2021 Lecture Summaries

Hussein’s detailed and well-illustrated talk began with comments on the Third Intermediate Period, when a strong New Kingdom element was retained in the sculpture, and this archaism continued into the Late Period. Statues of Dynasties 25 and 26 are closely related. Those of the 25^th Dynasty Kushite rulers show youthful, muscular torsos that reflect some Old Kingdom sculpture. Heads were rounder and fuller in the face than was usual, with a double uraeus but never the blue crown. Those of the Saite rulers of Dynasty 26 did display the blue crown but not the distinctive Kushite features such as the double uraeus. The statuary included sphinxes, and seated and standing figures. A number of sculpted royal heads have survived that show a long and rather full face; almond-shaped, slanted eyes; and a slightly smiling mouth. Female statues of the 25^th Dynasty imitate figures of the Middle Kingdom, with long, narrow waists, broader hips, traditional tight dresses and long wigs. Like the kings, they wore the double uraeus with a vulture head in between.

Hussein then turned to private sculpture, much of it coming from the Karnak Cachette and other Theban temples. Here the tendency to archaism increased, and a single statue might combine a pose, costume and hairstyle from three different periods. The greatest innovation was that the faces, and bodies, of male statues could sometimes show signs of ageing. An example of a statue of a man called Montouemhet from the Cairo Museum (CG42236) shows him wearing a New Kingdom style wig, but he has an Old Kingdom style youthful body and pleated kilt. In a seated statue in the Berlin Museum, he is shown wearing a long cloak. The seated pose derives from a style that originated in the Middle Kingdom. A further statue in the British Museum (EA 1643) shows Montouemhet in a kneeling pose holding a stela. This pose was used only for servants prior to the New Kingdom. From the Third Intermediate Period the kneeling pose and the block statue became more popular forms. A kneeling statue of Nespakasshuty in the British Museum (EA1137) shows him holding a pillar topped with the head of Hathor and a temple facade structure.

The scribal pose, which originated in the Old Kingdom, also became popular in the Late Period but unlike earlier examples that were hidden in tombs, they carried the name on the edge of the kilt, ensuring visibility. A variation was the seated statue with one knee raised, also having its origins in the Old Kingdom. There are also small scale group statues from the 25^th and 26^th Dynasties. The private sculptures of the Saite Period display expressions of loyalty to the monarchy, with a royal name inscribed on the shoulders, and Libyan features that may reflect the ethnicity of their owners. Another feature is the depiction of the owner underneath the chin of Hathor, something previously only used to depict the king.

Turning to Dynasty 27, statues of Darius show him in Persian style garments that continued to be represented in the Ptolemaic period. Private sculpture also reflects Persian influences in dress and jewellery. No sculptures can be attributed to the 28^th or 29^th Dynasty kings, and private statues are very rare. Dynasty 30 royal statuary draws on that of Dynasty 26 and provides a model for those of the Ptolemaic Period. Torsos show a clear differentiation between breast, ribcage and stomach, and sphinxes are large and more stylised than human statues. Private sculpture of this period shows signs of ageing, with wrinkles or drooping eyelids, and the innovation of curls on the head being left unpolished to make them appear lighter. Hussein ended with a final Dynasty 30 innovation- the healing statue or guerisseur, that gave protection against dangerous creatures.

Jean Barnett

As the title suggests, Angela’s lecture was an in-depth look at the possible meanings of nfr in a variety of contexts. After reminding us of the three functions of hieroglyphs (as phonograms, ideograms or determinatives), she noted the development of nfr in early sources from the first to fourth dynasties, where it becomes a name-Nofret. It is usually found as an adjective with a variety of meanings: fair, kind, beautiful or happy, and when applied to nouns, we get phrases like is nfr (beautiful tomb), itn nfr (perfect sun-disk). But how do we get to the core meaning of the word?

To explore this question Angela began with the writings of Horapollo, a first century CE priest who described the hieroglyph of nfr as a heart suspended by a windpipe, signifying ‘the mouth of a good man’. This idea found its way into Gardiner’s sign list as F35, and a number of variations can be seen on the website https://www.phrp.be/ListOccurrences.php?SignKey=224&Gard=F35 But does it represent a heart, or a windpipe and stomach? Does the line at the top indicate a branching off to other body parts? The use of nfr to indicate a body part is found in only one text from the temple at Edfu, where it refers to the oesophagus. In the context of the offering formula nfr has less to do with ‘beauty’ than with ‘goodness’, as in ‘everything good and pure’. It can be applied to determinatives to give phrases such as ‘beautiful Egypt’ or ‘beautiful cattle’, and its meaning changes through time. In the Old Kingdom nfr carried the meaning of ‘well’ or ‘perfect’ and was part of the phrase rn nfr ‘beautiful name’. It was even applied in one dynasty 6 mastaba tomb to donkeys!

Angela then looked at a case study of the Tales of Wonder from the Westcar Papyrus. Here the word becomes part of the phrase hrw nfr, ‘a happy day’, a euphemism for sexual pleasure, and can also indicate negation in a phrase translated as ‘nothing for contents here’, which seems to mean that when we have everything, nothing more is wanted or needed. In love poetry from the New Kingdom nfr comes to mean ‘beauty’ and is associated with perfection when applied to the King in the phrase ntr nfr ‘the perfect god’. It appears in the centre of amulets suggesting a meaning of protection, and finally it signifies a sense of peace and wellbeing in the phrase ‘until the day came on which it went well with me’. This was an enjoyable, well-presented talk, not just for hieroglyph experts but for beginners too.

Jean Barnett

Gianluca’s subject for this talk was faience figurines. Faience is a man-made material consisting of crushed quartz, lime and an alkali flux, with copper to give it a lovely blue colour. It was used from the Predynastic era onwards but the Middle Kingdom saw its use in the manufacture of small figurines in a limited range of subjects. The figurines are hand-made, indicating a high level of skill, with a coarse core and a surface layer of glaze, in shades of blue and turquoise. The corpus of figurines in Gianluca’s research numbered 1061, 706 of which were found in an archaeological context, with the rest being purchased. The figurines are of dwarfs, truncated women, wild and domestic animals, and hybrid creatures.

The main part of Gianluca’s talk focused on four points: chronology, archaeological context, iconography and social distribution. The earliest examples are two hippo figurines in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, that could be from the time of Senwosret I but the majority can be dated from the mid- to late 12^th dynasty, mostly from the period 1850-1750 BCE. Although a few were found in tombs at Esna dating from the Second Intermediate Period, there are none attested in Egypt after 1600 BCE. Outside Egypt, they were still in use in Kerma, in modern Sudan, until around 1500 BCE.

In terms of archaeological context, over 80% of the figurines came from funerary deposits, the rest being from temples, mainly at Byblos in the Levant, or domestic contexts. Those found at Byblos came from the Obelisk Temple, where they were part of a cache of votive objects. They bear a remarkable similarity to figurines found in Egyptian contexts. Many of those from a domestic context came from Lahun, where they may have been associated with the burial of infants.

Turning to iconography, Gianluca noted that the figurines appear in the archaeological record at the same time as ivory tusks, and bear similar motifs, notably those related to protection, specifically in the context of women giving birth. These motifs also appear on ‘birth bricks’ found at Abydos.

Finally, Gianluca turned to the social dimension. The figurines are absent from the extremes of society, from both the upper and lower classes, although mud figurines have been found at Lahun and Buhen. Some were found in an anonymous tomb under the Ramesseum temple at Thebes, which may have been owned by a healer of some kind, as the tomb also contained papyri related to healing.

In summary, Gianluca concluded that, geographically, most figurines were found in the centralised areas of Lisht and Thebes, the power sites of the Middle Kingdom. The objects display a significant homogeneity of style, type and manufacture. Some show signs of breakage, with the head, eyes, ears and mouth being chipped off, perhaps in some ritual. These are fascinating objects that may give us a window into an interconnected world of belief and social relationships.

Jean Barnett

As Eva pointed out, the title says it all! This was a fascinating and wide-ranging talk covering several aspects of Eva’s work at the city of Bubastis. Situated in the South-East of the Nile delta, Bubastis has a long history from the Predynastic to the Roman period. Although it was a large site with some unique buildings, some of it is now lost under modern developments. The location of the city was a favourable one close to the Pelusiac branch of the Nile, enabling fast communication. One aspect of her team’s work was to establish the route of the water course to the South of the city.

Bubastis was a cult centre for the worship of the goddess Bastet, who was originally venerated not as a cat but as a lioness. She was one of three lioness goddesses worshipped in this part of the delta, along with Sekhmet and Shesmetet. Eva noted that this area had conditions that would sustain prides of lions. Bastet is not depicted as a cat until the New Kingdom, and this dual nature of the goddess may reflect the dual nature of kingship, where the Pharaoh is seen both as a protector and as a possessor of dangerous power.

The city of Bubastis had everything: temples, palaces, residential areas and cemeteries. Eva’s excavations have revealed the existence of a temple to Bastet from the late Old Kingdom. Modest in size and having remains from other periods, possibly recycled from elsewhere, the temple had canals around it, essential for festivals described in the Brooklyn Papyrus. This document tells us how Bastet saved the eye of Horus from Seth and rowed on the sacred canals, the Isheru in the moment of her triumph over the enemy.

Eva also described other excavations taking place at the site. These include temples of Pharaohs Teti and Pepi I, the ‘Great Building’ whose function was possibly administrative, and two elite cemeteries. Some of the tombs consist of large rectangular structures with vaulted roofs and decorated chambers that are comparable with those at Saqqara from the time of Pepi II. The excavations at Bubastis on the temple of Pepi I were cut short by the pandemic but Eva’s team did find evidence of residential buildings being demolished and the ground levelled to enable the building of the temple. It seems that the need to build the temples had precedence over the residential areas. She has also found evidence of a Middle Kingdom temple built in the middle of the earlier cemeteries. Eva summarised her work as providing an insight into temporal and spatial movement of monuments at this site.

This was a really enjoyable talk with something for everyone, including cat lovers!

Jean Barnett

Katharina’s lecture gave us what for some might be an unusual take on Egyptology. Based at the University of Wales Trinity St. David, she has carried out a project using Egyptian objects from the Cyfarthfa Castle Museum in Merthyr Tydfil. The objects, collected and donated by local people, have no provenance and are in danger of being forgotten, misplaced or stored in boxes in the museum storeroom. She aimed to bring them back to life via storytelling and exhibition, in a kind of secondary archaeology.

Her method uses the concept, developed by Kopytoff (1986), of objects having a cultural biography, or, to use the latest term, an object itinerary. She used a mummy mask, an offering dish, a wooden Seker bird and a frog amulet to explain this. For example, a student wrote a short story about finding the wooden bird, which came to life and flew away. This idea was then developed by Welsh artist Julie David to paint a triptych of the bird. So what Katharina is doing is collecting fictional stories inspired by the objects, which can then give rise to paintings, poetry and even ballet. However, she emphasised that this approach is not a substitute for academic research, but an addition to it.

The Museum of Life is a German concept, taken up by Orhan Pamuk in his Manifesto for Museums: objects need stories, identity and attention. The concept is a challenge to museums in presenting ideas of truth, which is not the opposite of fiction, and is part of the discourse of their non-neutrality. It questions what is exhibited, how it is exhibited and who makes these choices. The concept is also part of the discourse of decolonising museums to bring together legalistic definitions of heritage/ownership and tangible heritage, the feeling of belonging.

Katharina ended her thought-provoking talk by summarising what should have happened to her project but for Covid. An exhibition ‘Gendered Lives in Ancient Egypt’ has been postponed until 2021/22, a ballet based on the project has also been postponed, but the Cyfarthfa Castle Museum storerooms and Egyptian collection reopened on 17^th May. For further information about Katharina’s project there is a YouTube video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ix6168O8TjE

and a paper:

Zinn, K (2019) ‘The Museum of Lies: Incorrect facts or advancing knowledge of ancient Egypt?’ Journal of History and Cultures 10, p165-190.

