Egyptian Archaeology 26

No. 26 Spring 2005

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EGYPTIAN ARCHAEOLOGY T HE B ULLETIN

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T HE E GYPT E XPLORATION S OCIETY

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EGYPTIAN ARCHAEOLOGY Bulletin of the Egypt Exploration Society Website: www.ees.ac.uk The opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the aims or concerns of the Egypt Exploration Society Editor Patricia Spencer Editorial Advisers Peter Clayton Vivian Davies George Hart David Jeffreys Mike Murphy Chris Naunton John Taylor Advertising Sales Linda Lee Egypt Exploration Society 3 Doughty Mews London WC1N 2PG (Phone: +44 (0)20 7242 1880) (Fax: +44 (0)20 7404 6118) (E-mail: ea.sales@ees.ac.uk) Trade Distribution Oxbow Books Park End Place Oxford OX1 1HN Fax: +44 (0)1865 794449 Phone: +44 (0)1865 241249 E-mail: orders@oxbowbooks.com Website: www.oxbowbooks.com Published twice a year by The Egypt Exploration Society 3 Doughty Mews, London WC1N 2PG Registered Charity No.212384 A limited Company registered in England, No.25816 Original design by Jeremy Pemberton Printed by Commercial Colour Press plc 116-122 Woodgrange Road Forest Gate, London E7 0EW The Euroslavic font used to print this work is available from Linguist’s Software, Inc., PO Box 580, Edmonds, WA 98020-0580, USA. Phone: (425) 775-1130. www.linguistsoftware.com © Egypt Exploration Society and the contributors. No part of this publication may be reproduced without prior permission of the publishers.

ISSN 0962 2837

Bubastis. Excavations of the Egypt Exploration Fund (1886-89), directed by Edouard Naville. During the work fragments of a shrine of Nekhthorheb (Nectanebo II) were discovered, and are now being studied at the British Museum. See Neal Spencer’s article, pp.21-24. Photograph: Egypt Exploration Society Archive.

Number 26

Spring 2005

Editorial

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Dominic Montserrat and Egyptian Archaeology Patricia Spencer

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Satellite imaging in the pyramid fields Miroslav Bárta and Vladimír BrÛna

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Mendes: city of the ram-god Donald Redford

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Notes and News

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Marsa Nakari: an ancient port on the Red Sea John Seeger and Steven Sidebotham

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The Tuthmoside stronghold of Perunefer Manfred Bietak

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The great naos of Nekhthorheb from Bubastis Neal Spencer

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Digging Diary 2004 Patricia Spencer

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All this pottery, what about it? Janine Bourriau

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Two graves and a well at Sais Penny Wilson

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Notice Board

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The quarries of Gebel Gulab and Gebel Tingar, Aswan Elizabeth Bloxam and Per Storemyr

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Bookshelf

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Membership Matters and Acknowledgements

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Cover illustration: Satellite photograph showing details of the Abu Sir pyramid field and North and Central Saqqara dominated by the pyramid of Djoser. QuickBird DigitalGlobe image. See pp.3-6.

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Answering archaeological questions ancient harbour, this time on the Red Sea, which was probably the Ptolemaic port of Nechesia. From the Delta, there are reports on work at three of the major cities: Donald Redford assesses the history and monuments of Mendes, Penny Wilson reveals some previously unsuspected aspects of the Twenty-Sixth Dynasty capital at Sais, and Neal Spencer has been studying the remains of a monumental shrine of Nekhthorheb from Bubastis. From the other end of Egypt, Elizabeth Bloxam and Per Storemyr report on the quartzite quarries at Aswan, finding evidence for their exploitation in both the New Kingdom and the Roman Period. Finally, Miroslav Bárta and Vladimír BrÛna demonstrate how satellite images, such as the stunning view used on the front cover, can increase our knowledge of even such well-known sites as the Memphite pyramid fields. PATRICIA SPENCER

The title of Janine Bourriau’s article in this issue ‘All this pottery, what about it?’demonstrates the curiosity of non-specialists about archaeological investigations.

In this case the question was posed by a visitor to the EES excavations at Memphis, baffled by the attention being paid to seemingly insignificant pot-sherds. Such painstaking recording of information and its subsequent study, whether it happens in the field or later in research facilities, is an essential part of all archaeology in Egypt today. The articles in this issue of EA illustrate the varied nature of current Egyptological research and show how detailed study of the available evidence can help archaeologists to answer questions.

Manfred Bietak assesses the evidence for locating the ancient Egyptian harbour of Perunefer in the Nile Delta, rather than at Memphis, while John Seeger and Steven Sidebotham have been investigating another

Dominic Montserrat and Egyptian Archaeology Dominic’s involvement with Egyptian in 2002 to join the editorial team, an inArchaeology began in 1999 when he asked vitation which he accepted with pleasure. if we would be interested in carrying a As a member of the editor ial board review of the new film The Mummy. This Dominic, when his ill-health permitted, was definitely a new venture for EA but regularly attended meetings and contribwe felt that an Egyptological viewpoint uted greatly to the editorial process. His on the film, even if wr itten slightly advice was always particularly valuable ‘tongue-in-cheek’ would be valuable to when articles outside the normal range readers and Dominic wrote a piece (EA of fieldwork reports, such as Joan Rees, 15, p.44) which was both entertaining and Petrie as poet (EA 22, pp.18-19), were beinformative, while pointing out, gently, ing considered for publication and he some of the more obvious Egyptological Dominic talking on the phone to brought a different perspective to editerrors in the film and also criticising its Eva Ratz just a few weeks before his orial discussions. anti-Egyptian bias. Dominic followed this death. (Photograph © Suzie Maeder.

One further review by Dominic folReproduced courtesy of Eva Ratz) in 2001 with a review of the sequel, The lowed: of Patricia Usick’s Adventures in Mummy Returns (EA 19, p.44) and at the same time Egypt and Nubia: the Travels of William John Banks (1786also began to review books for ‘Bookshelf ’. In EA 19 1855) in EA 22 (p.41) and at the time of his death, he (p.42) he reviewed Nicholas Reeves’ Akhenaten: Egypt’s had identified several books which he hoped to reFalse Prophet – a task for which Dominic was admiraview for EA: reviews which, sadly, he was unable to bly prepared after the publication, in 2000, of his own complete.

Akhenaten: History, Fantasy and Ancient Egypt.

Dominic was a valued colleague and a good friend Dominic’s wide range of interests within Egyptolto all the other editors of Egyptian Archaeology. His adogy, Egyptomania and Classical Studies, and his vice and encouragement are a real loss to the editorial enthusiasm for so many different facets of the subteam and his wide-ranging field of interests and knowjects, led him on to review books for EA on diverse ledge will be impossible to replace. As a person, he topics: Julie Hankey’s Arthur Weigall, Tutankhamun amd was a man of great charm, warmth, wit and elegance, the ‘Curse of the Pharaohs’ (EA 20, pp.42-43), the rewho bore with great courage and seemingly unfailing print of Theodore Davis, The Tomb of Thoutmosis IV good humour the ill-health with which he had to live.

(EA 21, pp.41-42) and, also in EA 21 (pp.42-43), He will be greatly missed.

Michel Chauveau’s Cleopatra: beyond the myth. EA 21 Dominic Montserrat was born on 2 January 1964 and died at his was also the first issue in which Dominic was listed as London home on 23 September 2004. one of the ‘Editorial Advisors’. His enthusiasm for the PATRICIA SPENCER magazine and his support of it had led to an invitation 2

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Satellite imaging in the pyramid fields In recent years Egyptologists have made increasing use of remote-sensing techniques and satellite imaging to survey and map ancient sites. Miroslav Bárta and Vladimír BrÛna report on current Czech work at sites in the area of the pyramids.

The Satellite Imaging Project of the Czech Institute of Egyptology began in 2002 to improve understanding of the topography and development of the site of Abu Sir and a set of high resolution aerial views was ordered from the QuickBird system of the GIS imaging company DigitalGlobe (www.digitalglobe.com).The satellite’s orbit had first to be pre-set on the basis of detailed parameters supplied by the Institute to record precisely the area of our interest. This included the pyramid fields of Abu Sir, Saqqara and Dahshur. The data received was then analysed and compared with the results of other techniques, including a detailed surface survey of the site, 3D modelling and geophysical surveying. The starting position was extremely advantageous: the resolution of the images is 0.65m in the panchromatic and 2.56m in the multi-spectral zone.

For an archaeologist the 0.65m precision per pixel means that virtually all significant structures forming architectural elements of the cemeteries may be reliably identified.The images cover an area of 65 sq. km.

The southern part of the Abu Sir concession was selected to test the contribution and potential of the satellite image in the field as this area is currently one of the principal centres of activity for the Czech Institute. The geomorphology of this particular corner of the pyramid field of Abu Sir and Saqqara seems to have been untouched over the last few cen-

Landsat satellite image of the Old and Middle Kingdom pyramid fields, with (in box) the DigitalGlobe image of Abu Sir/Saqqara/Dahshur

South Abu Sir and the North Saqqara plateau as seen from the pyramid field of Abu Sir, looking south-east. (Photograph: KamilVodera)

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Detail of the central mound in South Abu Sir

turies and thus provides a unique opportunity for study.

South Abu Sir contains an extensive necropolis which grew up over a period of several centuries, and in 1991 the Institute started a systematic survey of the site.

Since then it has proved possible to document, and in many cases also to restore, the tombs of several high state officials. Prominent amongst these are the tombs of the Commander of the Army Kaaper, the mortuary priest Fetekty, the Overseer of the Granaries of the Residence Ity, the Property Custodian of the King Hetepi, and the Vizier Qar and his sons. Bearing in mind the historic significance of the area during the third millennium BC, situated between the main cemeteries of Abu Sir and Saqqara, and the exposed location of the monuments, a long-term plan was devised to document the main surface features of the site in advance of intrusive archaeological activity.

During the initial surface survey a wide range of archaeological information was gathered and features

were identified and recorded. As a direct result, a 3D map of the site has been compiled, with all the surface traces including tomb ground plans and masonry (consisting of limestone and bricks of both mud and tafl), dumps, concentrations of ceramics, human and animal bones, pockets of wind-blown sand and isolated artefacts. The map is linked to a database containing both textual and visual information for every single feature.

The surface survey was then followed by a geophysical and remote-sensing exploration of the site. The immediate results, in combination with the satellite imaging described above, have enabled the expedition, even in this phase of analysis of the cemetery, to resolve many previously unanswered questions about the history of the site.

The cemetery in South Abu Sir developed from the end of the Third Dynasty, when the first tombs of distinguished dignitar ies (Hetepi, Ity) were built, extending the burial ground of high state officials from

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the northern part of Saqqara to Abu Sir. At the beginning of the Fifth Dynasty, the tomb of Kaaper followed, paralleled by development at Saqqara, especially in the area north of Djoser’s tomb complex and very close to South Abu Sir.There is, as yet, no evidence for tombs of the later Fifth Dynasty in South Abu Sir, and it is highly probable that most of the non-royal tombs of the time were constructed in the pyramid field at Abu Sir itself and close by. In the middle of the Sixth Dynasty the tomb complex of the Vizier Qar and the adjacent tombs of his sons (Inti, Qar junior and Senedjemib) were constructed. These tombs gradually occupied dominant topographic locations from the south-east to north-west, which gave them a very impressive appearance. They created a south-east/ north-west axis, which respects both the natural topography of the mound and possibly the proximity of the Abu Sir Lake, which formed the main route of access to the area during the Old Kingdom.

A significant contribution of the various mapping activities is the reconstruction of several ancient access routes which led to the cemetery from the Abu Sir Lake area. These routes led to the main, dominant tombs of the cemetery and are also located so as to

guarantee access both to the main parts of the cemetery and to their less frequented parts. The courses of these routes are quite distinct from natural wadis, and features which occur alongside some of them can be associated with cultic cemetery activities.

Combining the evidence of the surface survey, geophysical measurement and satellite imaging gives a much better understanding of the topography of the site. The surface survey helped with the interpretation of larger features such as tombs, and identified specific structures, major burial shafts or concentrations of material such as bone fragments or pottery. Tombs were usually built of mud bricks or limestone blocks and their eroded tops leave clearly coloured traces on the surface of the desert but it is harder to identify structures built from tafl bricks, which are not markedly apparent on the surface. One other weakness of the surface survey became evident on the slopes, where features are less apparent because of geomorphological and post-depositional processes, especially washing and erosion. The survey is also subjectively affected by the optical properties of light, the season and the time of day. The same factors significantly hinder geophysical measurement and satellite monitoring, too.

High-resolution image of the pyramid complex of Pepy I in South Saqqara

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The satellite images have several comparative advantages: the whole of the site explored is recorded at one moment in time, the images are not conditional on any subjective human factor, and they capture the entire area. Through this it is possible to identify and verify the existence not just of the bigger, more obvious structures but of smaller structures as well.

However, the greatest significance of the technology is for analysis of the overall properties of the site under investigation, such as its basic components and their spatial distribution, the geomorphology of the 3D model of South Abu Sir with the satellite image texture terrain and the impact on it of human The geophysical survey facilitated the verification of activity, and, last but not least, analysis of the commuthe results of the surface survey and also detected an nication system. Nevertheless, the satellite picture does array of smaller elements and internal structures of not detect all components and sometimes not even the individual larger features. The only weakness of some which are detected through geophysical and/or magnetometric measurement is in the mapping of the surface survey. It is certainly true to say that the full tafl-brick structures which are physically almost idenpotential is realised only when all three methods are tical with the properties of the tafl subsoil of South linked and interrelated.

Abu Sir. Geophysics was unexpectedly very successful The collection of data which has taken place over even on the slopes, and so it has contributed signifthe past two-three years will require just as much time icantly to the completion of the archaeological plan for full evaluation and interpretation. However, it is of the site. A smaller-scale comparison of the results already evident that with the aid of these methods it achieved immediately to the south-east and east of will be possible to improve significantly the quality Hetepi’s tomb also provided interesting results.Whereas and effectiveness of further archaeological activities so in the south-east, two smaller, tightly fitting tombs that work can be targeted to provide answers to out(with a brick coat and internal sand and limestone standing questions about the lesser-known aspects of waste fill) were detected through geophysical survey, Egyptian archaeology in this area. The Czech Institute they were not detected at all during the surface surhas made the satellite image of the pyramid fields availvey, probably because of the very undulating terrain able to all expeditions working in the area, and to our at this part of the site. partners in the Supreme Council for Antiquities.

Two ways of showing the same information.

Above: a 3D model of South Abu Sir with individual groups of the mapped surface features (viewed from the north).

Left: the eastern part of South Abu Sir represented as a geophysical map

❑ Miroslav Bárta is Associate Professor in the Czech Institute of Egyptology and Field Director of the South Abu Sir Project. He has worked in Egypt since 1991. Vladimír BrÛna is a GIS expert, and member of the University of Jan Evangelista Purkyne in Ustinad Labem. He has been co-operating with the Czech Institute of Egyptology since 2000 and participated in projects in Abu Sir and in the Western Desert. QuickBird aerial images from DigitalGlobe ( www.digitalglobe.com ).

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Notes and News

Luxor and Karnak temples. A Climate change in antiquity.

USAID project, in collaboration Earth and planetary scientists at with the SCA, to build water Washington University in St Louis, drainage recycling stations around USA, are studying snail fossils to the temples of Luxor and Karnak, understand the climate of northand to install a modern sewage sysern Africa 130,000 years ago, as tem for residents nearby, began in described in a paper presented at January 2005. Both temples are enthe 116th annual meeting (7-10 dangered by rising ground water November 2004) of the Geologilevels, compounded by leakage cal Society of America, in Denver, from water and sewage pipes Colorado. Jennifer Smith,Washingwhich serve the neighbour ing ton University Assistant Professor communities. The ground water is of Earth and Planetary Sciences, heavily salinated and when conand her doctoral student Johanna ducted into the walls and columns Kieniewicz, are using stable isotope of the temples, the salt f ades and minor element analyses of the painted decoration and damages freshwater gastropod Melanoides Amarna. The North Palace as it is today, after conservation and the stone surfaces.The Swedish entuberculata and carbonate silts from restoration. (Photograph: Chris Naunton) vironmental engineering company a small lake (now dried up) in the SWECO, which will carry out the work, Kharga Oasis to reconstruct climatic conMiddle Egypt. Individual travel to the has been studying the problem for the past ditions in the western desert during the major archaeological sites in Middle Egypt four years and it is expected that the project is again possible and visitors are being made lifetime of the lake. The snail fossils reveal will take two years to complete. clues about the ancient climate and envivery welcome by local people and those ronment, and could also shed light on the involved in tourism. Facilities and access to the major monuments are being impossible role weather played in the disperBritish Museum. The students’ room of sal of humans from Afr ica. This new proved - there is a new tarmac road to the the Department of Ancient Egypt and research supports the view that Egypt’s Royal Tomb at Amarna, for example. IndiSudan at the British Museum will be closed vidual tourists, like groups, will be escorted western desert was much less arid 130,000 for a period of several weeks during the years ago, when it was a thriving savannah,

by Egyptian security police but recent visisummer of 2005 while storage space is becomplete with humans and wildlife. tors have not found this to be intrusive and ing reorganised. Researchers and students it has not hindered their enjoyment of the who wish to study material between June BMSAES. The fourth issue of the online many important sites, such as Amarna and and August 2005 are advised to contact the journal of the Department of Ancient Egypt Beni Hasan, in the region.

Department well in advance to check on and Sudan, British Museum has been pubavailability of material and access to the lished, containing articles by Vivian Davies, Griffith Institute, Oxford. Transcripts of students’ room.

Jeffrey Spencer and Nigel Strudwick: the diaries of Howard Carter, written durTutankhamun scanned. Egyptian sciening all nine excavation seasons in the tomb www.thebritishmuseum.ac.uk/bmsaes tists, working for the SCA, have scanned of Tutankhamun, can now be seen at the

by CT (computer tomog raphy) the Esna temple. The SCA has begun a study website of the Griffith Institute in Oxford mummy of Tutankhamun. The work was of the Graeco-Roman temple at Esna (http://www.ashmol.ox.ac.uk/gri/4tut.html). They carried out at the king’s tomb (KV 62) in which is threatened by the r ise in the contain information on the day-to-day the Valley of the Kings, and enabled the ground water table. Two options are being progress of the work, personal relationships scientists to produce a digital image of considered - either a pumping operation and the complex archaeological and politiTutankhamun’s face. to lower the water level below the base of cal environment in which Carter had to the columns or a plan to dismantle the temoperate. This material is being made availple and rebuild it on a higher base. able for the first time and it is hoped that Islamic monuments. In December 2004, scans of the diary pages themselves will be the Egyptian Prime Minister, Ahmed Nazif, made available in the near future.

Margaret Gardiner, the only daughter of accompanied by the Minister of Culture, Alan Gardiner and his wife, Hedwig, died Farouk Hosni, opened Islamic monments on 2 January 2005 in London at the age of Current Research in Egyptology. The that had been renovated in El-Muez Street 100 years. Margaret was born in Berlin on Sixth Annual CRE Symposium took place in old Cairo: the Mosque, fountain and 22 April 1904, when her father was studyon 7-9 January 2005 at the University of school of Suliman Agha el-Slehdar, the ing Egyptian philology and working on the Cambridge. Papers were presented on a Sultan Barquq School, the El-Nasser Wörterbuch. After the family moved to Engwide range of Egyptological topics, from Mohamed Bin Qalawun Mosque, the land in 1911, she attended Bedales School the Predynastic era to the Roman Period.

