EGYPTIAN
other, no less interesting, pieces published here for the first time. In the former category, the rishi coffin of the so called ‘Qurna Queen’ (see also pp.38-40) is of exceptional interest not least because of the many unresolved questions that still surround it and the burial from which it came: was the owner Egyptian or Nubian, a queen/princess or a member of the elite from the Second Intermediate Period or early New Kingdom; was the grave discovered by Flinders Petrie in the Theban desert an isolated burial, a cache or part of a still undisturbed cemetery? The coffin trough of the Third Prophet of Amun-Re at Karnak, Iufenamun, is a good example of the extensively decorated type popular in the Third Intermediate Period which includes an unparalleled and curious vignette combining scenes from the fifth hour section of the Book of Gates with representations from the Book of the Dead. It is also significant for belonging to the same high priest who, in c.960 BC, was responsible for moving the mummies of Seti I and Ramesses II from the Valley of the Kings to the tomb of Queen Inhapy, which was then being reused as a cache. The unique double coffin of Petamun and Penhorpabik, two young boys who died in the second century AD and whose bodies were placed side by side, sheds light on the great humanity which often lies behind antiquities. Many other coffins in the collection come from the nineteenth-century excavations conducted in the Theban necropolis by Alexander Henry Rhind, whose main discoveries were a disparate group of 80 coffins from a cache or mass grave at el-Khokha and others from a tomb at Qurna, the latter used in the 21st Dynasty by priests to conceal the mummies of a number of 18th Dynasty princesses, and further reused in the early Roman Period. The study concludes with a useful reference section, comprising tables of concordance, including a list of coffins recorded by Margaret Murray in her Catalogue of Egyptian Antiquities in the National Museum of Antiquities (1900), a small glossary, and a comprehensive index. The book is illustrated with many highquality photographs and is attractively and clearly laid out. It is a valuable addition to the subject of Egyptian coffins and the history of Egyptological collections, and is recommended for both coffin specialists and general interest readers. GIANLUCA MINIACI Finally David Jeffreys reviews the DVD of a recent television programme. Egypt’s Lost Cities (BBCDVD3361) 2011. 90 mins (a BBC/Discovery/France Televisions co-production). Price: £12.99. This DVD presents a BBC feature programme screened in the UK in June this year, based on the work of Sarah Parcak, whose Cambridge PhD was published as an excellent book, Satellite Remote Sensing for Archaeology (London, 2009). This programme is a popular version of part of her research, focusing on the Nile valley and Delta, and the desert regions on either side. The title is something of a misnomer, since true settlement sites hardly appear at all and the spotlight is on desert and desert-edge sites such as the Memphite pyramid field and the west
ARCHAEOLOGY
bank at Abydos - not surprisingly perhaps, as these are the areas most accessible to both excavation and non-intr usive remote-sensing techniques. I may be oldfashioned, but for me one of the more irritating aspects of the programme was the inclusion (apparently compulsory these days in television production of archaeological content) of two young ‘presenters’ who seem to have been selected for their apparent complete ignorance of ancient Egypt. One is an actor and the other a zoology graduate involved in bigcat conservation. We are thus treated to a continual chorus of ‘Wow!’ and ‘Off the scale!’ (‘Oh my God!’ and various growling noises may have crept in as well) as if the information emerging had never been seen or imagined before. The result is a near-total absence of intelligent discussion, questioning of techniques and use of results: in general any reflection of the philosophy of modern applications to archaeological data. There is a clear lack of some sensible editorial control and authority: much of the footage from ‘Saqqara’ was evidently shot at Dahshur; a sequence at a supposedly remote location in the Western Desert had the team clearly crossing a railway line; Lisht (Itjet-tawy) is said to be in Lower Egypt; the ‘conservationist’ presenter is shown in close-up rubbing her fingers over a newly discovered Middle Kingdom block at Hawara with not a latex glove in sight. Two longish sequences inside tombs, with Zahi Hawass (Giza) and John Romer (Thebes), seemed completely redundant – what had they to do with the programme’s theme and content? The CGI (computer generated imagery) is at times laughable – an inanely grinning Sphinx; monuments miraculously emerging amid sandstorms with imagery seemingly inspired by/borrowed from Scorpion King/The Mummy/Aladdin/Hidalgo (you name it); and the Sahara transforming from desert to savanna and back again – something incidentally that we have known about for years. Perhaps the most depressing aspect was the tacit assumption that geophysical survey and remote sensing of whatever kind is a natural evolutionary prelude to excavation. If there is anything more calculated to drive me to incandescent rage and an early grave, it is statements such as ‘every Egyptologist dreams about … an undiscovered royal tomb’ (well actually … not - or only as a nightmare perhaps). It is hard to imagine that someone who has worked and studied with Barry Kemp could come out with such a statement. Although one must, I suppose, make allowances for an element of playing to the gallery/cameras, there is a serious point here: in reinforcing stereotypes of what Egyptian archaeology is about, programmes like this firstly do a huge disservice to the 35
serious efforts of other professionals who have already covered the same ground, and secondly ignore the view that the satellite image should perhaps stand as the record unless and until the site is physically threatened. Viewers are given the entirely false impression that nobody has investigated Egyptian sites using remote sensing techniques, while, in fact, ground-based survey provides much higher resolution and precision than satellite imaging can at present. I find it difficult to forgive the complete absence of any reference to, or acknowledgment of, the work of colleagues such as Jon Dittmer and Ian Mathieson, Tomasz Herbich, Helmut Becker and Kristian Strutt who have, over the past twenty years, painstakingly been recording floodplain and desert-edge sites using ground-based and other remote-sensing techniques: magnetometry, resistivity meter survey, acoustic survey, etc. (as reported frequently in the pages of EA) at sites such as Saqqara, Tell el-Daba, Qantir, Tell Balamun, Sais and Buto, to name but a few … and even Tanis, the one settlement site that features in the programme. There is also a neglect of previous use of satellite imagery itself: for example the one foray into desert regions (coyly not identified, but ‘700km south-west of Cairo’ gets us somewhere to the south-west of the Dakhla Oasis) makes no mention of the pioneering satellite-based archaeology of Paleolithic and Neolithic sites along the Saharan ‘radar rivers’ discovered years ago, or of the work at Jebel Uweinat and Gilf el-Kebir, all relying in part on satellite data. François Leclère has also shown the value of filtering satellite images (see EA 30, pp.14-17), and we have seen how satellite pictures can be used in advanced spatial analysis by the Czech Institute working at Abu Sir (EA 26, pp.3-6 and cover). Since this programme was supposed to be about cities, it was a shame that the crucial point – that this technique is next to useless for complex, deeply stratified settlement sites (i.e. cities) - was virtually buried (so to speak). In fact the applied aspects of the technique turned out to be fairly disappointing - excavations actually tailored to the satellite imagery (for example by Günter Dreyer at Abydos, who was remarkably accommodating) either found nothing or, at another site, looked like a disaster in the making as scenes of the trowel-and-brush scraping of a piece of pristine limestone flooring/walling were painful to watch. One is inevitably left with a strong sense of opportunities missed - for example, the hundreds of new sites identified by this method in the Nile Valley, the Nile Delta and the Fayum (where are they and of what date? We would all love to know); and the potential of the method for providing a national register of sites much more sophisticated than what is currently (though only recently) available. On the other hand there were moments of real revelation - such as Sarah’s interactive screen for displaying the satellite imagery - a sort of huge iPad. I have to get me one of those! A modified version of this programme is apparently being prepared for the US market: It will be interesting to see what changes are made, if any. DAVID JEFFREYS