Egyptian Archaeology 46

No. 46 Spring 2015

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EGYPTIAN ARCHAEOLOGY

T he B ulletin of T he E gypt E xploration S ociety

The Egypt Exploration Society

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Geoffrey T. Martin: Tutankhamun’s Regent: Scenes and Texts from the Memphite Tomb of Horemheb

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EGYPTIAN ARCHAEOLOGY Bulletin of The Egypt Exploration Society www.ees.ac.uk

The opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the aims or concerns of the Egypt Exploration Society Editor Jan Geisbusch Editorial Advisers Peter Clayton David Jeffreys John J Johnston Chris Naunton Alice Stevenson John Taylor Advertising Sales Jan Geisbusch Egypt Exploration Society 3 Doughty Mews London WC1N 2PG Phone: +44 (0)20 7242 1880 Fax: +44 (0)20 7404 6118 E-mail: advertising@ees.ac.uk Distribution Phone: +44 (0)20 7242 2268 E-mail: orders@ees.ac.uk Website: www.ees-shop.co.uk 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 Set in InDesign CS6 by Jan Geisbusch Printed by Page Bros Ltd, Mile Cross Lane, Norwich, Norfolk NR6 6SA © The Egypt Exploration Society and the contributors. No part of this publication may be reproduced without prior permission of the publishers.

ISSN 0962 2837

Medinet Habu: the blockyard team with Coptic architectural fragments. See p. 14. Photograph: © The Medinet Habu Fragment Project.

Number 46

Spring 2015

Editorial Egyptian Archaeology 46 is the first issue since Patricia Spencer has passed the journal’s editorship on to me, and it was with some trepidation that I picked up the baton after such a long and successful tenure. Even so, delving for the first time into the technical and creative intricacies of producing EA has been great fun, too.

You will possibly notice some changes. Layout looks a little different, having allowed myself to experiment with space and text flow - a small mark, perhaps, of things to come as we continue to think about the journal’s shape and direction.

You will also, I certainly do hope, notice that we’ve added volume, going from 44 to 48 pages.

I’m very happy to start - and close - this issue with articles on recent discoveries, in Abydos, Saqqara and near Beni Suef respectively. The first of these, a chapel of the Eleventh Dynasty pharao Nebhepetre Montuhotep II, has been described by the archaeologists leading the excavation - Ayman Damarany, Yasir Abd el-Raziq and Ashraf Okasha - as one of the most important discoveries of the past few years. Another stand-out article, I feel, is the piece by Aiman Ashmawy and Dietrich Raue, as it highlights not just Egypt’s archaeological wealth, but also, importantly, the great threats this heritage is facing.

Jan Geisbusch EES Patrons for whose most generous support the Society is very grateful: C. T. H Beck, Barbara Begelsbacher, Eric Bohm, Raymond Bowker, Andrew Cousins, Martin R. Davies, Christopher Gorman-Evans, Richard A. Grant, Annie Haward, Michael Jesudason, Paul Lynn, Anne and Fraser Mathews, Anandh Indran Owen, Lyn Stagg, John Wall and John Wyatt.

If you would like to become an EES Patron, please contact Carl Graves: carl.graves@ees.ac.uk Cover: Detail of a wall painting at the Villa of Serenos, Amheida (see. p. 23). Photograph by Chris Kleihege, courtesy of Excavations at Amheida, New York University.

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Contents A new temple: the mahat of Nebhepetre at Abydos

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Josef Wegner

The temple of Heliopolis: excavations 2012-14

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Aiman Ashmawy and Dietrich Raue

Heliopolis: geomorphological and geophysical survey

12

Morgan De Dapper and Tomasz Herbich

Continuing the Medinet Habu Fragment Project

14

J. Brett McClain

Gold mining in early Ptolemaic Egypt

17

Bérangère Redon and Thomas Faucher

A new portrait of Amenhotep III in Thebes

20

Hourig Sourouzian

Colours in the oasis: the Villa of Serenos

23

Dorothea Schulz

Artefacts of excavation

27

Alice Stevenson and Emma Libonati

Flinders Petrie and the image world of Akhetaten

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Marie Vandenbeusch, Gianluca Miniaci and Stephen Quirke

Digging Diary 2014-15

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Gems in the desert: recent work at Wadi el-Hudi

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Kate Liszka

Discoveries at Saqqara

41

Ali el-Batal, Saleh Soleiman and Ragab Turkey

A new Ptolemaic temple at Gebel el-Nour

45

Mansour Boraik

Bookshelf

47

Image: excavations of the northeastern dump of Bi’r Samut; see p. 17.

(Photograph by Bérangère Redon, 2014.)

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A new temple: the mahat of Nebhepetre at Abydos Excavations in 2014 revealed the well-preserved ruins of a previously unknown cult building of the Eleventh Dynasty king Nebhepetre Mentuhotep II at Abydos. Work by Ayman Damarany, Yasir Abd el-Raziq, Ashraf Okasha, Josef Wegner, Kevin Cahail and Jennifer Wegner provides an initial look at this building, identified as a royal mahat chapel.

During the summer of 2014 an opportunity arose to conduct the initial excavations of a previously unknown temple at Abydos. It came to the attention of the Ministry of State for Antiquities that a decorated royal building was located beneath the modern town of el-Arabah.An examination of the area was commenced with support of MSA chairman Dr Mamdouh el-Damaty, Ali al-Asfar, as well as Gamal Abd el-Naser and Ashraf Okasha of the Sohag and Baliana inspectorates.The excavation has revealed the well-preserved, standing ruins of a limestone chapel of Nebhepetre Mentuhotep II, a king of the Eleventh Dynasty. This building,

Left: map of Abydos with the location and orientation of the Nebhepetre chapel, and possible location of the canal for conveyance of the Abydene gods on boats. Centre: position of the chapel relative to temple of Seti I. Right: schematic plan showing the chapel as currently known.

identified in its dedication inscription as a royal mahat chapel, offers important new insights into the landscape and religious rituals of Abydos at the beginning of the Middle Kingdom.

The chapel of Nebhepetre lies just beyond the north-west corner of the temple temenos of Seti I.The building is extremely close to the chapel of Ramses I, parts of which are still visible on the surface.

The Nebhepetre chapel is now the earliest identified cult building in an area of Abydos that evidently 3

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witnessed significant building activity during the Middle and New Kingdoms.What was the significance of this part of Abydos? The mahat of Nebhepetre offers new insights into this question.

