminar to study Mamluk geometry and apply this knowledge in their projects. Finally, the Egyptian Heritage Rescue Foundation (EHRF ) par tnered with 13 designers and craftsmen working in different fields from khiyamiyya (quilting) to tile making, interior design, jewellery and fashion. Each participant created a contemporary design inspired by the geometry and ornamentation of the Mamluk minbars.

Photos: EHRF

Right: cement tiles with a geometrical design inspired by the Mamluk minbars.

28 May 2008. All its side panels had been removed as well as the entrance portal, leaving only the structure of both flanks, the staircase and the dome (image p. 28, bottom). Some of the stolen parts could be repatriated when, in 2014, Danish police intercepted a parcel destined for the USA that contained wooden pieces with inlaid panels taken from the Ganim al-Bahlawan minbar. Its restoration involved salvaging the structure still in situ and reuniting the repatriated pieces with it. However, the process made us aware of the tragic loss of know-how in traditional woodwork. Only a single master craftsman was available with the necessary skills to join the restoration team. The database created by project is, we believe, the first of its kind in Egypt. It is not exclusive to the minbars and can be developed to accommodate mater ial from other architectural elements, such as doors,

We hope that the legacy of the project will be to create sustained interest and appreciation both in Egypt and abroad. The EHRF will continue to care for the minbars alongside the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities. Our aim is to share the knowledge we have acquired through the project with wider circles of professionals as the best way to raise awareness and we hope that this can play a role in the protection of Egypt’s heritage.

Workshop with junior architects: drawing a sixteen-fold star.

epigraphic panels, window grilles, mosque lamps, and so forth. It pulls together all the material and information from the project’s different teams, making it now possible to create links between the data and to conduct more focussed research. This has allowed us to identify the origin of the panels found in an auction house in Paris in 2019, resulting in the cancellation of their sale. The project has trained early-career professionals, graduates in architecture, archaeology, conservation and art history. Many volunteers from Cairo and abroad have par ticipated and r eceived tr aining in documentation and conservation to develop their technical skills. The project has delivered series of workshops to children and the general

• Omniya Abdel Barr is a conservation architect working in Cairo and London. She is a project manager at the Egyptian Heritage Rescue Foundation and the Barakat Trust Fellow at the Victoria and Albert Museum working on the photographic archive of K. A. C. Creswell. The Rescuing the Mamluk Minbars Project was set up in partnership with the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities (Egypt) and is funded by the Cultural Protection Fund of the British Council in partnership with the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (UK).

Two Egyptian texts from Oxyrhynchus

Image: P. Oxy LXXXIV 5432 / EES

The EES’ Oxyrhynchus Papyri collection, housed at the Sackler Library in Oxford, comprises over 500,000 fragments of literary and documentary texts from the 3rd century BCE to the 7th century CE. Of this wealth of material, Amin Benaissa picks two texts that illustrate the cohabitation of Egyptian and Greek languages at the ‘City of the Sharp-Nosed Fish’.

Demotic contract of a house sale from 13/14 CE.

The EES’ large collection of papyri from Oxyrhynchus consists mostly of books and documents in Greek. But here and there we find traces of the Egyptian inheritance in language and script. Traditional hieroglyphs continued to adorn the city’s temples: in a Greek document of 107 CE, two pairs of brothers declare themselves to the authorities as ‘sacred inscribers’. Demotic remained alive and well, especially in priestly circles, until it was overtaken by Coptic in the 3rd century, a new script for new forms of the old language. Two new texts, published in the latest volume of The Oxyrhynchus Papyri, provide striking examples of the cohabitation of tongues. One, a Demotic house-sale dated

under Augustus, the first Roman ruler of Egypt, carries below it the receipt in Greek for the sales tax. The other, five centuries later, is a glossary to Homer’s Iliad, which contains in parallel columns a paraphrase of the archaic text in later Greek and a translation of that paraphrase into Coptic. Selling your house in Demotic, paying your taxes in Greek The Demotic contract dates from 13/14 CE, only a few decades after the Roman conquest of Egypt. It is the first such document to be published from Oxyrhynchus. In its format and formulary, it offers an interesting point of comparison with the more numerous Demotic EGYPTIAN ARCHAEOLOGY ISSUE NO 56 SPRING 2020

