EGYPTIAN
ARCHAEOLOGY
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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