Jean Barnett

Giuseppe took us on a journey through his research into the changing nature and iconography of the god Anubis, revealing unexpected connections with Greek and Roman culture, magic and Jungian psychology. But who/what is Anubis? He has been worshipped since Dynasty 1 and his name has a number of interpretations. He is shown in Egyptian art as a recumbent or standing canid; in human form with a canine head; enthroned; mummiform; winged; and as a warrior brandishing knives. Anubis’ family is complex with connections to Ra, Hesat, Osiris, Nephthys, Isis and Bastet. Is he a dog or a jackal? Jackals are aggressive scavengers, but dogs are domesticated pets, so there is a contradiction here. DNA studies have shown that the modern canids in Egypt are a sub-species of the grey wolf, so Giuseppe concludes that the best description is that he is a ‘sort of dog’.

After an overview of other canine deities in the Egyptian pantheon, Giuseppe moved on to talk about the multiple titles of Anubis. I counted 16 that connect him with various places, 9 with his function at the weighing of the heart ceremony, 9 in connection with mummification, and 4 that have cosmic significance! During the Middle Kingdom the cult of Osiris grew in importance, taking over from Anubis as the god of the dead, but in funerary texts he is still associated with a number of body parts of the deceased and with the face of Osiris. In the Late Period he becomes more of an access route to the gods. It is the Hellenistic and Roman periods that see a clear change. Giuseppe explained that in the works of Plutarch we find Anubis portrayed as a messenger, helper and protector of the gods. He has become Hermanubis, a syncretism with the Roman god Hermes, and thus central to the various cults of Isis in the world of Late Antiquity and an important feature of Medieval mysticism and alchemy as Hermete Trismegistus.

After exploring various Graeco-Roman cultic connections, Giuseppe moved on to discuss perhaps the more unexpected aspects of Anubis. He becomes associated with werewolves, with alchemy and with the devil, Lucifer, another name for Sirius, the ‘dog star’. In his association with the devil he is found in combat with St. Michael, the figure who in Christian theology will judge humanity in heaven, which is just what Anubis does in Egyptian belief. Finally, in Jungian psychology we find the concept of the archetype of the wolf that can be traced into ideas such as the association of depression with a ‘black dog’ and the ‘big bad wolf’ of fairy tales.

This was a fascinating lecture taking us on a journey from Egyptology into other spheres of knowledge, and I am sure we all learned a great deal.

Jean Barnett

2020 Lecture Summaries:

Prof. Bickel’s talk focused on two shaft tombs, KV64 and KV40, neither of which were constructed to house any of the Pharaohs. The excavation, part of the Kings’ Valley project led by the University of Basel, had as its focus the chronology of use, tomb ownership, biological remains, and architecture and topography.

KV 64 contained a coffin and a stela dating from the 22^nd dynasty. The coffin was simple, but nicely decorated and belonged to Nehemesbastet, a singer of Amun. Her coffin lay on top of a layer of debris covering an 18^th dynasty burial. Other finds in KV 64 included an 18^th dynasty blue flask and half of a wooden tag referring to the ‘king’s daughter Sat-Jah’. This gives a chronology as follows:

· An 18^th dynasty burial of someone from the royal family’s entourage

· A looting/recycling phase with the retrieval and reuse of objects

· Pharaohs reburied

· Reuse with or without fill-up, of priestly families.

KV 40 is next door to KV 64 and is much bigger. The ceiling is blackened but the floor is clean because it was covered in debris. Here the team focused on conservation of textiles and cartonnage; classification and documentation of finds; and the sorting of a large quantity of bones. These were the remains of at least 84 individuals, the majority being females and children. Analysis of KV 40 shows that it was originally used during the reign of Amenhotep III. Sealings were found naming Thutmosis IV and Amenhotep III.

Around 100 storage jars have been constructed from the broken pottery, and the inscriptions on these refer to both the contents and the owners. The writing is hieratic and has enabled the team to identify, for example, ‘Nefertari, from the house of the royal children’, ‘the King’s daughter Taemwadjet’, and ‘the King’s son Mer-Taoui’. Some of the female names are without titles, such as Tatchuja, and some have foreign names, e.g Antirama, which is Semitic. From the inscriptions and tags the team has identified 34 people: 26 women, 6 men and 2 unidentified. The men are ‘king’s sons’ but why so many women? Of the 26, 14 are ‘king’s daughters’, 1 a granddaughter and 11 untitled. The pottery gives an insight into rituals and procedures. Phases in the inscription process have been identified, with coatings on top of inscriptions, then further coatings. Why was it covered? Also lots of bags of natron were found with the pottery, in a pristine condition.

Susanne was asked about future work for the project. This is likely to be on tomb KV29, which has the deepest shaft in the valley, and there is sufficient work for a few more seasons.

Jean Barnett

The Hatnub quarry area, 17 km East of Amarna, was identified by Petrie in 1894. The aim of the Hatnub Landscape Project is to record and investigate the archaeological features within 100 km² centred on the 17 km long quarry road. Hatnub means ‘mountain of gold’ because the alabaster takes on a gold sheen. Extensive epigraphic work has been carried out at the site since 1981and an 890m² area of the settlement around quarry P was surveyed by Ian Shaw in 1985-94.

From satellite images Hannah has identified walls, quarries, spoil heaps, shrines, work areas, roads, cairns, blank areas and habitations. The latter are the most common. She has found most of Shaw’s features. A GIS survey also identified pottery scatters and Zir emplacements (New Kingdom water jars). The habitations are huts, shelters and windbreaks. The cairns are waymarks, difficult to identify on satellite images. Hannah pointed out that although we see landscape from above, the Ancient Egyptians moved through it. The blank areas could be quarries or small areas of alabaster. The ‘dams’ are actually small walls, some only a few stones in length, clustered in one area on the edge of one wadi. Is remote survey accurate? There is 69% overall accuracy, rising to 95% or roads and tracks, as they are hard to miss, but false negatives are a problem. Accuracy can be improved by targeting fieldwork at small or indistinct features, modern disturbances where inaccuracies are likely to occur, and at unusual features like the dams.

The results of her research are as follows:

• There is a clear division between the ‘red’ and ‘black’ lands. There is one road in and out, so were the Egyptians afraid of the desert? No- the road is for the removal of large objects. There is other access from all directions, so the desert is accessible.

• The graffiti in quarry P mention a large number of gods, but they are local forms of Thoth, Sekhmet, and the Ennead of Ra. There is no mention of Hathor or Min, the ‘desert specialists’. This suggests this is a liminal place, not one that is feared.

Hannah then answered questions as follows:

• Did they find tools? Yes, hammer stones and drills are being studied by the French team.

• Could the ‘dams’ be intended as such? No, they are at right angles to the wadi, so would not collect water. They are built walls, and she hasn’t seen them anywhere else.

• Are there any wells? Possibly, but this needs excavation work.

• The windbreaks are not for corralling animals; they have only one side and are not big enough.

• By the Amarna period the quarry had been worked out and alabaster was being quarried elsewhere. The graffiti says there is nothing there anymore!

• She thinks P began in the pre-dynastic period and was a source of stone for a stone-based civilisation. It would have needed a lot of water, so they quarried near the Nile.

Jean Barnett

I loved this lecture. It was quite different to anything I’ve heard at the NEAES before, and was thoroughly entertaining. This was the story of how a limestone Ptolemaic statue of an ordinary non-royal Ancient Egyptian woman came to part of the collection of the Montrose museum in Scotland, who the woman was, and who the donator was. It does make you think differently about museum artefacts. They are beautiful objects, but the often fascinating story behind them and how they came to be in that particular collection is rarely told. The Donator The first part of Dan’s story was about the donator, Dr James Burns. He was born in 1801 and died in 1862 and had a long list of grand titles to his name including Chevalier and Grand Prior of India. James Burns’ family was split between Ayrshire and Montrose. His father was Provost James Burns III. They lived in Burness House at Bow Butts. Robert Burns, the poet, was James’ first cousin twice removed. James went to school at Montrose Academy, which had been established by his grandfather. He became a doctor of medicine and worked at Guys Hospital in London for a time.

Family friend and radical MP Dr Joseph Hume helped James and his brother Alexander obtain a commission with the East India Company. In India, Alexander became a main player in international diplomacy and James became an assistant surgeon, being posted in the fortress at Bhuj. In the 1820s he was sent north to Sindh as a diplomatic envoy, to treat Mourad Ali, the son of the Chief Amir, who was ill. He prescribed Ali quinine, which was used to treat malaria. The family made James take it first to prove it was safe, and it made him ill. In 1834 James was granted six months sick leave. His journey back to Scotland, during which time he acquired the statue, actually took him three years!

The Montrose Abroath and Brechin Review newspaper published an account of James’ journey. In February 1834, he boarded a coal powered steamship called the Hugh Lindsay. He sailed across the Indian Ocean to Jeddah, where he passed through the Medina Gate. He then took a camel train from Suez to Cairo.

During his five days in Cairo, James visited factories and schools as well as the tourist stops. Inside the sarcophagus of Cheops/Khufu in the Great Pyramid of Giza, a drunken rendition of Auld Lang Syne by the Scottish party would have echoed around the small space.

James spent a day with Muhammad Ali Pasha, who was considering building a railway in Suez with English engineers.

A mystery remains about how James obtained the statue of Meramuniotes. The statue came from Luxor, but he never went there. Could it have been a diplomatic gift from the Pasha? (Members may remember we saw stones from the Great Pyramid which were given to George Elliott by Muhammad Ali Pasha and thus ended up in churches in West Rainton and Penshaw). Alternatively James could have purchased the statue at Cairon market.

James left Egypt via Alexandria, with Rev. Joseph Wolff, a missionary. He had a terrible journey to Crete, then continued to Malta, where he had to spend 20 days due to plague isolation. Eventually he got back to Montrose.

James Burns was an important person. He was the physician general for Bombay. He became a fellow of the Royal Society in 1835, having been nominated by lots of notable people including politicians and scientists. He was given an honorary law degree by the University of Glasgow. He was a Knight of the Royal Guelphic Order. King William gave him the title Chevalier. A painting was done of him. He had lunch with Princess Victoria.

James wrote a history of the Knights Templars, in which he linked the knights to Scotland for the first time. This book was the origin of the ideas in Dan Brown’s ‘Da Vinci Code’. Dan said Burns has a lot to answer for!!

We know from Montrose Museum’s accession record, that ‘Dr Jas. Burnes’ donated a marble statue from Thebes in 1837.

The subject of the statue

Meramuniotes lived around 250-200 BC. The statue has impeccable detail, depicting her hairstyle, her earrings and her pleated dress, knotted at the front. She holds two cloths in her hands. There is a long inscription in hieroglyphs on the reverse, which does not include her name. The first part of the inscription is an offering formula to the goddess Mut, Lady of Isheru. The precinct of Mut was next to the sacred lake of Isheru at Thebes.

The inscription tells us that the woman’s father was called Userkhons and her mother was called Nehemesratowy; and that the subject of the statue was a musician, a sistrum (a percussion instrument that you shake) player in the temple of Amun-Ra.

Dan was able to work out the names of 19 members of the family tree over six generations, from other inscriptions and objects that mention the same people, plus two or three other family members alongside.

Bronze situlae (ritual buckets) in Cairo Museum, for example, has various family names on them including ‘Nehemesratowy and Meramuniotes, the sistrum player’.

There is a statue of her grandfather Ankhpakhered I in the Metropolitan Museum and a statue of her Great Uncle Horsaisis in Cairo Museum. The British Museum holds a stela possibly dedicated by her mother. Statues also exist of her brother Ankhpakhered II and her sons are mentioned on a piece in Turin museum.

The sandals that Meramuniotes wore at her funeral survive in another museum collection, as does an offering table from her tomb.

Meramuniotes thus came from a powerful family. Her mother, Nehemesratowy, was also a sistrum player in a temple.

This story is important because it explains how museum collections were brought about, by travellers collecting objects. Little was known about the statue until Dan’s research. She now stands in a brand new case in the museum, accompanied by new interpretation, made possible by Dan’s research carried out for the ‘Revealing Cultures’ project and ‘Discovering Ancient Egypt’ touring exhibition, and she has been cleaned and conserved.

