EGYPTIAN
ARCHAEOLOGY
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-