EGYPTIAN
ARCHAEOLOGY
The Yale University Moalla Survey Project At the Upper Egyptian site of Moalla, forty-five kilometers south of Luxor, a Yale University project has begun a survey of this large necropolis and its environs. Colleen Manassa summarises the results of the 2008-09 season. The exceptionally informative, yet often obscure and bombastic, autobiographical inscription of Ankhtifi of Moalla dominates histories of the third nome of Upper Egypt. Yet the epigraphic evidence in his First Intermediate Period tomb presents only one facet of the history of this region of Upper Egypt. In the winter of 2008-09 the Yale University Moalla Survey Project (MSP) began an archaeological survey of the environs of Moalla. The first season of work yielded fascinating results, including a northern extension of the Moalla necropolis and an ancient caravan route leading into the Eastern Desert. The Moalla Survey Project has identified 12 additional concentrations of tombs north of the free-standing conical hill that contains, among others, the tombs of Ankhtifi and Sobekhotep. These newly identified sepulchres range in date from the Fifth Dynasty to the middle of the Eighteenth Dynasty - clearly, necropolitan Moalla was important both before and after Ankhtifi’s rule as nomarch. In future seasons we plan to refine our archaeological map further and begin categorising the wide variety of tomb types within the Moalla necropolis. On the southern fringes of the cemetery we discovered the first predynastic pottery from Moalla; the relationship of the predynastic material at Moalla to the later burial sites is uncertain, and the sparse ceramic remains may be
Sketch map showing the locations of sites discussed in the article
part of a small cemetery or habitation site. Late Naqada II through to early dynastic ceramic material is also present at another necropolis south of Moalla (M08-09/S1) and along the ancient desert road leading eastward from the site. Identifying further predynastic material remains a goal of future survey seasons. In the northernmost section of the Moalla necropolis are two rock-cut tombs with traces of preserved painted
View of the slope of Area I of the Moalla necropolis, with modern quarry activity in the lower left
38