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Jennifer Morrison

The meaning behind Ancient Egypt’s iconic colossi were the subject of Daniel’s Durham University dissertation. Daniel says we are fascinated by these statues, but we don’t fully understand them. They need further study. There are six giant statues on the pylon of Luxor Temple. That at the far left is different to the other five, having crossed arms. Why? People said it had been wrongly restored. The 2016 Sunken Cities exhibition at the British Museum included several large statues. The finding of an enormous statue of Psamtik I at Heliopolis in 2018 captured the world and re-wrote history. Egyptologists did not know, until this find, that colossi were made during the 26th dynasty. It is posed in a traditional striding position, and is wearing a conventional crown, kilt and beard. In 2019 a sphynx of Ramesses II was found. Existing works on colossi include Anna Garnett’s book ‘The Colossal Statue of Ramesses II’ which focuses on one particular statue; Lise Manniche’s book ‘The Akhenaten Colossi of Karnak’, which is a case study of a group of statues at one site and ‘Royal Statues in Eygpt 300 BC – AD 220: context and function’ by Elizabeth Brophy, which focuses on one period of time. There appears to be no detailed study of colossi in general.

Daniel told us that dictionary definitions of a colossus include ‘extremely large’ and ‘at least twice life size’.

Egyptian art has a religious focus. It was formulaic – made in accordance with strict rules and the law of scale. Large = important, hence pharaonic statues are bigger than statues of normal Egyptians.

There are four main types of colossi – seated, standing or striding, the sphinx and osiride (statue pillars). Daniel suggested that there is a possible fifth type – statues carved in-situ into natural rock outcrops or mountains, for example the Sphinx at Giza and at Jebel Barkal in Sudan, there is a mound that looks like a pharaoh’s crown with a snake attached to the front (uraeus).

At first, statues commonly flanked entrances, stood in front of pylons or in open courts. They were accessible to the public.

For example, there is a pre or early dynastic period statue in the Ashmolean Museum which is 4m high. It is a column-like ithyphallic figure which wears a sash around the waist. It could represent the god Min.

During the 4th dynasty Sneferu built sacred enclosures at the base of the pyramids, which featured monumental twin stelae inscribed with the name of the king. This too, Daniel argued, was an experiment towards the development of colossi.

The first seated colossus is of the 4th dynasty pharaoh Menkaure. He is wearing a shendyt kilt and crown and holds a bolt of cloth in his right fist. But this statue was inside a cult temple to the dead king. It was not accessible to the public.

The first sphinx was of 4th dynasty pharaoh Khafra and this too was located in a mortuary complex. His tail lies over his left haunch.

There were fewer colossi during the Middle Kingdom. Daniel explained that this was because there was no large-scale workforce available to create colossi while Egypt was divided and the rulers’ reigns were often too short for them to have had time to create colossi. But once the times of trouble had passed, the pharaohs wanted to display their power and legitimise their rule by harking back to older monuments, so colossi reappear.

There is an osiride pillar of Montuhotep II (11th dynasty) with crossed arms, flanking a funerary temple. A similar one exists of Senusret I (12th dynasty).

There is a seated colossus of Amenemhat II (12th dynasty), and colossal sphinxes which copy the position of the tail of the Khafra sphinx.

The form of colossi changed in the New Kingdom. Those of Amenhotep III no longer hold the bolt of cloth and the rest of the royal family are now depicted, indicating a change in status of royal women. The colossi of Akhenaten display a new non-typical body form, to contrast with statues associated with older cults. But the figures still wear old regalia and stand in the same position. Late New Kingdom colossi returned to conventional forms – such as those of Tutankhamun. Ramesses II made the widest use of colossi. He used all forms, re-used statues made for other pharaohs and put up a statue of his daughter. Ramesses III set up osiride at his mortuary temple at Karnak.

The later colossi are particularly interesting. The colossus of Tanwetamani (25th dynasty) was created, Daniel said, to legitimise his ruler as an incomer from Nubia.

Ptolemaic colossi are an amalgamation of Greco-Macedonian and Egyptian art. They tend to have rounder faces and bodies. An example outside Alexandria sports a Greek curly fringe. Another Hellenistic twist are the ram’s horns beneath the ears, which represent Amun. By this time colossi were not restricted to temples – there was a colossi at the Pharos lighthouse of Alexandria. The last colossus was put up by Caesarian who shared the throne with Cleopatra.

Daniel’s concluded his talk by analysing the possible multiple functions of colossi, which lasted for over 3000 years, relatively unchanged in form. He suggested that they might have been vessels of the soul, through which the ka could visit earth. This is why they stand in mortuary temples. Did they project power? Emphasising the power of the king to maintain cosmic balance – hence the common depiction of the sema tawy motif, which represents the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt. Were they temple guardians, standing at the entrances and on avenues? Were the statues worshipped? – the Horbeit stela shows the butler of Ramesses II presenting offerings to statues of the king.

Mary Beard apparently says colossi were about self-reassurance – the pharaoh trying convince himself that he is divine. But Daniel asked why would he have self-doubt when he was in charge? The statues acted as proxies where the pharaoh could not be present in person. They were even like tourist attractions or places of pilgrimage – people gouged out pieces from the colossi at Coptos as souvenirs.

I enjoyed Daniel’s confidently presented talk immensely and next time I see a giant statue either in a museum, on the television or in a book, I shall ponder over its function beyond it being a beautiful work of art.

Jennifer Morrison

2019 Lecture Summaries:

Dr Omran’s talk focused on his expert knowledge of a little-known group of tombs at Akhmim, which lies 500km south of Cairo on the east bank of the Nile. Akhmim has three necropolis’ – A, B and C. • A was the main necropolis during the late period and was still in use during the Greek/Roman period. Three Coptic monasteries stand on the hill. • B features 884 tombs on a mountain, of Old and Middle Kingdom date • Necropolis C, El-Salamuni, was the main necropolis during the Greek/Roman period, comprising rock-cut tombs and a temple built by King Ay and dedicated to Bel Mn (Bel being a Greek god and Mn being the local god of fertility). Previous excavations at El-Salamuni include that of Pococke 1737-1738, C. Schmidt in 1893, Jean Cledat in 1903 (recorded three tombs) and Von Bissing in 1897 and 1913 (recorded tomb C1). In 1913 Hermann Kess recorded the temple. In 1952 Neugebauer and Parker did some work. N. Kanawati visited tomb C1 in 1971, cleaned it and photographed it. Between 1977 and 1982 the German Archaeological Institute in Cairo carried out a quick survey of the tombs at necropolis’ A and B and an overview of necropolis C, but no description of the tombs.

Klaus Kuhlman divided the El-Salamuni tombs into four types:

• Group C1 comprises 29 undecorated Old Kingdom tombs

• Group C2 are shaft tombs of late and Ptolemaic periods

• Group C3 are Roman period façade tombs. They imitate an Egyptian portal, have a series of chambers with burial niches and ground beds for inhumations

• Group C4 are late Roman rectangular chamber tombs containing mass burials of heaped mummies on ground beds

A big new discovery came in 2012, when 9 tombs were found by the Akhmim Antiquities Office. Most of the new tombs have two chambers – an ante room and a burial room with three niches. Tomb F4 only had one chamber.

It is difficult to precisely date the tombs due to the lack of inscriptions, but they have to be 2nd or 3rd century BC and Roman or Ptolemaic. The funerary art is a mixture of Egyptian and Hellenistic – geometric squares in red and black, floral motifs, vases, vultures and hieroglyphs. Mummification was the main method of funerary rite, but inhumations had been placed on the ground beds in the ante rooms. There was no evidence of cremation. Were they built as private tombs but later used for family or the public? Sadly, the tombs have been looted because they have no doors on them and the villagers hide the entrances with debris and sand.

The team have re-investigated the famous tomb found by Von Bissing. It has beautiful decoration but is in bad condition. The walls are cracking and the ceilings could fall in. The tomb is full of debris again.

Dr Omran showed us an amazing 3D fly-through video showing the main themes of tomb decoration at El-Salamuni:

• floral motifs, garlands, festoons, trees, birds, animals and insects

• signs of the zodiac, planets and astronomical scenes, both Egyptian and Greek, such as six females carrying the sky

• funerary scenes, the afterlife, the judgement of the deceased and Osiris (Akhmim is linked to Abydos, where Osiris is the main god)

• demotic inscriptions

• geometric decoration in black, yellow and red rectangles - Hellenistic in style (orthostates). It is similar to that used in Roman villas and in tombs at Alexandria. The decoration imitates marble and alabaster.

The deceased are depicted in Hellenistic style but with Egyptian funerary iconography – such as symbols of Isis and her son Titus, Osiris and offering tables.

No intact mummies have been found thus far, nor any artefacts. Many mummies from the site are held by museums across the world.

Dr Omran’s project involved undertaking a complete topographic survey of the tombs on the mountain, documentation of the tombs, restoration of the decoration and site management – the plan is to open up the site to tourists. Photogrammetry has been used to reconstruct the motifs.

Today’s study day was all about power and continuity. Legitimising rule by harking back to the past and a reluctance to let old things go. This explains why these awe-inspiring Ptolemaic tombs include traditional Egyptian motifs in their decoration.

Jennifer Morrison

Dr. Papazian began by reminding us of what springs to almost everyone’s mind when we hear the word ‘pyramid’: the magnificent structures at Giza. Yet there are previous pyramids that he categorises as ‘provincial’, that is, they are outside Memphis. Seven such small step pyramids exist in the archaeological record and the important point about them is that are not funerary monuments. Early archaeologists dug beneath the foundations of these structures looking in vain for burials, and in the process weakened the foundations. The provincial pyramids are among the earliest stone monuments in Egypt, dating from a quite narrow time band around the end of the 3rd and the beginning of the 4th dynasties, in the reigns of Huni and Sneferu. Architecturally, they are built with accretion layers, slanting like Djoser’s pyramid. They are sited at Elephantine, Edfu, Qula, Naqada, Abydos, Seila, and Zawyet-el-Meitin. All are built of limestone, except the one at Elephantine, which is of granite. The Abydos pyramid has mud-brick ramps that were added subsequently. So, if they are not tombs then what is their function? Dr. Papazian presented two possible theories: that they had some connection with the early organisation of the administrative districts, or that they were symbolic in some way, a manifestation of royal power, enabling worship of the royal ka. The former theory, that they represent territorial demarcation, has some merit, as they are sited at places where ancient boundaries would have been, but there is no evidence for any more than the seven listed above. A further interesting point is that all seven lie along a route marking entry points into the Western desert, suggesting that they could have had some official function as customs offices.

The second theory is that they were the focal points of the royal cult away from Memphis, and there is evidence to support this. Excavations at the Seila pyramid have revealed objects bearing the name of Sneferu, including a libation table, a roofing block and a stele. On the East side of the Edfu pyramid there is a possible emplacement for an altar. At Elephantine an inscription refers to ‘the diadem of Huni’ (from the end of the 3rd Dynasty). The Pharonic cult evolved through dynasties 1 to 6. During dynasties 1 and 2 the royal ka was worshipped at stand alone ka-foundations, evolving into the provincial pyramids that functioned to spread the worship of the king throughout Egypt. By dynasty 4 they were concentrated in the Memphite area and by dynasty 5 sun temples were built but still in the Memphite area, for example at Abu Ghurob. By dynasty 6 there was a redistribution of the royal cult into the provinces with royal ka-foundations in various temples: Tell Basta, Zawyet, Abydos, Kophos and El-Kab. .

Dr. Papazian is currently working on the excavations at the Abydos pyramid and finished his presentation by commenting on the encroachment of the modern town, and the need for conservation. This particular pyramid is valued by the local people, who see it as aiding fertility and leave offerings of children’s clothes around its base.

Jean Barnett

The third lecture of our Study Day was dedicated to the representations of women in Ancient Egypt, with a central question: why are women depicted in a different way than men and what is the function of it? Joanne started her talk by explaining that there are some common features in women images over the millennia: they are semi-naked, don’t have any detailed face or any legs but are represented with hair. She then showed us one of the earliest feminine representations, a fantastic ivory figurine from El-Badari, with what is very likely hair, breast and an emphasis on the pubic region – all traits that are extremely common later. Some figurines from Naqada show women represented as offering bearers, with baskets on their head, apparent breasts but no facial feature. These offering bearers are also commonly found in tombs during the Middle Kingdom and are associated with Isis and Nephthys. From the Old Kingdom, women are given some sexual characteristics. This association between women and offerings represent the food and sexual energy offered to the deceased, which allow him to begin his rebirth. In the Middle Kingdom, some fertility figurines also appear, inscribed with texts such as ‘May a birth be granted to your daughter’. Their number increases in the New Kingdom, especially in settlement sites like Deir el Medina, Gurob and Memphis, and it is believed they were objects used in everyday life.