Although located significantly south of the main Osiris temple, the Nebhepetre chapel sits on the desert escarpment facing towards the heart of the Early Dynastic royal necropolis at Umm el-Qa’ab. The newly exposed building is oriented directly towards the tomb of Djer - the symbolic tomb of Osiris. It appears that while the low desert wadi that linked the Osiris temple and Umm el-Qa’ab formed the main ceremonial connection in the religious life of Abydos, the desert edge physically closest to and directly facing Umm el-Qa’ab had emerged by the early Middle Kingdom as a desired location for situating royal cult buildings dedicated to the veneration of Osiris.

The work completed so far by the MSA has exposed a single 2.6 m wide chamber with its floor 4.2 meters below the modern surface. The exposure sits within a small culde-sac in the town of el-Arabah. The chamber is built of

The west wall with personifications of the sacred barque equipment: Neshmet stands to the right and Menit, the mooring post on the left.

massive limestone blocks. The walls - which have not yet been exposed on their outer sides - are at least half a meter in thickness and are still standing to a maximum height of 2.5 m. The decoration consisted originally of two superimposed scene registers on each wall.

The overall height of the chamber would have been approximately 4 m.The wall scenes depict Nebhepetre in the company of a series of deities including, most prominently, Osiris.The lower register on the east wall has an offering scene showing Nebhepetre holding a necklace and a baton presenting offerings to Osiris.

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Scenes on the west wall are extremely significant.

Parts of two registers are preserved. The upper register shows Osiris facing outwards, although the rest of the scene is missing. In the lower register are two goddesses labelled Neshmet and Menit. Here we see personified goddesses representing ritual equipment used in the divine barque processions of Abydos. Neshmet we can identify as a personification of the sacred barque of Osiris while Menit (probably Menit-weret as known from the Pyramid and Coffin Texts) may be a personification of the mooring post used in boat journeys and an important symbolic element in divine boat processions.

Best preserved of the scenes exposed so far is the lower register on the inner (south) wall. Here Nebhepetre appears followed by another goddess whose name is unfortunately damaged.The pharaoh is identified as the ‘King of Upper and Lower Egypt, the good god, lord of the two lands, Nebhepetre, beloved of the Lord of Abydos, forever and ever’.

Nebhepetre faces a male deity above whom are a series of texts identifying ‘speech’ of Osiris, Khentiamentiu, and Wepwawet. Notably, here Osiris and Khentiamentiu are listed as separate entities, not in the combined form Osiris-Khentiamentiu that becomes typical from the Eleventh Dynasty onwards.

Most importantly, between Nebhepetre and the male deity is the building’s dedication text in four columns:

‘The King of Upper and Lower Egypt, son of Re, Mentuhotep. It was for Osiris, Khentiamentiu, Wepwawet, and the gods who are in Abydos, that he made his monument.

He made for them a mahat chapel of white limestone, his majesty having found it at great distance. His majesty built it anew. His majesty caused there be made for them a canal for making conveyance by boat upon it. His majesty acted through the desire that his name exist upon it, being made firm and strong for eternity.’

The south wall with the building dedication text. Drawing by Kevin Cahail and Jennifer Wegner.

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We find here a crucial statement regarding the masonry used in the building; a fine-grained white limestone.

Nebhepetre chose to highlight the great distance the stone travelled, and even the king’s own role in its selection.

The emphasis on the quality of the white limestone suggests that it was taken from a source much further north, perhaps the Tura quarries opposite Memphis.

This statement may be an oblique reference to the postreunification era of Nebhepetre’s reign when fine stone formerly in territory controlled by the Herakleoplitans was now available to Nebhepetre. The text goes on to say that the building is a mahat, a commemorative cult building erected by the king specifically for Osiris and the other gods of Abydos.

statues by means of boat would have tied these satellite temples to the main sanctuaries of the Abydene deities in the area of the Kom es-Sultan. Consequently, the canal may have extended southwards from the Osiris temple, passing in front of the area of the Nebhepetre chapel.The chapel itself likely stood on the desert edge above the height normally reached by the Nile inundation. Leading down from its entrance was probably a ramp or causeway terminating in a landing platform at the bank of the canal.

In this regard it is striking that two of the later Ramesside cult buildings in this immediate area - the Ramses I chapel and Ramses II temple - follow the orientation established centuries before by the Nebhepetre chapel.Aside from the importance of orientation towards Umm el-Qa’ab, quite

One of the most intriguing elements of the chapel’s dedication text is Nebhepetre’s statement that, along with the building itself, the king established a canal for the conveyance of the gods of Abydos.The emphasis placed on this new canal is undoubtedly closely associated with the scenes on the west wall of the mahat chapel where we see personifications of the Neshmet barque and mooring post.

It appears likely that this chapel was integrated into the periodic boat processions and itself physically connected to the canal mentioned in the dedication text.

The statement suggests that Nebhepetre’s chapel, as well as later temples built in this zone of Abydos, were linked to the main Osiris temple by a series of interconnected water features. The ceremonial transport of the gods’

possibly all were constructed with respect to long-lived water features that lay within the floodplain.

How did the Nebhepetre mahat, and the king’s new canal function in the context of the gods’ ceremonies at Abydos? One possibility is that the boat transport of the images of Osiris and Wepwawet described here was part of the annual Osiris procession.We know that this annual ceremony was initiated by a waterborne component in which the sacred Neshmet barque was placed on a water body, probably a sacred lake, prior to the journey of the god aboard two different barques to the area of peqer at Umm el-Qa’ab.What occurred following the ceremonies at Umm el-Qa’ab itself is less clear. The cluster of royal cult buildings on the desert edge facing towards the 6

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tomb of Osiris suggests that the return journey of the procession may have led directly back to the desert edge in the vicinity of the Nebhepetre mahat. From there, the god’s statue may have continued by boat back to the Osiris temple, thereby forming a circuit that linked the main Osiris temple and tomb with the royal cult buildings that stood along the desert margin facing peqer. The annual Osiris procession was the most important of a series of periodic religious festivals that would have made use of the Abydene landscape. However, it was not the only one.

We can envision Nebhepetere’s canal functioning in other boat processions in which the gods of Abydos progressed by canal to visit outlying temples and sanctuaries.