contracts recovered from the Fayum. As usual in this period, it was written with a reed pen rather than a brush in three or four very long lines, only a por tion of which survives. It records the sale of the fourth-part of a twostorey house by two brothers to another pair of individuals. The Greek receipt below the Demotic text, issued by a banker of the city, confirms the buyers’ payment of the prerequisite sales tax. We find here a pattern typical of late Ptolemaic practice: the private agreement could be written in Demotic and follow traditional legal forms if the parties involved so chose, but the world of fiscality and banking – of direct interest to the state – operated primarily in Greek. The ownership and sale of fractions of houses was commonplace in Roman Egypt and reflects the divisions resulting from partible inheritance. The house in question was situated near the temple of Sarapis, which formed the nucleus of the city. What is striking is that the names of the contracting parties are all Greek so far as they are preserved, a reminder that names by this period do not necessarily carry a strong connotation of ethnicity. In contrast, many of the neighbours of the property listed in the Demotic text bear the name Ḏd-wn (Greek Thonis), a local cult-title of Horus. Unfortunately, the occupations of the parties are not extant, and we cannot tell why they resorted to making an agreement in Demotic rather than in Greek. Reading Homer in Greek and Coptic The Greek-Coptic glossar y is another remarkable bilingual text dating from the 6th century CE. It is one of only a very few cases in which works of classical Greek literature are translated into Coptic. We have a leaf from a papyrus codex written in three columns: the first column gives the Homeric text, broken into single words or phrases on each line; the second provides a word-for-word prose paraphrase in koine Greek, the standard Greek dialect of the post-classical period; the third has the Coptic translation in the Sahidic dialect. Sometimes the writer does not seem to have had enough space at the end of the page to fit the Coptic translation in one line; in such cases, he was forced to make additions above the line. The preserved leaf covers lines 70-82 of the second book of Homer’s Iliad. In this passage, Agamemnon tells the Achaean leaders about the dream he had just received from Zeus,

which deceptively promised that he would capture Troy on that very day. He paradoxically proposes to test the troops by urging them to flee back to Greece. The Iliad was the focal point of Hellenic culture in Egypt, as in the rest of the Graeco-Roman world. The first two books of the Iliad, in particular, were the most commonly read and studied at school: scores of papyri of these books and of associated texts have survived. Glossaries, paraphrases, commentaries, and summaries were necessary aids for the comprehension of the archaic dialect of Homer, and these have also been preserved in large quantities. One can only speculate about the possible author and user of such a text. The similarities between the scripts used for the Greek and the Coptic suggest a single hand at work. It belonged evidently to a bilingual individual who seems to have understood the Homeric text fully. The translation is correct and idiomatic, but the requirement to follow the word order of the Greek imposed by the columnar format occasionally results in some awkwardness in

TWO EGYPTIAN TEXTS FROM OXYRHYNCHUS

Images: P. Oxy LXXXIV 5414 / EES

Fragment of a GreekCoptic glossary of Homer’s Iliad, 6th century CE. Opposite page: recto, this page: verso.

the Coptic syntax. Thus the Coptic version could not be used as a standalone translation without the Greek text. In view of the codex’s contents and format, the editor, Daniela Colomo, argues that its author was likely a teacher: he presumably used the Coptic glosses to facilitate the explication of the Homeric text to his pupils. A parallel is provided by the 6th-centur y notar y, teacher, and poet Dioscorus of Aphrodito, who is known from an extensive archive of papyri. Dioscorus was bilingual in Greek and Coptic, possessed a copy of the Iliad and a Greek glossary of the poem, compiled a general Greek-Coptic glossary of both everyday and literary words, and himself composed poetry in Homeric diction. It is clear that even in the Christian context of Late Antique Egypt, Homer continued to hold cultural sway alongside the Bible well into the 6th century. We hope to continue to publish similar texts in future volumes. The next instalment will contain a Coptic spell for the protection of a house and a painting of the infant sun-god

rising from the waters of chaos on the first day of creation. In a later volume, we will edit a Greek-Demotic contract about a slave dating from the reign of Hadrian (c. 134/35 CE), which would make it one of the latest known contracts in Demotic. Such texts will help recover the Egyptian heritage of a city better known as a storehouse of Hellenic culture.