Fountain Ankuteb of Ali El-Metlahr and and later studied at Cambridge but, with The Organising Committee were pleased the Mosque and school of Al-Ashraf Bersai. her inherited wealth, Margaret never had to note the increased level of international These Islamic monuments have been reto work for a living. She became a promiparticipation in the conference. The constored by the SCA, at a cost of LE25 million. nent figure in the arts world, founding an ference proceedings will be published by Ministerial discussions are under way in Arts Centre in Orkney, and her Hampstead Oxbow Books ( www.oxbowbooks.com) who Egypt to develop and improve old Cairo have recently published the proceedings of home became a meeting place for artists, with a view to turning the area into a large the Fourth Annual Symposium, held at poets and sculptors. She is survived by her open-air museum.

University College London in 2003 (Curson Martin Bernal, author of Black Athena. rent Research in Egyptology 2003, edited by EA 25 Correction. The photographic Thanks to Ann Eglintine, Rawya Ismail, Kathryn Piquette and Serena Love. £24. credits were accidentally omitted from Paul Rachel Mairs, Jaromir Malek, Robert ISBN 1 84217 133 X). The seventh CRE Nicholson’s article Conserving bronzes from Morkot, Mike Murphy, Chris Naunton and will be at the University of Oxford and deNorth Saqqara (pp.7-9) in EA 25. All of the Jeffrey Spencer for information for ‘Notes tails will be available shortly on the website: photographs used in the article were taken www.currentresearchegypt.fsworld.co.uk and News’.

by Janice Coyle.

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Mendes: city of the ram-god Since 1990 a joint mission of three north American universities, Washington, Illinois and Pennsylvania State, has undertaken excavation and survey at the ancient site of Mendes (Tell elRuba). The director of the project, Donald Redford, assesses the results achieved to date.

The annual campaigns of the joint mission at Mendes have focused on three areas, all on the north of Tell el-Ruba: the royal necropolis, the riverine harbours and the temple of the ram-god Banebdjed (‘the Ram, the Lord of Djedet’) and its associated buildings. Totally unexpected was the depth and r ichness of domestic and cultic occupation of the third millennium BC. A sounding immediately west of the rear of the temple has uncovered six building phases ranging from the First Dynasty through to the early First Intermediate Period, with sealings of the Fifth Dynasty king Neferirkare (third phase) and Aha and Den of the First Dynasty (sixth phase) yielding a relative sequence. Corings beneath the First Dynasty level indicate that human occupation extends down to basal sand nearly 4m below. The original settlement, it now appears, was founded on a series of levées left by the wandering Mendesian branch of the Nile (rather than on a Pleistocene ‘turtleback’), and centred upon a shrine dedicated to Banebdjed.The earliest shrine, presumably of prehistoric foundation, has not yet been

reached in excavation, and may have been swept away by later renovations.

Then, at some time dur ing the Old Kingdom (in the Fourth Dynasty?) a 40m wide mudbrick podium, over 2m high, was built over the original shrine, and a new temple was erected upon it. This was destroyed at the Human bodies within the fosse surrounding the north bastion of the end of the Sixth Dynasty in a con- temple podium; end of Old Kingdom flagration which was associated with some sort of massacre: the bodies of over 35 human victims were uncovered, sprawled in front of the podium on the north side. While some poor mud-brick walls built above the rubble suggest that an attempt was made to revive worship during the First Intermediate Period, it was not until the Twelfth Dynasty that a wholly new temple was built (see box, p.10) though this was almost entirely swept away by later constructions.The Hyksos Period has left no evidence, while the Eighteenth Dynasty also is conspicuous by its absence from the site’s archaeological record, although texts ind icate that the temple continued to be occupied.

It is only with the Nineteenth Dynasty that major renovation and expansion was contemplated at the site. Ramesses II, probably late in his reign, planned (but barely carried through before his death) the construction of two pylons fronting the temple on its north side. One, 10m wide and over 50m long, stood flush with the outer face of the Twelfth Dynasty façade, while the second, 6.5m wide and slightly longer than the first, stood 35m further north. If a peristyle had been intended for the court thus enclosed, it may never have been completed. Both pylons were constructed of limestone, but most of the masonry was carried off in the Middle Ages for lime-burning, leaving only the sand-filled foundation trenches to indicate where they had once stood. A fortunately surviving gateblock from the outer pylon names both Ramesses II and his son Merenptah; while the latter is mentioned

Topography and development of the tells at Mendes The site of ancient Mendes (measuring c.3km north to south and slightly less than 1km east to west) is today marked by the ‘twin’ mounds of Tell el-Ruba and Tell Timay which were originally joined but are now separated by an area of farmland. The site is c.20km south-east of the modern city of Mansura on the Damietta branch of the Nile, and approximately 55km due south of the Mediterranean coast. In antiquity it was the main town of the Sixteenth Nome of Lower Egypt and one of the Delta branches of the Nile, the ‘Mendesian’, ran past the city, serving as the community’s riverine transit corridor, north to the Mediterranean and south to Memphis. Because of the varying strength of its discharge, however, the Mendesian branch tended to meander over time, carving beds originally west of the city, but later settling to a course on its eastern side. East-west communication was aided by a canal which ran from Buto in the west Delta and terminated at the north-west corner of Mendes. From the second century BC the local watercourses began slowly to dry up and by the time of Christ the Mendesian branch had retreated eastward, leaving the city isolated.

By AD 641 the northern mound (Tell el-Ruba) had been completely abandoned, and, four centuries later, the southern mound (Tell Timay) followed suit.

In spite of this somewhat chequered history, the site of Mendes is ideally suited to excavation. No modern occupation encumbers the summit of Tell el-Ruba, and even Tell Timay is largely devoid of dwellings. Moreover, the fact that until the early twentieth century extensive marshes abutted the mound meant that it was difficult of access for scholars and treasure-hunters alike, and thus the ancient site enjoyed a kind of natural protection. Extensive digging began with Edouard Naville in the late nineteenth century, and was put on a firm scientific footing by Donald Hansen and Bernard Bothmer, whose New York University team conducted excavations intermittently from 1963 to 1980.

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Contour map of Mendes (Tell el-Ruba)

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Faience haunch with the cartouche of Merenptah from the foundation deposit of the second pylon

particularly in the Saite Twenty-Sixth Dynasty (see box, p.11). Immediately to the east of the temple and intersected by the modern road lie two mounds which, for all the world, resemble excavators’ dumps.The further of the two is crowned by a gate-block showing the unmistakable profile of a Great Chief of the Me(shwesh), and we had long surmised that Naville had it dragged there because it did not suit his criteria for registration. Last season the mound was excavated, and we were surprised to discover that, far from being a modern spoil heap, it contained a large and well-appointed building, abutting the temple and presumably communicating with it by means of the gate from which the gate-block had originated. The substantial walls, some over 2m wide, suggest a structure of two or more storeys, perhaps a palace as it is situated to the left of the main temple; while the ubiquitous Third Intermediate Period pottery points to a date contemporary with the occupation of the city by a family of Libyan chiefs descended from a Hornakht (ninth-seventh centuries BC).

Most early travellers to Mendes were impressed, as modern visitors continue to be, by the numerous diorite and granite sarcophagi, each about 2.10m × 1m, which litter the central and western side of the great north-west enclosure of the ram god. These were intended not for human occupancy but for the interments of the sacred animals associated with the cult.

Broadly speaking the sarcophagi are distributed in two groups, those of black basalt lying mainly north and north-west of the temple, and those of granite and greywacke clustering about 200m due west. The basalt sarcophagi show a smoothed, ovoid interior and a

Plan of the temple of Banebdjed

on a block from the same pylon and on the gate blocks from the second, inner, pylon. In association with the latter, two foundation deposits were unearthed, both intact, but buried not under the foundation sand as would have been expected, but just beneath the surface of the ground, flush with the outer, northern, face of the pylon. Both contain faience amulets and a stone ‘brick’ with the cartouches of Merenptah. A possible explanation for this anomaly might be to postulate that Ramesses II died with both pylons standing but undecorated, leaving it to his son to complete the job, a task which Merenptah felt justified his adding foundation deposits.

The area occupied by the temple to the Ram, as it was left by Ramesses and Merenptah, was not increased in subsequent centuries but inter nal modifications and ancillar y buildings were to be added over the course of several dynasties,

The Middle Kingdom Temple at Mendes The façade of the Middle Kingdom temple extended the length of the building, over 30m north of the Old Kingdom podium, the surface of which was used as the floor. Later construction has been unkind to the Middle Kingdom at Mendes, but some features of this temple have, in fact, managed to survive. The façade seems to have been pierced by four symmetrically placed apertures flanking the central entrance, two to the east and two to the west. In light of the concept of the ram god in later times as the embodiment of the four major elements, one wonders whether already in the twentieth century BC Banebdjed was being identified with Re, Shu, Geb and Osiris. At a distance of some 20m south of the façade, and in the centre of what can only have been a central court, the opening of a drain was set.This communicated with a series of subterranean drain-pipes made of pottery, each pipe interlocking with its neighbours, the whole declining towards the north-east. Presumably the purpose was to take excess fluid (from sacrifices?) out of the temple area, and deposit it in an adjacent waterway. Of the innermost cella of the Middle Kingdom temple nothing remains – there is reason to believe the construction of the naos court by Amasis has destroyed it – but storage chambers of Twelfth Dynasty date were unearthed on the southern fringe of the temple area.

Gate block from east of the temple with the profile of a Great Chief of the Me(shwesh)

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The Late Period redevelopment of the temple the Ramesside court, although we are not sure whether this work was begun by Amasis. Here a foundation box, c.65m × 40m, had been excavated down to the level of the Old Kingdom podium (thus removing the remains of the temples of the Middle and New Kingdoms) and back-filled with fine building sand to a depth of 2m. Above, a new configuration of rooms and corridors was constructed, with walls of quartzite and columns of basalt. This part of the complex was so horribly destroyed in the Middle Ages that we despaired of ever being able to reconstruct the ground plan. The present surface layer consists of masses of shattered quartzite, some few fragments approaching 1m in length, but most reduced to mere slivers of stone. But then, as we proceeded to excavate in incremental ‘peel-backs’, we found a series of regularly-positioned ‘slots’ which were appearing beneath the rubble, sunk into the foundation sand; and it was realised that here we had the foundations of a wallingsystem, robbed out to be sure, but accidentally back-filled by detritus.

Once these had been plotted, both in top-plan and section, there emerged a meaningful and symmetrical plan, not so very different from the layout of typical temples of the Late Period. A barque shrine had occupied the central portion of the rear of the temple, and had been surrounded by an ambulatory and side chambers on south, east and west.What lay in front has not yet been fully investigated, but it is conceivable that a hypostyle hall had once stood behind the second Ramesside pylon. Decoration of these new chambers dated from the Twenty-Ninth and Thirtieth Dynasties: a dado of upright cartouches gives the prenomen and nomen of Akoris of the Twenty-Ninth Dynasty, while a horizontal band of text (of unknown import) was added by King Nekhtnebef (Nektanebo I) in his first year (380-79 BC). The walls were carved with the usual scenes in panels, showing the king offering Dado of cartouches of king Akoris, from an ambulatory(?) within the temple to the Ram.

The most extensive renovations undertaken in post-Ramesside times date from the reign of Amasis (569-526 BC), who removed the rooms standing in a 30m × 40m rectangle at the rear of the existing temple, and sunk a deep foundation pit of the same dimension. In this hole, after a bottom layer of sand had been poured in, over five courses of large limestone blocks, each about 1m high, were laid as a foundation to support four granite shrines (naoi), each c.10m tall, set in a square. The inscribed jambs and lintels of the shrines proclaim Amasis, with titulary, to be ‘beloved of the Ram’, while foundation deposits at the four corners, unearthed by the New York University expedition, confirmed Amasis as the builder.The shrines were intended to house the cult images of the four avaThe only surviving shrine of Amasis, tars of the ram-god, viz. Re, Shu, from the naos-court of the temple Geb and Osiris. The sides of the resultant ‘naos-court’ were enclosed within mud brick walls of which only a few courses now survive; the roof was left open to the sky.

Four apertures gave access to the court, the main one being on the south (rear) of the temple. Here we unearthed a foundation trench c.10m × 10m, symmetrically placed along the temple axis, wherein had been set a pavement of stone and the threshold of a gate. On the north side two lateral posterns connected with the original temple, while on the east a narrow gate led to what can only have been a waterway. There is no evidence for a gate on the western side.

Additional renovations were planned for the central temple behind

of mud-brick cubicles, originally vaulted. Each was of a size comfortably to receive one of the sarcophagi – in fact one of the latter still sits in its cubicle – and traces of gold leaf attest to the sumptuousness of the interments. As far as we were able to tell, no cubicle communicated with its neighbours, and the presence at the site of a miniature shrine in limestone makes it tempting to reconstruct the capping of each cubicle with a mock-up of the pr-nzr. Excavation of the depression in which the sarcophagi now lie in disorder (they were dragged from their cubicles in Roman times) revealed a rectangular patch of foundation sand

rough, unworked exterior, a design which suggests that these objects were intended to be sunk in the ground, so that only the interior could be seen. During the course of the 1995 season a surface survey detected the presence of a rectangular patch of ground a little over 120m north of the temple façade to the west of the central axis, in which discoloured ovoid patches occurred with regularity at surface. Trial excavations proved that the patches represented pits of the same dimensions as the sarcophagi and, although the building which must have enclosed this burial ground is now gone, fragments of massive granite architraves retrieved in our excavation suggest that it was conceived on a grand scale.

The granite and greywacke sarcophagi, numbering 14 and accompanied by three of the same shape in limestone, are smooth both inside and out and are provided with rounded lids of the same material. In all examples a lateral slot on each side of the sarcophagus accommodated the horns of the animal. The group occupies a slight depression between two rises at the western extremity of the site. The rise to the south constitutes the local section of the Ptolemaic enclosure wall, while the mound to the north, when excavated from 1999 to 2001, proved to be a complex

Excavation of the Third Intermediate Period ‘palace’, east of the temple

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Saite horizon, but most diagnostics can be dated to the Thirtieth Dynasty, and Ptolemaic and Roman times.

One or two cubicles were later made over into dwellings, and the accompanying pottery of late Roman date suggests the work of Christian hermits.

One further point needs to be discussed about the arrangements at Mendes for burying the sacred rams.

It might seem odd at first sight that two cemeteries were needed for the interments, especially since both are essentially of the same date. But the explanation must be sought in the different shapes of the sarcophagi.

Those of greywacke in hypogeum II clearly were designed to receive the male of the species, as the lateral slots prove; but the diorite, oval boxes of hypogeum II could only have been used for rams if the horns were broken or removed, which would have been unthinkable to the ancient inhabitants of the city. What we have, it can be argued, in the second installation is an arrangement suited to the burial of ewes; and in light of the importance to the Egyptians of a sacred animal’s parentage, we might suggest that hypogeum II was reserved for the mothers of the rams.

Ram sarcophagus, showing the lateral slots for the horns of the animal

c.22m Ă— 15m with traces of a gate on the western side.

The whole had originally been enclosed by limestone walls (over 250 limestone blocks were retrieved from a Roman well in the vicinity) and had formed a sort of approach to the cubicle complex which it abutted on its northern side. It might also have doubled as an embalming chamber for the animals.

The periods of occupation of both burial hypogea could be established with relative certainty.Very little pottery was recovered in our soundings in the northern hypogeum (I), but the little there was pointed to Ptolemaic times. Refuse pits dated by a coin of AD 67 suggest that the installation had been abandoned by that date. More pottery emerged from the excavations of the western hypogeum (II). A little pointed to a

â?‘ Donald Redford is Professor of Egyptology in the Department of Classics and Ancient Mediterranean Studies at the Pennsylvania State University. He has excavated in Jerusalem, Buto, Karnak, Tell Kedwa and Mendes and is currently preparing a second volume of reports on the excavations at Mendes.

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The Tuthmoside stronghold of Perunefer In the early Eighteenth Dynasty the Tuthmoside kings had a naval and military stronghold at ‘Perunefer’, originally thought to have been at Memphis. Manfred Bietak reconsiders its location in the light of evidence from the Austrian excavations at Tell el-Daba.

It was George Daressy who first proposed in the late 1920s that the location of Perunefer, the major Egyptian military and naval stronghold of the Eighteenth Dynasty, should not be sought at Memphis but in the Delta, at the same site as the later town of Piramesse.

Labib Habachi agreed that Perunefer was in the Delta but he thought it was at the site of Khatana/Qantir which he identified as Avaris/Piramesse.Their reasoning was based on the Karnak and Memphis stelae of Amenhotep II, who describes proceeding to Memphis, after his arrival at Perunefer. This would have been unnecessary if Perunefer had been situated at the Memphite residence. A Delta identification would also make sense in respect to the Canaanite cults attested for Perunefer in Pap. Petersburg 1116A: they could be considered as a continuum of Avaris.

Ancient Avaris can now be safely identified, after nearly four decades of excavations by the Austrian Institute, with the site of Tell el-Daba and its environs, and together with nearby Qantir (being excavated by

the Hildesheim Museum expedition) as Piramesse, the Delta residence of the Ramesside kings.What has been missing previously,however, were any Eighteenth Dynasty installations at Avaris, needed to confirm the location of Perunefer. Within the last decade the Austrian Institute in Cairo has found this missing link at the western edge of ancient Avaris. Situated on the eastern bank of the former Pelusiac branch of the Nile an Eighteenth Dynasty settlement has been revealed by geophysical survey and excavations.

After the conquest and abandonment of the Hyksos capital at Avaris the early Eighteenth Dynasty rulers constructed here troop facilities such as magazines and enormous stores for grain. There is also evidence of camps with fireplaces, and the remains of ovens and tents. Most conspicuous are pit graves for young men who had died between the ages of 18 and 25 and who had been buried without individual offerings. They were probably soldiers who died in the camps from diseases over a period of time. Communal offerings

The position of Tell el-Daba in the eastern Nile Delta with the reconstructed water system (after Bietak, Avaris, fig. 1)

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ally into the central court. To the north the survey identified more compounds, probably for troops, and to the south the geophysical survey revealed a whole town.

The major Palace G was constructed on a podium, over 7m high, accessed by a ramp along its local northern side. Only the walls of the podium’s substructure are preserved but it is possible to reconstruct most of the plan from the foundation walls.The palace measured 160.62m × 79.22 m (without the nor th wall 300 × 150 Egyptian cubits) and the substructure was filled with soil except for a strip along its local easter n side which contained magazines and stairways leading to the upper storey. At the base of the ramp was a bathroom with stone Plan of the site of Ezbet Hilme, east of Tell el-Daba, showing the remains of the Tuthmoside palace compound sinks, and its position suggests and the New Kingdom town that it was obligatory to wash were made in pits containing contemporary pottery before ascending the ramp. A similar function was which probably represents the remains of ritual meals. served by another bathroom at the side entrance of Of special interest is an execration pit with the bodies the building, leading to the private section. of two men lying face down and with numerous stones The ramp and its landing led to a huge square courtand smashed pots on top of them. Other graves reyard, open to the north and lined on both sides with vealed strange burials, often in pairs lying in opposite colonnades. At its rear was a portico with three rows directions in the same pit, also face down. Were they of columns, identified from their foundations. From the victims of epidemics which swept through the the court one entered a broad vestibule with two rows camps or the result of executions to maintain strict of columns. Behind that the official part of the palace discipline? Anthropological examination has shown was divided into two sections.To the left was the square that some of the soldiers were Nubians and this is supthrone room (55 × 55 cubits) with four rows of colported by the presence of Kerma household ware and umns. In the rear wall the magnetic survey showed Kerma beakers. Bone and silex arrow tips show that two niches in the middle, and the western adjoining the men probably served as archers in the Egyptian aisle. In the right section is a tripartite room combiarmy. Kerma pottery continued also in the later strata nation, of which the north wall had been thickened of the Tuthmoside Period, during which the Nubian to create a stairway from the throne room to the roof.