Joanne then displayed some plaques and models, the size of the palm of a hand, made of clay. A very limited number show pregnant ladies, probably because pregnancy was considered a dangerous time that needn’t be represented. Little dots can be seen on some of the models, which are believed to be tattooing.

Another category of objects are the ladies on beds, with sometimes the form of the body incorporated in the bed, with a child, a mirror or a snake.

In the second part of her lecture, Joanne touched on the very interesting question of the function of these feminine representations. According to her, two groups can be distinguished: the plaques, models and hand modelled figurines, possibly used in medical or magical practice and belonging to an oral tradition, explaining why there isn’t any text recording their function. They could have been used by women, in a fertility context, and possibly also as love charms.

The second group is constituted of the bigger objects, stand-alone figurines, displayed and potentially linked to a household worship of the ancestors.

Women can be represented as nourishers or healers but also as protectors in the form of goddesses. To illustrate this, Joanne showed us the stunning representation of the goddess Nut in the tomb of Ramesses VI: a carrier, who protects and gives birth, or rebirth.

Women are also the stimulator of desire for the spark of creation, like Hathor who is the Hand of Atum, the Creator, and therefore have a role to play in maintaining the cosmic order.

I really enjoyed this very richly illustrated lecture which highlighted the preeminent role of the feminine representation throughout the history of Ancient Egypt and gave us the opportunity to see some wonderful Egyptian objects that create a link with the people and their very intimate believes, fears and hopes.

Julie Misuriello

Seti I rose to power in the post-Amarna period. After the untimely death of Tutankhamun, who left no heir, power devolved to Ay then Horemheb, who also left no heir. In need of a successor, Horemheb named Sjuta, mentioned in the Amarna letters as being part of the chariotry division. Sjuta had a son called Ramose, whom Dr. Nielsen identifies as Rameses I, the first ruler of the 19th dynasty and the father of Seti I. Despite having a very short reign, Rameses I took much of the credit away from Horemheb for the restoration of Egypt. On his accession, Seti’s priority was foreign policy and he became an active campaigner. He toured Egypt’s vassal states to ensure their loyalty, defeating the Shasu Bedouin in Sinai, then the chiefs of Hammath and Yeonam. He took action against the Apiru and extracted tribute from Byblos and the Levantine coastal states. The tribute from Tyre took the form of cedar trees. A timber census in Memphis listed the stocks in terms of parts of ships, so Seti seems to have had a distinct purpose for the tribute. In year 3 of his reign he challenged the Hittites and forced the Amurru province to change its allegiance from the Hittites to Egypt. This enabled him to strike at Qadesh, but we have very little information about this particular campaign. It seems that the Hittites were slow to respond to Seti’s challenge, possibly because they were distracted by the break-up of the Mittani Empire. Or maybe Seti was just lucky!

In year 6 Seti defeated the Libyans, presenting us with a puzzle. Three factors seem to have governed Egypt’s foreign policy regarding a particular state: was it a potential threat? Did it have mineral resources? Was it on a route to somewhere else? Libya did not fulfil any of these so why did Seti campaign there? The most likely reason could be that he was planning a series of fortresses and needed to scare the inhabitants to ensure their co-operation. In year 8 he again attacked the Hittites, who underestimated him by sending an army of levied troops to be defeated. Seti’s 10th year saw the Irem rebellion, about which we have little information. The campaign, which focused on gaining control of the desert wells, may have been led by the Crown Prince, later Rameses II.

As a builder, Seti I was ambitious. He campaigned to acquire a variety of resources in terms of both materials and manpower. All these various resources went into a number of building projects, perhaps the most spectacular of which was the hypostyle hall at Karnak, with its 134 columns and battle reliefs showing Seti in action. At Abydos his memorial temple legitimises his reign. Its King List is heavily edited, basically just including anyone Seti wished to be associated with. In memory of his father he built a beautiful chapel with inscriptions that claim that the dynasty was ordained by the gods. The wording is somewhat emotional and may reflect possible guilt at the rather basic nature of his father’s tomb (KV16) in the Valley of the Kings.

Seti’s wife was Tuya, more visible during the reign of Seti’s son and successor Rameses II. Seti died in 1279 BCE aged around 39. The cause of his death is unclear but he suffered from arteriosclerosis, which can cause heart disease. His tomb (KV17) is impressive, Discovered by Belzoni, it is 140m long with well-preserved wall paintings. His body was discovered in the Deir-el-Bahri cache by Maspero.

Dr. Nielsen’s most recent publication is ‘Pharaoh Seti I: Father of Egyptian Greatness’- a truly apt tile.

Jean Barnett

This lecture was the last of the day and was given by a Durham University postgraduate student, Andrew King, who had done his MA thesis on the subject. Andrew began by describing Egyptian warfare. The army was state run and organised into battalions with names related to the gods such as ‘the battalion of Ptah’. They used specialised weapons and they made sure they had the better weapons than their enemies (for example eight-spoke chariots rather than four-spoke). There was a strict military hierarchy stretching down from the King. Andrew described the war-god Montu. The Ways of Horus was the name of the North-eastern frontier between the delta and the Levant. It was a road with forts, wells and granaries strung out along it that followed the coast. It was known since the Middle Kingdom being mentioned in Sinuhe. Details of its forts and layout can be found on Seti I’s reliefs at Karnak and in Papyrus Anastasi I. The area was hot, dry and sandy. It was not only a military road. It defined the frontier and was a show of strength. Andrew discussed whether the frontier was a barrier preventing movement or porous.

The main frontier town was Tjaru although this was also an important trade centre with many wine jars bearing the town’s name.

Andrew’s work has involved calculating what can be seen from one fort to another using GIS (geographical information system) software and showed us many maps to demonstrate. He noted that because a fort can be seen from the next it didn’t mean that the reverse was true.

He has been able to plot the likely locations of various forts mentioned in ancient texts whose sites are currently unknown using the assumption that each fort (or other structure) must have been able to signal its neighbour. This is, he believes, the information field archæologists need to find these forts.

Also he was able to show the control the Egyptians were able to have over the sea, by charting how much of the Mediterranean could be seen from the many strongholds. This demonstrates that Egypt was not just a land power but it was also a sea power. However the ports on the Ways of Horus still need to be sought by field archæologists.

This was an interesting lecture for those of a technical bent to finish the day off with and the lecturer’s pleasant style encouraged listening.

Ned Ramm

Carolyn began with an explanation of the history of the Egypt Centre at Swansea University. The collection derives from that of Sir Henry Wellcome whose idea for a museum of medicine got rather out of hand when he started collecting non-relevant items. On his death in 1936 the Trustees of his collection distributed it to various museums. In 1971 the Classics department at Swansea, and specifically professor Gwyn Griffiths, was contacted by the Petrie Museum who offered their collection to Swansea. Griffiths’ wife, Kate Bosse-Griffiths, was instrumental in organising this windfall. She unpacked and catalogued the items, and organised a display room, obtaining lottery funding in 1976, and in 1998 the Egypt Centre as it is today was opened with Carolyn as its first curator. She then developed this history into an explanation of how the Centre works, particularly its inter-disciplinary approach to Egyptology. For example, in conjunction with the Mathematics Department, an exhibition that included the Rhind Papyrus was staged. The Centre has close links with local schools and hosts a variety of Saturday activities for children, employing a diverse group of volunteers. Carolyn then went on to list some of her favourite objects from the collection of 5000, around a quarter of which are on display. These included:

• A jewelled collar, possibly from the Amarna period. This has been the subject of much discussion, as although the beads and the linen stringing are authentic, it isn’t possible to be sure that the stringing didn’t take place in modern times.

• Bob the dummy mummy. The Centre, as a matter of policy, does not display human remains so a dummy is used to explain to children the process of Mummification.

• A mummified ‘lump’, which, with the aid of a CT scan by the University’s Engineering department, was revealed to be that of a small cobra.

• A very small cartonnage coffin that a CAT scan showed contained a 12-week-old foetus. This shows the level of care that could be taken over the loss of a child in the ancient world.

• Various statues including one of Osiris, with a copper alloy coating that suggests a deliberate attempt to make it look decayed, and one of Sekhmet obtained from the London Theosophical society.

• A golden coffin depicting the ‘weighing of the heart scene’, with a birth brick being checked by Anubis.

• A fragment from a wall painting that may depict Akhenaten’s elbow.

• The base of an offering table apparently belonging to Paneb, the workman accused of murder and adultery according to the court records from Deir el Medina. (The Centre has produced T-shirts with ‘Paneb is Innocent’ on them!).

Carolyn’s lecture also covered clay bezels, stone heads, a sickle, shabtis and bed legs. She brought her entertaining lecture to a close with a statue of Anubis, originally in poor condition with plasticine ears, but now thankfully properly conserved, as befitting the god who serves as the Egypt Centre’s logo.

You can read more about the Centre on its website: http://www.egypt.swan.ac.uk/

Jean Barnett

What a fantastic lecture on a miserable Saturday afternoon in Durham! José talked us through the results of the project he’s been conducting since 2001 on the North end of the necropolis of Dra Abu el-Naga, in Thebes. The site has a strategic position, opposite the temple of Karnak, and is rich with high rank officials’ tombs. It was the first stop during the Feast of the Valley, seeing a processing going from Karnak to Deir el-Bahari. The site shows occupations from different periods, starting with tombs of the 18th Dynasty, reused at a later period, and going back to coffins from the 12th Dynasty. José’s Spanish and Egyptian team is not the first to excavate here. Indeed, Newberry published the results of his work at the start of the 20th century, providing many sketches that proved of much help when recreating scenes destroyed since. José started his lecture with the tomb of Djehuty (TT 11), overseer of the treasure under Hatshepsut, and brilliantly exposed the peculiarities of both the monument and the character. Djehuty built his tomb as a testimony of his knowledge of writing and religion: the facade of the tomb is famous for its large biographical inscription which mentions the expedition to Punt and is one of the first examples of outside decoration of the 18th Dynasty. The tomb also shows ancient forgotten rituals and the earliest version to be known of the chapter 151 of the Book of the Dead. Djehuty was never buried in the burial chamber so it didn’t suffer when the tomb was robbed, and this eggshell meant to protect the body was beautifully preserved.

The presentation then moved on to the tomb of Hery (TT12), one of the earliest to have funerary processions and decorations preserved. Exciting news: both tombs should open to the public in a couple of years!

I particularly enjoyed José showing us the variety of approaches the project requires, not only archaeological but also the archival work, using the notes of Champollion or Rossellini to reconstruct broken inscriptions.

In 2006, the modern town of Dra Abu-el-Naga was demolished, and José obtained the right to expand his site in exchange of cleaning the debris. A fascinating chase for the Prince Ahmose Sapair then began, with artefacts mentioning his name discovered on different areas of the site. José is convinced that Dra Abu-el-Naga was related to the cult of the kings, which would explain its importance and its reuse for animal mummies burials at a later stage.

José mentioned the curious custom of leaving a coffin unprotected on the ground, illustrated on the site. The court of Djehuty has also opened a new field of research with 500 years of stratigraphy to be studied to better understand the climate and the landscape of the necropolis.

In my opinion, the most impressive finding is the miniature garden uncovered in the court at the entrance of the tomb, with seeds and the trunk of a tree still preserved.

The site is full of promises and will help to retrace the development of the necropolis and understand the interaction between the different tombs.

I thoroughly enjoyed this extremely informative lecture, filled with funny anecdotes, and particularly appreciated the high-quality photographs José shared with us throughout. I would recommend checking the website http://www.excavacionegipto.com with a very interesting excavation journal and more fantastic pictures of the site and the objects found.