Having excavated the inner end of this decorated chamber, a key question now to be answered is: what else is preserved of the Nebhepetre mahat? Is this a single-room structure or have we exposed just one chamber within a more complex multi-room cult building? It is now crucial to expand excavation to define the wider format and setting of the building. The fact that the building type, a mahat, is explicit in the dedication text opens the unique possibility for investigating the design and functions of this particular temple type. The thematic focus on the sacred barques of Abydos suggests that additional decorated parts of the building, particularly the exterior walls, could well have scenes of barque processions. The building may in fact have also function as a barque shrine and perhaps preserves architectural elements connected to the processions. Future excavations should add significant new information on this cult building established at Abydos by the founder of the Middle Kingdom.

Far left: Nebhepetre on the chamber’s south wall, facing the gods of Abydos on the south wall. Left: detail of the male god on the south wall. Right: detail of the text stating that the king built a canal for conveyance of the Abydene gods on boats.

 Ayman Damarany and Yasir Abd el-Raziq are Inspectors of the Egyptian Ministry of State for Antiquities at Abydos, Ashraf Okasha is Director of the South Sohag Inspectorate of the MSA. Dr Josef Wegner is Associate Professor of Egyptian Archaeology, University of Pennsylvania, Dr Kevin Cahail is Research Associate in the Egyptian Section, Penn Museum, Dr Jennifer Wegner is Associate Curator of the Egyptian Section, Penn Museum, University of Pennsylvania.

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The temple of Heliopolis: excavations 2012-14 Heliopolis once stood at the centre of the ancient Egyptian sun-cult. Its architectural layout and landscape are the topic of debate, much of it based on decontextualized objects. Today, the temple area is threatened by modern garbage dumps and other usage. Aiman Ashmawy and Dietrich Raue report on the recent Egyptian-German excavations there.

The sun-cult was the core Area of the central temple of Heliopolis (Misraa es-Segun) with the Matariya Museum and the obelisk of Sesostris I. Photograph: Dietrich Raue. element of ancient Egyptian religion for more than three millennia, and Heliopolis stood at its centre: The place of the world’s creation and a national reference point. In ancient Egypt, like in modern Egyptology, Heliopolis was considered to be the model for large temple complexes, such as Karnak and the Great Aten temple of Amarna.

The architectural layout and the landscape of Heliopolis are the topic of much debate.

Most of the hypotheses about this centre of the sun-cult are based on decontextualized objects like obelisks in London, New York, Rome, and other places, as well as on the still standing obelisk of Sesostris I, in Matariya.

The temple area is threatened by modern garbage dumps, function of this structure is disputed, as is its date and its in the area called Misraa el-Segun, and by other usage architectural context. Excavation work, combined with including house construction, especially in the area of geomorphological and geophysical investigations (see the the shopping mall Suq el-Khamis. Several hectares of the contribution of Morgan De Dapper and Tomasz Herbich temple area were lost during 2012 and 2013 and a large in this volume), began within this structure west of the apartment house was built immediately southwest of the obelisk:Area 210, a section of 130 x 15 m, was opened for obelisk museum. In addition, dense vegetation covers lower the investigation of this so-called ‘High Sand of Heliopolis’ levels thriving on the high groundwater. in order to investigate its connection with the axis of the The most impressive remains within the temple are a main temple. A large mud brick wall of more than 20 m circular structure. It measures about 400 m in diameter and width was uncovered in the northern part of Area 210. is 65 m wide in the eastern section of the main temenos.

Beyond any doubt, this wall is identical with the structure While Petrie considered this structure a ‘fort bank’ of the that Petrie indicated in 1912 in this location. However, Hyksos Period, others argued in favour of a platform of it remains an open question as to whether it is a part of a sanctuary called the ‘High Sand of Heliopolis’, based the ‘High Sand’ or whether these are the lower courses on a passage in the stela of Piankhi. This construction of a straight, double-enclosure wall that ran east-west in was most probably the centre of the sun-temple, as this position. indicated by spectacular finds from the early 20th century, A part of these brick courses can be dated to the later and by the position of the obelisk of Sesostris I. The part of the Late Period. Other pottery finds date to the 8

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x 25 x 22 cm, were found and provided information about the schema of decoration. A couple of fragments preserve finely executed representations of the royal family. Others indicate limestone columns built of talatat fragments with palm leaf capitals. These finds have provided a significant amount of fresh evidence concerning the building projects of the Amarna Period in Heliopolis. In addition, residual finds of the Second Intermediate Period added to earlier observation for the presence of the Hyksos Period near or even within the temple of Heliopolis.

Illicit digging west of the shopping mall led to the discovery of an offering table in 2012. It belongs to the ‘god’s father of the house of Ra, clean of hands, Meryra’ , who might be the same person as a namesake attested on a stela from Abydos, now in the British Museum, dating to the earlier Nineteenth Dynasty.Another object recovered in 2014 is a Ramesside doorjamb of a priest of the (Heliopolitan) estate of Amun.

The fragment is one more piece of evidence for the presence of decorated, free-standing tomb-chapels in the Heliopolitan necropolis of the Ramesside Period.

Similarly, other objects from tombs of the New Kingdom were found in the temple precinct of Heliopolis.This leads one to assume that during mid-20th century construction work, areas in the necropolis of the New Kingdom in the quarter Ain Shams were cleaned and debris was dumped in the western temple area.

As a result of the geomorphological and geophysical survey (see the article by De Dapper and Herbich), subsequent excavations can be scheduled around the obelisk. Future activities will have to rely on such localization and have to be prepared for work below groundwater levels. In addition, a topographical survey

by Luc Gabolde and Damien Laisney aims to determine precisely the potential astronomical orientation of the great temple of Atum at Heliopolis.

Area 202, Suq el-Khamis in March 2012. Photograph: Dietrich Raue.

Ramesside Period and there is other evidence for building phases. There is also evidence for artisanal activity (e.g. a mould for faience amulets) in the main temenos of Heliopolis from layers in Site 210. More recent pottery finds and Ottoman pipe heads were found in surface material.