• Amin Benaissa is Associate Professor at the

Faculty of Classics, University of Oxford, and a Fellow of Lady Margaret Hall. He has been a General Editor of The Oxyrhynchus Papyri since 2016. The Oxyrhynchus Papyri Project is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, with additional suppor t from the British Academy. The tex ts discussed here were published as respectively A. Benaissa and A. Winkler, ‘5432. Demotic sale of part of a house with Greek tax receipt’, and D. Colomo, ‘5414. Iliad 2.70 -82 with paraphrase and Coptic translation’, in A. Benaissa (ed.), The Oxyrhynchus Papyri LXXXIV (London 2019) EGYPTIAN ARCHAEOLOGY ISSUE NO 56 SPRING 2020

The courtyard of Karnak temple where the cachette was discovered in 1903.

Photo: Jennifer E. Turner

‘Exalt my name’: self-representation on elite statues With the support of the EES Patrons’ Award, Jennifer E. Turner spent a research month in Cairo in 2019. Her work focuses on more than 200 surviving examples of elite statuary found within the Karnak cachette, now held in the Cairo Museum, dating from the late New Kingdom (1190–c. 1077 BCE) to the early Late Period (c. 722–525 BCE). The content as well as the placement of statue inscriptions, she argues, represent conscious and meaningful elements of the statues’ creation process. Letting the statue speak Non-royal statue biographies can reveal much about the statue owner’s life and genealogy, their conception of the afterlife, and also highlight their connections to the king through an emphasis on their off icial roles and responsibilities. From the New Kingdom onwards (16th century BCE), statue biographies begin to increase in length and diversify in content, merging literary themes, which are typically found in other contexts, and playing with ideas of sensory experience and vivid evocations of the statue body as intrinsically connected to the deceased statue owner. Over 1,000 surviving statues were found ritually deposited within the so-called cachette cour t at Karnak, a discovery made by the

French Egyptologist Georges Legrain in 1903 within the north-west area of the courtyard (image above). The deposit itself is believed to date to the Ptolemaic Period (332–30 BCE), and as a result the original archaeological contex t of the objects from their initial establishment in the temple is lost. However, the cachette provides a ‘time capsule’ of monuments over crucial phases of Egyptian history, and thus my research also considers what influences within wider society might have impacted upon the statue subject’s (or dedicator’s) desire to include less traditional material within their accompanying inscription. The placement of text across the surface of the statue body – and thus the physical representation of the subject himself – acts as

‘EXALT MY NAME’: SELF-REPRESENTATION ON ELITE STATUES

a platform for their ‘voice’ to be recorded and displayed. Various statues, I argue, ‘speak’ to both living and divine audiences, and deliberately use opposing areas of the statue surface to produce a contrast of who is speaking and what is being said. Other examples blend their voice across the entire surface, creating a suggestion of their presence through evocative descriptions of their experience of the sacred temple space. Just as elite statues established in funerary settings hoped to ensure that sustenance would be provided for the deceased through the traditional offering formulae, those fortunate enough to have their image displayed within the Karnak complex also hoped for this same guarantee. Such inscriptions, as well as the innovative texts I came across during my research, raise interesting questions about how the ancient audience engaged with these monuments. However, difficulties such as low literacy levels, uncertain accessibility within the temple, and potentially limited visibility of the monuments must also be considered. Further questions to be considered concern authorship and the production process for non-royal statuary: who was responsible for the content of the text, what gods or living humans would be addressed, and where would the text be placed? How much influence did the statue owner and his family have, and did artists and scribes act as key decision-makers in creating and inscribing each monument? Through careful consideration of these ideas and a detailed exploration of elite biographies from Karnak, I hope to contribute to the wider understanding of the sacred spaces in Thebes during this changeable phase of Egyptian history. The voice of Hor at the Egyptian Museum Today, Egyptian elite statues are spread out in museums across the globe, though the majority from Karnak are still held in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. While resources such as the IFAO’s Karnak Cachette Database and museum collection catalogues are crucial for accessing images of these statues, for the purposes of this research it was essential to see these objects and thus to be able to examine their inscriptions in more detail. Funding through the EES Patrons’ Award allowed vital work to be carried out in the Cairo Museum, including comparing the rendering of the hieroglyphs on the monument