Julie Misuriello

In today’s talk on perhaps the Manchester Museum’s most well-known exhibit, Dr Forshaw, of the KNH Centre for Biomedical Egyptology, described various investigations into the twelfth-dynasty mummies of Khnum-nakht and Nakht-ankh, known as ‘The Two Brothers’. But were they brothers? He began in 1907 when they were discovered in a (rare) undisturbed tomb 250 miles south of Cairo. The entire assemblage from their tomb was transported to Manchester where, in a front of an audience of some 500 people, Margaret Murray unwrapped the mummies. She found that Nakht-ankh’s mummification was more carefully done than that of Khnum-nakht, suggesting that the latter’s death was unexpected. According to their coffin inscriptions they had the same mother, and, while the inscription gave no occupation for Nakht-ankh, his ‘brother’ was described as a wah-priest. Dr. Forshaw pointed out shocking aspects of this investigation: the unwrapping was a public spectacle and scraps of the wrappings were offered to the public, thus losing valuable academic knowledge. At the time, the lack of any form of radiography meant that the main investigative methods were visual. Thus, the team’s anatomist declared the mummies’ ages to be around 60 (Nakht-ankh) and 40 (Khnum-nakht) by examination of the degree of closure of their cranial sutures, not an accurate measure. He also highlighted a racial difference between the two based on the shape of their skulls. The faces on the coffin lids are different but there is no other evidence that coffin lid portraits represent the physical characteristics of the people inside. Influenced by the coffin inscriptions stating that Nakht-ankh was the ‘son of a prince’ and Khnum-nakht ‘the son of the son of a prince’, the team decided they were half-brothers with different fathers.

In 1979 Rosalie David’s team carried out a further investigation that established that the ‘brothers’ had sand pneumoconiosis, pleurisy and schistosomiasis (parasitic flatworms). Facial reconstruction showed physical differences and led to the suggestion that Nakht-ankh may have been adopted. DNA studies could throw light on the great puzzle of their relationship, so at this point Dr. Forshaw took us into the science of DNA. There are two types: mitochondrial, inherited entirely from the mother, and Y-DNA, inherited from the father. DNA analysis has been used in archaeology but there are two major problems with ancient DNA: it degrades over time, especially in hot climates, and the risk of contamination is high because of the techniques used to extract it. For example, the results of the detailed DNA study of 2007-9 carried out on Tutankhamun to establish his familial relationships have been challenged by scientists.

During the third investigation into the two brothers, Dr. Forshaw, a dentist by training, extracted DNA from the teeth of the skeletons. He used second-generation sequencing to read strands in the samples taken from the dentine of two molars from each skeleton. Mitochondrial DNA indicated a maternal relationship between the two ‘brothers’: they either had the same mother, or were related as cousins or uncle/nephew, but not as father and son. The Y-chromosome DNA confirmed that they had different fathers.

The debate over the precise relationship between the two men, and why they were buried together, continues but Dr. Forshaw’s study, the first of its kind, has indeed shed new light on a question that has puzzled Egyptologists since 1907.

Jean Barnett

Dr Gobeil became the director of this site in 2011. He told us that when he took it on, everyone said he was ‘doomed’, that this would mark the end of his career - because the site had already been excavated and was well understood. There was nothing left to learn. However, as Dr Gobeil explained to us in his fascinating lecture, he proved them wrong! Excavations, which are still ongoing, have thrown new light on the understanding of Deir el-Medina. The site lies 765km south of Cairo. It is on the west bank of the Nile across the river from Luxor. Deir el-Medina is the settlement of the craftsmen (mainly from the Levant) who decorated the royal tombs in the Valleys of the Queens and Kings. The working week was ten days, and the craftsmen had to carry with them all of their tools on the difficult journey through the mountains. The journey from the settlement (15 minutes to the Valley of the Queens, but 45 minutes to the Valley of the Kings) was too onerous to make every day so there was also a temporary village closer to their place of work, comprising around fifty houses with names carved in the rooms. French archaeologist Bernard Bruyere worked at Deir el-Medina from 1921 until 1951. He found 68 artisan’s houses and 7 phases of construction. The votive area contains 30 votive chapels. A big stone temple to Hathor was built over the earlier mudbrick chapels. In addition, the necropolis contains 491 tombs, 53 of which are decorated. Only 7 tombs are open to the public.

When he took over the site in 2011, Dr Gobeil had three aims – to restore and preserve the fragile mudbrick and dry-stone walls; to write a site management programme and to study the 10 storerooms (tombs which had had metal doors added and which contained objects not studied by Bruyere).

Work on the village:

Up to 20% of the walls in the village had collapsed. Few workmen’s villages are known in Ancient Egypt and so there was an urgency to assess the condition of the buildings. The village buildings were excavated, cleaned (40cm of dust and sand lay on the floors) and restored using appropriate materials and archive photographs over a period of four months.

Thousands of objects were found during this conservation work. Bruyere had retrieved the stelae but left behind beads, small inscribed stones and stamped mudbricks.

A new accurate map and 3D model of the village has been created. It includes stone-by-stone drawings of the buildings.

Work on the votive chapels:

One of the chapels had been restored in 1934 but by 2011 was in poor condition. The outer walls were damaged, the internal wall divisions and the circular base for a zeer (a vessel to hold water) had gone.

The chapel took two months to restore. 150 objects were found on the floor including the head of a statue and many ostraca. One ostracon mentioned a cyclic feast. Another mentions the wrath of King Amenhotep I. There was a hole in one wall where the priest could hide. When the villagers came to see the oracle, the priest threw the god’s reply to them, hence the ostraca on the floor.

Another chapel has had a new roof installed and the wall paintings restored. A wooden floor and lighting were put in and the chapel was opened to the public in 2016.

D-Stretch software was used to identify the decoration on a shrine in chapel no.4. It is a painting of a child sat on a cushion, his finger held to his lips. There is a similar image on a stela in the Louvre. It represents Ramesses II and was set up on one of his jubilees to revive the eternal youth of his realm.

Work in the tombs:

Most of the tombs are in a terrible condition. The conservation work has included cleaning paintings and reattaching them to the wall and creating new plans and 3D models using photogrammetry. An un-finished sketch was found using D-Stretch software.

In the 1930s the human remains in the tombs were assessed but the excavators were mainly interested in those with amulets or writing on their wrappings. There is no budget to build a new storeroom for the human remains and so they have been moved to a dry tomb. A mixture of alcohol and water was used to kill the bacteria which had formed on them. The remains were then wrapped in acid free paper, numbered, tagged and boxed. This work was done by Anne Austin of the University of Stanford.

One of the most interesting discoveries was the torso of a female mummy which was decorated with tattoos depicting Wedjat eyes, baboons, nefer hieroglyphs, snakes and flowers. These are unusual as tattoos were usually geometric patterns. It has taken two years to study the designs using D-Stretch. There are two symmetrical lotus flowers at the bottom of her back and two cows with headdresses representing Hathor on her left arm. Was she a priestess of Hathor? a singer? a musician? The findings were published in 2016. http://www.deirelmedina.com/lenka/Tattoos.html In total ten tattooed bodies have been found. Tattoos include a lion smelling a lotus flower, a band of lotus flowers around the thighs and a belt with geometric motifs around the hips.

Tiny fragments of linen cloth were found in 2012 and 2014; remnants of decorated shrouds.

The khetem:

This structure is mentioned in documents but has never been identified on the ground. It was a guarded checkpoint where archives and tools were kept. Dr Gobeil aimed to find it.

In 2017 he got permission to investigate the north entrance and the so-called ‘Ramesside House’. The khetem was not found but Dr Gobeil has re-interpreted the house as the entrance Temple of Amun of Ramesses II from the Ramesside street. It has a central staircase with rooms to either side.

Excavations also revealed a large wall and a place to deliver water with two gutters, two basins and ceramic jars set in the ground. There is a similar structure at Amarna, where the basins were interpreted as providing drinking water for donkeys and the ceramic jars holding water for humans. A thick layer of straw served as the ‘parking area’ for the donkeys.

Following the course of the newly found Ramesside street may help with the future search for the elusive khetem.

I really enjoyed this lecture and it encouraged me to do further internet research on Deir el-Medina and the tattooed mummies.

Jennifer Morrison

Elena is a Marie Curie Fellow at Durham University. She talked to us about her research project on the 3rd intermediate period, which was a period of political turmoil. At the end of the New Kingdom there was a loss of unity, a weakening of the economy and political fragmentation. There was a large influx of people into Egypt from Libya and Nubia. Libyan mercenaries and chiefs acquired military power. In 945 BC Libyans became pharaohs at Tanis and Bubastis. The pharaohs placed their children in high priesthood. Tefnakht came from a family of priests. Despite his non-royal background, he rose to become a Chief of the Ma (ancient Egyptian abbreviation for the Meshwesh, who were a Libyan tribe); he was a prince of Sais; he assumed the title ‘Great Chief of the West’ and founded the 24th dynasty. Tefnakht ruled from 727 to 715 BC. The 25th Dynasty or Nubian Dynasty was founded by Piankhy or Piye in 747 BC. He invaded and seized control of Lower Egypt around 735 BC and celebrated his campaigns on his Stele of Victory, which was found at Jebel Barkal in 1862. Piye’s son Taharqa defeated the Assyrians in 674 BC, but in 671 BC the Assyrian King Esarhaddon conquered Memphis and Taharqa retreated south. He soon regained control over Memphis, only to be defeated by Esarhaddon’s successor Ashurbanipal, and dying soon after. Taharqa’s successor Tantamani defeated Necho, the subject ruler installed by Ashurbanipal, and took Thebes. But in 663 BC the Assyrians sacked Thebes and chased Tantamani back to Nubia. An Egyptian ruler, Psamtik I was placed on the throne as a vassal of Ashurbanipal and he reunified the country and centralised the government within ten years.

The temples played an important role during this turbulent time. The temple personnel controlled local power and the provision of wealth and so the Assyrians and their relatives became high ranking priests. Making the priest titles hereditary was a strategy to keep control in a time of instability.

Osorkon II (pharaoh from 872-837 BC) moved the office of the High Priest of Ptah to Memphis to control people and economical power. He also appointed his son Nimlot C as the High Priest of Amun at Thebes.

Elena is studying new categories of priests using cult topographical manuals, which list the cities and priests, lakes, rivers and gods. These include the Manual of the Delta, Tanis Geographical Papyrus, Tebtynis Papyrus and the Great Geographic Text of Edfu. The Jean Yoyotte archives held by Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes in Paris documents as-yet unpublished priest titles. Elena’s next port-of-call will be to examine an archive in Brooklyn Museum.

Elena aims to find out who the priests were and understand their social position, their roles, their administration and their titles. She is studying the social network of individuals and their families.

During the 25th and 26th dynasties, ancient priest titles from the Old Kingdom were re-used for prestige. The titles were passed down from father to sons. A statue in the Pushkin Museum in Moskow lists five generations of one family (Basa I, Ankhor, Basa II, Padiamun and Basa III), many of which were priests. A coffin in the tomb of Pasheritaisu at Saqqarah lists the same family, including Basa III and his son Horsaaset.

Another family of priests is listed on two stelae in the Louvre, where the sons held the same offices as their father.

Questions remain for Elena to answer. Did the priest’s offices move round to avoid local corruption or to follow political power? Were the titles honorific rather than effective jobs? Did people hold these titles at the same time? Why was there a proliferation of titles during the 26th dynasty?

Jennifer Morrison

This was a great start to another fantastic study day. Sarah is the deputy editor of Ancient Egypt magazine. She began her talk by reminding us that when in use, the temples would have looked very different to how they do today. The wide-open courts would have been full of statues, every space would have been decorated, and the temples would have been gaudy with colour. Temples are still awe inspiring today, but they would have wowed in antiquity. For example, no expense was spared when the Temple of Montu at Karnak was built. It included a staggering 2800kg of gold, plus white gold, black copper, bronze and semi-precious stones such as lapis lazuli. Temples were the machines that kept Egypt running – they brought order to chaos. They were ‘mansions of the gods’ or houses for a deceased king. They represent the body of a god and the site of original creation. They sustained life for the hereafter. Sarah went on to discuss the various locations and alignments of temples. Gebel Barkal was built on a sacred site, a natural mound where the gods were thought to reside. The Aswan temples were aligned to Sothis, Luxor is aligned with Karnak and Edfu is aligned with an earlier temple. Many temples have a solar alignment, so the sun illuminates the interior when it rises and sets.

Temples were also important economic centres. They required a large workforce and were built with the spoils of conquest and tribute. They were the setting of large public festivals. They were like mini cities with their own granaries, bakeries, sanatoriums etc.