In 2012, the excavation work was mainly concerned with Area 200 within the north-western part of the main temple precinct, north of the Suq el-Khamis shopping mall. It continued earlier fieldwork of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (2001–2010, 2005 in cooperation with the German Archaeological Institute). Most squares bear evidence for the destruction levels of a temple of Ramesses II. A pedestal of a colossal statue and a large torso of a seated statue were discovered in 2006–2010 as well. The temple was embellished by the re-erection of at least four red granite statues of Sesostris I by Ramesses II. Their back pillar is uninscribed, but the faces and the style of the nemes headdress point clearly to the earlier Twelfth Dynasty. Heads of such statues were found in 2001–2006. A fragment of the same material indicates a life-size depiction of a king in the Sed-festival cloak. In addition, the god Thot is attested among Area 202, Suq el-Khamis in March 2014. Photograph: Dietrich Raue the statuary of the Middle Kingdom. Other materials were used for the temple’s statues: yellow-brown quartzite was used, for instance, for a large statue of a falcon.

The dedication of the sanctuary in Site 200 remains unknown. Close by, large blocks of a gate, made of silicified sandstone were discovered.

One of them proved to belong to a cavetto cornice block, reinscribed by Ramesses II. The original inscription probably mentioned Ramesses I. Area 200 furnishes plenty of evidence for the activity of Akhenaten in the precinct of the sungod in Heliopolis. Decorated and undecorated limestone blocks, each originally measuring 52.5 9

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Sketch of the position of the large double enclosures of the temple of Heliopolis in Matariya and Arab el-Hisn: Black: as indicated by Petrie in 1912.

Yellow: inner course, probably New Kingdom.

Green: outer course, probably latter Late Period.

(Photograph: Google Earth, adapted by M. Beiersdorf.)

Area 200 from north, temple of Ramesses II. (Photograph by Dietrich Raue.)

Area 200: torso of a royal red granite statue.

(Photograph by Dietrich Raue.)

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Excavation finds: lintel of Ramesses II from Area 200 (top; photograph by Dietrich Raue). Offering table of the priest Meryra found in Area 202 (above; photograph by M.Wenzel). Fragment of pottery vessel with depiction of a gazelle, probably Second Intermediate Period (below; photograph by M.-K. Schröder).  Aiman Ashmawy is Director General of the Excavation Department in the Ministry of State for Antiquities (MAS). Dietrich Raue is Custodian of the Egyptian Museum – Georg Steindorff – of the University of Leipzig. The mission is grateful for the ongoing support of the German Archaeological Institute in Cairo, the Institute of Photogrammetry of the University of Stuttgart, the German University Cairo, the Austrian Archaeological Institute in Cairo, the Institute of Geography of the University of Ghent, the Polish Institute for Archaeology and Ethnology at the Polish Academy of Science in Warsaw. The project includes furthermore a cooperation with the project OrTempSol (Labex-Archimede, AAP 2, 2014, Axe 2 Pouvoirs: Espaces de pouvoirs et constructions territoriales, supported by the IFAO) and with the research training group ‘Kulturelle und technische Werte historischer Bauten’ at the BTU Cottbus-Senftenberg. The mission is funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG).

Further financial support is owed to the Fondation Schiff-Giorgini, the Bertold-Leibinger Foundation and private donors. Parallel to the current excavation work, training courses for archaeological and epigraphical methods and techniques for members of the Inspectorate of Antiquities/Matariya were funded by the German Embassy Cairo.

To the authorities of the Ministry of State for Antiquities, the Inspectorate of Matariya and the storerooms at Tell el-Hisn we would like to express our sincere thanks for their kind support and cooperation.

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Geomorphological and geophysical survey In view of the enormous dimensions of the Temple of Heliopolis (1,100 x 900 m) and the limited chance for excavations due to the high groundwater table, a geomorphological and geophysical survey was carried out by the joint Egyptian-German Archaeological Mission in Matariya, report Morgan De Dapper and Tomasz Herbich.

The combined investigations began within the circular structure that was known in the past as ‘fort bank of the Hyksos Period’ or as the ‘High Sand of Heliopolis’. By hand drillings, a stratigraphy of 4th and 3rd millennium bc was discovered 300 m west of the obelisk.The pottery of the earliest occupation 10 m deep shares characteristics of the Buto-Maadi culture. It is located on top of a late Pleistocene sandy gezira. Another set of drillings was made in Area 210. It provided evidence for the extension of the same gezira.

Tests with a fluxgate gradiometer did not show clear evidence of archaeological features; this is probably due to the highly magnetic silt layers of up to 3 m thickness.

By contrast, electrical resistivity profiling was tested successfully in the main temple around the obelisk. Area 211 lies the closest to the obelisk of Sesostris I. Results of resistivity profiling coupled with drillings verified the interpretation of a higher-resistivity elongated structure as a limestone wall, which is surrounded and covered by limestone fragments originating from the wall.At a depth

Temple of Heliopolis: Areas 5 (southern enclosure walls), 210, 211 and 220 (Misraa esSegun) and the western part of the temenos (Suq el-Khamis) with the sites 200 and 202.

(Photograph: Google Earth.)

Area 211 and obelisk of Sesostris I. (Photograph by Dietrich Raue.)

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of 2.2 m, the drillings hit this hitherto unknown large limestone wall or wall foundation close to the temple axis.

In Area 220, where the geophysical prospection covered 60 x 60m, another hitherto unknown structure was detected at a depth of 3 – 4 m, as was suggested by both multi-level resistivity profiling and a concentration of stone debris in the drillings. Further to the west, anthropic construction layers were indicated by a sand foundation of New Kingdom date.

Area 211: resistivity profiling in spring 2014. (Photograph by Tomasz Herbich.)

Area 211: resistivity map. Anomaly interpreted as a wall marked with an arrow.

Drillings marked by red squares.

Area 5: drilling in the southern enclosure wall. (Photograph byP. Collet.)

The results of drillings, carried out in the southern enclosure of the temenos (Area 5), corroborates the hypothesis of construction of huge walls of up to 20 m width in the 1st millennium bc as a measure of flood protection.

Indeed, the stratigraphy in the outer enclosure wall of the later Late Period showed a thick layer of very homogeneous, brownish-black Nile flood silt with very fine lamellation, pointing to a sequence of flood levels. This may be also relevant for the circular structure around the obelisk of the Middle Kingdom.

The combined approach of geomorphological and geophysical surveying proved for the first time the existence of a palaeo-landscape marked by at least one sandy elevation rising as an island at least 5.5 m above the floodplain when first settlement took place. In addition, it paved the way for the first localisation of a limestone wall in the vicinity of the obelisk. In this way, it will contribute greatly to debates over ancient Egypt’s religious history. Topics such as the transformation of a mythical landscape into an architectural re-enactment of its mythic past can be addressed anew.