Kingdom of Kush, with its capital at Kerma, was exThe thickened wall with the stairs is similar to a pylon terminated. Nubian soldiers may have been recruited and with the tripartite room configuration resembles from among prisoners of war and employed at the other a temple plan. This would make sense, given the fact end of the Egyptian empire: the Near East. that this room combination is on the right side of the It was in the early Tuthmoside Period, most probpalace and is thus given preference over the throne ably early in the joint reign of Tuthmosis III and room.The broad room in the south may have belonged Hatshepsut, that a palatial compound of royal dimento this section and have been an intimate part of the sions was constructed, covering about seven acres. It sanctuary. consisted of three palaces (F, G, J), an ample court, a The southern part of the palace can be considered as big villa east of Palace G and a magazine compound its private section, accessible through the throne room south of Palace F. In the late phase at least three workand by a side entrance leading to a bathroom and stairs shops were added. The compound was enclosed by a to the upper storey. The private palace seems to have wall with a pylon-entrance in the north leading axibeen divided into two apartments, each with bedrooms,

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Palace G. The reconstructed functional plan.

(Reconstruction: Manfred Bietak. Graphic: Nicola Math)

private reception rooms and magazines. Of special interest was the substructure of a toilet, filled with sediments, and half of a stone lavatory pan, which obviously broke courtyard through the ceiling, hopefully without the royal occupant.

South of Palace G, and separated from it by a narrow street, was the small Palace J, oriented at a right angle to Palace G and also resting on a podium substructure accessible by a ramp. The plan was similar to the big palace, but much simpler. A square courtyard, with a portico at its rear and an adjoining colonnade, led to a vestibule with the foundations of a row of columns, and, behind that, the throne room with two rows of columns. At both sides the plan shows corridors, one probably a stairway, the other leading to the private part of the building. This consisted of a reception room, a bedroom and a bathroom. At the eastern end the plan can only be interpreted as a loggia with a portico with a Palace G of the Tuthmoside Period. Three dimensional reconstruction

by Manfred Bietak and Nicola Math terrace in front looking south.

Palace F was positioned opposite Palace Amarna villas, as a throne room with four columns, a G at the central courtyard. It was smaller than G, measside room on the east with two columns and probably uring 130 Ă— 90 cubits, but was also a podium structure a bathroom or bedroom on the west. The private secwith a ramp on its local northern side. Its plan was tion is missing, so the building must be considered as different from the other palaces, with a rectangular having been purely ceremonial. What made this buildcourtyard and a vestibule leading to a central square ing exceptional were the dumps of fragments of court. In the local south the grid pattern of the wall Minoan frescoes at the base of the ramp (see EA 2, foundations can be reconstructed by comparison with pp.26-28). the floor plans of the larger Kahun houses and the The frescoes, painted in purely Aegean technique on highly polished lime plaster, can now be dated to the early Tuthmoside Period. They had not adhered well to the mud-brick walls and in a short time the plaster crumbled and fell. The fragments were collected, taken outside and dumped at the base of the ramp. Motifs such as large-sized griffins and lions must have flanked the throne on the rear wall of the throne room in a similar fashion as at Knossos. Floor paintings with a maze pattern probably also came from the throne room,

courtyard

courtyard

Palace F. Three dimensional reconstruction by Manfred Bietak and Nicola Math

Palace F. Above: the wall plan (after Janosi, Egypt and the Levant 5, 65).

Below: reconstructed functional plan (after Manfred Bietak, unpublished)

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Fragments of a floor painting with a maze pattern from the Palace F dumps. (Graphic by Marian Negrete-Martinez)

come from the colonnades of the central courtroom. It is amazing that the technology, style and motifs of the frescoes are purely Minoan, with not a hint of an Egyptian emblem or royal symbol of power. The emblems and symbols such as the half-rosette frieze and the maze point directly to the palace of Knossos, as does the representation of bull acrobatics, which are known in paintings up to this period only in the Knossos palace.

All this shows that connections between the courts of Knossos and Egypt were established at the highest level.

Although the large Palace G had paintings in Egyptian technique on mud plaster, some rooms seem also to have been furnished with Minoan paintings on lime plaster. They were also found at a door with a portico through the enclosure wall leading to the base of the ramp of Palace G. Among ornamental motifs a lifesized representation of a lady in a flounced skirt was found. The evidence of Minoan painting in these palaces is contemporaneous with the earliest representations of Keftiu delegations in Theban tombs.

The first such representation is in the tomb of

Fragments of a griffin from the Palace F dumps projected on the Xeste 3 griffin from Thera. (After Bietak Synchronisation II, 30 and Doumas, Wall Paintings of Thera, no.128)

together with the bull acrobatic scenes (with a background of another maze pattern), hunting scenes and scenes of lions and leopards chasing ungulates, though some scenes may have come from the colonnaded side room. Plaster reliefs of bulls are most likely to have

Part of the bull and maze frieze of Palace F (Š Manfred Bietak, Nanno Marinatos, Clairy Palyvou)

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Avaris, who was without doubt the Canaanite weather god in Egyptian guise, shows an uninterrupted occupation from the Hyksos Period to the Eighteenth Dynasty, and a door lintel with the name of Horemheb replacing the names of Tutankhamun shows that the temple was reinstalled after the Amarna Period. It is from this time that we have inscriptional evidence of Canaanite cults in Perunefer again. After the abandonment of the palaces Keftiu delegation with enlarged Aegean commodities from the tomb of Senenmut. dur ing the reigns of (After Peter Dorman, The Tombs of Senenmut, pl.21d) Tuthmosis IV and AmenSenenmut (reign of Hatshepsut) while the last ones hotep III (when the base was no longer needed date to the time of Amenhotep II. It is highly likely because of a change in Egyptian foreign policy) the that the Minoan paintings at Tell el-Daba and the tomb site was reoccupied in the Amarna Period and used representations are connected. again as a major stronghold by Horemheb, who conIf this site was Perunefer – and all the evidence speaks structed a fortress over the remains of the palaces. in favour of this identification – then many things The site of Perunefer had become important again, would fall into place. The ‘Keftiu’ ships mentioned in almost certainly in the face of the rise of a new the papyrus BM 10056 may not refer merely to a spesuperpower in the Near East: the Hittites. cific type of ship, but could refer to actual Minoan ❑ Manfred Bietak is the Head of the Institute of Egyptology and ships in Perunefer: the Minoan thalassocracy must have the Vienna Institute of Archaeological Sciences of the University been needed as an ally by the more land-bound Egypt of Vienna, and the Director of the Austrian Archaeological Instiof the early Eighteenth Dynasty, to pursue its political tute in Cairo. He has excavated in Nubia, Thebes and the eastern Nile Delta and promoted studies on the interconnections begoals in the Near East.That Avaris was a harbour town tween Egypt, the Levant and the Aegean. is attested in the Hyksos Period on the second stela of Kamose, and on shrine door inscriptions in the Pushkin Museum, Moscow, for the Ramesside Period. It is only natural to assume that it also served as a harbour in the time in between these two periods – the Eighteenth Dynasty, when we have evidence of stockpiling and military camps at the site. The temple of Seth of

Ceiling Patterns with Minoan motifs from the tomb of Senenmut.

(After Peter Dorman, The Tombs of Senenmut, pls.27b-c, 28c-d)

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Marsa Nakari: an ancient port on the Red Sea The ruins at Marsa Nakari on the Red Sea have long been known and it has been suggested that they might be associated with the ancient port of Nechesia, noted by the geographer Ptolemy.

John Seeger and Steven Sidebotham describe their investigation of the site.

View of Marsa Nakari looking southwest. (Photograph: John Seeger)

The ancient remains at Marsa Nakari lie atop a limestone bluff about 7m above sea level on the south side of Wadi el-Nakari, approximately 20km south of the modern town of Marsa Alam. John Gardner Wilkinson visited Marsa Nakari and drew a plan of the site in the 1820s, and several travellers and nonvisiting scholars in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries suggested that the remains might be associated with the ancient port of Nechesia, possibly of Ptolemaic foundation, noted by the second century AD writer Claudius Ptolemy in his Geography 4.5.8.

The core of the site, on the southern side of Wadi elNakari, covers an area approximately 177-191m north to south by 55m east to west. A scuba diving resort camp dominates the northern side of the wadi but the remnants of several minor ancient structures including some graves also lie on high ground on the wadi’s north side. On the south side of Wadi el-Nakari just below and north of the site, our surveying recorded the walls of several structures of unknown, but possibly ancient, date. Whether the ancient harbour was here in Wadi el-Nakari and the scant architectural remains were part of the port facilities, or the harbour lay south of the site, remains to be determined. It is possible, of course, that there were anchorages in wadis both north and south of the site, used at different periods in the port’s history. Farther to the west on a rise in Wadi el-Nakari, as well as on a hill immediately west of the modern Marsa Alam-Hamata highway, are the remains of ancient graves; all have been heavily robbed.

Excavations at Marsa Nakari have been ongoing since 1999 and have documented ample evidence of both early and late Roman occupation.There is some, though scanty, evidence of Ptolemaic activity here; excavations recovered a Hellenistic lamp and the saddle portions of two grinding stones, apparently for gold, that stylistically appear to be Hellenistic. Examination of finds

John Gardner Wilkinson’s plan of Marsa Nakari.

(Ms. G. Wilkinson XLV D.9. Gardner Wilkinson papers from Calke Abbey, Bodleian Library, Oxford.Courtesy of the National Trust)

Some of the beads (photograph: Steven Sidebotham) and a Hellenistic lamp (photograph: John Seeger) from the excavations at Marsa Nakari

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from eleven trenches recorded hundreds of beads, an abundance of pottery (predominantly amphorae, but also table and cooking wares, and a little fine ware), some terracotta oil lamps, glass, many copper alloy nails and tacks, and about a dozen Roman coins. Of the latter, the earliest identifiable issue was a billon tetradrachm (four drachma coin) from the Alexandria mint of Vespasian (AD 69-79) and the latest, in the fourth century AD, included coins of Constantine I, Valens and Theodosius I. Unidentifiable coins, possibly belonging to emperors from the fifth century, were also recovered. To date no recognisably Islamic artiefacts have been documented.

The ancient road which linked Marsa Nakari to the Nile at Apollinopolis Magna (modern Edfu) preserves the remains of gold mines, nearby quarries, forts and watering points that date, according to study of the surface pottery and a few inscriptions, from Ptolemaic through to Islamic times. Towards its western end this highway was co-terminous with the Ptolemaic and early Roman route connecting Berenike and Edfu.

Given these factors, one would expect that Marsa Nakari itself was originally a Ptolemaic foundation, perhaps one of many Ptolemy II Philadelphus established in the third century BC as part of a larger programme of canal, Red Sea port and Eastern Desert infrastructure enhancement.

Beginning in the second century AD the Romans constructed another major thoroughfare, the Via Hadriana (named after the emperor Hadrian, who ruled AD 117-138), which extended about 800km from the city of Antinoopolis (modern El-Sheikh Ibada) in Middle Egypt over to the Red Sea coast and then ran approximately parallel with the coast, terminating at Berenike. A survey of this desert thoroughfare directed by Sidebotham between 1996 and 2000 noted that some segments of it overlay earlier routes and

Map of the Red Sea and key sites and roads related to Marsa Nakari.

(Drawing: A M Hense)

that at least portions of it continued in use into the fifth or sixth centuries AD. Local Maaza and Ababda Bedouin still use portions of the road.The Via Hadriana survey traced all but about 40-50km of the ancient route and noted that it did not appear to run through Marsa Nakari, but perhaps passed 3-4km west of the port. This seems unusual as the Via Hadriana passes through the ancient emporium at Myos Hormos (modern Quseir el-Qadim) and terminates at Berenike. At present we can offer no explanation as to why this road seems to have bypassed Marsa Nakari.

Marsa Nakari had several possible raisons d’être in the Roman Period. One purpose would have been as a way station between the larger ports of Myos Hormos and Berenike, about 150km north and south respectively from Marsa Nakari. In addition, there was probably commercial interaction between Marsa Nakari and the desert hinterland and with other emporia in the Red Sea and Indian Ocean.The artefacts thus far recovered from surface surveying and excavations at Marsa Nakari indicate an understandably heavy reliance on imports from the Nile valley Satellite image of the Marsa Nakari area

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Anhydrite walls of an early Roman structure looking south-east.

(Photograph: Steven Sidebotham)

View of the anhydrite quarry in Wadi el-Amboot looking north-west.

(Photograph: Steven Sidebotham)

but excavations have also documented commercial activities conducted at the ancient port, suggesting exports of wine and glassware, and imports of beads, some of the latter likely to have come from India and Sri Lanka. Additional excavation should eventually provide evidence that allows identification of other exports and imports and their provenances. Recovery of beryls and anhydrite architectural elements reflects interaction with mines and quarries in the Eastern Desert. Other artefacts documented from the excava-

tions may have been made at Marsa Nakari, such as the numerous copper alloy nails and tacks, for local or regional consumption, and do not necessarily reflect any long distance commerce with regions beyond Egypt.

The settlement at Marsa Nakari appears to have been enclosed by a defensive wall made of pebbly sandstone and sandy conglomerate measuring about 108m north to south by 55m east to west. Such an enclosure makes it unusual, as other ancient Egyptian Red Sea ports that have been excavated (Klysma, near modern Suez, Myos Hormos and Berenike) seem to lack such defensive arrangements. Perhaps Marsa Nakari’s small size required formal defences that the larger Red Sea ports noted above did not. Both Wilkinson’s plan and our survey noted these walls. Excavations in 2002 unearthed the north-eastern corner of this fortification, complete with portions of a round corner tower. The tower may also have served as a signal platform or beacon for ships.

The most impressive structures on site excavated thus far, aside from portions of the defensive wall and tower, were built of brilliant white anhydrite ashlar in the first-second centuries AD. James Harrell, the project geologist, found the source of this friable building stone about 4km northwest of Marsa Nakari itself on the southern side of Wadi el-Amboot.The quarry, stretching about 43m across a hillside and with worked surfaces up to 3m high, is badly weathered and preserves no tool marks; Professor Harrell did, however, find fragments of iron tools used by the quarrymen.

The pottery recovered from the quarry dated only to the early Roman Period and there is no evidence that it remained in operation after the second century AD. Additional excavations at Marsa Nakari and continued surveying of its hinterland should document better the role the port played in Red Sea commerce and in the local and regional economy in ‘classical’ antiquity. ❑ John Seeger is Professor Emeritus, Northern Arizona University, and Director of the Marsa Nakari Project. Steven Sidebotham is Professor of Classical Archaeology and Ancient History at the University of Delaware and technical advisor to the Marsa Nakari Project.

Plan of Marsa Nakari surveyed by Steven Sidebotham and Hans Barnard. (Drawn by Hans Barnard)

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The great naos of Nekhthorheb from Bubastis The work of a British Museum project to record fully the fragments of a great Thirtieth Dynasty naos from Bubastis is described by Neal Spencer.

Part of the façade of the naos (British Museum EA 1080)

Between 1887 and 1889, Edouard Naville directed the Egypt Exploration Fund’s excavations at Bubastis (Tell Basta) in the north-eastern Nile Delta. (see photograph, p.1). A columned hall of Osorkon II was discovered, fronted by a gateway adorned with scenes of the sed-festival, while the western end of the temple site yielded a significant amount of architecture inscribed for the Thirtieth Dynasty king Nekhthorheb (Nectanebo II), including reliefs, lintels and fragments of several monolithic shrines. It is still unclear if the Nekhthorheb structure represented an addition to, or modification of, the Twenty Second Dynasty temple, or was a separate entity. During this king’s reign, at least eight monolithic naoi were set up in the Bubastis temple, dedicated to forms of Bastet, Heryshef, Horhekenu, Sekhmet, Seshmetet and Khonsu-Horus.

Fragments of the largest of these shrines, presumably the central naos in the temple, are now in the British Museum, the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, and various

private collections.

Naville’s publication included line drawings of the shr ine’s decoration, but a recent project to create the first comprehensive photographic record of the shrine fragments now in the British Museum has prompted a new architectural reconstruction, and an opportunity for the aesthetics of the fine sunk relief to be appreciated by a wider audience.

The naos, cut from a single piece of red granite, originally measured 3.58m in height, and was of an apparently unique form with a pitched roof fronted by a uraeus frieze. The interior space featured a narrow niche at the rear, and was provided with doors, presumably of wood embellished with copper, which opened inwards. The door jambs are not preserved, but the threshold bears a symmetr ical scene of Nekhthorheb, followed by his ka, offering a small figure of Maat. The figure of the king was clearly conceived as offering to the image of Bastet housed within the shrine. The exterior walls bear a frieze of cartouches on the cavetto cornice, a dedicatory text invoking Bastet, Lady of Per-Bastet, with four registers of divine images beneath, and a bottom framing device based on the nomen of Nekhthorheb. The decoration represents an important source for divine iconography in the Late Period.

The divine images, carved in sunk relief into the highly polished granite surface, were preceded in some registers by a figure of the king offering. Unlike naoi with similar decoration, such as the naos of Nekhtnebef (Nectanebo I) from nearby Saft el-Henna, the gods are not identified by hieroglyphic texts, hindering interpretation of the decoration. Some of the generic forms, such as a falcon or seated goddess with sundisc and cow-horns, could represent one of many deities known to have such manifestations, but others

Perspective reconstruction of the Bubastis naos.

(Drawing by Claire Thorne)

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Left wall, first register: hybrid creature with a human head and insect legs, followed by the bust of a lioness (British Museum EA 1079)

Back wall, third register: a standing baboon (Atum?) holding a bow and arrow, followed by a representation of Osiris-Anedjty (?) (British Museum EA 1078)

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Detail of the bottom framing device, based on Nekhthorheb’s nomen (EA 1005)

Right wall, third register: a nursing goddess wearing the red crown (British Museum EA 1078)

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Left wall, first register: a kneeling king before plants (British Museum EA 1078)

Right wall, third register: hippopotamus standing upon a pedestal (British Museum EA 1078)

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Back wall, first register: Osiris-Hemag (?) upon a bier, flanked by mourning goddesses (British Museum EA 1079)

can be identified on the basis of iconography, for example the Goddess of Thebes. Despite the lack of labels, some groupings are evident: four frog-headed deities, and four serpent-headed gods in the register below, clearly represent the Hermopolitan Ogdoad.

Each of these figures wears sandals in the form of a jackal. The rear of the shrine has a strongly Osirid character, with a djed-pillar, seated Osiris and a standing mummiform Osiris flanking a depiction of the resurrecting god upon a bier, accompanied by two mourning goddesses. The register below features a deity in the form of a reawakening Osiris, while the third register includes a form which could represent Osiris-Anedjty.

Despite the small scale of carving, the sculptural style is consistent with contemporary full-scale temple reliefs, as evident on a depiction of a kneeling king (see p.23, upper image). With a height of only 2cm, the face exhibits the same fleshy appearance, almondshaped eyes and shy smile encountered on larger-scale reliefs, such as those from Behbeit el-Hagar or Samanud. Other examples of the fine carving include the Bes-amulet suspended from the neck of a nursing goddess, and the finely executed folds of flesh on the representation of a hippopotamus. Some of the divine

forms recall funerary iconography, particularly that found in the Valley of the Kings tombs or Book of the Dead vignettes, rather than classical temple decoration.