Sarah then took us through a history of the development of temples. The earliest probable sacred spaces were in the prehistoric period (before 3200 BC). They were caves decorated with art depicting human figures.

The earliest manmade religious structure in Africa is at Nabta Playa where standing stones date to 6500 years ago. It has been s uggested that the stones represent a calendar or a sundial.

The first shrines were built in the Pre and Early Dynastic Period (5500 to 2686 BC), and were constructed of wooden posts and colourful reed matting. There was a per-wer type shrine at the cult centre of Nekhen (Hierakonpolis) or the City of the Hawk. The shape of the shrine resembles a falcon or a crouched animal.

The other type of shrine is known as a per-nu. Buto, an early dynastic capital of lower Egypt, has tombs built in the same shape. There are Early Dynastic Period temples at Coptos (for Min), Memphis (for Ptah) and at Elephantine (for Satet). There is Early Dynastic royal mortuary architecture similar to temples, at the necropolis of Umm El Qu’ab at Abydos.

Sarah showed us images of 11th and 12th dynasty temples such as the Temple of Metuhotep II at Deir el-Bahri and the White Chapel of Senusret I.

During the New Kingdom kings were trying to out-do one another and demonstrate power, propaganda, wealth and empire, by embellishing temples and holding bigger more impressive rituals and public processions. There was a processional way of sphinxes between Luxor and Karnak. Along the way there were way stations or kiosks where pilgrims could rest. Pharaohs chiselled away their predecessor’s decoration and cartouches in order to carve their own.

Sarah discussed the symbolism of temples. They represented the focal space between heaven and earth, human and divine, chaos and order and harmony and balance. The roof represented heaven and the floor represented the marsh, from which the primeval world emerged. Column bases often feature marsh plants like palms, lotus and papyrus. Some outer courts were designed to actually flood. The pylon represents two mountains and the sun rose in-between.

A typical temple layout might include enclosure walls which marked out the estate of the god and protected the temple from invasion. In front of the entrance there might be pairs of obelisks, or cedar wood flagpoles with coloured pennants, or colossal statues of the king and god combined.

The pylon acted as a gateway or threshold, leading into an open peristyle courtyard surrounded by a colonnade and filled with statues. This was the interface between the outer public area and inner sacred space.

The inner halls, with their hypostyle columns and jewelled bronze doors which were opened to let the sun and heaven inside, were dark, private and sacred.

The sacredness increases as you pass through the temple. The power centre of the temple was the Holy of Holies where the rituals took place. These inner sanctuaries were dark and intimate spaces where only kings and priests were allowed, the most holy place at the heart of the temple, with gold statues, a naos type shrine and offerings to the gods.

The inner chambers around the sanctuary held statues of visiting gods and were storerooms for equipment. Crypts under the floor held treasure.

We know from Dendera that stairs led up to the temple roof.

Houses of Life (per-ankh) held religious texts, temple accounts and correspondence. They were the centres of priestly learning, art, theology, astronomy and medicine.

All temples had a sacred lake where you could immerse yourself to be purified.

I think everyone enjoyed this talk particularly because it was so well illustrated. There were reconstruction drawings by Jean-Claude Golvin and R.H. Wilkinson, amazing photographs (particularly of Dendera Temple) and best of all video reconstructions and fly-throughs, which I shall enjoy watching again and again.

Julie Misuriello

For the second lecture of the day, our very own Penny Wilson took us for a fascinating journey in the Egyptian religious mind. Penny started her talk by explaining the motive of the Wedjat-Eye, which is a combination of a human eye and a falcon eye. The twisted part underneath could be a representation of the optic nerve attached to the eyeball – another proof that the Egyptians were experts in human anatomy. Wedjat means which is ‘whole’ or ‘healthy’. The eye is an early protective motive on reliefs, stelae or amulets. On coffins from the Middle Kingdom, the eye has a practical function since it indicates where the head of the deceased lays and creates a portal through which the dead can see. The Wedjat-Eye has also a close link with the snake Nehebkaou ‘He who binds kas/food’, at the same time creator and destroyer. The Wedjat-Eye first appears in the Coffin Texts (CT VI 224) in relation with Horus and Seth’ power struggle. As Penny reminded us, the power of Horus is in his eyes, whereas Seth’s power is to be found in his testicles. Horus’ eye is taken away and given back to him.

The ritual of slaughtering the oryx/antelope is interesting in that regard because it is aimed at returning the power to the King. Yet, antelopes are known to have red eyes, like bleeding eyes, at some point in the year.

Thoth is closely linked to the Wedjat-Eye, and many statues are showing the lunar god holding the Eye. The symbol of the moon growing to be full again is here very clear. Furthermore, in the story of the contending of Horus and Seth, the moon disk is the child of Seth, rising on his head, and taken care of by Thoth.

However, the Eye has a destructive aspect too. The fiery Eye seeking blood, Sekhmet, links to the red eyes of the antelopes.

Finally, Penny pointed that the Wedjat-Eye has mathematical applications: its different parts create the Egyptian fractions. What is very intriguing is that all fractions only add up to 63/64. Penny then showed us a representation of a ritual on the Roman backwall of Kom Ombo with offerings coming from the different temples of Egypt to form the whole of Egypt. Ultimately, the Wedjat-Eye is Egypt and all its parts are the different towns, whereas the Nile is the Wedjat-Eye that goes through Egypt.

Penny finally came to this conclusion: the offering of the Wedjat-Eye enables the kingships of Horus/the King, protects him against his enemies (Seth) and restores the Eye, that is Egypt. The filling of the Eye at Edfu is a perfect illustration: it shows a list of gods, stones and plants. The Wedjat-Eye is an image of Egypt, under the King’s authority.

Penny ended her talk by referring to a famous pendant from Tutankhamun’s treasure that brings to life the ideology behind the concept of the Wedjat-Eye: a representation of the cosmos with the Heavens, the sky and the Earth. Filling the Wedjat-Eye metaphorically assures the completeness of Egypt.

I particularly enjoyed this fantastic lecture because it demonstrated how, in the Egyptian religion, different concepts and believes overlap and can explain rituals which at first seem obscure. Furthermore, the observation of nature is always a key element when it comes to explain the Egyptian myths.

Julie Misuriello

Building on the lectures by Sarah and Penny, Ken focused on the issue of access to temples for the people rather than the priesthood, looking at the evidence for when access was allowed and to what parts of the temple structure. This evidence comes several sources including the rekhyt rebus, an emblem of a lapwing with human hands that represents the citizens of the lower classes. Ken began with a reminder of the names for temples. The basic word in pr (house), along with ḥwt-ntr (mansion of the gods) and ḥwt nt ḥḥw m-rnpwt (mansion of millions of years). The design of the temples represented the cosmos: a pylon leading to an open courtyard that would be full of statues, then a roofed hypostyle hall leading to the inner sanctuary. The rooms of the temple became smaller and darker as one went in, with the roof getting lower and the floor higher. Ordinary people would be allowed access as far as the open courtyard but the rest was for the priesthood only. Ken described the successive areas of a typical temple, including the outside areas. Gouges made by pilgrims on the exterior walls are often hard to date, but they are evidence of people taking dust from the walls, believing it to have magical properties. There may also be graffiti made by scribes, wab-priests and artisans. The outside areas also had small temples, as at Karnak, where people could make offerings. Postholes around the walls indicate the existence of wooden shrines around the figures carved on the walls. Doorways were also popular places for worship, for example, the ‘People’s Gate’ at Luxor. In the courtyards, caches of statues have been found buried underground, evidence of access granted to the ordinary people, the rekhyt people. The letters of Djehutimose also mention taking children into the courtyard. However, evidence for access by the rekhyt people to the hypostyle hall is rare, and texts indicate that that the inner sanctuaries were off-limits. In terms of timing, access was allowed during festivals, as these were public events.

In the remainder of the lecture Ken talked about the rekhyt rebus. This is made up of a lapwing with human hands, a neb basket, a star and a cartouche of the Pharaoh. In total its meaning is ‘all the rekhyt people adore the Pharaoh’. But what has this to do with temple access? It has been argued from evidence on the ‘People’s Gate’ at Luxor that the rebus gave access permission, but Ken challenges this. For example, all the hypostyle columns at Karnak apart from the central group have the rebus. Ken has found seven examples from the New Kingdom and Graeco-Roman period where the rebus is in the inner sanctuary, all on friezes and doorways, so this cannot indicate accessibility.

In conclusion, Ken argued for a new interpretation of access by the rekhyt people, that they are a part of the reciprocal arrangement between the people, the Pharaoh and the gods; they are part of ma’at. If we take away the people, there is no Pharaoh and if there is no Pharaoh, there are no gods.

Jean Barnett

Sarah’s lecture followed on from her earlier lecture ‘Origin and Development of Cult Temples in Egypt’ The lecture covered major New Kingdom and Ptolemaic temples in Lower Egypt; Luxor Temple, Great Aten temple in Amarna, Seti I Temple in Abydos, Dendera, Edfu and Karnak. The lecture consisted of tours of the major cult temples using fly through videos. It began with Luxor Temple which was begun under the reign of Amenhotep III with additions from Hatshepsut (which were later destroyed) and Ramesses II who built on a large scale. The temple was built for Amun of the Opet which was a form of Amun that Amun-Ra at Karnak Temple visited during the Opet festival. The court built by Ramesses II angles slightly so it is more in line with Karnak Temple and contains triple shrines for the divine triad: Amun, Mut and Khonsu. The temple became a military camp during the Roman Period evidenced by Roman reliefs unearthed. A fly through video was shown of a reconstructed Luxor Temple and surrounding area, the video allowed the viewer a clearer understanding of how the structure would have looked with roofs and brightly coloured paint. The next stop on our temple journey was Amarna and the Small and Great Aten temples, the fly through video again was a reconstruction constructed by Jean-Claude Golvin of the temples based on the remains of the buildings excavated at the site. The video showed a more clean and sophisticated temple in comparison to Luxor as well reconstructed city which truly gave an understanding of the size of the Great Aten temple.

From Amarna we continued to Seti I temple at Abydos, Seti I died before the temple was complete and the project was taken on by his heir Ramesses II who made changes to the temple reliefs. Seti I used raised relief where Ramesses used sunken, Ramesses also included images of himself and his children even though he states within the text he was finishing the temple for his father.

The temple is unique in that it has an L-shape, this is due to the location of the Osireion behind the temple, the design was deliberate as it is believed Seti built the Osireion which is situated behind the Osiris inner chapels of the temple. There was no fly through video for this temple but we were given a brief overlook if the different inner chapels using photographs.

Before being shown the Ptolemaic Temples a brief introduction was given into this period of history starting with the Alexander the Great invasion which lead to the Macedonian Greeks who became Pharaohs. The new Pharaohs brought a mixture of styles which in turn gave complicated and confusing imagery, as well as building new temples they also repaired temples already present.

The most distinctive features of this period is the Mammisis or Bath House, independent structures within temple complex and iconography which celebrates the rituals of the marriage and birth of their offspring which is symbolically related to the New Kingdom birth scenes.

The first Ptolemaic temple we shown was Dendera Temple which is still has its roof which also has a kiosk. The temple consists of a hypostyle Hall and 12 chapels which include shrines for Hathor’s Sistrum and Menat Collar, the rear temple wall has the only known image of Cleopatra. In recent years there has been a large restoration project at Dendera which included removing the soot in the Hypostyle Hall, images of the work was shown which has uncovered original paint.

There are also several kiosks from the Roman period outside the mudbrick enclosure wall which surrounds the temple complex. A gateway of Domitian and Trajan is built into this mudbrick wall which leads to the large open courtyard.

The next temple was the Edfu Temple which took 95 years to construct, there is evidence of New Kingdom structures but the temple today was constructed during the Ptolemaic period. It is a standard temple layout and incorporates a shrine of Nectanebo II. The story of the construction of the temple is told on the walls of the temple itself along with the temple foundation ritual. We were shown a literal ‘Run Through’ video, although it was entertaining watching an individual running through the temple it was not as informative as the ‘Fly Through’ videos.