 Morgan De Dapper is senior professor at the Department of Geography, University of Gent; Tomasz Herbich is researcher at the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology, Polish Academy of Science, Warsaw. He was supported in the geophysical survey by Jakub Ordutowski, Robert Ryndziewicz and Dawid Święch.

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Continuing the Medinet Habu Fragment Project Despite a comprehensive reconstruction of the long and complex architectural sequence of MedinetHabu based on work by the Oriental Institute’s Architectural Survey, the study of the walled templecity remains unfinished. J. Brett McClain reports on continuing work on the fragments and small finds by the Oriental Institute’s Epigraphic Survey under W. Raymond Johnson.

From 1926 to 1933, the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute Architectural Survey, directed by Uvo Hölscher, systematically excavated the temple enclosure of Ramesses III at Medinet Habu. The data gathered by Hölscher’s team allowed a comprehensive reconstruction of the long and complex architectural sequence of the walled temple-city, published at an unprecedented level of detail between 1934 and 1954. Nevertheless, the

collected periodically from the surrounding areas of the Theban necropolis, were also brought to Medinet Habu, which served as a convenient repository for such material.

In 2007, concern about the condition of the inscribed fragments lying about the complex, many of which had begun to show the effects of groundwater and salt decay, led the Epigraphic Survey, directed by W. Raymond Johnson, to undertake a survey of the corpus, with the The new blockyard at Medinet Habu.

abrupt stop of the Architectural Survey’s fieldwork in 1933 due to financial constraints left Hölscher’s study of Medinet Habu unfinished in some respects. Although the Epigraphic Survey continued to work on the site, recording the inscriptions in Ramesses III’s mortuary complex, an on-site museum, envisioned to house a selection of the architectural fragments and small finds from the excavation, was never built. Some objects intended for this museum, stored in the temple treasury, were later dispersed, while hundreds of inscribed stone architectural fragments were left either piled within the enclosure or lying on the surface as found. Most of these blocks remained unpublished, and over the subsequent decades additional groups of relief and sculpture fragments,

goal of making a comprehensive record of the blocks.

This coincided with a request by the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) to dismantle a small blockyard built against the east wall of Ramesses III’s palace, south of the great mortuary temple. It was decided to construct a new, larger blockyard, located against the south enclosure wall of the complex and provided with damp-coursed storage platforms, where all fragmentary material from the complex could be collected, securely stored, and analyzed, and wherein conservation measures could be undertaken as necessary.

Construction of the new blockyard was completed in 2008, and moving of the fragments from the grounds of the complex, the old blockyard, and the storage rooms 14

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Julia Schmied registering a late Ramesside fragment.

inside the mortuary temple was largely completed by 2011. The transfer of the fragments into the new facility was supervised by Egyptologist Julia Schmied, who created a database for recording and tracking each piece, and by senior conservator Lotfi Khaled Hassan, with the assistance of epigrapher Christian Greco. Since 2011, the Chicago House conservation team has undertaken treatment of many of the salt-damaged fragments, as well as arranging a number of the most historically important inscribed pieces along the exterior wall of the blockyard in order to create a small open-air museum.

Meanwhile, analysis of the fragments is revealing the significance of this previously neglected material with regard to the history of the Medinet Habu temenos and adjacent areas. The collection, numbering over 4000 pieces, is heterogeneous, reflecting the timespan of the site, with pieces ranging from the early Eighteenth Dynasty through the abandonment of the Coptic town of Djeme in the 9th century ad.

Among the most significant groups is a selection of door jambs and lintels dating to the Ramesside period, bearing the names, titles and dedicatory formulae of high officials from the Nineteenth and Twentieth Dynasties, some of whom are well known from other sources (Fig. 5).The nature and significance of these blocks, particularly regarding the occupation history of Medinet Habu vis-àvis the Theban necropolis at the end of the New Kingdom, is now being evaluated by Julia Schmied as part of her doctoral dissertation for the Department of Egyptology, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest.

Many fragments in the collection, of course, come from the monumental structures of Ramesses III’s mortuary temple, including pieces originating from either the first or second stage of the king’s ceremonial palace, south of the first court. Although the walls of this structure were of mud brick, core architectural elements such as doors, columns, and pilasters were constructed of sandstone.

Hölscher was able to analyze these fragments alongside the in situ mud brick remains in his masterful reconstruction of both stages of the palace. Our analysis has revealed significant additional fragment groups from the palace, not published by Hölscher or utilized in his analysis, which will ultimately shed further light on the structure’s decorative program. Moreover, the palace fragments include many of the most beautifully decorated pieces in the Medinet Habu collection, and thus will form an important component of the open-air museum.

Additional inscribed blocks originated from the destroyed interior chambers of the mortuary temple. Among these is an intriguing fragment showing decorations on two adjacent sides, whose orientation indicates that the block reveals two distinct stages of decoration. On the narrower side can be seen parts of a painted frieze with winged cobras, nb-baskets, and cartouches identifiable as those of Ramesses III. The other side bears two columns of hieroglyphic text, including cartouches in which the names were erased but not recarved. Careful study of one of these cartouches revealed traces of the nomen of Tausret, the female pharaoh of the late Nineteenth Dynasty.This block was taken from its original location in Tausret’s mortuary temple after construction thereof was halted and her names suppressed, to be re-used as building material in one of the inner chambers of Ramesses III’s monument. Along with other uninscribed but clearly re-used blocks in situ in those inner sanctuaries, this fragment, the only example thus far known of an inscribed building block from Tausret’s temple, casts significant light on the interruption of her building programme and the subsequent quarrying of the site for building stone. More Tausret blocks must lie buried deep within the standing portions of Ramesses III’s monument, and it is possible that other loose fragments may await discovery at Medinet Habu. Only time and careful study will tell.

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are also well represented in the fragment corpus, with groups of blocks from the Twenty-Fifth and Twenty-Sixth Dynasties, including the destroyed mortuary chapel of Ankhenesneferibre, along with groups representing gates and other structures of the Thirtieth Dynasty and the Ptolemaic period, some of which relate to still-standing structures within or around the temple enclosure. A significant group of blocks dating to the Roman era also includes parts of buildings whose original locations are known, as well as yet unidentified structures. Finally, there are numerous architectural fragments from the Coptic phase, now being catalogued. The architectural details, texts, and iconography preserved in each of these fragment groups will, when analyzed, add substantially to our understanding of the stages of this site’s history.