One fantastical creature combines insect legs with a human face and an abstract body form.

The lack of labels to identify the gods contrasts with similar naoi which can be interpreted as ‘catalogues’ of the divine statuary housed within the temple in question, particularly when measurements and material are given in the accompanying text, such as upon the naos from Saft el-Henna. The Bubastis naos, in contrast, offers a more ambiguous representation of the divine world, with an emphasis on creation, Osirid imagery and regeneration. Naville’s excavations in the Thirtieth Dynasty structure also yielded a series of reliefs depicting divine images, but in this case explicitly grouped into temples qualified with a toponym, from both Upper and Lower Egypt. The monumental shrine and these surrounding reliefs may have been conceived as layers of symbolic protection, one somewhat abstract, the other terrestrial, around the sacred image of Bastet.

This correlates well with the contemporary temple building programme, which focused on expanding temple enclosures and modifications to processional routes and doorways, all seen as potentially vulnerable areas.

The naos was never finished; the cartouches on the cornice, and various details of some of the divine images remained incomplete.

Many other Thirtieth Dynasty monuments were finished or reworked in the early Ptolemaic Period, but this naos was not, suggesting that it may have been destroyed during the Second Persian Period. Current excavations at Bubastis, by the University of Potsdam, should clarify the original architectural context of this master piece of monumental architecture and relief-carving.

Right wall, second register: half of the Hermopolitan Ogdoad, depicted as snake-headed figures (British Museum EA 1078)

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❑ Neal Spencer is Assistant Keeper in the Department of Ancient Egypt and Sudan at the British Museum and Director of the Museum’s expedition to Kom Firin. Photographs: British Museum Photographic Service.

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Digging Diary 2004 Summaries of some of the archaeological work undertaken in Egypt during the Summer and Autumn of 2004 appear below together with some previously unreported work carried out in Spring 2004 (see also EA 25, pp.25-29). The sites are arranged geographically from north to south, ending with the Western Oases.Where possible, website addresses, which contain more detailed reports, have been given.

Field Directors who would like reports to appear in future issues of EA are asked to send a short summary, with a website address if available, as soon as possible after the end of each season to Egyptian Archaeology, 3 Doughty Mews, London WC1N 2PG. E-mail: patricia.spencer@ees.ac.uk PATRICIA SPENCER Abbreviations: EDP Early Dynastic Period: OK Old Kingdom; FIP First Intermediate Period; MK Middle Kingdom; SIP Second Intermediate Period; NK New Kingdom;TIP Third Intermediate Period; LP Late Period.

Institutes and Research Centres: ARCE American Research Center in Egypt; BM British Museum; CNRS French National Research Centre; CTEEFK Franco-Egyptian Centre, Karnak; DAI German Institute, Cairo; EAP Egyptian Antiquities Project; EGSMA Egyptian Geological Survey and Mining Authority; HIAMASA The Hellenic Institute of Ancient and Mediaeval Alexandrian Studies, Athens; IFAO French Institute, Cairo; MMA The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; OI Oriental Institute, University of Chicago.

SCA Supreme Council for Antiquities

SUMMER/AUTUMN

SPRING (February-May) Upper Egypt Karnak: The CTEEFKcontinued work under the overall direction of François Larché and Nicolas Grimal.

1. Jean Winand and Stéphanie Polis recorded, photographed and registered about 150 scattered blocks which were already on platforms east of the Amun temple. The blocks, of the reigns of Tuthmosis III and Ramesses II, come from either the precinct wall or the Eastern Temple. One room of the Taharqo monument (in which blocks of the wall were once stored) was partially cleaned and blocks coming from several monuments were identified.Around 80 fragments of a diorite royal statue were moved from this room to the ‘Sheikh Labib’ storeroom.

2. Work between the 7th and 8th pylons, financed by the Latvian Ministry of Culture, and supervised by Bruno Deslandes (Unesco architectural expert) undertook the scanning survey of the 8th pylon and of the walls linking it to the 7th pylon. Millions of points were scanned to reconstruct the pylon and its environment.

3. Excavation continued, directed by Charles van Siclen, between the 8th and 9th pylons. A small area c.15m E of the W stone enclosure wall and S of the presumed line of the southern MK enclosure wall was re-cleared and recorded, revealing a small stairway from the start of the 18th Dyn. The stairs led W down from an artificial raised platform (temp.

Ahmose?) to the original MK level of the small forecourt. Constructional details of the Horemheb wall were studied. On the exterior of the wall, the foundations, made up of Amarna talatat, had been replaced

(probably c. reign of Ptolemy I when the court itself was repaired) with large blocks of sandstone which seem to have come from an unknown, dismantled pylon (?) of post-Ramesside date. After that repair, a mudbrick pavement three courses thick was laid alongside the wall. This pavement extends at least 3m to the west of the wall, but its western edge has not been reached. A group of three cubes of sandstone which formed parts of a small standing statue holding a naos with a rounded top were found in a sub-surface rubbish pit located west of the 8th pylon. The statue has the name of the vizier Huy (c.years 30-40 of Ramesses II).

4. A new project, directed by Emmanuel Laroze, to study and publish the architecture of the Opet Temple began with the cleaning of the monument.

About 100 blocks previously ranged on the ground along the southern façade of the temple have been moved and stored on the platforms built against the Euergetes storeroom. Topographers plotted several millions of points on the temple while the outside faces, the roof and the hypostyle hall were surveyed and photographed, using a 3D scan.

Western Thebes: A new mission, headed by Guy Lecuyot (UMR 8546 CNRS-ENS) and Catherine Thirard (Univ of Lyon II) and supported by the IFAO, initiated a study of Coptic remains in the S part of the Theban Mountain, with archaeological investigation in the three most N wadis of the area: ‘the First Valley’, ‘the Second Valley’ (also known as ‘Vallée des Pèlerins d’Espagne’), and the ‘Third Valley’. GPS coordinates were taken so the sites can be accurately mapped. Many Coptic remains were identified and recorded, including pottery, unpublished

Egypt Exploration Society Expeditions

Sais: The EES/Univ of Durham team, led by Penny Wilson, excavated three test trenches in the N Enclosure area. Two of the trenches contained TIP domestic areas with ovens and mudbrick buildings. These structures seemed to have been constructed over an earlier cemetery (see further pp.34-35). Evidence of a Saite monumental structure was found at the S entrance to the enclosure area, confirming that there had been Saite material here, but it has been completely removed by nineteenth century sebbakhin. Further drilling work in the Saite region confirmed the settlement to the S, a substantial sand gezira under Qodaba to the S and a sand ridge to the E with the Saite river channel alongside it.

Delta Survey: 1.During the Sais season, Penny Wilson and the EES/Durham team visited and recorded basic information on 37 sites in Beheira governorate, concentrating on sites around the north part of the Canopic Branch of the Nile. These included the large spectacular mounds at Kom el-Ahmar (EES no.286) and Kom Debaa (EES no.612/613); the rocky outcrops on the W with ancient sites such as Kom el-Hag (EES no.358); once-extensive, now much reduced, sites like Abu Guduur (EES no.406) and Tell Trughi (EES no.303); the finished sites of Tell Bisintawy (EES no.333) and Kom Farag (EES no.400), and the sandy mound with material dating from the NK to the Medieval Period at Rosetta (Abu Mandour). In addition survey plans were made at Kom Sidi Selim (EES no.282), Kom el-Misk (EES no.600) and Kom Khawalid (EES no.272) in Kafr el-Sheikh province. Pottery was recorded at all sites for further

(www.ees.ac.uk)

Delta Survey. Roman vats at Tell Trughi.

(Photograph: Penny Wilson)

study.The information provides an interesting comparison of Late Antique and Ptolemaic-Roman sites in these two areas and data for analysis pertaining to the relationship of settlements with river channels.

2. During the BM excavations at Kom Firin, Neal Spencer visited four sites in western Beheira. Kom el-Shimuli (EES no.442) was covered with amphora fragments (late Roman-7th century AD) but with no visible structural remains. Kom el-Ahmar (EES no.443) was partly flooded as it had been reduced to below the level of surrounding fields; visible pottery was late Roman. No distinctive ceramics were evident at Kom Hamrit though fragments of both fired bricks and mud bricks were scattered on the surface.The small site of Abu el-Tubul (EES no.446) did not feature any visible structures but Late Roman pottery was noted on the surface, and some sherds from imported amphorae of the latter part of the 1st millennium BC.

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Memphis: The Survey of Memphis, directed by David Jeffreys (UCL), continued sediment coring, with samples being recorded at four locations known to have been river channels in historical times: at Tammuh to the N of Memphis, Bedrashein and Bedrashein Island to the E, and Ezbet Shimi to the S. Further survey of the N Saqqara plateau and escarpment was carried out, in anticipation of a longer excavation season at the foot of the escarpment in 2005. Janine Bourriau (McDonald Institute, Univ of Cambridge) worked on NK ceramics from the excavations at Kom Rabia in preparation for their publication in the near future (see pp.30-33).

Amarna: 1.A team directed by Paul Nicholson (Univ of Cardiff) undertook post-excavation study at the industrial estate site O45.1.Finds, including animal remains, from earlier excavation seasons were studied. To this end the database of finds was checked for consistency and updated, and publication drawings were made of the most significant finds from the 2003 season.

2. Barry Kemp (Univ of Cambridge) and a small team spent a month at the site recording finds from the Spring excavation season (see EA 25, p.25). In addition, preliminary work was undertaken on two categories of material in preparation for planned specialist studies. One comprises fragments of crucibles used for small-scale bronze working, recovered both during the excavations of 1999-2000 south of the Great Palace, and in debris from the house of Ranefer and the adjacent 2004 excavation.The other comprises leather fragments discovered at various parts of the site since the current excavations began in 1979.

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graffiti and caves occupied by anchorites.

Bahariya Oasis. The IFAO expedition, directed

by Frédéric Colin continued excavation of the Roman fortress in Qaret el-Tub in the sector of the church and of the principia. In addition, two intact tombs from the pharaonic cemetery were excavated; one belongs to the SIP and contained a local pottery similar to MBA II B/C types well attested in Tell el-Daba.The other tomb, in the middle of the fortress, is a complex hypogeum and cannot yet be dated. The excavation in Qasr Allam has led to the hypothesis that the site was a ‘temple’ or ‘domain’ of Amun. An enclosure has been found predating the cellular platform (see EA 24, pp.3033), while study of clay sealings has allowed the storage activities of that enclosure to be dated to the end of the TIP (terminus ante quem c.730 BC).

SUMMER (May-September) Lower Egypt Tell Ras Budran: The Univ of Toronto expedition (directed by Greg Mumford and funded by the Canadian Government) continued investigations at this site (Rothenberg’s No.345) in the el-Markha plain of South Sinai. The tell is 200m W of the Red Sea and contains a sand-engulfed fort 44m in diameter, with 7m wide walls and a W entry passage flanked by a bastion. The entry passage was blockedup at both ends in antiquity, while the garrison had added a cobble stone ramp against the interior door blocking. The builders had placed a sloping retaining wall against the interior vertical wall face to support the weaker core limestone blocks. The W half of the courtyard floor was excavated and drysieved, yielding a 5-20cm thick layer of black soot and organic materials containing over 500 diagnostic OK potsherds, mainly in local Sinaitic fabrics but some (c.10%) in Nile silt. Some vessels have incised hieroglyphs and other marks. The floor also yielded nodules of copper and turquoise, a copper awl, flint tools, pounders, grinding stones, basalt hammer stones and other artefacts. Subsistence remains were found and future flotation of samples should reveal more microscopic evidence. The absence of wind-blown sand within the floor layer suggests that the fort had been occupied continuously, while the turquoise and copper nodules link the site with the known OK mines at Wadis Maghara and Kharig, 25km to the E. (www.deltasinai.com) Zawiyet Umm el-Rakham: Steven Snape and the Liverpool Univ team concentrated activities on a complete magnetometry survey of the site under the supervision of Christian Schweitzer, and the development and implementation of a conservation/ restoration plan for the site in collaboration with senior officers of the Conservation Section of the SCA. (www.geocities.com/zurdig) Saqqara: 1.The team from the Waseda Univ Institute of Egyptology, under the general direction of Sakuji Yoshimura and led in the field by Nozomu Kawai, continued work at the NW limit of the necropolis on the summit of the rocky outcrop on which the Khaemwaset monument is located, and on its S slope. Excavation in front of the 3rd Dyn layered stone structure revealed a pit with an ox-horn (probably a foundation deposit) as well as smaller pits for wooden posts or plants. A little further S, hundreds more MK pottery sherds were recovered, probably cult refuse deposits. Two test trenches opened on the SW slope of the hill yielded a number of limestone blocks from the Khaemwaset monument and more than 100 pieces of LP faience amulets from the summit of the outcrop. Restoration was undertaken at the mudbrick structure of Amenhotep II and Thutmosis IV on the top of the outcrop.

2.The Univ of Pennsylvania Museum team, directed in the field by David Silverman and Jennifer Wegner, with Josef Wegner as Director of Archaeology, worked in two areas within the vicinity of the Teti Pyramid Cemetery. Investigation of the subter-

Wadi Abu Diyeiba. A sandstone anepigraphic stela.

(Photograph courtesy of James Harrell)

ranean corridor from the burial chambers of the MK tombs of Sihathoripy and Sekweskhet showed that it heads southward (with a slight bend to the W) and extends beyond the temenos wall of the Teti Pyramid complex, terminating well under the mudbrick walls of the Anubieion. Careful sifting of the debris from this part of the corridor revealed 70 fragments of painted relief, most of fairly small size.

The iconography and texts suggest that the majority derive from an above ground offering chapel, outside the temenos wall.Their style and execution are similar to a large inscribed fragment found in the last season, and they may all belong to the chapel of the two officials. The second focus of work was the ‘capless’ pyramid to the E and slightly N of the Teti Pyramid. Using EDM technology and a grid established during an earlier season, the area was surveyed and the visible remains of Lepsius ‘pyramid no.29’ were located, mapped and photographed.

Its layout and likely proportions indicate that the satellite (‘queen’s’) pyramid would not be where originally shown, but further to the E and the S. Upper Egypt Akoris (Tehne el-Gebel): The Japanese mission, directed by Hiroyuki Kawanishi (Univ of Tsububa), continued excavation at the SW limit of the site and at the cemetery on the W edge. Although the former area is located on a steep slope, many mudbrick structures were found. Numerous seeds of ‘sont’ (acacia) used for tanning raw skin, animal hair and sandals were unearthed from the leather workshop.A number of kilns were concentrated on the lower ground. Wooden coffins and a large jar reused for burial dotted the area sparsely, all of which was covered by vegetable matting. The style of an anthropoid coffin containing the skeleton of a female adult belongs to the 22nd/23rd Dyn. However, the coffin was probably reused in the LP judging by its find context. On the W edge the existence of 11 shafts was confirmed southward from the mastaba.

Among them, two pairs appeared in which one half of each was for a burial chamber and the other for funeral goods. All datable remains belong to the LP. Abydos: The Middle Cemetery Project (Univ of Michigan), directed by Janet Richards, continued study and documentation of materials excavated in 1999 and 2001, and expanded the programme of magnetic survey begun in 2002 and carried out by Tomasz Herbich (Polish Academy of Sciences). As of this season, a magnetometric map of more than 10ha (25 acres) of the Middle Cemetery has been produced, allowing a deeper understanding of its extent, nature, and spatial organisation. It is clear that the cemetery was built initially as a carefully

26

laid-out landscape in the 5th and 6th Dyns, then continued to grow S and W in a less orderly fashion throughout the FIP. Among the excavated materials studied were the fragmentary remains of Weni the Elder's (6th Dyn) serdab deposit, to determine the original contents of the serdab as opposed to elements identifiable as belonging to Saite Period reuse; skeletal remains from the intact burials N of Weni's mastaba; and skeletal remains from the extensive 'bone bed' discovered in 1999.The minimum number of individuals of the ‘bone bed’ was determined to be 50, probably from the small Saite cemetery around the top of Weni's tomb shaft.

Wadi Abu Diyeiba: A team sponsored by the EGSMA and led by James Harrell (Univ of Toledo), and including Steven Sidebotham, continued the on-going survey of ancient stone quarr ies (www.eeescience.utoledo.edu/egypt/) by surveying this previously known but unstudied Ptolemaic amethyst quarry, 25km SW of Safaga. The quarry has c. 450 trenches, some as long as 100m and as deep as 20m, cut into the granite bedrock and scattered across an area of 3sq km. A badly robbed quarry settlement of c.12 buildings yielded fragments of six different Greek inscriptions, two anepigraphic stelae, an altar and an offering table, all cut from sandstone. Incised on sandstone outcrops beside the settlement are many representations of human feet. In another part of the quarry is a small (1.3m high 1.2m wide, 1.5m deep) shrine with intact granite walls and roof.

Karnak: The CTEEFK projects, under the overall direction of Françcois Larché and Nicolas Grimal continued.

1. In the so-called ‘MK courtyard’, the sounding made by Jean Lauffray along the E wall of the S rooms was cleaned, revealing four superimposed courses of small limestone blocks on which is set a line of three long sandstone blocks. Two or three limestone courses are missing to reach the top of these sandstone blocks of which the upper faces are level with the four granite thresholds: the only remains of the lost monument.The limestone courses occupied the whole surface of the courtyard (as shown in earlier soundings) forming a ‘podium’ for the construction above. Geological coring has shown that the first limestone course is set on a sand layer directly above silt.

2. Recent observations by François Larché around the 4th and 5th pylons have allowed clarification of the proposed chronology for the many changes of the hall between the pylons (the ‘Wadjyt’). Cleaning of the join between the hall’s short sides and the foundation of the 5th pylon’s side walls has shown that the 5th pylon and its side walls are earlier than the 4th pylon’s. New details have been added to the reconstruction of the E faces of both pylons, particularly the existence of niches identified by Jean-François Carlotti inside the E face of the 4th pylon’s S tower has been confirmed during the restoration of the N tower by the discovery of eight seated Osirian statues of Tuthmosis I, in place inside limestone niches resting on a projecting sandstone base. A new height of four cubits has now been measured for the niches instead of the previous seven cubits. In the same hall, an architectural survey (scale 1:50) was undertaken by Emmanuel Laroze, to complete drawings already made in the central area. A topographic survey of around 1,500 points was made to support the hand drawings of the blocks.These drawings are being digitised.

3. Further excavation, directed by Aurélia Masson and Marie Millet, and research has shown that the dating of the priests’ houses E of the Sacred Lake, can now be extended back to the 21st Dyn: the door-frame of House No.1 has the name of Ankhefenkhonsu of that dynasty and ceramic evidence also points to the same date. House No.VII was excavated down to the base of its wall and its stratigraphy established the existence of seven phases.

The study of the material coming from the five first phases has shown a chronological homogeneity: ce-

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ramics, small objects and epigraphic materials are all of the 26th-27th Dyns. An unpublished treasure (now in an SCA magazine) from house No.V includes more than 1 kg of silver ingots and two silver coins from northern Greece and dating from around 500-480 BC (27th Dyn), providing further confirmation of the date of the main housing.