Last temple was Karnak, which is actually a complex of temples rather than a singular one. Karnak consists of 3 precincts- Montu, Mut and Amun. A quick run through of the temples and chapels along with the layout was given before a brief overview. A video of Karnak was shown which showed the temple phase-by-phase which gave a better understanding of this large structure grew over time. Some of the additions in the video were hard to see as they small and some of it could be a bit confusing as there were individual structures which seemed to have no connection to the complex, of course this could be due to knowledge has the video is based on the evidence found.

The video was followed by a quick look in pictures of the 2 different axis, East/West and North/South, which was colour coded to show what was built at what time.

The lecture ended with the decline and fall of temples, the start of the decline is seen in the Roman period with the increased popularity of Christianity. Images of David Roberts paintings were shown to give an image of the state of the temples when Egyptology was born.

The lecture was fun and engaging as well as thought provoking as seeing these temples it is easy to forgot that they have been developed, altered or simply replaced.

Kelly Thompson

(A PDF with links to the Temple videos etc can be found here)

We learnt that there are six broad types of offering tables: A stone rectangular table with a spout B oval or horseshoe shaped ceramic tray C ceramic tray with a shrine sculpture inside D stone offering basin E pottery soul house with a spout F amulet or model offering tablet in bronze, faience etc Some offering tables, such as those in temples are large and monumental. Some are fixed (cut from the bed rock). Small ones are handheld and can be moved around. Amulets are personalised and are portable and carried. Offering tables can be made of various materials – limestone, sandstone, granite, basalt and pottery. The colours of offering tables are thought to have meanings. For example, red tables could symbolise blood or the red Nile. White tables could represent nourishment and purity, Isis or Nephthys. Black (basalt), green and blue tables are also common. Limestone changes colour – it is white when dry, red when wet. The spouts, basins and canals on the offering tables have various possible meanings, such as reaching or feeding the dead below, storing energised water, providing sustenance, irrigation of the fields, canals representing movement, basins representing sacred lakes.

Offering tables often feature pictures of offerings such as vegetables, fruit, animal parts and beer jars, and natural elements such as lotus flowers, reeds, Isis tree.

The iconography represents fertility and rejuvenation.

What made Esme’s talk particularly enjoyable was the fun (and messy!) interactive session afterwards. She had had two 3D prints made from photographs of two real offering tables held by the Fitzwilliam Museum.

The first model was a scaled-down version of a desk-sized limestone table from Abydos, which was decorated with jars and amphora and featured canals, eight basins and a spout.

The second was a life-size copy of a crude mud pottery offering tray from El Kab, which had been painted red and had a piece of meat, an ox skull and an ox leg carved inside.

Members of NEAES took turns to pour water onto the models to see how liquid would have run across the table and tray, and where you would need to pour the liquid from to fill the basins and out of the spout. Members suggested that the pottery offering tray was probably made by a family. It was probably tilted when in use. It was porous and would have soaked up much of the water. It might have been taken to the fields and used to bless the harvest or perhaps taken to a chapel or a grave (to copy what went on the upper classes courtyard tombs). The real example was found in the citadel at El Kab and so was probably for domestic use. It was speculated that the red paint would have made the water look like blood. A magic man or priest needed to say a spell to magically charge the water and maybe the amulet offering tables were worn by the priests. This was a great afternoon which brought artefacts to life. I hope that the Society has more interactive sessions in the future.

Jennifer Morrison

Manuela began by presenting us with a problem: why was this site built? Amara West is an Egyptian outpost in Lower Nubia, established under Seti I in about 1300 BCE and abandoned around 1070. There are several older sites nearby, including that at Sai so why was it needed? The settlement consists of a small walled area, later extended with suburbs to the West and East, plus two cemeteries. It was first excavated by the EES in the 1930s and 40s but is now under a team from the British Museum. The architecture is typically Egyptian but with more rounded Nubian style buildings in the Western suburb. It is the small finds at the site that interest Manuela, as they may tell us something about the way of life there. Finds at the site are listed in a database (see the website below) and show vidence of small-scale metal production and the use of imported and local materials. Manuela described the findings under four headings: wood, bronze and ivory, jar stoppers and seals, and faience and stone tools. Some 470 wooden objects have been found, mainly in the cemeteries, as they are funerary beds and headrests, and mainly fragmented. The woods are local species such as acacia and sycamore. Of particular interest are the styles of the bed legs: these are in three parts and are a mix of cuboids and cylindrical shapes. Manuela was able to develop a typology of bed leg types over time. The head rests are patterned with ivory studs to disguise the dowels that held the parts together. Also, the remains of a wooden box have been found, with bone sticks and a top decorated with faience and pigments.

The 300+ bone and ivory finds comprise jewellery, furniture inlays, tools, gaming pieces and hairpins. The bones come from a variety of animals: caprines, cows, pigs and antelopes. The ivory items mainly comprise bracelets and mirror handles. Ivory working requires a range of tools, as illustrated in scenes from the tomb of Rekhmire at Thebes, and chisels have been found. However, no tools relating to textile working have been recovered, suggesting that cloth may have been imported.

The jar stoppers, found mainly within the settlement, consist of three parts: bungs, stoppers and sealings. Stopper impressions have also been preserved, as in some cases the actual stopper has been eaten by termites. Reconstructions of some seals indicate that they may have been thrown on a potter’s wheel. There are relatively few faience objects, around 35 pieces, mainly in fragmentary form. The 72 stone fragments are mainly of travertine, and cut marks on some of them show evidence of reuse.

While the puzzle of the need for the site’s existence remains, the finds do throw light on issues such as the balance between local production and imported goods and materials at the site, and the level of interaction between Egyptians and the local Nubian population.

For further information see: http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/search.aspx gives the database of finds.

http://www.britishmuseum.org/pdf/Amara_West_Living_in_Egyptian_Nubia.pdf is a full report on life at the site.

Jean Barnett

Lucy Skinner is a conservator who has previously worked at the British Museum and Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge. She went to Amarna in 2011 to work on the wooden coffins. It was interesting to learn about the findings of the excavations from a scientist’s point of view rather than an Egyptologist’s. Lucy told us that Amarna (Akhetaten in antiquity) was built and abandoned within fifteen years and thus represents a time capsule of archaeological material and burials. The city was built as the new capital of pharaoh Akhenaten and cult centre for the worship of the Aten. The city is also known for its two groups of rock tombs. The north tombs lie at the base of a cliff face and a ravine divides them into two groups. Six decorated tombs belonged to some of the principal men at Akhenaten’s court (such as two senior priests). Nineteen south tombs, which are cut into a low plateau, contain burials of a broader range of officials. Tomb 9 is for Mahu, Chief of police. Tomb 25 is for Ay, ‘the God’s father’, who later became pharaoh.

In 2001 Barry Kemp (Amarna Trust) discovered non-elite burials at the end of a wadi using GPS survey. Pottery and bone were found lying on the desert floor. In 2003 a further cemetery was found. There may be over 7000 graves.

The first painted coffins were excavated in 2006. One example has a ring decoration on the lid, and depicts a vulture holding a ring (a shen ring carried by the vulture goddess Nekhbet?) with its feathers represented by blue and red dots.

In 2008 a coffin decorated with a face was found. This was a new type of coffin decoration – the Amarna type. ‘Traditional’ coffins depict the eye of Horus, not humans.

In 2010 two complete examples of this new type of coffin were found, showing humans making offerings to the Aten. The find was published in the Journal of Egyptian Archaeology in 2011.

Conservators were brought to Amarna from 2011 to work on the coffins. They found that some of the bodies were lying supine and were wrapped in textile and vegetable fibre matting, with stones placed on top of them. The matting was recorded in-situ and then samples were taken for analysis. Different crops were used for the matting in the two cemetery areas. One complete matting coffin was block lifted for conservation.

One ceramic coffin was found and in 2012, a mud and straw coffin for a child. It still had a carrying rope around it. It was very heavy but not very strong. It was block lifted by the conservators, but despite conservation work, the face of the coffin fell in and the back was broken – but this allowed the body inside to be excavated.

Twenty unpainted plain wooden box-shaped coffins were recorded. They were in such poor preservation that they could not be retrieved in one piece. Termites had eaten the wood, there was root damage and water had penetrated from the wadi and from rainfall. But the dovetail joints, internal dowels and wooden pegs holding the coffin together could be seen.

In the south-west corner of the cemetery there was a brick tomb which had been heavily robbed. There was probably a chapel above it which had a window grille. The coffin inside was made of chunky wood and had been plastered and painted. A hand was visible and gold leaf was present – possibly from a gilded face?

Fifteen stelae, which resemble a rock cut tomb, marked some graves. Their pointed tops point to the sun (Aten being the disk of the sun).

Lucy explained how the fragile coffin timbers are prepared for lifting. The outer surface is consolidated with various consolidants and a backing is then placed on the other side so that the pieces of timber can be moved. The wax applied over a cheesecloth gauze will later evaporate once the plastic or foil covering is removed.

One of the most interesting coffins included that of a child, which was decorated using the yellow pigment orpiment. This would have been rare and expensive. It sparkles like the sun – but is toxic as it contains arsenic. This coffin survived in better condition because the termites didn’t like the toxic pigment. The coffin was too small for the 3 year old child. Their feet poked out of a hole in the end.

The ‘jackal coffin’ was conserved in-situ as it was so fragile. It was not fully uncovered and recorded until it was back in the lab.

One coffin was pink inside. Others were yellow (ochre).

The coffins are now being studied in the lab to identify pigments (a portable XRF machine is used). Visual light luminescence can identify Egyptian blue and can see decoration under thick varnish.

Analysis will hopefully also identify the plasters used to fill gaps between the timber panels (and textile impressions survive on the plaster), the wood species (sycamore is common), the type of joints, dowels and mortice holes used. Wood from other objects have been reused as coffin pegs. Objects made from cedar from Lebanon may have been used as timber patches. The texts are being deciphered. Some of the human remains have hair extensions tied on. Perfume cones made of bee’s wax were placed on a couple of skulls. One woman had a wax comb on her head. The bodies are quite well preserved. Some have been naturally mummified by the dry heat. Some retain skin.

Excavations continue in Amarna in 2018. The graves of young people aged between 7 and 25 years have been found, but no babies and no elderly people.

Jennifer Morrison

James’ lecture today introduced us to the fascinating topic of Ptolemaic-Roman terracotta figurines from the site at Tell Timai in the Nile delta. Such figurines are often found in museum collections, and James used some examples from Manchester to develop his theme. James began by talking about the site and the field school that he runs there. Tell Timai is mentioned by Herodotus and has a history dating back to the fourth century BCE, coming to prominence under Ptolemy II. Its history continued through the Roman and Coptic periods until the tenth century CE. Although modern villages are encroaching on the site, it is well-preserved, with the remains of a late Ptolemaic temple, metallurgy workshops, a late Roman cemetery and some houses. It is the houses that form the context for the terracotta figurines, unlike, say those found in temples in Greece. James made the important point that the context for the figurines found in museums is often unknown; they could be from temples but we just don’t know. The figurines depict several gods from the Egyptian pantheon: Bes, Harpocrates, Thoth in baboon form, and Isis. Some are sexually explicit with both male and female genitalia. James developed a case study focusing on three figurines of acrobats. These show figures with their legs vertically in the air, resting on their forearms on circular tables with leonine feet. The faces are ethnically African with coiled hairstyles. They were discovered together in a circular pit, together with other items including gold earrings. Nearby was an infant burial under amphora shards, but it is not clear whether the pit relates to the burial. These acrobat figurines are unique; the only objects with any similarity are marble statues of the first and third centuries CE found in Rome, one of which is a copy of an Alexandrian original. This suggests that the style was common in Egypt in the late Ptolemaic period.

The figurines from the Manchester Museum are of the same gods. Harpocrates is shown as a boy with his finger on his lips, reflecting the hieroglyph for a child. Bes, a protective figure, is shown with armour. Other gods depicted are Isis, Thoth (again as a baboon), Sobek, Serapis, and, from the Greek pantheon, Eros, Athena, Demeter and Zeus. What was the role of these figurines? James noted that artists of the 19th century often painted a romanticised picture of Egyptian life, showing people making offerings to gods in small shrines in their houses. This perhaps gives us a clue; the figurines could have formed collections for domestic shrines.