Almost 90 years after the Architectural Survey began its excavation of Medinet Habu, our study of the site remains a work in progress.

Chicago House conservation team with reassembled column from the palace of Ramesses III.

Top: block from the gate of the Emperor Tiberius Claudius Germanicus.

Centre: traces of Tausret’s name in erased cartouche (left) and reconstruction of the name (right).

Bottom: fragment with inscriptions of Ramesses III (side) and Tausret (top).

 J. Brett McClain is Senior Epigrapher of the Epigraphic Survey and a Research Associate of the Oriental Institute, University of Chicago. The Medinet Habu Fragment Project and other conservation initiatives at Medinet Habu are funded by a grant from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). Photographs: W. Raymond Johnson, Julia Schmied, and Yarko Kobylecky. Drawings: Margaret De Jong.

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Gold mining in Early Ptolemaic Egypt The first campaign in the Samut district of the Eastern Desert took place in January 2014.

Two main sites excavated by the French team, conducted by Bérangère Redon and Thomas Faucher, are a fortress and a mining district. They date back to the beginning of the Ptolemaic Period and their construction is closely linked with the exploitation of gold mines nearby.

Gold was plentiful in Egypt and had been used by the pharaohs as a means of asserting their power. Abundant particularly in the Eastern Desert (in a wide definition, including the Northern Sudan), gold is mined in the area as early as the Predynastic Period. From the Old Kingdom onward, campaigns are launched by the pharaohs, taking the form of seasonal, often short-lived operations.They are at first limited to the search for alluvial gold in the wadis, but progressively gold quartz is also extracted from visible veins. The New Kingdom is a period of development for these activities; it is in the Ptolemaic Period that the state initiates for the first time a systematic and intensive exploitation of the Egyptian gold-bearing veins, to consolidate its power and pursue an ambitious foreign policy. This intensification is also made possible by the use of iron tools, replacing lithic tools, and more efficient grinding mills.The Roman era is a period of decline and the next peak in activity occurs in Omayyad. times. The last renewal of the gold mining is modern and a gold rush has been occuring in the region since the revolution of 2011, with a deep impact on the area’s heritage.

As for Antiquity, while the continuous use of gold in Egyptian art has produced a considerable literature, the actual history of Egyptian gold - the mining, the production, the circulation - is a lot less well known. Of course, surveys have been conducted in the area since the 19th century by pioneer travellers and geologists (Linant de Bellefonds, Benzoni, Wilkinson, and others), followed by more scientific missions (led by G. Castel, H. Wright, S. Sidebotham, or D. and R. Klemm). But so far no stratigraphical excavations of a gold mining site have been conducted, except at the mainly Byzantine site of Bi’r Umm el-Fawakhir by the Oriental Institute of Chicago in the 1990s.

The research project of the French mission of the Eastern desert aims to fill these gaps in our knowledge through the excavation of Samut, a key gold mining district dating back to the Ptolemaic Period, located between Edfu and Marsa Alam.This site has never been explored before and holds crucial data for the understanding of the history and archaeology of Egypt’s gold during one of its major peaks of exploitation.

The district of Samut is organised around two main sites, Bi’r Samut and Samut North. Faced with recent destructions, we had to conduct salvage excavations on both sites in January 2014, a change to our original plans, which was to study one site after the other.

Bi’r Samut is a Ptolemaic fortress located in a wadi, at one of the ancient roads leading from the Nile Valley to the Red Sea. It is known since the 19th century and has been drawn by Wilkinson in 1818. Rectangular in shape, measuring 68 x 59 General view of Bi’r Samut from northeast. (Photograph by J.-P. Brun, 2014.) m, the fort was secured by 17

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four angle towers (of which three remain) and two gates.

While we did not excavate its inside this year, it probably held, among other facilities, a well (‘bi’r’) that has given the site its name.

In 2014, J.-P. Brun excavated the two rubbish dumps located northeast and northwest of the fort, close to the gates and in great danger of looting.They were particularly rich in ceramics (studied by J. Gates-Foster) and ostraca (389, written both in Greek and demotic, have been registered by A. Bülow-Jacobsen, M.-P. Chaufray, H. Cuvigny). With the few coins discovered in the same context, they show that the fort was occupied in the Early Ptolemaic Period (but probably later than at North Samut) until the end of the 3rd century bc. So far no connection with any gold-mining activity is mentioned in the ostraca, which deal mainly with food and water distribution.

North Samut is located 5 km to the north. Far less known, except from recent descriptions by S. Sidebotham, and D. and R. Klemm, it is the heart of the Ptolemaic gold exploitation area, centred around its main mine. It consists of a quartz vein visible from the surface, exploited for a stretch of 277 m.Ancient works can clearly be seen, in the form of a surface trench, the upper part of which is empty.

The lower part is full of stones and sand, and did not allow a complete view of the ancient activities. However, an underground survey has been conducted by Fl.Téreygeol, A.Arles and J. Gauthier in four shafts, their depths ranging from 13 to 64 m. Ptolemaic works are observable only in the upper part of the shafts, between the surface and a deoth of 18 m.The trench was exploited from the surface continuously on a 10 m-stretch, and several galleries can be observed in the lower part. Below 18 m, mining activity is definitely modern, probably carried out by a British company that worked in Samut in 1903.

One hundred metres southeast stands the main structure of the area (n° 1 on the plan), measuring 58 x 36 m. Its four wings were rationally organised: the western one housed the kitchen (fig. 8) and probably a dining room;

the southern one accommodated a possible chapel with a small mastaba and several storage rooms; amongst the discoveries, mainly amphora, was a complete lead bowl still containing lentils, as identified by Ch. Bouchaud.The northern wing has not been completely excavated but its high position, the size of the rooms and the finds could indicate that it was the major’s quarters; finally, the eastern wing comprises three intriguing rooms, oblong, divided into three spaces by low walls and guarded by a gatehouse near their narrow entrances. Pottery and fragments of quartz have been found there in significant numbers, as well as a crusher and stone tools for the miners. These spaces might have been living and working quarters for some of the miners.

Area 2 (probably a dormitory for the workers crushing the quartz) has not been studied in 2014, as we focused on areas 3 and 4, which had partly been destroyed in 2013. These are located close to the vein and devoted to the mining process: here the quartz rocks, taken from the mine by the miners, were crushed and reduced to powder; this was then washed out, leaving behind the gold, as described by the Greek geographer Agatharchides in the 2nd century bc. In particular, two heavy mineral processing plants (used to separate the gold from the sediment at the end of the process) have been cleared. They were mentioned by D. and R. Klemm, who compared them to devices discovered at the Laurion, Greece. Our own partial excavations, however, revealed some dissimilarities and further excavations are needed to better understand their function.