4. Excavations north of the central zone were directed by Guillaume Charloux. At the limit of former soundings, a MK wall marks a break with the structures to the E since the mudbrick pavement does not go beyond this wall. The walls are built at the same level on a layer of soil, very rich in material, and corresponding to the levelling layer visible in the 6th pylon courtyard, under the mudbrick structure. Continuation of the foundations of the MK structure, found last year, has been identified. It was levelled off, directly below the W face of the foundations of the N rooms of Hatshepsut. The substructure of a tiny courtyard (Tuthmosis III) between the four chapels alongside the N courtyard of the 6th pylon and the three chapels beside Hatshesput’s N rooms, was excavated.Two foundations must belong to an earlier structure of Amenhotep I. A narrow sandstone water channel was found under the pavement of the E chapel of Tuthmosis III. Flowing N, this channel runs for over 30m to the S face of the inner Tuthmosis III wall.To the S, this channel was cut when Hatshepsut’s rooms were built. Stratigraphy dates this channel to the reign of Amenhotep I as a wall foundation of this king was built together with the channel.

5. Excavations in the 5th pylon courtyards were supervised by Ophélie de Peretti and Emmanuel Lanoë. A grid of MK mudbrick walls (1-3 cubits wide) was identifed beneath NK levels, dated on associated ceramic evidence to the end of the 11th Dyn or beginning of the 12th Dyn. The walls are related to other mudbrick structures cleared last year in the central zone, showing that the MK temple extended further to the W than previously known.

As in the 5th pylon N courtyard, fragments of a sandstone architrave of Senwosret I and fragments of octagonal sandstone columns were reused, in the S courtyard, as foundations of the bases of Tuthmosis I’s colonnade. This MK colonnade was probably in the same place as the NK colonnade, but at a lower level, corresponding to that of the MK mudbrick walls. The limestone Osirian pillar of Senwosret I (Egyptian Museum, Cairo) was found in the S courtyard by Legrain and it had been probably buried there, with the fragments of the MK colonnade, during the construction of the 5th pylon and its courtyards.The counterpart of an anonymous foundation deposit found in 2003 in the 6th pylon N courtyard was discovered, partly placed under a base of Tuthmosis I colonnade, in the 6th pylon S courtyard. Both deposits are probably linked to the construction of Tuthmosis I’s colonnade.

Western Thebes: 1. The Theban Mapping Project, directed by Kent Weeks, continued its work in the Valley of the Kings, devoting most of 2004 to the preparation of ‘existing condition’ reports, photographs and conservation surveys of all tombs in the Valley which are open to the public. Work continued in KV5 in the chambers and corridors forming part of yet another level of rooms about 25m below the tomb entrance. Several chambers had well-decorated walls with beautifully painted, life-size figures of Ramesses II. (www.thebanmappingproject.com) 2. At Asasif, the Italian Archaeological Mission to Luxor, directed by Francesco Tiradritti, continued work in the spring and summer in the tomb of Harwa (TT 37), completing the record of excavated objects and of monuments stored in the vestibule of the tomb of Harwa by the MMA expedition in the 1920s and deriving from their excavations in Malqata, Deir el-Bahri and Asasif.

Upon completion of their recording they were moved into the SCA storeroom near the Carter

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House.The removal of the huge heap of debris that covers the access ramp to the tomb of Harwa was continued, and scattered within the debris were some limestone ostraca and sculptors’ models. In the same area were sherds of a jar with a hieratic text mentioning Harwa, and other people, in connection with Theban deities. The sherds recovered unfortunately are not sufficiently well preserved to reveal the full meaning of the text. While clearing debris in the S part of the subterranean corridor around the tomb, the mouth of another funerary pit was uncovered. (www.harwa.org) Wadi Araba: The team led by James Harrell (Univ of Toledo) and sponsored by the EGSMA discovered an ancient flint quarry in the W part of Wadi Araba, near Darb el-Khalil. Beside it are the ruins of a single large building, nearly square and c.17m on each side, with several rooms arranged around the inside of the enclosing outer wall and opening on to a central courtyard. Behind this structure are vast piles of flint fragments where this rock had been chipped into tools, especially blades. No diagnostic pottery was found but the presence of ‘dolerite’ mauls for quarrying flint nodules from the limestone bedrock indicates a date for the site earlier than the Graeco-Roman Period.

Moalla:The Univ of Liverpool Moalla Project, directed by Mark Collier, continued research at the

31°N

30°

29°

early FIP rock-cut tomb of Ankhtifi,working on the southern side of the forecourt. The most notable aspects of the work were the finding of a series of small mudbrick features aligned parallel to the wall of the columned hall and a mudbrick wall running N-S at the front (W side) of the forecourt.

Wadi Abu Aggag: The team led by James Harrell (Univ of Toledo) and sponsored by the EGSMA discovered what is now only the third known ancient quarry for siliceous sandstone or quartzite, on the E bank of the Nile just N of Wadi Abu Aggag at the N edge of Aswan.The quartzite here is in a wide range of colours, including light grey, light to dark brown, brownish black, and pink to red.The quarry is nearly 4sq km in size and resembles a cratered moonscape with its several hundreds of pits where wall-like piles of tailings surround worked quartzite outcrops. Paved slipways and stone huts are common as also are rockcut hieroglyphic inscriptions and pictorial graffiti.

There are many worked blocks, including some roughed-out blanks for seated statues. From the tool marks, pottery, inscriptions and other indications it is clear that the quarry dates largely to the NK with a part of it also of the Roman Period.

AUTUMN (September-December) Lower Egypt Alexandria: The HIAMASA Mission, directed by

Mendes Alexandria ❑ Delta ❑ ❑ Buto ❑ Survey sites ❑ Sais Kom Firin & Delta ❑ Tell el-Mashala, Survey sites ❑ Tell Basta ❑ Tell el-Daba ⇐ Zawiyet Umm el-Rakham Wadi Natrun ❑ Cairo Giza ❑ Abu Sir, Memphis,Saqqara ❑ Dahshur ❑ Qaret el-Tub Fayum ❑ ❑ ❑ Qasr Allam Medinet Madi ❑ ❑ Wadi Araba El-Bawiti Tebtunis, Khelua ❑ ❑ Ehnasya el-Medina Bahariya Oasis

100 km

Sinai Peninsula ❑ Tell Ras Badran

❑ Tehne el-Gebel

28° ❑ Amarna

Eastern Desert

27°

Wadi Abu Diyeiba ❑ ❑ Koptos

Abydos ❑

26° Western Thebes ❑ Armant ❑

Kharga Oasis

Dakhla Oasis

Esna ❑

❑ Karnak, Luxor ❑ Tod Marsa Nakari ❑ ❑ Moalla

25°

Aswan Gebel Gulab, Gebel Tingar ❑ ❑ ❑ Wadi Abu Haggag

24° Key: Names in bold type: subjects of main articles

Names in normal type: ‘Digging Diary’ or ‘Notes and News’ entries

Lake Nasser

23° A

29°E

30°

27

31°

32°

33°

34°

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Harry Tzalas, continued its underwater archaeological surveys focusing on the site Chatby 1, in the vicinity of Cape Silsileh (ancient Akra Lochias).The weather conditions and the visibility were good and this resulted in tracing over 100 large architectural elements and other artefacts.These included a red granite slab with the torso of a pharaonic official, carved in low relief, and, found near by, a hieroglyphic text inscribed on a quartzite slab. The inscription contains two cartouches but is covered with marine concretion and has not yet been cleaned and studied. Other finds were two monumental granite bases, a stone anchor, catapult balls, a metallic cannon ball and numerous pottery sherds.

Buto: The DAI/Univ of Poitiers expedition, led by Ulrich Hartung and Pascale Ballet, concentrated on survey and study.Tomasz Herbich investigated a further 8.5 ha by geophysical measurements in the NW and N part of the site.The magnetic map shows the continuation of casemate-like building structures arranged along a main street (see EA 24, pp.16-17) most probably of the Saite Period.These houses are partly covered by Ptolemaic/Roman building remains, cemeteries and industrial features such as kilns and slag heaps.The core drillings undertaken in the same area confirmed this picture and cast additional light on the extension of TIP and ED settlement layers below the Saite buildings. Pottery studies were mainly dedicated to research on material from the spring campaign (see EA 25, p.29) and from the EES excavations in the 1960s, the latter being almost finished. (www.dainst.org) Mendes (Tell el-Ruba): The Pennsylvania State Univ expedition, directed by Donald Redford, continued excavation (see further pp.8-12).

Kom Firin:The BM expedition, led by Neal Spencer, underook further excavation in the SE temple, which clarified further elements of its plan, and the dating of this ruined structure to the Ramesside Period. A domestic installation (late NK/earlyTIP) built into the NW corner of the temple was cleared: large in situ cooking vessels, a pot-stand, a small number of fired clay animal figurines, a flint knife and an amulet were recovered. The magnetometry survey was extended to areas adjacent to the temple, revealing a 220×200m enclosure, with walls 5m thick and with fortifying bastions at the corners.

Smaller structures were arranged around the small temple. An imposing two-tower gateway was identified in the N stretch of the enclosure wall.

Excavations yielded a mass of limestone chippings, some with worked surfaces: the gate may have been clad with decorated limestone.The enclosure is built with the same type of bricks and construction method, and follows the same alignment, as the temple within, suggesting a Ramesside date. Further fired clay cobra figurines were discovered in a variety of contexts.(www.thebritishmuseum.ac.uk) Tell el-Mashala: Sabrina Rampersad (Univ of Toronto), continued excavation of the Late Predynastic and ED remains along the W edge of the tell. Sev-

ARCHAEOLOGY

eral contracted burials were uncovered, one of which contained two whole vessels and half a large oyster shell.The presence of goods, albeit meagre, in association with this individual is the first indication of social stratification within the site’s ancient population. Upper Egyptian artefacts were also uncovered, most notably a fragment of a small breccia ointment jar from one of the habitation contexts. The flaked tool industry (the bladelet) continues to dominate the artifactual assemblage, but other finds are bladelet cores, small round clay discs (perhaps used as pot lids), upper and lower grinding stones, hammerstones, faunal remains and shell fragments.

Abu Sir:The Czech Institute of Egyptology expedition, led by Miroslav Verner, investigated a large 5th Dyn mastaba in South Abu Sir. The mastaba, devastated by robbers and unfortunately so far anonymous, has a unique architectural plan. In addition, restoration and reconstruction of the relief decoration in the tomb of Inti and the copying of scenes and inscriptions in the tomb of Qar was undertaken and the archaeological and geodetical survey of South Abu Sir continued (see pp.3-6).Anthropological materials from the pyramid Lepsius no.25 were examined.

Cairo, Ain Shams. The SCA has established a law requiring an Inspector of Antiquities to be present whenever building construction is being conducted in areas known to contain archaeological remains.

As a result, an expedition, directed by Zahi Hawass, has been excavating beneath one of the houses in Ain Shams and found a late 26th Dyn tomb, containing a large black granite anthropoid sarcophagus with the name and title of the deceased, Khonsuankh, ‘Treasurer of the King's Palace’ and ‘Chief of the Royal Palace’. Surrounding the sarcophagus were more than 400 shabtis and four intact alabaster canopic jars with lids in the forms of the sons of Horus.Within the sarcophagus were the remains of the mummy and several gold amulets.The tomb has now been relocated next to the tomb of Panehsi in the Ain Shams Open Air Museum.

Upper Egypt Saqqara: The Glasgow Museum, Scotland, team, led by Ian Mathieson, undertook a geophysical survey season to complete the recording of the area to the N of the Step Pyramid and between the Serapeum and the Teti Pyramid. A total of 160 30m squares were surveyed in 12 days, over the spoil heaps of Mariette and De Morgan as well as some rather massive mastabas now represented by huge detritus mounds. The work led to the rediscovery of the Serapeum Way which is very clearly delineated in the geophysical data along with its associated chapels and probable tombs.

Dahshur: The MMA mission, directed by Dieter Arnold, concentrated work in the area of the king’s north chapel at the pyramid complex of Senwosret III. Only the mudbrick subfoundation of the chapel is preserved along with the limestone foundation blocks of the adjoining pyramid. No traces of a pyramid entrance were found in the area. Several thousand relief fragments of exceptional quality were recovered, including a large section of a tympanum block depicting the enthroned king receiving blessings from Hor us.

Study of the relief fragments from the pyramid temple and queens’ chapels continued. Reconstruction (using both ancient stones and newly carved blocks) of the NE cor ner of the mastaba of Khnumhotep Dra Abu el-Naga. The decorated interior of the large sarcophagus. progressed in the mastaba (Photograph: German Archaeological Institute)

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shelter N of the king’s pyramid complex.

Khnumhotep’s structure represents a rare surviving example of a mastaba with a panelled façade. The mastaba shelter now contains reconstructed sections of the mastabas of Nebit, Hor-Kherty and Khnumhotep. Study continued of the human remains from approximately 550 post-NK burials found throughout the site. (www.metmuseum.org) Medinet Madi (Fayum): The expedition of the Univs of Pisa and Messina, directed by Edda Bresciani, excavated Graeco-Roman settlement remains S of temple C, revealing a large hall with two stone pillars (their composite capitals were replaced) and with walls covered with coloured plaster, and decorated with geometrical motifs and many later drawings, of different types of boats. On the plaster on the S wall is painted a frontal bust of a king: the uraeus and eyes are very clear and it may be a commemorative image of Amenemhat III. Many objects of faience, glass and pottery were found and some Greek papyri and ostraka.

Khelua (Fayum): The Pisa and Messina Univs’ team, directed by Edda Bresciani, made good progress with the restoration of the MK rock-cut tomb of prince Wadje, especially with regard to the walls, doors, and pillars 11 and 12. Preparations were made for the covering of the pillared hall and insertion of iron doors next season.

Tebtunis (Fayum):The joint mission of IFAO and the Univ of Milan, under the direction of Claudio Gallazzi, continued the excavations of the depository mound in the southern part of the kom, where papyri, ostraca and amphora dipinti with Greek, demotic and hieratic texts were collected. At the same time, work continued beside the dromos of the Soknebtunis temple: the W side of the street was cleared in an area almost 50m long. For the first time the mission tested the E part of the settlement.

In this sector ruins of the eighth century AD were found and buildings located of the Byzantine and Late Roman Period.

Ehnasya el-Medina (Herakleopolis Magna).

The Spanish Archaeological Mission, directed by Carmen Pérez-Die, continued excavation in two areas. In the S of the site the principal work was focused on the FIP necropolis, revealing some vaulted mudbrick rooms and a badly destroyed level with fragments of FIP false door stelae.The stratum above was occupied by some TIP tombs. Excavation of this upper level uncovered four canopic jars and many shabtis belonging to Ankhsomtutefnakht.

In the Herishef Temple the entrance was cleaned and blocks found by Petrie were studied.

Koptos: The expedition of Univ Lumière-Lyon2, directed by Laure Pantalacci, continued the topographical survey, adding the buildings in the three small precincts S of the main enclosure. Drawings were completed of most of the remaining stone blocks in the core of the Min and Isis temple, the W ‘churches’ and the E area. Many loose blocks were also mapped. Cleaning of a door sill beside the modern road SE of the site showed that it consisted of several decorated early Roman blocks and pillars.

The sill is associated with a square (5m×5m) mudbrick building, the floor being c.80cm higher than the sill.At a somewhat later period, a mudbrick room was built to the E against the platform. The ceramic deposit above the floors of these rooms seems to be of the 1st century AD. Across the modern road, to the N, lay several more blocks and an area of c.10m×8m was cleared, showing that these N blocks, as well as the blocks reused to the S, belong to several limestone door-frames, one of which has the cartouche of Augustus. At least one of these doors (which probably collapsed in an earthquake) was oriented S-N, towards the contemporary temple at el-Qala. The blocks were photographed, drawn, entered into the database and then placed on fired bricks or concrete blocks, to isolate them from earth moisture.The door-jambs of Nero identified last year in the entrance to the Isis door of the

EGYPTIAN

1st pylon were moved close to their original position ready to be replaced (www.mom.fr/egypto).

Luxor: Conservator Hiroko Kariy for the Chicago House OI Epigraphic Survey resumed conservation and monitoring. of inscribed sandstone wall fragments. Selected fragment groups were documented by Yarko Kobylecky and Ellie Smith, who also began documentation of the badly decaying socle inscription of Amenhotep III which runs around the lower exterior of the rear sanctuary.

Dany Roy and his workmen started the stabilisation of the E wall of the Colonnade Hall with a brick and sandstone buttress. Into this will be restored 42 wall fragments which complete a representation of the divine barque of Khonsu and its towboats on the Nile during the Opet festival. Conservation and restoration work at Luxor temple are supported by a Robert W Wilson Challenge for Conserving Our Heritage grant and the World Monuments Fund.

Western Thebes: 1. An ARCE EAP Project, funded by USAID, has been working since August in theValley of the Kings removing a previous concrete flood protection prototype around the entrances of KV16 (Ramesses I) and KV17 (Seti I), constructing a new set of protective walls around each entrance and lowering the tourist path in front of the tombs. Edwin Brock (ARCE) directed the archaeological part of the work, including the removal down to the bedrock of debris around the two tombs and excavation of the pathway. Numerous pottery sherds and small artefacts were located, including fragments of the alabaster sarcophagus lid of Seti I. 2. At Dra Abu el-Naga, the DAI team directed by Daniel Polz discovered a small rock chamber (tomb no.KO3.4) at the bottom of a shaft, with a large (2.7m long, 1m wide and 1m high) wooden sarcophagus containing a wooden inner coffin. The chamber is only slightly larger than the sarcophagus, so robbers had to break through the foot panel to remove the mummy, and any other objects. The sarcophagus is decorated on the exterior with a horizontal line of text, with the title, ‘Sab’, and the name, Imeny, of its owner, in an offering formula.

The internal decoration of the sarcophagus is extremely well preserved with religious texts and polychrome representations of ideal burial equipment. The inner coffin, also box-shaped, has only a band of text on its outer sides with the title and name of Imeny’s wife, the ‘mistress of the household’, Geheset. A vertical column of text, added to the foot panel of the outer coffin at a later stage also refers to Geheset. Probably the chamber and the large sarcophagus were being prepared during Imeny’s lifetime when his wife died unexpectedly early and was buried in the smaller coffin and then placed inside the larger sarcophagus of her husband.

The shaft tomb, which had originally been planned for Imenybecame, therefore, the burial place of his wife. Preliminary analysis of the pottery with the burial shows it dates to the first half of the 13th Dyn, rarely attested in Upper Egypt. (www.dainst.org) 3. The Italian Mission of the Univ of Pisa at Dra Abu el-Naga, directed by Marilina Betrò, continued work in TT 14. The first room was decorated

by Huy, a Ramesside wab-priest of Amenhotep I ‘the Image of Amun’ , but all the structure was later reused as shown by traces of funerary reoccupation in the almost square room E of the niche room. In the same period the overground chambers of a yet unknown tomb located W of TT 14 were probably connected through a stepped passage to the underground funerary passages and rooms of TT 14. The new tomb, now under excavation, has a long vaulted room with scant traces of painted decoration, and another sloping passage opening in the floor and going to the W.Among the finds were wooden, pottery and faience shabtis, fragments of wall decoration showing Ahmose-Nefertari and probably Ahhotep, a few funerary cones and fragments of votive beds. (www.egittologia.unipi.it)

ARCHAEOLOGY

4. The work, codirected by Lyla Pinch-Brock and Roberta Shaw, of the Theban Tombs Project of the Royal Ontario Museum,Toronto at Qurna continued in the tombs of Amenmose, (TT 89) and Anen (TT 120).The season was funded by the Amarna Foundation, the Ancient Egypt Society of Western Australia and the Royal Ontario Museum. In the tomb of Amenmose work concentrated on completing the analysis of Qurna. The Theban Tombs project of the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto.Left: Rosalind Janssen examining cloth found during the excavations. Right: Roberta Shaw collating copies mater ials and texts, in the tomb of Amenmose. (Photographs courtesy of Lyla Pinch-Brock) rephotographing scenes digfragmentary limestone wall with two offering scenes itally and copying the tomb’s inscriptions, many of (discovered by Bisson de la Roque and in the SCA which have been previously copied by Norman de storehouse) was completed by gathering together Garis Davies in the late 1930s but before cleaning 21 fragments.The king’s name is not preserved and by the Egyptian Antiquities Organisation (now the the date (probably MK) has not yet been precisely SCA) in 1980 removed the bat guano and thick established. covering of wax which had obscured the scenes.