to exis ting tr anscr iptions from major publications, clarifying damaged or lost areas of statue text, looking for visual markers across the statue surface that may signal the beginning of the inscriptions, and considering interactions of the ancient audience. Being able to explore the relationship between text, image, and the ancient viewer was a valuable experience and learning opportunity that photographs and illustrations of the objects can only par tly facilitate. Another advantage of on-the-ground research is the ability to compare statues from Karnak with other contemporary examples from northern sites, such as Memphis, while also having the chance to see famous objects from the Third Intermediate Period and Late Period era, ranging from elite tomb goods to monumental royal stelae of the foreign kings who occupied Egypt. A particular focus was the many elite statues of impor tant of f icials from the Third Intermediate Period, as they often seemed much larger in real life than in the initial impressions gained from existing images. An example is the granite block statue of Hor, an official of the Twenty-third Dynasty (837–728 BCE) (image below), a dominating presence reinforced by the extra height of its modern base that places his statue at almost 1.5 m tall. Hor’s ‘voice’ across the statue surface includes a direct address to his living audience placed along the upper edge of the block form, stating that the king himself authorised the statue’s establishment within Karnak temple. Hor’s Block statue of Hor (CG 42226) on display in the Cairo Museum.

Photo: Jennifer E. Turner

EGYPTIAN ARCHAEOLOGY ISSUE NO 56 SPRING 2020

voice is also presented across the back-pillar, which is sadly not visible in its current display within the museum. However, in both areas of the statue surface his inscriptions emphasise his prowess in speech. This skill of the statue subject is mirrored by the requests on the left and right side of the statue for ‘words to be spoken’, suggesting an intended interaction with the living audience. These are further complemented by the visual blending of text and image, as each side of the statue is framed by images of the gods (with the male deities Thoth and Osiris depicted on the left side, the female deities Isis and Nephthys on right). Another surviving block statue of this official displayed within the same area of the Museum (images below) offers a contrast in ancient aesthetics, as this representation of Hor was

and seeing the god and his ‘sleeping limbs’ being awoken by the god’s myrrh fragrance. In contrast, on the left side of his statue Hor directly addresses the priests of Amun and reinforces his skill in speech in a manner similar to his larger surviving statue. Here, he also requests the active voices of his audience through performance: ‘Show my statue honour, exalt my name in hymns!’ In both statue biographies, Hor’s voice is used to reinforce his accomplishments and demonstrate a relationship with the king, but in this latter example a textual contrast is created by addressing the living and the divine respectively on juxtaposing areas of the statue. In both cases, the voice of the statue’s subject requests the voices of others, and thus the power of speech that is evoked transcends Hor’s own

made from calcite and stands at a much smaller 60 cm in height. Though this smaller statue of Hor requires more physical effort of the viewer to read the full inscription, it is also more accessible in its current display. This was a particularly important example to examine, as the inscription is not readily legible, requiring actual face-to-face scrutiny in person. Hor’s biogr aphy on this s tatue was particularly interesting, as there is a deliberate use of the opposing sides of its surface to address two distinct audiences. The right side features Hor ‘speaking’ to Amun, describing his transition to the next life, as well as hearing

and relates more widely to the anticipated performance of others within the wider temple setting. With such evocative and striking inscriptions, it is also interesting to note that the block pose is often interpreted as a display of reverence by the statue subject, as it passively engages with the activities taking place in the temple.

Block Statue of Hor, Cairo Museum (CG 42227), full image and close-up.

Opposite page left: display case of statues and stelae from the Late Period gallery, Cairo Museum. Opposite page right: group statue from the Late Period / Ptolemaic Period (JE 36576), Cairo Museum.

Statues in their ritual context This research further aims to demonstrate that such interconnections across the statue surface may have been composed with the ‘ritual orientation’ of the Karnak complex and

‘EXALT MY NAME’: SELF-REPRESENTATION ON ELITE STATUES

the wider sacred Theban landscape in mind. Creating symbolic or ritual orientations, often used when ‘true’ orientation to cardinal points is not possible, is a practice recognised in tomb decoration within the Theban necropolis (the Nineteenth Dynasty tomb of Samut for instance, uses the opposing east and west wall of his chamber to detail his journey to the afterlife and his presence before numerous gods). Orientation was also certainly recognised within the temple space, and the pairing of inscriptions and reliefs was also understood in both contexts. For statues such as Hor’s, which utilise their surface to present two contrasting yet connec ted tex ts, per haps we can understand these as symbolically mirroring east (his left side, addressing the living) and west (his right side, describing his moving into

growing power of the Theban priesthood also resulted in the decline of royal control. Building activity in Karnak also slowed under the early foreign kings of the Third Intermediate Period, yet practices of dedicating elite statuary within the space not only continued but also seemed to accelerate during the Twenty-fifth and Twenty-sixth Dynasties (c. 740–520 BCE). The statue’s original intended location within Karnak temple was not only physically more secure than the Theban necropolis, it also came with the assurance of continued offerings and participation within the temple rituals. Hypotheses regarding the original contexts for elite statuary often suggest the outer courtyards, gateways and entrances of Karnak as the most likely settings, and though it is impossible to ascertain how truly ‘public’ such