The pottery of North Samut has been studied by J.-P. Brun. It comprises mainly local cooking vessels and amphora, and several View of the two heavy mineral processing plants. (Photograph by A. Bülow-Jacobsen, 2014.)

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Left: satellite view of the Eastern Desert, with the main Ptolemaic settlements and mining sites. (Image © BingMaps, adapted by B. Redon.)

Underground exploration of the Samut North mine.

(Photograph by A. Bülow-Jacobsen, 2014.)

Above: general plan of the Samut district with location of the mining activities and settlements. (Drawing by Th. Faucher, 2013.)

lamps of similar forms; bearing initials, these might have been miners’ lamps. Only 14 ostraca have been discovered in Building 1, of which one indicates that the amphora contained 368 black figs sent to a banker. All the material dates to the reign of Ptolemy I. The stratigraphy of the remains excavated in 2014, as well as the observations made in the mine itself, show that Samut North had been occupied only very briefly, maybe for less than 10 years, while Bi’r Samut’s occupation was later and lasted longer. It raises many questions about the massive and disproportionate investment made by

Ptolemy I in the Samut gold mine for such a short period of activity. The chronological discrepancy between the two settlements is also intriguing. Hopefully, further excavations will bring answers to these issues. However, exceptionally well preserved until recently, the two sites were seriously damaged in 2013. At Bi’r Samut, a big pit has been dug at the main entrance to the fortress and the gate destroyed. Furthermore, several locations on the site were attacked by looters, in particular the southwest corner of the fort and a part of the dump next to it.These actions are clearly connected to recent and illegal activity of diggers, looking for gold in the Eastern Desert and in particular near the ancient sites. At North Samut, a mining company planning to reopen the mine was allowed to make deep boreholes to analyse the mineral content of the remaining quartz, causing damages in areas 1 and 3.All these destructions are a great loss for the archaeology of Egypt, and the site - as well as many others in the Eastern desert - is clearly in danger of disappearance over the next year should it remain unprotected.

 Bérangère Redon (CNRS-HiSoMA, Lyon) and Thomas Faucher (CNRS-IRAMAT, Orléans) have been the director respectively deputy director of the Eastern Desert mission since 2013.The mission is funded by the French Foreign Office and the French Institute of Oriental Archaeology (IFAO), with the participation of the CNRS and the Collège de France. We thank the Ministry of Antiquities for their authorisation and help. Images: © The French Archaeological Mission of the Eastern Desert.

Photogrammetry of the two heavy mineral processing plants.

(Image by A. Arles, Arkemine.)

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A new portrait of Amenhotep III in Thebes In cooperation with the Ministry of Antiquities, The Colossi of Memnon and Amenhotep III Temple Conservation Project has since 2013 been carrying out a joint emergency salvage action for two statues of Amenhotep III lying fragmented and half buried in the fields near the northern gate of the enclosure surrounding the Temple of Millions of Years (see EA 44). By Hourig Sourouzian.

The pair of colossi are now standing again side by side for the first time since their collapse 3200 years ago. Originally monolithic sculptures hewn in the red quartzite quarries of Gebel el-Ahmar near ancient Heliopolis. they stood at the north gate of the vast temple precinct of Amenhotep III in Thebes. After being toppled by an earthquake in 1200 bc, they lay for centuries broken into several pieces in the fields, where they were threatened by the usual destructive factors of irrigation water, salt, vegetation, fires, encroachment and vandalism.

The colossi represent Amenhotep III striding, holding a papyrus roll in each hand.The roll in the right is inscribed with the throne name Nebmaatre, the face of the roll in the left is damaged. The king wears the white crown of Upper Egypt and the classical pleated shendyt-kilt.A broad collar rendered in shallow relief adorns his chest.The belt around the waist is decorated with a zigzag pattern. Better preserved on the Eastern statue, the belt is fastened with a rectangular clasp bearing the names of the king,‘NebmaatRe,Amenhotep Ruler of Thebes, beloved of Amon-Re’.A dagger with a falcon-headed handle is inserted in the belt.

Each colossus stands on a rectangular base decorated with fecundity figures bringing the offerings of their estates.

Their back slabs are inscribed with the royal titulary and dedication texts to Amun-Re, as well as to Ptah-Sokar on the east statue.

The face of Amenhotep III on the eastern colossus. Š Memnon Amenhotep Project/Sourouzian.

base, which is itself 1 m high, 2.4 m wide and 4.3 m long.

On 3 November 2014, the autumn season began with re-assembly work on the western colossus. This colossus is more damaged, more fragmented, with more missing parts. It consists of 89 large pieces and numerous small fragments, which were all documented. First the pieces of the base and the feet were brought and placed on the pedestal.Then groupings were made to join larger pieces together and fix on them as many smaller fragments as possible, until the head, the chest, and the body formed three large parts.A crane was again necessitated to lift these

After having the large pieces of the statues lifted and carried from the muddy ground in 2013 (see EA 44, p.

39-40), reassembly and conservation work started on 20 January 2014 with the eastern colossus. Its 71 large parts were gradually re-assembled and the smaller fragments fixed on the body. The parts of the base, the feet and the legs were lifted and placed on the reinforced plinth by means of huge timber scaffolds.The torso, the chest, then the head were lifted and placed with the help of a crane.

The colossus was raised in March, and unveiled on 23 March 2014. It measures 12.35 m in height, including its 20

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parts. The western colossus was raised on 2 December 2014, and restoration work is still going on. It measures 12.92 m with its base, including its 0.95 m-high base (width: 2.23 m, length: 4.28 m). On 14 December 2014, HE Mamdouh Eldamaty, Minister of Antiquities. and HE Tarek Saad El-Dine, Governor of Luxor, unveiled the new statues in the presence of the media, honoured guests, colleagues and friends.

As they stand now, these sculptures are so far the tallest specimens of royal statuary in striding attitude.While we know of even ones, they remain lying fragmented on the ground (e.g. a pair of quartzite statues of Amenhotep III at Karnak, estimated to reach 21 m, but unfortunately badly broken).