Aswan: The joint team of the Swiss Institute and The newly revealed texts were examined and colthe SCA Aswan, headed by Cornelius von Pilgrim lated by Edwin Brock. The tomb’s wall paintings and Mohi ed-Din, and directed in the field by addressing the importation of resin from Punt, and Wolfgang Müller, continued its work, focusing on the manufacture of unguent featured in a recent two large rescue excavations. One area (15), located BBC radio programme, ‘Locating the Land of Punt’, beside the former rescue operation no.9 (petrol stawhich can be heard at www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/science/ tion), yielded a dense sequence of Ptolemaic unearthingmysteries. In the tomb of Anen, work fobuildings. The house-units – situated at a T-shaped cused on conservation of the exterior, reconstitution street crossing – are well built and one is equipped of the false door and reconstruction of the fragwith a finely plastered bathroom. One room showed mentary ‘Amenhotep III blessing the harvest’ scene. traces of the production of faience beads. Two secJac and Rosalind Janssen analysed inscriptions and tions of massive stone buildings at the edge of the fabrics collected during the three years of excavaarea might belong to smaller temples overbuilt by tion, revealing a new title for Anen, and evidence of modern houses. Rescue work necessitated by the a high-status burial, confirming that Anen was acplanned extension of the communal water installatually buried in TT 120. tions in the centre of Aswan (area 13) continued.

5.The Chicago House OI Epigraphic Survey conAlthough located outside the assumed line of the tinued epigraphic recording at Medinet Habu in Late Roman town wall, a sequence of domestic arthe small Amun temple barque sanctuary and amchitecture was uncovered in two areas. The large, bulatory of Thutmosis III, and cleaned the carved well-built houses can be dated to the Ptolemaic and and painted façade of the sanctuary of Hatshepsut.

Early Roman Periods. Investigation of the earliest In the back naos room, collation of the painted inbuilding layer was limited by the higher water table scription of Ptolemy IX on the red granite naos in this part of the town. In a sounding, however, a was completed by senior epigrapher J Brett McClain fortification wall with a sloped rampart, was unwhile the 4-ton naos was moved to the opposite covered, indicating the location of the LP fortress side of the room by Dany Roy and the subsided to the S of the town proper. naos emplacement was excavated, prior to restoraBahariya Oasis: tion, by Lisa Giddy and Tina Di Cerbo. ConsolidaSCA expeditions, directed by Zahi Hawass, contintion of the crumbling exterior foundation blocks ued work at two sites in the Oasis. on the S side of the sanctuary was begun by conser1. In the ‘Valley of the Golden Mummies’ two vator Lotfi Hassan assisted by Nahed Samir. This intact Graeco-Roman tombs were opened (shown work is supported by a grant from USAID and the live on television in several countries). The tombs EAP through ARCE. represent the lower class burials in the cemetery Armant: Christophe Thiers (CNRS), in collaboand contained skeletons of the deceased, pottery and ration with Youri Volokhine (Univ of Geneva) and a ceramic sarcophagus. under the auspices of the IFAO, cleaned the main 2. At the site of Sheikh Soby in El-Bawiti where temple and continued the survey of scattered blocks previously the tomb of the 26th Dyn governor, (more than 130 were recorded and photographed).

Djedkhonsuefankh and some of his family had been Work also continued on the checking of the MK found, work concentrated on trying to find the blocks published by Mond and Myers and preparatombs of Djedkhonsuefankh’s mother, Nasa II and tions made for a topographic and architectural survey his grandfather, Iruaa, as well as the unlocated tomb of the temple area. Like last year, urban works (waof the first Governor, Shebenkhonsu. Excavation reter installation) brought to light undecorated blocks vealed two sealed shafts. At the bottom of one shaft which probably belonged to the main temple. was a rubble-filled room, 15m long, which led to Tod: Under the auspices of the IFAO, Christophe another room which turned out to be at the foot of Thiers (CNRS) led the continuing epigraphic surthe second shaft. This room contained an anthrovey at the temple of Monthu, in collaboration with poid sarchophagus of Padiherkheb, son of Padiese Lilian Postel (IFAO, scientific member). The main and brother of Djefkhonsuefankh. Padiherkheb was purpose was to continue study of blocks lying a temple official with a function involving the ‘eye around the temple or kept in the SCA storehouse. of Horus’. Surrounding the sarcophagus were nuMore than 190 Ptolemaic and Roman blocks were merous shabtis and several large clay pots. recorded and photographed. Links between blocks were made, especially fragments belonging to a kind of altar and to a scene of the hypostyle hall. A dozen I would like to thank David Jeffreys, Chris Naunton and blocks with the name of Cleopatra VII were identiJeffrey Spencer for assistance in compiling this edition of fied; most seem to belong to the temple’s upper ‘Digging Diary’. I am grateful to James Harrell, Lyla cornice. MK blocks were also studied, mostly from Pinch-Brock, Daniel Polz and Penny Wilson for providthe destroyed limestone sanctuary of Senwosret I. A ing the illustrations.

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All this pottery, what about it ?

At the EES ‘Memphis’ Study Day in November 2004 members heard how the question which is the title of this article was asked by a bewildered visitor surveying thousands of sherds drying on mats in the sun. Janine Bourriau’s talk, summarised here, attempted to answer the question.

The Egypt Exploration Society excavated at Kom Rabia, Memphis, between 1984 and 1990. For reasons which I shall go on to explain, recording pottery takes a long time and absorbs a large part of an excavation’s resources, not least for the numerous people deployed among the reed mats and buckets. Thus, I am very grateful for the support I have always received from the two Memphis field directors, David Jeffreys and Lisa Giddy.

There is so much pottery from an urban site like Kom Rabia that any strategy to cope with it can lose sight of the end product: a publication which helps to date the site and its artefacts, but also says something about the community who lived there, their quality of life and their contacts beyond the walls of their cramped houses. Egyptian pottery of the New Kingdom is familiar to many in the guise of blue-painted jars from Amarna and fine jugs from the tomb of Tutankhamun, yet these tell only a small part of the story.What Kom Rabia provides is a stratified sequence of pottery from the whole of the New Kingdom, covering the period c.1550-1070 BC. It shows clear and quite rapid changes of style throughout these 500 years

and where we can identify them they become an indispensable dating tool. Since at this time pottery styles were fairly uniform throughout Egypt, Nubia and the Oases, the tool is even more useful. Furthermore, the people of Memphis were using pottery from Mycenae,

Map showing the position of the excavation on Kom Rabia (RAT) in relation to the Ptah Temple at Memphis (JEA 73 (1987) p.14, Fig. 1)

Axonometric projection of Level II houses, showing communal ovens and grain silos and stairways up to the roofs (JEA 72 (1986) p.6, Fig. 3)

The writer with Paul Nicholson and Sarah Buckingham ‘on the mats’, sorting pottery at Kom Rabia

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Cyprus, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria and Nubia, as well as from Egypt itself, so we can link the contexts at Memphis, dated by our Egyptian pottery, to others elsewhere in Egypt and beyond. Knowing what was happening in all these different places at one and the same time is vital if we are to understand the relationship between the var ious political powers and commercial interests of the entire eastern Mediterranean area.

However, if the pottery evidence is going to be reliable it must have been carefully excavated and all its properties properly studied. This means that raw material, shape, technology of manufacture and firing, and decoration must all be looked at and the criteria assembled to show how the pottery from one period differs from that of another. Counting is a further essential component in establishing how pottery changes: for reasons that I shall explain, we need to show not just the presence or absence of a given pottery type but whether it is common or rare.

The problem the archaeologist faces is clear: each individual sherd recorded has to be looked at in detail, but the numbers retrieved during an excavation are huge - 5,000 sherds, or even more, each day. We overcame it by turning to a friendly statistician for advice on sampling. Nick Fieller, from Sheffield University, showed us that a given number of randomly selected rim sherds from each context, this number to be calculated according to the total number present in the context, could be taken to represent all the sherds present. He allowed us to keep and record any other sherds we felt to be especially interesting (for example, sherds of non-Egyptian or painted pottery) but these were not to be included in the statistical analysis of the data. In the final publication, the whole of the random sample will be published (it amounts to 36 per cent of all the sherds we recorded), together with a selection of the purposive sample, chosen to illustrate particular features of the corpus.

What is the general character of the pottery at Kom Rabia? First of all, we have to recognise what the pot-

tery in a single context represents. It is not the totality of the pottery in use at a single moment, but discarded broken pieces which have accumulated over time.

When a floor in a house was re-laid, for example, intact vessels still in use were temporarily removed, while any useless fragments were swept outside, dumped into a pit, or left behind in the floor debris and sealed by the new floor. Using evidence from all the contexts, including street fills and pits as well as floors, we can eventually put together the entire corpus in use. But we have to be alert: some broken parts of vessels could be re-used, extending their use-life and potentially confusing the chronological picture; thus we find the rims of Middle Kingdom storage jars in use in the late Eighteenth Dynasty as pot-stands and the flat base of a broken Mycenaean stirrup jar pressed into service as a gaming piece. Other earlier sherds commonly survive in later contexts for different reasons: they may have weathered out of the mud bricks in which they had been incorporated, or have been thrown up during the digging of grain silos, pits or wells in later times.This is why it is important to know not just that a pottery type occurs in a given context, but how rare or common it is.

Secondly, we see that vessels of some types were in

Sherds of Base Ring I ware from Cyprus (Eighteenth Dynasty)

Sherd of Mycenaean pottery (Nineteenth Dynasty)

Late Bronze Age Canaanite jars (From A. Leonard, in The Origins and Ancient History of Wine (1996) p.237)

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The handle of an amphora cut to show that a marl clay has been used with a body made of a Nile silt clay. The two are bonded by an overall coating of marl clay, also intended to make it less porous

ing fragments by William Schenck, to show what one example would have looked like when complete.

During the post-excavation period we have been able to carry out studies of the raw material used to make the pottery, helping to establish which classes were made locally and which were produced elsewhere, for example in Upper Egypt. Study of the amphorae (large transport jars) has provided particularly good evidence for Egyptian workshops specialising in these vessels.

We have also made a comparative study using contemporar y pottery from the Egypt Exploration Society’s excavations at Amarna. Perhaps it is not surprising that the most common Nile silt pottery from the two sites shows small but detectable differences, indicating that local potters, then as now, used different ‘recipes’ in prepar ing their clay.

Finally, questions other than dating have also been addressed.

All sherds which belonged to nonEgyptian vessels were recorded as par t of our purposive sample, with the largest number proving to belong to transport amphorae which had come from the area of Syria/Palestine, bringing in commodities such as oils, resin, honey and wine.

Together with Margaret Serpico, who had already studied such amphorae found at An early Eighteenth Dynasty marl clay vessel, Amar na, and probably imported from Upper Egypt on the Laurence Smith evidence of its clay

A bowl with a red coating, black rim and ring burnishing on the inside, early Eighteenth Dynasty

use for shorter periods than others: for example, a cooking pot usually had a shorter use-life than a storage jar. Furthermore, its sherds are generally smaller and there are few whole vessels, so reconstructing the original complete shape can be difficult.This is where the similarity of New Kingdom vessels throughout the country helps; parallels from other sites can usually supply the missing parts of the shape.

Thirdly, bowls and dishes are much more common than jars, but whereas the shapes of jars are much more chronologically sensitive, the surface treatments of the open forms, by which I mean clay slips, burnishing and red or black coloured rims, are equally chronologically significant. Special or unusual vessels can be helpful, too: for example, fragments of large sculptured vases in the rumbustuous form of the god Bes are common in the late Nineteenth Dynasty, and some have been found at Kom Rabia. The image of Bes, snake-biter and protector of both women and children, was displayed ever ywhere in houses, painted on walls and carved on furniture. A composite vessel has been drawn from some of the survivReconstruction of a Bes jar, Nineteenth Dynasty.

(Reconstruction and drawing by William Schenck)

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Map showing the provenance of fabric groups 2,4 and 5 of Canaanite jars from Memphis. Group 4 comes from the region around Ras Shamra (Ugarit)

and Carl Heron, we carried out a provenance study of their clays, and residue analysis of the vessel contents.

We were able to show that they were made in various localities along the Levantine coastal strip between North Syria and Gaza. One class came from Ras Shamra, ancient Ugarit. We could also show a link between specific commodities and particular pottery fabrics: for example, between pistachia resin and a fabric originating in the region around modern Haifa. At Amarna, and at Deir el-Medina and elsewhere in Egypt, these same amphora classes have been found inscribed in hieratic with their contents, source, destination, donor and date. Interpreting these inscriptions is greatly helped now that we can know from the clay alone where the jars were made, and thus the likely source of their contents. ❑ Janine Bourriau is a Fellow at the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, University of Cambridge and has excavated for the EES at Saqqara, Memphis and Buto. She is grateful to all the funding bodies who have made this work possible: The Egypt Exploration Society, The McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, Cambridge, The Wainwright Fund, University of Oxford, The British Academy, The Society of Antiquaries of London and the National Environmental Research Council.

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Two graves and a well at Sais Test excavations in 2004 at Sais by the EES/University of Durham mission discovered unusual features which throw light on two little-attested time periods at the site, as Penny Wilson describes.

In the Northern Enclosure area of Kom Rebwa at Sais a test trench uncovered Third Intermediate Period domestic layers built over an earlier cemetery area.

One of the partially excavated graves contained an intact burial in a small mud-brick structure. The body was lying on its back, with its head on one side facing to the south-west, and may have suffered a break to the left arm, which had mended during the person’s lifetime. The deceased had been buried with a fine collection of pottery, comprising a small marl jar with a string of yellow faience ring beads around it, a pink slipped pilgrim flask and a Cypriot poppy-head flask.

The handle of this flask had been broken off before it was included in the grave, suggesting that it had been in daily use and not made specifically for inclusion in the funerary equipment. The deceased was wearing a necklace with four stylised scarab beads and a heart bead (all of carnelian), a faience Taweret amulet, a silver serpent amulet and a gold moon crescent. In addition, on the right wrist, there was a rectangular carnelian amulet with stylised udjat-eyes incised upon

Above: objects from the Eighteenth Dynasty grave, including the poppy-head flask (centre, back) and carnelian necklace pendants (front) Right: the gold moon crescent from the same grave

it. On the left shoulder there had also been a small object of a blue friable material, which had decomposed but left a vivid blue stain in the soil.

From the pottery this burial can be dated to the New Kingdom, around the reign of Tuthmose III, and the crescent type of pendant has recently been described as a Canaanite emblem, with comparable objects found in graves in Tell Ajjul in Palestine.

The interpretation of this burial was straightforward compared with that of another found in a shallow rectangular pit near by. In this second burial the body was laid out on its back with the head to the north and turned to the east. The head, however, had been completely enclosed in a coarseware vessel and a small broken cup may have been placed on the chest. When the body was cleared, it was not possible to find its feet, though because of poor preservation the foot bones could have decayed. The burial certainly dates to before the Third Intermediate Period but until analysis of the pottery in the debris has been completed, it is not possible to confirm the date or say why this person was buried in this way. This cemetery seems to lie outside the settlement area already identified in the eastern part of Kom Rebwa east and suggests that the high gezira ground was divided into different zones for living and burial. What is not clear is whether this New Kingdom cemetery was within an enclosed area or outside an earlier, as yet undetected, enclosure wall.

Less mysterious, but possibly just as unique, was the

The Eighteenth Dynasty grave with the crescent pendant in situ

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Detail of the second grave with half of the vessel removed to show the head

ficult as it continued to fill with water seeping from the water table. The well contained a mass of pottery dating to the end of the Saite Period, possibly contemporary with the Persian invasion, including Phoenician and East Greek imported amphorae, as well as locally made Egyptian pottery. A thick deposit of a black oily substance was found about half-way down the well. It had coated some of the vessels and made the mud extremely unpleasant. The vessel which had probably contained the oily material was also found.

The oil may have been poured down the well deliberately to spoil it for any invading force moving into the city, and then fired, leaving a black burnt coating on the inside of the well. Alternatively, the oil jar could have been accidentally dropped down the well. Either way, this little well seems to hide an interesting story.

The cemetery of the New Kingdom and the Saite Period well provide small pieces of information which contribute to our understanding of the lives, and burial practices, of the people of the ancient city of Sais.

The burial of a body with its head enclosed by a vessel

discovery of a Saite Period well in the Great Pit area.

Most known ancient wells in Egypt are deep pits lined with stone, or cut down into rocky substrata. This well consisted of a deep pit, cut into the soil, lined with pottery ring segments. Each ring was approximately 35cm high and 186cm in diameter and they were simply stacked one on top of another, effectively lining the well.The joints between the segments were packed with mud, and footholds were provided at intervals down the inside of the well. There were at least 13 of these rings going down to a depth of around 3m.There may be more, but the excavation of the well was dif-

â?‘ Penny Wilson is a Lecturer in the Department of Archaeology, University of Durham, and Director of the EES/Durham expedition at Sais. The funding for the project from the Arts and Humanities Research Board is gratefully acknowledged.

A Phoenician amphora from the well, with black oil traces on its side Right: four segments of the well Left: excavating the Saite pottery well.

A workman is holding a mud-covered Egyptian beer jar

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Notice Board Egypt Exploration Society Events London

Manchester

Cairo

Saturday 11 June, 2005. EES Study Day on the topic of what we can learn of life in ancient Egypt from written sources, in the Brunei Gallery Theatre at the School of Oriental and African Studies, Thornhaugh St, Russell Square, London WC1H 0XG. Speakers will include Morris Bierbrier and John Tait. Full details and booking form will be in the Spring EES mailing.

Manchester lectures are held in Lecture Theatre 1, Stopford Building (1st floor), University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester at 7.00 pm. Enquiries: Rosalie David, KNH Centre of Biomedical Egyptology, School of Biological Sciences, University of Manchester, Manchester M13 9PT. Phone: + 44 (0)161 275 2647. E-mail: rosalie.david@man.ac.uk

EES lectures are held in the auditorium of the British Council at 7.00 pm. Enquiries: Rawya Ismail, EES Cairo Office, c/o British Council, 192 Sharia el-Nil, Agouza, Cairo. Phone: +20 (0)2 3001886. E-mail:

Saturday 13 November, 2005. EES Study Day on rescue archaeology and conservation in Nubia and Sudan, in the Brunei Gallery Theatre at SOAS. Speakers will include Pamela Rose, Derek Welsby, David Singleton and Eric Miller.

Details in the Summer EES mailing Saturday 3 December, 2005. The EES Annual General Meeting, lecture (Jaromir Malek, Tutankhamun for all: Howard Carter’s Excavation Records in the Griffith Institute, Oxford) and reception in the afternoon/early evening in the Khalili Theatre, Main Building, SOAS. Details in the Autumn EES mailing.

ees.cairo@britishcouncil.org.eg

LECTURES

Tuesday 24 May, 2005. Stephen Quirke, In the Name of the King: the history and interpretation of the five titles and names of Pharaoh.

The British Council auditorium is currently closed during building works. EES lectures will start again in August 2005.

Tuesday 28 June, 2005. Jiro Kondo, Recent activities in Egypt by the Institute of Egyptology, Waseda University.