Photos: Jennifer E. Turner

the realm of the dead), respectively. Amidst the changing nature of various cultural practices in this period, perhaps we can also imagine that owning a statue may have taken on added significance with regards to the statue owner’s afterlife – this par ticularly in light of the instability within the area of the Theban necropolis suffering frequent tomb robberies, foreign raids and the appropriation of earlier funerar y equipment. By the end of the Twentieth Dynasty (c. 1100 BCE), the formerly unified country had already begun to fragment, with a geographical split created by the shift of the royal power base to Tanis, while the

spaces were, it is likely that for some high-status members of society there was some level of access. Being able to engage with such objects in person during my research also allowed for a deeper consideration of the ancient audiences’ potential interactions with these texts. When visiting Karnak temple today, it is important to visualise a constantly evolving complex in which an array of commemorative monuments of varying statue types, sizes, materials and contexts were all contending for the attention of their desired audiences. Some ideas of such access and visibility also pertain to their modern presentation; large display cases stacked with EGYPTIAN ARCHAEOLOGY ISSUE NO 56 SPRING 2020

Block statue of Djedbastetiwefankh (CG 42251), Cairo Museum, and close-up of detail.

During my research trip, I was able to examine over 50 statues on display in the Cairo Museum, just days ahead of objects from the Late Period gallery being prepared for the move to the Grand Egyptian Museum. The diversity and innovation in statue biography during this period is, I believe, a reflection and product of the broader cultural changes and foreign interaction taking place during this era. Correlations between the physical body of the statue, the placement of the statue’s ‘voice’ and the inscribed descriptions of the senses and experience of temple space will need to be explored further while considering the importance of text placement. The opportunity to view other examples beyond the original dataset, and the contrast of modern museum display versus the uncertain ancient contexts also provoked fur ther thoughts about accessibility and visibility. Ultimately, research so far has strengthened my perception of these commemorative monuments as a stage for the voice of the deceased to endure and resound in the temple – and the museum!

• Jennifer E. Turner is a PhD student in Egyptology at the University of Birmingham and Collections Assistant for the Eton Myers collection of ancient Egyptian artefacts currently on loan to the University of Birmingham from Eton College. She is also currently the Local Ambassador for the EES in the West Midlands area. Sincere thanks are due to the EES and their Patrons for funding this research, and also to the staff of the Egyptian Museum for their assistance during the research trip.

Photos: Jennifer E. Turner

objects (image above left) automatically restrict the modern viewer’s access and ability to see the entire object, while freestanding examples may still be placed against walls or other surfaces that limits the amount of text which is visible to the museum visitor. The physical conditions of objects exposed to the elements and the impact of sunlight on visibility were also notable in the museum contex t – throughout the course of the day, the inscriptions across the statue of a seated group (image previous page, right) would have simultaneously optimally clear incised text and conversely deep shadows across other areas of the surface, obscuring the inscription. This would surely also have been a factor within certain areas of the Karnak temple complex that would have presented further challenges for the ancient viewer. The Twenty-second Dynasty limestone block statue of Djedbastetiwefankh (image below left) is decontextualised from the chronological displays of other galleries, located in the atrium amongst a wide range of Egyptian monuments, including colossal royal images. This statue was also enhanced by a tall modern base, which means the statue subject gazes above the viewer’s eye level. While it was difficult to view the back-pillar text, interesting relief figures were visible (image below right) with their own inscriptions separate from the rest of the statue surface, which is dominated by relief scenes.

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EGYPTIAN ARCHAEOLOGY ISSUE NO 54 SPRING 2019

Travelling in space and time: Naqada in the archive

Above: sketch map of the site of Naqada with indication of some key localities also found in the IUO digitised photographic collection. Burial areas are stippled. Above right: location of Naqada.