James concluded his talk by noting the wide variety of figurines at Tell Timai, representing both Egyptian and Hellenistic deities. They are found in domestic contexts and focus on protection and fertility, with the acrobat figurines being a new type. Those in museums lack a secure date but do provide an important and invaluable tool in demonstrating the wide variety of deities and everyday themes portrayed within the coroplastic artwork of the Ptolemaic-Roman Period.

Jean Barnett

Dirk’s lecture was a treat for those of us who admire prehistoric rock art and it was a refreshing change of topic from tomb art. Most of us have heard of the famous rock art in France and Spain, but I was not aware of the contemporary rock art in Eygpt. Dirk began with a short synopsis of similarly dated rock art finds elsewhere. Bison paintings in a cave at Altamira in Spain were found in 1879, but not confirmed as being Palaeolithic until 1902. Art was found in a cave in Portugal in 1981, but not confirmed it was Palaeolithic until 2006. By contrast, cave art was found in Egypt in 2004 and had been dated by 2010. El Kab, a pharaonic site, serves as the base for the Brussels mission’s rock art surveys. The first Egyptian site that was discussed was el-Hosh, where undated curvilinear mushroom shapes representing fish traps, were found at 35 different locations in 1998. The art is between 8000 and 9000 years old. There is also a late Palaeolithic settlement at el-Hosh, found in 2004, where flints dating to 16,000 to 15,000 years ago and animal bone have been recovered. In 2005 twelve panels depicting naturalistic animals were found in an idyllic location. Similar drawings had been found by the Canadians to the south in the 1960s.

Building on a flood plain meant the need for protective measures. An extensive drilling programme investigated the subsoil and showed that the top of the flood plain is higher towards the North, with the Late Kingdom and the double walls serving as dams.

The second site to be discussed was Qurta, which lies on the eastern bank of the Nile. The village was built in the 1960s to house residents displaced by the construction of the Aswan dam.

There are three rock art sites. Canadian scholars spotted the rock art by accident while they were excavating a site which was going to be reclaimed for agriculture. The excavation yielded flint hunting and butchery tools and animal bones (auroch, gazelle, donkey, hippo, fish and waterfowl – the same animals that are represented on the rock art).

The six locations at Qurta One were recorded between 2007 and 2010. They include a panel 2m x 4m in size which depicts 25 high quality bovids. Due to changes in ground level from quarrying, the art can now only be reached using scaffolding.

At Qurta Two there were realistic animals - an auroch with peculiarly bent hind legs (there is a similar bovid and horse in Lascaux and an antelope with bent hind legs in a Dordogne cave), a group of four frolicking or running wild aurochs (bos primigenius – an extinct species), a large goose, gazelles, three waterfowl, hippos and fish (including a Nile perch). There are similar bovids at Grotte de la Mairie. There were some fantastical hybrid animals including a bovid missing its front legs, a strange animal or monster - amorphous with two legs, and a strange bird, like a pelican or stork with a bovid’s body. Finally, there were stylised human figures. Six of them were on a large bovid and had no heads, arms or feet. There are similar human figures at Gonnersdorf in Germany, which have been dated to the late Magdalenian 15,000 to 13,000 years old. The comparable art traditions from the different countries attest to a similar mental culture. The art at Qurta Two has been dated because hillslope deposits partly covered the panel and the date at which the deposit was laid down has been dated by OSL (Optically Stimulated Luminescence) to 15,000 years ago.

The natural features of the rock appear to have been used to conceive the art. For instance, a natural crack in the rock had been widened to form the hind quarters of a bovid. The relief on the rock was used to suggest movement in the drawings.

Egyptian colleagues have found more art sites. At Cas 13 there is a life size ibex. There is a fish close to Wadi Abu Subeira.

The late Palaeolithic sites are focused along the wadis feeding into the Nile. People didn’t live in the deserts at that time as they were too inhospitable. During the Holocene period, 10,500 to 7000 years ago, people did move out of the Nile valley, but the rock art was different by then.

Dirk told us that it is likely that rock art will be found all along the north coast of Africa where aurochs were present (rock art is also present in Sinai and Libya). Art is always in high prominent places overlooking the hunting grounds.

Dirk says Qurta is as scientifically important as Lascaux. The Qurta rock art has featured in a French documentary and was in the first episode of ‘ Immortal Egypt’ with Joann Fletcher. It is even mentioned in the Lonely Planet guidebook. National Geographic has run trips to see the art, which is closed to the public because they are so fragile. The Ashmolean Museum has a representation of the Qurta panel.

The art comprises incisions and pecking by flint tools. The rock is soft and easy to carve. There is now no evidence of colour, but they might have been painted.

I really enjoyed Dirk’s lecture. I knew nothing of Egyptian prehistoric rock art before this talk. The existence of similar contemporary mental cultures creating similar art in North Africa and Europe, and possible interaction between people in Sicily and North Africa via the Straits of Gibraltar during the Palaeolithic period is fascinating.

Jennifer Morrison

Our second lecture today provided a fascinating insight into the settlement at Elkab. The site is noted for its Late Period mudbrick enclosure wall, a double wall dating from the Old Kingdom, a New Kingdom necropolis, a unique mastaba tomb from the third dynasty, a temple of Amenhotep III and the Vulture rock with sixth dynasty inscriptions. Since 2009 the Belgian team has focused on the Pre-dynastic areas of the site. Wouter drew our attention to the writings of Annie Quebell, artist for Flinders Petrie, who in her book ‘A Wayfarer in Egypt’, summarised the questions that inspired the team: Elkab was a huge town but why was it so large? How did it originate? How did it develop through time? Whilst the granite blocks themselves, which have been reused as memorials and depict no Egyptian decoration, are of no great interest as artefacts, the story behind them is quite fascinating and somewhat entertaining. I have to credit an afternoon trawling through Wikipedia for putting my short talk together. Until the 1840s the site was a tell until it was destroyed in the search for fertilizer, known as the sebakh but early 20th century excavations found its remains. Since 2009 the Belgian team has excavated 15 trenches and test pits that reveal a vast (4-5 ha) settled area with the Old Kingdom layers undisturbed. Below these, the team found older levels dating to the Badarian period. In fact, the test pits revealed all phases of the Pre-dynastic era, with potsherds of ribbed ware, other pottery and flint tools from Nagada I and II. Also, there were fragments of obsidian that originated in Ethiopia, suggesting contact with others.

The journey of the pyramid blocks from Egypt to Penshaw and West Rainton is all connected to Sir George Elliot, 1st Baronet, a notable 19th century industrialist and politician.

The team has only tested the potential of the site so far but have drawn a number of conclusions:

• its origins date back to the Badarian era but this may not have been a permanent settlement

• from the Nagada period it was a small agricultural settlement

• the test pits suggest that the settlement shiftedv • the Pre-dynastic area of the site is on a sand dune, away from and above the alluvial plain of the Nile

• in the early dynastic period and the Old Kingdom the settlement expanded into the flood plain, evidenced by late third and early fourth dynasty pottery.

Building on a flood plain meant the need for protective measures. An extensive drilling programme investigated the subsoil and showed that the top of the flood plain is higher towards the North, with the Late Kingdom and the double walls serving as dams.

Evidence of daily life has been found from food storage and workshop areas. One building from the second dynasty has stone foundations, exceptional for houses of this period, and was in use for 200 years up to the early fourth dynasty. It has several floor levels with fire pits and storage areas. Burnt wooden beams were found on the top floor level, and there was further building on top of the debris. An odd collection of artefacts from the oldest level includes sickle blades, ceramic vessels, a ceramic disc and a crucible for copper production. One unique vessel had three round depressions in its base and holes in the side, but it had no traces of burning so was not a lamp. The ceramic disc is a Clayton disc, usually found in the Western desert rather than the Nile Valley. Their function is unknown. The crucible, from the second dynasty, matches those seen in Old Kingdom tomb pictures of metalworkers.

Wouter ended his presentation with an amusing tale of how Dirk Huyge found, while answering a call of nature (!), a sandstone fragment of a statue of Sahure (the second ruler of the fifth dynasty). Its feet and legs are wrapped, making it a unique Old Kingdom example; such statues are related to the Heb Sed festival and usually show the cloak over bare feet. Was it a mummiform statue? Wouter left us something to think about!

Jean Barnett

I really enjoyed this lecture, which examined the connection between Egypt and Greece in the Saite period (26th dynasty). Claus explained that when we think of a non-Greek philhellene (a lover of Greek culture) in antiquity we are more likely to think of Lord Byron in the 19th century, not an Egyptian pharaoh. However, Herodotus called Amasis (pharaoh between 570-526 BC) a philhellene and his third book discusses the friendship between Amasis and the Greek tyrant of Samos, Polycrates.

We do not know if Amasis ever visited the island of Samos, but he made a treaty with Polycrates, who sent him gifts, and Amasis sent the Greek king a letter describing his luck in life. Friedrich Schiller wrote a poem called ‘The Ring of Polycrates’ about the two rulers in 1798.

Amasis promoted (but regulated) Greek trade with Eygpt.

He dedicated votive objects to Greek sanctuaries at Cyrene in Libia (an image of Athena or Neith), Lindos on Rhodes (two statues and linen armour) and Samos (two wooden statues behind the entrance to the holy of holies). He was the first Egyptian to conquer Cyprus.

The Great Kouros of Samos (a 4.75m high statue) was inspired by Egyptian statues.

Amasis is actually the Greek version of the pharoah’s name Ahmose II. His pre-nomen was khum-ib-re.

Psammetichus I (664-610 BC) had settled Ionian and Carian soldiers in the Stratopeda (the camps) on an arm of the Nile called the Pelusian, but Amasis moved them to Memphis.

Claus described several excavated sites in Egypt which have demonstrated evidence of Greek influence or presence.

At Abu Simbel, there is Greek and Carian graffiti on the legs of the colossi of Rameses II, which describes the 592 BC campaign of Psammetichus II against the Nubians. The foreign troops were led by Potasimto and the Egyptian troops by a general called Amasis. Whether this is the same man who became pharaoh in 570 is not known, as Amasis is a common Egyptian name.

Tell Dafana in the eastern delta was a significant military installation protecting routes to the Levant. Petrie excavated here in the 19th century, but a new project was begun in 2014 to re-examine the site. A large brick structure was found to contain evidence of daily life. Egyptian objects were found alongside Greek pottery and limestone figurines of foreign style. Foreigners were obviously living here.

Even the name Naukratis suggests a Greek presence. It was the capital city of the 26th dynasty and a trade hub where Greeks were allowed to trade. Again, the site was excavated by Petrie but there has been ongoing work from the 1990s by the British Museum. A Greek style temple has been found, a Greek polis and sanctuaries of Aphrodite, Hera (built by the Samians) and Apollo (built by the Milesians). The Aeginetans set up a precinct to Zeus. Herodotus tells us that Amasis gave Naukratis to the Greeks, but it was already in existence during the reign of Psammetichus I. Artefacts recovered include black Greek painted figurative pottery, alabaster statues of east Greek style and limestone and terracotta statues of 6th century BC date. There is a terracotta kore (statue of a woman) from Naukratis in the British Museum.

Sais was the home town of the Saite kings. There isn’t much to see on the site today, but there was a palace and a temple to Neith.

Memphis became a foremost town in the Saite period, equal to Sais. There was a 26th dynasty palace here, which was probably the residence of Amasis, and a temple of Ptah. The site of the Palace of Apries is now known as Kom Tuman. Limestone reliefs are now held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Basel Museum holds the Apries amphora which displays poor quality hieroglyphs presumably copied by a non-Egyptian.

The site of Kom el-Qalia includes the palace of Merenptah, which was excavated in the early 20th century by Clarence S. Fisher of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology. Fisher was not an Egyptologist and he dug straight through the later layers in order to reach the New Kingdom remains. The finds, which include a limestone statue of a non-Egyptian soldier, part of a limestone stela showing a figure wearing a Phrygian cap and a fragment of a terracotta statue of a woman (similar to the kore from Naukratis) with a long curly hairstyle, broad collar, a mantle over one shoulder and a garment which depicts hieroglyphs of the prenomen of Amasis, are split between the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and the Cairo Museum.

Claus concluded that Amasis perhaps longed for the Mediterranean shores of Samos and he wanted to show his subjects that he associated with Greek deities and culture.

Jennifer Morrison