SITE VISITS

Please contact Rosalie for details of Northern Branch lectures later in 2005.

Saturday 9 April 2005. A visit to the EES/University of Durham excavations at Sais (Sa el-Hagar).

Saturday 7 May 2005 (provisional date).

A visit to sites in the Mansura region, including Behbeit el-Hagar.

Bolton The 2006 EES lecture in Bolton has not yet been arranged. Details will be included in a future mailing to EES members.

Please contact Rawya for details of lectures and site visits later in 2005.

The British Egyptology Congress, Cambridge 2005 24-25 September, 2005. The EES and the University of Cambridge will host a conference at the Mill Lane Lecture Theatre, Cambridge, and at The Fitzwilliam Museum. The conference will include the 2005 Stephen Glanville Memorial Lecture, to be given by Vivian Davies on the evening of 24 September, followed by a reception in the newly-refurbished Egyptian galleries at the Fitzwilliam Museum. Abstracts of papers should be sent by 1 April to: fitzmuseum-egypt@lists.cam.ac.uk Full details can be found at: www.ees.ac.uk/ membership/conference.htm and also at www.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/projects/ae/congress/congress_index.html

NON-EES LECTURES AND OTHER EVENTS Lectures on ancient and modern Egypt, and other cultural events, are held at the Education and Cultural Bureau, Embassy of the Arab Republic of Egypt, 4 Chesterfield Gardens, London W1Y 8BR at 6.30 pm.

Phone: +44 (0)20 7491 7720. E-mail (NB: new address): egypt.culture@btconnect.com 12 March - 30 October, 2005. Sudan: Ancient Treasures. A loan exhibition from the National Museum, Khartoum, Sudan, at the Bowes Museum, Barnard Castle, County Durham (www.bowesmuseum.org.uk).

To 27 March, 2005. Mummy: The Inside Story. Exhibition at the British Museum, London.

To 10 April, 2005. Pharaohs. Exhibition (most pieces loaned by the Egyptian Museum, Cairo) at the Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris.

Saturday 7 May 2005. Bloomsbury Academy Study Day. Egypt’s Western Deserts and the origins of Egyptian Civilisation in the UCL Bloomsbury Theatre, London. Speakers: Stefan Kröpelin, Heiko Riemer, Dirk Huyge and Andras Zboray. Details: Phone: +44 (0)20 7679 3622. Fax: +44 (0)20 7413 8394. (www.egyptology-uk.com/bloomsbury).

Tuesday 17 May 2005. Annual colloquium of the Sudan Archaeological Research Society Recent Fieldwork in Sudan and Nubia at the British Museum, London. Details: SARS, Department of Ancient Egypt and Sudan, Br itish Museum, London WC1B 3DG (www.sudanarchs.org.uk).

To May/June 2005. Beasts of the Nile: animals and the ancient Egyptians. An exhibition at Warrington Museum.The exhibition then moves to Rochdale Art Gallery (18 June 18 September 2005)

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Wednesday 13 July 2005. The Annual Raymond and Beverly Sackler Distinguished Lecture in Egyptology at the British Museum, London will be given by Edgar Pusch.

14-15 July 2005. An international colloquium on Egypt and the Hittites at the British Museum, London. Details: Department of Ancient Egypt and Sudan, British Museum, London,WC1B 3DG. 13-16 July 2005. A conference: Ptolemy II Philadelphus at the University of Auckland.

Details/registration: www.arts.auckland.ac.nz/ sites/index.cfm?s+m_ptolemy

9-11 September 2005. A conference: After Polotsky. New Research and Trends in Egyptian and Coptic Linguistics at the University of Bonn. Papers in German, English and French. Phone: +49 (0)228 737587. E-mail: aegyptologisches.seminar@uni-bonn.de

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The quarries of Gebel Gulab and Gebel Tingar, Aswan A British-Norwegian archaeological and geological mission has begun the systematic documentation of the ancient silicified sandstone quarries of Gebel Gulab and Gebel Tingar on the west bank at Aswan. Elizabeth Bloxam and Per Storemyr summarise these fresh investigations and assess the implications for understanding the logistics and organisation of ancient quarrying.

Silicified sandstone (often termed quartzite) is generally known as the most ‘solar of stones’, given that its crystalline appearance displays an attractive range of colours covering the spectrum from purple red, via yellow, to pure white. The stone was highly prized by royalty and crafted into objects such as obelisks, statuary and stelae from the Old Kingdom into the Roman Period. Its greatest use seems to have been during the New Kingdom, perhaps because of its solar symbolism connecting it in the Eighteenth Dynasty with the refocusing of religious ideas on the sun god ReHorakhty and the Aten. The head of Nefertiti in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo and Amenhotep III’s Colossi of Memnon at his Theban mortuary temple are just some of the fine examples of its use in this period. There was also a utilitarian use of silicified sandstone attested from the Neolithic Period, particularly as abrasive rubbers, grinding stones and borers to hollow out stone vessels The ancient quarries of Gebel Gulab and Gebel Tingar, covering an area of 12km2 on the west bank of the Nile at Aswan, are one of the major sources of silicified sandstone used in antiquity. In 2004, a British-Norwegian team undertook the first major archaeological and geological survey of the ancient quar r ies, which had been studied br iefly in the 1980s by Dietrich and Rosemar ie Klemm. It is impor tant to set these west bank quarries into their context within

Four characteristic types of silicified sandstone. a) white (Gebel Sidi Osman) b) yellow (Gebel Gulab) c) purple and orange (Gebel Sidi Osman) d) purple (Gebel Tingar) (Photographs:Tom Heldal)

the greater Aswan region, which constitutes a prodigious ancient industrial landscape, including the east bank granite quarries and the silicified sandstone quarries also on the east bank (at Wadi Abu Aggag), and recently surveyed by James Harrell (see p.27).

Quarrying on the west bank was to fulfil two objectives: firstly for the production of elite status objects such as obelisks, large statuary and stelae, and secondly, but most prodigiously, for the manufacture of utilitarian products such as grinding stones and querns.

Obelisk and stelae production took place at Gebel Gulab, where the well-known upper shaft of an obelisk block still remains. New areas of obelisk extraction were discovered during the current survey indicating several, mainly failed, attempts to quarry more of these

Head of Nefertiti in silicified sandstone.

From Amarna, now in the Egyptian Museum, Cairo. (Photograph: Per Storemyr)

The typical raw shape of grinding stones, found in large numbers in the west bank quarries. (Photograph: Elizabeth Bloxam)

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Gebel Gulab. Quarry face with cracked surface typical of fire-setting. (Photograph: Per Storemyr)

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The newly discovered quarry for an unfinished obelisk on the northern tip of Gebel Gulab.

(Photograph: Tom Heldal)

objects. Production of stelae would seem to have been more successful, given the numerous occurrences of stelae ‘blanks’ or partially worked blocks. Pottery scatters in these areas, mainly of Canaanite amphorae, date to the mid-late Eighteenth Dynasty. Although some Roman Period quarrying also took place in the southern area of Gebel Gulab, Roman exploitation is a more significant overprint of earlier quarrying at Gebel Tingar, where the purple variety of the stone is found, this colour being highly prized by the Roman elite.

Silicified sandstone is extremely hard in comparison with the unsilicified variety and there is overwhelming evidence, displayed by charcoal layers and cracked quarry faces, for the use of fire-setting to split the

rock in the pharaonic period.Together with recent discoveries in Chephren’s quarry and the Aswan granite quarries, this indicates that fire-setting was a much more widespread extraction technique than previously believed. Pounders of granite and dolerite were used for levelling surfaces and trimming extracted blocks. Roman quarrying is characterised by wedges put in shallow channels made by heavy picks and/or chisels, a technique seen ubiquitously in the Aswan granite quarries and elsewhere.

The archaeological infrastructure at Gebel Gulab and Gebel Tingar is most conspicuously represented by the networks of quarry roads. Gebel Gulab has the most well-preserved roads and, as the map opposite shows, arterial roads clearly lead from the numerous quarries, where the larger blocks and obelisks were predominantly quarried, on to a major road artery which traverses the desert. The main road artery then changes character into more ramp-like structures which descend the eastern and southern sides of the desert sloping down to the Nile. The roads range in width from 2.8m to 3.5m and were generally constructed by laying a single level of flat stones directly on to the ground surface, securely butted against each other, and hence explaining their remarkable preservation. The causeway which runs from the main obelisk extraction site is a substantial structure, constructed Paved roads in the industrial landscape at Gebel Gulab. The road in the foreground leads to a New principally to traverse a depresKingdom large-block extraction site. (Photograph: Per Storemyr) 38

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Map by the British-Norwegian mission of the ancient quarries on the west bank of the Nile at Aswan. Background IKONOS satellite image (2001) (used together with GPS and GIS in the survey) kindly provided by the Swiss Institute of Architectural and Archaeological Research on Ancient Egypt

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sion and to facilitate the transport of obelisks from Gebel Gulab during the New Kingdom.

Dating particular roads to either the New Kingdom or the Roman Period is difficult, as the ceramic evidence located on or beside these features is representative of both periods. However, the overwhelming majority of roads lead from the large-block quarries in which there is no evidence of Roman extraction, suggesting that most of the roads are pharaonic. In the absence of any wear marks, the means by which the stone blocks were moved across the quarry roads remains unknown, but the orientation of the major ramps descending the eastern side of Gebel Gulab implies that the quarried stone was being transported towards the Nile, probably close to present Naq el-Gubba. As yet no evidence has been found for manmade harbour/quay structures in this area, although these may not have been necessary, as natural features could have been used to access the Nile.

The absence of any sizeable settlement and food preparation areas in the quarries indicates that the labour force resided in the nearby settlements of Aswan and Elephantine. Small clusters of ephemeral shelters, generally 5m long by 4m wide, enclosed by 1-5 courses of dry-stone walls and usually located around a natural outcrop, functioned as sheltered workplaces rather than dwellings. These structures are probably originally of the New Kingdom but seem to have been reused in later times; there is evidence of periodic ‘clearing out’, as New Kingdom pottery is generally found outside the structures and Roman Period pottery inside. Despite the limitations of this data, the minimal ceramic evidence implies that the number of quarrymen employed at any one time was small and certainly not numbered in the thousands.

The range of epigraphic data at the quarries, some previously undocumented, is a remarkable aspect of this site. Pharaonic hieroglyphs, the most numerous being the symbols mry Ra, ‘beloved of Re’, occur on many of the stones surrounding the newly discovered

One of the many temporary shelters at Gebel Gulab.

(Photograph: Elizabeth Bloxam)

obelisk extraction sites. These could either suggest the marking of certain blocks for extraction or the name given to the obelisk, reinforcing the connection between the stone and its symbolic association with the sun god Re. The Greek inscriptions, first documented

by Jacques de Morgan in the late nineteenth century, have been interpreted as either the names of individuals, stone-cutters’ marks, or indications of the private ownership of certain parts of the quarry in this later period.

Over 40 previously unknown occurrences of rock art depicting animals, human figures, footprints, and, most ubiquitously, boats, were recorded during the survey. The boat representations range from simple sickle boats and square boats with high prows from 10-30cm long, to a pharaonic ship/cargo barge measuring 1.5m × 1m discovered beside an obelisk extraction site. It remains questionable whether such an elaborate boat would have been used in practice to transport stone from the quarries, and it may represent an idealised form which is symbolic rather than narrative. Future research in the quarries will investigate further the logistics of stone transport, determine a more accurate chronology and complete the documentation. This work is increasingly urgent, given the immediate threat to the site from modern development now taking place along its borders. ❑ Elizabeth Bloxam is Leverhulme Research Fellow at the Institute of Archaeology, University College London, and Per Storemyr is a conservation scientist/geologist based at the Expert Center for Conservation of Monuments and Sites, Zurich. This paper was co-written by geologist Tom Heldal, based at the Norwegian Geological Survey, the organisation which kindly sponsored the work. The writers also gratefully acknowledge the expertise of Adel Kelany, Ashraf el-Senussi and Wafaa Mohamed. They also wish to thank the Swiss Institute mission in Aswan, Cornelius von Pilgrim and Kai Bruhn, for allowing access to their archive material which enabled more accurate maps to be produced. For further information on the project, see the article in the new scientific journal Marmora No.1 (2005).

Rock art at Gebel Gulab. An incised New Kingdom boat on an outcrop close to the newly-identified unfinished obelisk site (photograph on p.38).

(Drawing: The British-Norwegian mission) 40

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Bookshelf David Fabre, Seafaring in Ancient Egypt.

Periplus Publishing London Ltd, 2004. ISBN 1 902699 33 5). Price: £50. To use a sort of oxymoron, I found this book exhilaratingly daunting. In all there are around 280 pages of authoritative text, scattered throughout with transliterations and/or translations of Egyptian documents, lavish visuals, pertinent line-drawings, copious references, a lexicon of nautical terms, a semitic and Egyptian philological glossary, a comprehensive index, a listing of Egyptian, biblical, Ugaritic and classical sources, and a bibliography running to almost 40 pages – all this in quarto size. But this book was sheer pleasure to read from cover to cover and I rejoice in the fact that there is a second volume yet to come, although I am a little frustrated at having to wait for the author’s defence of his claim that the destination of Hatshepsut’s ships bound for Punt lay to the south of Port Sudan.

In this volume Dr Fabre divides the material into ‘Egypt and the Sea’ and ‘The Professionals of Maritime Voyaging’ which, approached under six sub-headings, works admirably.

From the beginning the reader is alerted to the thoroughness of the book by being confronted by a detailed evaluation of the ancient Egyptian concept of maritime space, involving an analysis of much–disputed terms such as Wadj Wer (the ‘Great Green’) which seems to apply to the sea in general but in religious texts of the afterlife is more likely to indicate a ‘… fertile and regenerative space frequently linked to the Delta’. The changes in emphasis in such terms comes through in the discussion of the Haunebut which could refer to coastal Egypt and in the Ptolemaic Period could also mean the Aegean world. The author gives a particularly lucid account of the Mediterranean Sea, covering the currents and seasons for sailing. May to September was the optimum time for navigation, explaining why Wenamun was shipwrecked on Cyprus when he was forced to sail from Byblos in Lebanon sometime in March or early April. By the segmentation of the Mediterranean into zones a clear picture is given of Egyptian targets in sailing, so, by extending Roman nomenclature back to previous eras, the ‘Mare Aegyptiacum’ reveals the closeness of relations between Egypt and Cyprus (especially Phoenician Kition) while the ‘Mare Syriacum’ stretches from Ugarit and Byblos via the ports of Sidon,Tyre, and Dor to the Nile Delta.The description of the ‘Rhodian Sea’ incorporates a review of the connections between Egypt and Crete.There is a similar assessment of navigation on the Red Sea, which takes into consideration coral reefs, dominant winds, safe anchorages and a plausible scenario for the logistics of the time at sea of the ‘Shipwrecked Sailor’. Readers will gain insights from the chapter on the ports of the Delta and the Egyptian Mediterranean coastline, enhanced by reproductions of the Roman mosaic at Praeneste, the specific detail of the Madaba Map in Jordan and a sixteenth-century AD depiction of northern Egypt. Dr Fabre em-

world and evidence provided by shipwrecks.

Discussion then moves on to the people involved in maritime voyaging: the personnel of the ports, such as stevedores and carpenters, and ships’ crews, including rowers and those responsible for the cargo, with a liberal scattering of Egyptian titles and terms used in Roman times. Much attention is given to the function and social status of traders with information extracted from various documents such as the ‘Eloquent Peasant’, the ‘Report of Wenamun’ and the ‘Revenue Laws’ of Ptolemy II. The final section, ‘Religion and Beliefs’, is totally absorbing, especially on the relationship of Egyptian religion and the beliefs of Phoenician traders. By their ships the god Bes travelled from Memphis across the Mediterranean, north to Syria and Cyprus, then west to Carthage and Ibiza. GEORGE HART phasises the differences in the Delta landscape brought about by the modern barrage, drainage projects, shrinkage of ancient lakes and subsidence of the coast. He also includes an evocative passage by an early twentieth-century geographer describing the Delta as ‘…lands of solitude and wretchedness’. According to Dr Fabre much of this quoted extract will strike a chord with Delta archaeologists – who have however, he maintains, the consolation of hardly any tourists being around! The author covers the western coastal fringe of Egypt including the recent discovery of the vast port of Thonis-Herakleion, now lying under the waters of Abukir Bay. He gives succinct summaries of the harbour capitals of the eastern Delta at Avaris, Piramesse and Tanis, then provides welcome profiles of Tell Hebua/ Tjaru – the last Delta port from which ships sailed to the Levant – and the fortified city of Pelusium where archaeology has proven its existence in some form under the Achaemenid Persians.Access routes to the Red Sea included the Wadi Tumilat (the author stresses the fortification of the region around the Bitter Lakes) and the later ‘Canal of the East’, constructed under the Saite pharaoh Nekau, which by linking the Mediterranean and the Red Sea brought Indian merchandise to Ptolemaic Alexandria. Problems exist in ascertaining the ports used at different periods for voyages on the Red Sea such as at the Gulf of Suez, Mersa Gawasis, Quseir and Berenice.

The section on ships is exceptionally worthwhile reading. An initial survey covers the advent of sails in the Predynastic era, ‘Byblos ships’ more frequently voyaging to Punt than to Lebanon, Ramesside ‘menesh-ships based on Levantine cargo vessels and Saite triremes of Phoenician not Greek inspiration, ending with the Ptolemaic ships of the ‘elephant hunts’ sailing along the African coasts of the Red Sea. The author’s expertise in Egyptian naval architecture is quite evident in his presentation, with admirable clarity, of the construction of ships. All parts of a vessel are discussed and illustrated and occasionally the author perceptively lightens the technical data by drawing on relevant parallels in the Mediterranean

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Sally-Ann Ashton, et al., Roman Egyptomania.

Golden House Publications, 2004. (ISBN 0 9547 2185 3). Price: £25.This well-produced publication (all the illustrations are in colour) is the catalogue of an exhibition at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, which opened in September 2004 and runs until May 2005. Both the catalogue and the exhibition are principally the work of Sally-Ann Ashton, Assistant Keeper in the Museum’s Department of Antiquities, aided by colleagues in that and other departments.

Despite the many temples built or added to during Roman times, the average tourist does not comprehend that so much that still stands in Egypt was not constructed during dynastic times, and yet is still veritably Egyptian. Many restrictions were placed upon Egyptian priests by the ruling emperors, but they managed to oversee and have decorated vast areas of wall and column with hieroglyphs and deities, and images of the emperor himself. It is useful, therefore, for the interested public to see so many Roman objects made in Egypt exhibited and published in a way that draws attention to them as artefacts of the first three hundred years of Roman rule, but which emphasises the descent of many of them from pharaonic and Ptolemaic examples, and which also shows others to be products of the Roman Period, made by Egyptians. The bulk of these objects are small antiquities in terracotta, bronze, stone and faience, with a welcome leavening of imperial coins from the Alexandria mint, little known to the general reader, which have Egyptian scenes and devices on their reverse sides. Roger Bland has shown, although it is not mentioned here, how closely Egyptian coins were linked with the mint of Rome.There are interesting and extraordinary things to be seen in this exhibition and catalogue, and Dr Ashton is to be congratulated in putting it together, with her characteristic fervour and enthusiasm.