Cairo

Naqada

Aswan

Between 1977 and 1986, the Italian Archaeological Mission to Upper Egypt of the then ‘Istituto Universitario Orientale’ of Naples (IUO), directed by Claudio Barocas, Rodolfo Fattovich and Maurizio Tosi, conducted fieldwork at Naqada. As part of a project to finally prepare its results for publication, a relevant set of archival photographs have recently undergone in-depth analysis. They were also fully digitised and a selection of them made available through the digital repository

of the Archaeology Data Ser vice (ADS, University of York). Most of these images pertain to Naqada (see maps above), one of the key sites of Egypt’s Predynastic period, long known for the discoveries that Flinders Petrie made there at the end of the 19th century and, more recently, the focus of a heritage management project led by the late Geoffrey J. Tassie and supported by the EES (see Egyptian Archaeology 54). However, to the author’s knowledge there exists virtually

Map: Eric Gaba (WikiCommons: Sting) and WikiCommons: NordNordWest; with added features

Map: Adapted from W. M. F. Petrie and J. Quibell, Naqada and Ballas, London, 1896, pl. IA

Grazia A. Di Pietro reports on recent archival research on records produced by fieldwork in the region of Naqada in the 1970–80s. She outlines the resulting digital resource, made available through the repository ‘Archaeology Data Service’, along with its relevance for conducting further research, heritage management, and preserving the memory of the local landscape.

TRAVELLING IN SPACE AND TIME: NAQADA IN THE ARCHIVE

no or only very limited site photography of this earliest phase of exploration at the site and the most recent fieldwork has revealed significant changes due to urban and agricultural development when compared to previous archaeological investigations more than 30 years ago. Besides bearing witness to aspects of the history and archaeology of Naqada and of other sites in the region that are barely reflected in other sources, the photographic collection of the IUO Mission then represents an invaluable record that allows us to make a journey in time, to the 1980s and before, and to places that do not exist anymore as por trayed. The viewer is guided by the accompanying descriptions, which are informed by recent research into other unpublished archival material, such as field notes, sketch maps and published reports.

remains that these investigations have brought to light and the local geomorphology. More specifically, the prominent areas of the low desert overlooking cultivated fields, a typical Predynastic settlement location (c. 4th millennium BCE), are clearly portrayed by some of these photos. Other images allow us to get a better sense of the extension of other Predynastic remains for which Naqada is renowned, in particular its cemeteries: some archival pictures show large numbers of empty pits – excavated or plundered graves in the ‘Main Cemetery’ explored by Petrie, an area that today is almost completely covered by cultivated fields. More detailed depictions of a number of later monuments investigated by Petrie at the same site – such as the small stone pyramid dated to the Old Kingdom and the New Kingdom

Panorama of the site of Naqada, viewed from the north-west (1978 season). The pyramid of Nubt is visible on the edge of the desert terrace, on the left.

Photographs: University of Naples ‘L’Orientale’

Northern sector of the terrace of Zawaydah at Naqada, viewed from the north-east. Reed fences are visible to the south of each the two modern buildings. They were set up around two trenches excavated by the IUO Mission since 1979. The area between the buildings is approximately where Petrie's South Town originally stood.

Among the photographs now included in the ADS repository, there are some panoramas, created by meticulously matching, scanning and merging a series of photos, enabling us to visualise and reconnect to local (and wider) landscape sites that were thus far available only as traditional maps or in isolation (image above top). These panoramas give us a better grasp both of the fieldwork locations of the IUO Mission but also of previous fieldwork sites (image above). The same can be said about the relationship between the archaeological

rock-cut tombs (see images next page) – and subsequently surveyed by the IUO Mission and other research teams are also part of the digitised collection. These archival documents can facilitate a diachronic analysis of the conditions of the surviving sites and monuments, help in the assessment of the causes of their alteration and thus potentially contribute to the heritage management programme that has been initiated in the region. As a historical document, this photographic archive represents an irreplaceable record of EGYPTIAN ARCHAEOLOGY ISSUE NO 56 SPRING 2020

1: doorway of one of the New Kingdom rock-cut tombs located to the west of Nubt. The image was taken between 1977 and 1984.

2: part of a trench excavated at Zawaydah (Naqada) by the IUO Mission. Rows of aligned postholes are visible. View from the east/north-east (1982 autumn season). 3: pyramid of Nubt: details of its interior, seen from the west. Image taken between 1977 and 1984.

In general, the dissemination of these digitised photos aims to complement reports already published as well as forthcoming publications on the results of the investigations by the IUO Mission at Naqada. Ideally, it will also allow anyone interested in the history of archaeological research in the region to follow the main aspects of this field project as a privileged spectator. As a complement to plans and descriptive accounts in the relevant reports, the digitised photographic collection also provides more detailed depictions of some of the features – e.g. postholes excavated by the Italian team in the area of the Predynastic settlement, which once supported wooden 2

4: pottery recovered presumably in the surroundings of the New Kingdom rockcut tombs to the west of Nubt. Image taken between 1977 and 1984. 5: production of alabaster vessels at a factory in Gurna (Luxor), visited by the IUO Mission in 1979. 6: remains of the monumental ‘Tomb of Menes’ or ‘Royal Tomb’, located to the west of the modern centre of Naqada. Image taken between 1977 and 1984.

the field activities of the Italian Expedition in Upper Egypt, integrating other sources of information on the history of this mission. Most of the photos document in detail the main s tages of these explor ations: (i) excavation on a gravel terrace at the edge of the low desert, named ‘Zawaydah’, whose nor ther n por tion cor responds to the settlement known as Petrie’s ‘South Town’; (ii) surveys at the site of Naqada; and (iii) sur veys in the wider region of Naqada, approximately from Dendera to Qamûla. The monumental tomb known as ‘Tomb of Menes’ or ‘Royal Tomb’ (1st Dynasty), located to the west of the modern centre of Naqada, was amongst the sites visited in the region (image opposite page). Today, this, too, is covered by cultivated fields.

posts and other light-weight architectural structures (image above, top) – and a number of unpublished ar tefacts, including surface material photographed during the surveys and left on the ground. Amongst the latter, we find some ceramic fragments recovered in the surroundings of the New Kingdom rock-cut

TRAVELLING IN SPACE AND TIME: NAQADA IN THE ARCHIVE

tombs located to the west of Nubt (images opposite page, top and bottom). These photographic records can potentially help in the reconstruction of pharaonic and postpharaonic activity in this area, especially when combined with data on the remains identified by more recent fieldwork. Some images (right) depict scenes of daily life and activities of the communities that lived at or near the main archaeological sites of the Naqada area in the 1970s / early 1980s or at other places in Upper Egypt that were visited by the Italian team for research purposes: at a factory in Gurna (Luxor) the various stages of the production of alabaster vessels were

All photographs: University of Naples ‘L’Orientale’

recorded. These images open a window onto local life as it was more than 30 years ago, potentially a useful source of information for ethnographic studies. Overall, the photographic archive preserves a key record of the site and landscape of Naqada and other sites in the wider region in a form now vanished. It also records the various traces left by human activity from remote prehistory up to modern times. In combination with the results of the recent EES-supported Naqada Regional Archaeological Survey and Site Management Project (see EA 54) this material also witnesses the scale and pace of the local urban and agriculture expansion, and highlights the urgent need to protect the important cultural heritage that still survives.

• Grazia A. Di Pietro led and coordinated the ‘Naqada Publication

Project’, of which the work done on the IUO photographs was part, in 2016-18. She is currently collaborating with the Hierakonpolis Expedition (Ashmolean Museum, Oxford). The project was hosted by the Oriental Museum ‘Umberto Scerrato’, University of Naples ‘L’Orientale’ (UNO), Italy, and made possible through a generous grant from The Shelby White and Leon Levy Program for Archaeological Publications (Harvard University, The Semitic Museum). Her gratitude goes to the team members of the 1977-86 IUO Italian Archaeological Mission to Upper Egypt, whose records and data she had the privilege to use. Special thanks are due to Andrea Manzo (Professor, UNO) for supporting and facilitating access to this archaeological archive in the last few years. Thanks are also due to Elena D’Itria (post-doctoral fellow, UNO) for scanning the IUO photographic collection, image processing and refinement, and assistance with inventorying of the material. The website of the digital collection (https://doi. org/10.5284/1056618) was developed with support from the Open Access Archaeology Fund (University of York), which is also deeply appreciated. EGYPTIAN ARCHAEOLOGY ISSUE NO 56 SPRING 2020

Books

Sarah Parcak, Archaeology from Space: How the Future Shapes Our Past. Henry Holt & Co., 2019. ISBN: 978-1-250-19828-0. Price: £20 (hardcover)

Daniele Salvoldi (transl. and ed.), From Siena to Nubia: Alessandro Ricci in Egypt and Sudan, 1817–22. AUC Press, 2018. ISBN: 978-9-774-16854-3. Price: £50 (hardcover)