However, this exhibition and the catalogue are ill-named. In the quotidian realms of life, religion and death, people acquired small objects such as those displayed in Cambridge: these are not images of Egyptomania, but re-

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flected the piety and fear of Egyptians in their struggle to protect themselves from the everpresent supernormal world of gods and demons. By its ver y nature, Roman Egyptomania can occur only outside Egypt, whereas most Roman Egyptians, native or of Greek descent, permanent inhabitants, not seekers after fashion, came to terms with their desperate existence with the aid of protective devices made by Egyptian artisans. Owing to the availability of material, much of it in Italy, there is only one object of the hundred or so catalogued that can be regarded as an example of Roman Egyptomania: no.103, the marble statue of Bes from Rome.

Dr Ashton suggests that importation by Egypt of Egyptomaniacal products of Italy had great influence on the appearance of objects made in Egypt. Isis statues of Roman date in their canonical form seem to be placed into this category, but such figures are widespread over the eastern Mediterranean, from Cyrene, Cyprus, Delos, Athens and elsewhere, and need not be based on Italian examples. I doubt whether it is provable that any of the canonical statues of Isis found in Egypt, including those from Ras el-Soda (in marble), Canopus (in basalt) and Luxor (in limestone), is an Italian product. The author has many interesting ideas which enliven this publication, but I find it difficult to agree with her that the canonical Isis came about in Italy during Roman times by stealing the costume of Ptolemaic queens: the knotted shawl and the ‘Isis’ locks are found on many Ptolemaic figures and vases, just as the Bes (no. 59) is as likely to be wearing Macedonian armour as Roman.

Some minor quibbles: p. 9: surely Hadrian’s rebuild (if it was indeed he and not an Antonine or a Severan emperor) of the Sarapieion at Alexandria, even in parts, was not Egyptianising? (Judith McKenzie’s 2003 and 2004 publications on this building have resolved this); p. 11: despite some possible Greek input the Ammoneion at Siwa was a Twenty-Sixth Dynasty building in Egyptian style, not ‘purely Roman in form’; p. 11: the Gates of the Sun and Moon were at each end of Canopic Street, the main east-west thoroughfare of Alexandria, not incorporated in the Hippodrome; pp. 132-9: no. 84, with inept figures carved, I would judge, on an already existing pot, and nonsense inscriptions in relief (the last a bad sign) - I believe this object must be false; pp. 176-9: neither ‘RomanoEgyptian nor Egyptianising’, but rather a Roman barbarian, made in a coloured stone as so often they were: could the headdress be a Phrygian cap variant?

This publication for all its merits shows signs of hasty writing and lack of editing, no doubt due to short deadlines, but unfortunate for all that.

DONALD BAILEY Aidan Dodson and Dyan Hilton, The Complete Royal Families of Ancient Egypt. Thames & Hudson, 2004. (ISBN 0 500 05128 3). Price: £29.95. Genealogy mattered in ancient Egypt, and royal genealogy mattered most, then and now. Since the inception of Egyptology, scholars have attempted to piece together the pedigrees of the royal dynasties based on surviving evidence, and, unfortunately, a lot of

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Berenice who married a High Priest of Ptah but is known only from one disputed reading.

Philip III (the half-brother of Alexander) was not murdered by Cassander (as stated on p.258), who was his ally, but by Alexander’s notorious mother Olympias, whom Cassander killed in revenge (as stated correctly on p.262).

The volume concludes with a detailed index and it is splendidly illustrated throughout.

This will remain a standard reference work on Egyptian royalty for the near future. However, dare one hope that new discoveries will demand a new edition in the not too distant future?

MORRIS BIERBRIER

heady speculation. Much new information has been uncovered in recent excavations and so this book is a timely reconsideration of the current state of our knowledge. Of course, the paternal ancestry of each pharaoh was technically clear to all Egyptians since he was the son of the supreme deity, be it Re or Amun.

The contradictory fact that he also had a human father did not at all bother the Egyptians or indeed the king, who was happy to honour both his fathers.

The volume begins with a series of introductory essays on the king, the state of Egypt, and the royal relations, providing a useful background for the general reader. The authors quite rightly dismiss the discredited theory that the succession depended on the king marrying his sister. Indeed, they show that relatively few monarchs married their sisters and fewer children of such marriages actually succeeded.

The mechanics of succession still remain obscure and were perhaps so at the time. The authors then list the titles used by members of the royal family with their (the authors’) abbreviations. It is unfortunate that the title Mistress of Upper and Lower Egypt is abbreviated as MULE, a sterile animal.

There follows an exposition, section by section, of the royal families. Each begins with a list of the rulers and then a discussion of the family relationships, with a pedigree and finally brief biographical entries for each prince and royal lady, but not the kings. The speculation is usually confined to the discussion, and the entries themselves reflect the evidence as available. Sometimes, the line between speculation and fact is eroded; for example, the lady Kiya, a wife of Akhenaten, is shown on the pedigree as a daughter of Tushratta, King of Mitanni, when the name there should be that of Tadukhipa, whose identification with Kiya is pure speculation. Inevitably in such a complex compilation, there are statements of relationship which might be questioned, but the information on the whole is judicious, clear and concise.

The weakest part is the section on the Macedonian and Ptolemaic families, where errors creep in, such as the alleged son Caranus of Philip of Macedon, dismissed by classicists as fiction, and the alleged Ptolemaic princess

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Donald B Redford, From Slave to Pharaoh.The Black Experience of Ancient Egypt. The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004. (ISBN 0 8018 7814 4). Price: £32. Professor Redford’s volume, which focuses on the Egyptian TwentyFifth Dynasty, is a welcome addition to the growing number of publications dealing with one of the less fashionable periods of Egyptian history. Scholars, students and other enthusiasts will welcome any publication such as this, which is well written and will, hopefully, be fairly widely distributed, especially with its eye-catching (and deliberately provocative?) title.

The first seven chapters (of 15) are devoted to setting the scene by tracing the history of the relationship between the cultures of Egypt and Nubia up to the point of the invasion of the Two Lands by King Piye, shortly before the end of the eighth century BC. Professor Redford’s breezy and very readable account is written from an Egyptologist’s perspective and is based on references to numerous, mostly Egyptian, textual sources. The referencing throughout the book is thorough, which this reviewer (a keen reader of foot- and end-notes) found interrupted the flow of the prose at times, but which nonetheless is a sign of the author’s command of the primary sources.

Professor Redford’s summary of the reasons behind the ‘administrative decline of the Third Intermediate Period’, which actually appears some way into his narrative of the history of the dynasty, is most pithy and enlightening.

Here he explains the economic, political and environmental factors which brought about the changes in the way the country was run, in turn impacting on religious beliefs, and specifically the mythology of kingship. His notes on the negative effects of the monumental reign of Ramesses II are particularly interesting. The book also provides much detail as to the various Delta principalities and their rulers who, with central authority weakened (and perhaps nonexistent in any real sense), played an increasingly significant role during the Third Intermediate Period. The author does not however deal directly with the possibility that several kings traditionally assigned to the Tanite Twenty-Third Dynasty, actually belonged to an independent line of Theban rulers, preferring to adhere to Kitchen’s reconciliation of the archaeological evidence and Manetho’s list of kings. He concedes the likelihood that Osorkon III resided in Thebes, but avoids another of the most fiercely debated issues among those studying the period – whether or not that king was one and the same as the High

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Priest of Amun, Osorkon of the ‘chronicle’ recorded on the Bubastite Portal at Karnak.

Furthermore, later on in the book, Professor Redford writes that from the end of the Twenty-Fifth Dynasty onwards Thebes would be the ‘center of dissent in a reactionary south’, just as it had perhaps been before the beginning of the period.

The author’s thoughts on the chronology of the early Twenty-Fifth Dynasty take into consideration the very recently discovered Assyrian evidence from Tang-I Var, and his analysis of Piye’s campaign, particularly as to whether or not his defeat of the rebellious Delta chieftains had any lasting effect, is thoughtful and perceptive. Later, much interesting detail is provided on the nature of the Assyrian invasions which were the blight of the dynasty during its last decade and which would eventually bring it down.

Perhaps of greatest value however are the sections on the author’s own work at TwentyFifth Dynasty sites on which he, as their excavator, has a unique perspective and understanding. Details of his excavations at Karnak’s ‘Temple C’ (which he would add to the impressive list of buildings of the reign of Taharqo) and elsewhere at Karnak, are a useful addition to our knowledge, particularly as the detailed publication of these monuments is still awaited.

Professor Redford’s point in the epilogue that certain of the more powerful political figures in Egypt ‘embraced Assyrian hostility towards the Napatan regime’ is well made and raises issues that are central to the study of Egypt from the end of the New Kingdom onwards: that of the influx of foreign invaders, settlers, traders and mercenaries, Egyptian attitudes to them, and the effect and extent of their assimilation into and influence on Egyptian culture. The author’s deep knowledge of the various cultures of the Mediterranean and Near East is to the reader’s advantage. Professor Redford also explains how ‘By the close of the seventh century the Egyptians were taking active steps once and for all to neutralize the surviving Twenty-Fifth Dynasty’, raising the question of what the nature of this ‘threat’ actually was. The Egyptian attitude to the Kushite regime is lost to us now but it probably varied throughout the country, with the Thebaid less hostile than the Delta. In terms of art and architecture, at least, far from imposing their own alien traditions on the country, not only were the Twenty-Fifth Dynasty kings thoroughly Egyptianised themselves, they actually seem to have reinvigorated the traditions of Egyptian culture (particularly at Thebes).

Events after the end of the Dynasty are dealt with in the three-page epilogue, and the author mentions in the preface that the TwentySixth Dynasty will form the focus of a forthcoming monograph of his – Egyptian/Nubian relations will surely be dealt with in more detail there. However, that volume is unlikely to be a suitable place for expansion on the subject of the later Kushite and Meroitic cultures, on which a little more could have been said here.

The Nubian pharaohs of the Twenty-Fifth Dynasty have not previously received the attention accorded to other Egyptian rulers, for

ARCHAEOLOGY

various reasons: their monuments are not as visible today as are those of the New Kingdom, and the names of the Kushite pharaohs have not entered the popular perception of ancient Egypt in the same way as ‘Ramesses’, ‘Tutankhamun’ or ‘Cleopatra’. But this is not to say that theirs is not a story worth telling.

While the popular media, and in particular television companies, take no risks when covering ancient Egypt and tend to stick to well-trodden paths, Professor Redford has demonstrated that more obscure material can be presented in a way that is fresh, exciting and accessible.

CHRIS NAUNTON

David N Edwards, The Nubian Past. An Archaeology of the Sudan. Routledge 2004 (ISBN 0 4153 6988 6). Price: £25. Whether by accident or by design, the appearance of this book coincided with the opening of the Sudan exhibition at the British Museum (see EA 25, pp.17-19).This is most fortuitous since this excellent book is short on illustrations while the exhibition and its accompanying catalogue offer the opportunity to appreciate visually Nubia and its archaeological heritage.

Moreover, the catalogue contains a section on the Palaeolithic, a period not discussed by Dr Edwards.

The book is a new synthesis of Nubian archaeology meant to replace Bill Adams, Nubia, A Corridor to Africa (1977) which, to a very large extent, reflected the state of knowledge as it was after the Nubian Salvage Campaign of the 1960s. Since that time dramatic new discoveries have been made in the middle Nile valley and there was certainly a need for a new overview of Nubian and Sudanese archaeology. Peter Shinnie’s 1997 Ancient Nubia partly filled the gap and can still be used as an excellent introductory textbook. However, anyone looking for an up-to-date in-depth study with a comprehensive bibliography will have to read The Nubian Past, and especially so now that the gap between two sisterly disciplines, Egyptology and Nubiology, is growing, partly because of the physical separation of the two lands by Lake Nasser/Nubia. It must be emphasised that Dr Edwards is firmly anchored

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to a ‘Sudanological’ perspective and, like Adams before him, decries the Egyptocentric approach to Nubian studies, something that was indeed the case in the past, but may not necessarily be true now. In a broader intellectual context one can place the work of Dr Edwards in the realm of landscape archaeology, certainly a novelty in the field of Egyptian and Nubian studies.

Another novelty is the author’s inclusion in his narrative of lands beyond Nubia. This is reflected both in the reference to the Sudan in the title of the book and in actual presentation of material from excavations and surveys conducted in Darfur, Kordofan, Kassala and elsewhere. While one must applaud the author for bringing these distant regions to the reader’s attention, this approach also exposes the enormous gaps in our knowledge of the parts of the Sudan that lie away from the Nile.

It is also sometimes difficult to see a common thread binding archaeologies of these disparate areas, except for one key element, in fact crucial to the author’s argument, namely that culturally and politically Nubia and central Sudan are part of a larger Sudanic (one could also use the term ‘Sahelian’) African context.

Thus, the cultures of the middle Nile valley should be studied not from the traditional north-south perspective, tracing the contacts and influences along the Nile, but rather as part of the Sahelian savannah belt extending east-west across the continent. It means that in upper Nubia and central Sudan the reliance on agriculture and riverine economy was less important than in Egypt, and that in ancient Kush pastoralism and nomadism played a much larger role. Therefore in Kush, as Dr Edwards points out, the state may have been constructed and political power exercised in a different way from that in Egypt. It also becomes apparent that politically and culturally lower Nubia, the part of the country most familiar to Egyptologists, was a marginal region.

Although Dr Edwards provides an excellent and comprehensive bibliography, the progress of Nubian archaeology is such that a number of important site reports and other publications have appeared while the book was in press and could not be included. Apart from the British Museum catalogue, we now have a new book on Kerma temples (Bonnet), three new publications of excavations at Meroe (Grzymski; Hinkel and Sievertsen; Shinnie and Anderson), a report on discoveries in the southern Dongola reach (Îurawski), and three catalogues of the Sudan National Museum collections (Hinkel and Abdel Rahman; Lajtar; Van der Vliet). Perhaps with the exception of Meroe, none of these publications affects the author’s interpretation of Nubia’s past.

There can be little doubt that, as the book cover claims, Dr Edwards does indeed break new ground in the study of ancient Nubia: it should be a ‘must read’ for anyone interested in Egypt’s southern neighbour. This is a thoughtful and intellectually inspiring work, and the reviewer shares the author’s hope that it will encourage the development of Nubian and Sudanese studies at university level. One must congratulate Dr Edwards and the publisher for bringing such an excellent book to light.

KRYSZTOF GRZYMSKI

EGYPTIAN

ARCHAEOLOGY

Membership Matters London Office staff. David Butcher, who had been Financial Administrator at the Society’s London Office since September 1998, left at the end of 2004. At the Society’s office Christmas party on 17 December the current Treasurer, Michael Pike, thanked David for his hard work on behalf of the Society, and a presentation was made to him by the former Treasurer, Peter Parker, who also paid tribute to David’s good husbandry of the Society’s finances.

David’s successor as Administrator is Tracey Gagetta, who in addition to being a qualified accountant is also a graduate in Anthropology/Sociology of the Memor ial University of Newfoundland, St John’s, Newfoundland, Canada. Tracey can be contacted directly at: (telephone) +44 (0)20 7242 2268, (e-mail) tracey.gagetta@ees.ac.uk

Peter Parker making the presentation to David Butcher at the office party

Tracey Gagetta with Andrew Bednarski (see EA 24, p.44) in the London Office

EES membership subscriptions for the 2005-2006 year are due on 1 April 2005 and renewal forms will be mailed in March.

For the first time members who wish to will be able to pay subscriptions by credit/debit card, and full details of how to do this will be sent in the mailing. Members who are UK taxpayers are reminded that the value of their subscription to the Society can be augmented if they are willing to make a declaration of ‘Gift Aid’. Further information and ‘Gift Aid’ forms can be obtained from Tracey (contact details above).

The Society’s website (www.ees.ac.uk) has been augmented recently and is now being regularly updated; readers are urged to log on frequently to keep up-to-date with activities and reports.

The ‘Qasr Ibrim’ page of the Excavation section now has a finelyillustrated summary of recent work while the Library pages now house ‘guides’ (lists of periodicals held, shelfmark lists, bibliographic/research tools, etc) to help members make the most of online access to the catalogue and their visits in person to the Library at Doughty Mews.

Acknowledgements All archaeological fieldwork and research in Egypt is carried out by permission of the Egyptian Supreme Council for Antiquities. Contributors to Egyptian Archaeology gratefully acknowledge the assistance of the SCA Secretary General, Directors General and local Officials and Inspectors.

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The Egypt Exploration Society Membership Membership of the Egypt Exploration Society is open to anyone with an interest in ancient Egypt who wishes to support the Society’s programme of excavation, research and publication. There are various categories of membership, depending on which publications are received, and full details can be found on the Society’s website: www.ees.ac.uk where there are on-line application forms. Details and application forms can also be obtained by post from The Egypt Exploration Society, 3 Doughty Mews, London WC1N 2PG or by e-mail (andrew.bednarski@ees.ac.uk).

Members can make use of the Society’s London library and the new library in Cairo and the Society regularly organises lectures, social events, and Study-Days in London, Cairo, Manchester and Bolton, with occasional events elsewhere.The Cairo Office also organises excursions to archaeological sites. Full details of Cairo membership (only open to those resident in Egypt) are available from the Society’s Cairo representative: Rawya Ismail, EES Office, c/o The British Council, 192 Sharia el-Nil, Agouza, Cairo.

Telephone: 0 20 2 3001886 (direct line). E-mail: ees.cairo@britishcouncil.org.eg

Egyptian Archaeology Egyptian Archaeology is published twice a year (Spring and Autumn) and is included in the EES Membership subscription for all Membership categories, except that of Associates.

EES Membership for 2005-2006 will include receipt of EA 27 (Autumn 2005) and EA 28 (Spring 2006).

Back issues 3-25 (1-2 are both out of print) are available at: £3 each (No.3) £3.95 each (Nos.4-13) £4.95 each (Nos.14-25) An index to issues 1-10 is included with No.11 An index to issues 11-20 is included with No.21 ISSN 0962 2837

Orders for back issues should be sent to: Oxbow Books, Park End Place, Oxford OX1 1HN, UK. Fax: +44 (0)1865 794449.

Phone: +44 (0)1865 241249 E-mail: orders@oxbowbooks.com Website: www.oxbowbooks.com

The Egypt Exploration Society

No. 26 Spring 2005

PRICE £4.95

Reprint

The Rock Tombs of el-Amarna (Archaeological Survey Memoirs 13-18)

The EES has reprinted all six volumes of Norman de Garis Davies’ The Rock Tombs of el-Amarna, which have been out of print for many years. Each volume includes two of the original series.

Between 1902 and 1907 Norman de Garis Davies, working under the auspices of the Egypt Exploration Fund (now Society), conducted a comprehensive architectural and epigraphic survey of the tombs of Akhenaten’s courtiers, in the cliffs and wadis around the site of Tell elAmarna in Middle Egypt. This pharaoh’s reign, which began in approximately 1353 BC, was a time of great religious and political upheaval, and saw the foundation, at Amarna, of an entirely new capital city, Akhetaten. It was also a time of great innovation and change in art, not least in the style and content of scenes carved in two dimensions. This change is abundantly evident in the surviving wall decoration in these tombs, which Davies captured so skillfully, and which was then made available to the scholarly world and the wider public through the six-volume publication resulting from his work.

Each of the reprinted volumes includes a new preface by Barry Kemp, Director of the current EES fieldwork and research at Amarna, with colour cover photographs by the expedition photographer, Gwilym Owen.

Full Price: £40 per volume, or £110 for the set of three EES Members’ price: £35 per volume, or £95 for the set of three

Orders should be sent to: Oxbow Books, Park End Place, Oxford OX1 1HN, UK. Fax: +44 (0)1865 794449.

Phone: +44 (0)1865 241249 E-mail: orders@oxbowbooks.com Website: www.oxbowbooks.com

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