Jason Thompson, Wonderful Things: A History of Egyptology (3). From 1914 to the Twenty-first Century. AUC Press, 2018. ISBN 978-9-774-16760-7. Price: £35 (hardcover)

Sarah Parcak’s new popular archaeology book is a semi-autobiographical account of her research to date. Egyptian history, archaeology, personal reminiscence and imaginative reconstruction are interspersed to explore the significance of archaeology in the modern world and what it might offer us in the future. Parcak introduces us to ‘space archaeology’, sketches out its history, describes its global application, explores its potential and risks, describes the challenges to overcome, and argues that space archaeology provides an important perspective and powerful evidence for addressing modern challenges. This book is ideal for those who want to know whether there is anything left to find, what archaeological work involves and what it contributes to modern society. There are accessible introductions to periods and processes for the beginner, while the enthusiast will discover an insider’s perspective. Archaeological students should note Parcak’s honest discussion of the joys and difficulties of archaeological research, while remote sensing specialists will find a valuable precis of her recent research. The personal tone may not appeal to all, but it succeeds in transmitting Parcak’s sense of wonder at the past. Perhaps more importantly, in an age obsessed with profit and ‘impact’, this is one of relatively few popular and accessible books to robustly defend the huge social and cultural value of archaeological research.

Alessandro Ricci was both a medical doctor and a skilled artist, and in both roles an important figure of proto-Egyptology. His manuscript autobiography had been lost, found and lost again when Daniele Salvoldi came across a typescript copy, made in the 1930s, in the Egyptian National Archives in 2009; its English translation forms the core of this volume. Ricci’s narrative, covering the period between 1817 and 1822, is fascinating and well-translated. Indeed, it mostly does not read like a translation at all – high praise for such a piece of work. However, the book is much more than this, as Salvoldi prefaces Ricci’s narrative with a comprehensive account of what is known of his life and career. In the process, he demonstrates how Ricci is on occasion economical with the truth. In particular, Ricci implies that he undertook the copying of the decoration of the tomb of Sethy I on his own account, only subsequently selling his drawings and watercolours to Giovanni Belzoni. Yet it is clear that he had been employed by Belzoni from the outset. Nevertheless, Ricci’s copies are of exceptional quality and accuracy for their time, and attest to why Ricci was so often engaged as an artist by his contemporaries. As well as presenting his own and Ricci’s text, Salvoldi has been able to draw together every image originally intended by Ricci to accompany his writings. These are all extensively annotated and supplemented by modern maps, showing the places visited by Ricci. The ‘package’ provided by this volume is a model for publishing ‘period’ manuscripts of this kind, both in content and immaculate presentation. It represents a major contribution to the study of early Egyptology and the history of early 19th century Egypt, and can be wholeheartedly recommended.

Reviewing volume 2 of Wonderful Things in EA 47 (autumn 2015), I anticipated its sequel as ‘the most challenging of tasks’. Volume 3 sees Thompson successfully negotiating the world of living memory, leaving sufficient of the immediate present for the pen of a future generation. Drawing on Thomas Schneider’s seminal work in German, Thompson devotes a useful chapter to Nazi Egyptology. It is neatly structured around Georg Steindorff’s remarkable ‘list’ – compiled just one month after the conflict ended – of German Egyptologists active in the Nazi Party. Thompson correctly draws a distinction between the level of involvement of an older and younger wartime generation. I well recall my husband’s marked avoidance of Erich Lüddeckens at the Fourth International Congress of Egyptologists, held in Munich in 1985. Two decades later, he remained civil when Hans Goedicke recalled his digging of trenches in the occupied Netherlands. Conscripted membership of the Hitler Youth was pardonable. A later chapter on women in Egyptology includes the refreshing appearance of the frequently side-lined Elizabeth Thomas. Within her story, Thompson mentions Natacha Rambova, a ‘fascinating minor character’ and the subject of my own research. He erroneously refers to her as Rudolph Valentino’s ‘jilted wife’. Rather, it was Natacha who left her husband in order to pursue her own successful stage career. This remarkable three-volume tour de force fittingly ends on Egyptology in Egypt: new museums and the long anticipated opening of the Grand Egyptian Museum. Thompson rightly notes GEM as its ‘happy acronym’. This volume is likewise a gem.

AIDAN DODSON

ROSALIND JANSSEN

HANNAH PETHEN

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Egyptian Archaeology 56

Articles inside

The North Cliffs Cemetery at Amarna

Rescuing the Mamluk minbars of Cairo