The striding sculptures show the king with idealized anatomy: broad shoulders, long torso with massive arms and legs, the muscles rendered in a stylised manner.

The face of the eastern colossus is better preserved. In spite of damages to the forehead and the left eye, the partially broken tip of the nose and the knocked lips, enough of the features remain to present a completely new portrait of the aged Amenhotep III, with a stern, almost melancholic expression, far from the familiar features of the king with juvenile face, almond-shaped eyes and recognizable smile. The face of the western colossus is

The colossi of Amenhotep III standing again at the North Gate of his Temple for Millions of Years in December 2014. Š Memnon Amenhotep Project/Sourouzian

destroyed, leaving as the only distinguishable features (in good light) the original inner canthi of the eyes, framed by the large cosmetic bands.

Other portraits of the period representing the king with comparable features are known from a granodiorite head in the Cairo Museum with the white crown (JE 59880), a smaller red granite head wearing nemes, discovered by the our project in the temple (see ASAE 85), and dyads of the king found by a team of the Supreme Council of Antiquities in 2011 at the north-west edge of the temple .

It is worth noting that a piece of the inscription from the back slab of the eastern colossus bears a the text in which the speech addressed by Amon-Re to the king mentions this colossal statue (hnty wr). This piece will shortly be placed again on the back of the colossus.

Like many other colossi, this pair has also been the object of worship: the upper surface of the bases show offering cupules; moreover, evidence of their later worship comes from wooden stela seen by Wilkinson near the Ramesseum and copied in his unpublished manuscript (see Porter and Moss II).

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Representation of the colossal statue on the back slab of the eastern colossus. ©Memnon Amenhotep Project/ Sourouzian The eastern colossus during reconstruction in March 2014. ©Memnon Amenhotep Project/Sourouzian

Wooden stela of Sa-Mut (MS Wilkinson dep e.59 127a). © Bodleian Library, Oxford University.

 The author wishes to thank the Bodleian Libraries University of Oxford, for the copy of the manuscript and kind permission to publish.

The joint project working under the auspices of the Ministry of Antiquities headed by HE Mamdouh Eldamaty, is directed by Hourig Sourouzian and Mohamed Abdelmaksoud in 2013, with Abdelhakim Karrar in 2014. Field operations and site management are directed by the architect Nairy Hampikian.The preliminary excavation was carried out by Carmen Lopez Roa. Geo-radar investigations were carried out by Arkadi Karakhanyan, Ara Avagyan and Mikayel Gevorkyan.

Miguel Lopez, Mohamed Ali El-Ghassab. Christian Perzlmeier led the operations of transportation, lifting and raising with the team of stone specialists. Stability and statics were calculated by Mohamed el-Esawy. The fine restoration team is headed by Mohamed El-Azab named Abu-Hakim. The texts are studied by Rainer Stadelmann.

Field work is supported by the site inspector Azab, the conservator from the Department Ahmed Faragallah, and Ali Reda Mohamed.

Epigraphic drawings are made by Jola Malatkova and Pauline Calssou; documentation and epigraphy by Benjamin Durand and Somaia Osman. For the invaluable financial support in fall 2014, the project members kindly thank the Association des Amis des Colosses de Memnon with Farida Khelfa, Christian Louboutin and Henri Seydoux; World Monuments Fund ® Robert Wilson Challenge to Conserve Our Heritage; supporters of conservation Stephanie and Bernhard Buchner; the Memnon Verein with Renate and Michael Gadomski, Siegrid and Klaus Reuther, Peter Gain; Asem Allam; Horus Egyptology Society, Neil Stevenson; Chesterfield Association for the Study of Ancient Egypt; and all friends of the site.

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Colours in the oasis: the Villa of Serenos The Villa of Serenos is situated at the site of Amheida, the ancient Trimithis, in the northwestern part of the Dakhleh Oasis. One of the first houses of the ancient city to be investigated by the Dakhleh Oasis Project (DOP) back in 1979, it revealed astonishing wall paintings. Dorothea Schulz describes the ongoing reconstruction project. broader public the plan was soon been made to build a full-scale reconstruction, including facsimiles of the wall paintings. This way the site would get a spectacular visitors centre.

The ‘new Villa’, designed and built by architect Nicholas Warner, was finished in 2009 and during the 2010 field season the decorators could move in. They started with the Red and the Green Room, simply because most of the decoration is still in situ and the missing parts were fairly easy to reconstruct. After completing these two rooms, work started on the surviving geometric registers from the Central Room. These could be finished in 2012 and the painters moved on to the huge dome, which must have been completely decorated as well. Since the dome of the original villa entirely collapsed not one fragment of the decoration is still in place. Even worse, large parts of the walls are smashed and of the dome there are only smithereens left. Even so, closely based on these remaining fragments a very probable solution for the decoration of the dome could be made by my colleague Martin Hense and me. Subsequently, the decoration was applied to the dome in only four weeks time by no more than two

Polis and Poseidon as red sketch, the other gods still drawn in pencil only.

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Detail: cat from the west wall (see the scene of a couple playing a board game overleaf).

After the 1979 discovery the walls were reburied and had to wait for more than twenty years to be excavated properly. A team sponsored by Columbia University under direction of Roger S. Bagnall began excavations at Amheida in 2004, starting with the house of which the painted room was part.

This house has proven to be a rich and fascinating object of study and we are still far from finishing our work on it. The work is still ongoing and now sponsored by New York University, Institute for the Study of the Ancient World.

After clearing the central ‘painted room’ of the ‘Villa’, subsequent field seasons revealed other rooms decorated with intricate geometrical and floral motifs. Additional archaeological finds date the paintings to the second quarter of the 4th century ad. Furthermore, several ostraca provide information about the owner of the house, most likely being a town councillor, named Serenos.

Both the paintings in situ and the collected fragments pose considerable conservation problems; the layer of plaster is very thin and extremely fragile. The best way of conserving this precious building for future generations was refilling it with sand – after extensive documentation.

In order to make this fascinating building visible to the

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Projecting and tracing a figurative scene (Perseus and Andromeda).

In the lower register, Polis and running gods, headed towards Aphrodite and Ares to catch them ‘red-handed’ in a compromising situation... On the right, two men wearing Phrygian caps (guards?).

In the upper register, more gods or heroes on thrones, a horse and two golden cups (meaning unclear).

The finished reconstructed decoration of the dome.

Detail: female figure adorning a corner of the domed room.

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The banquet scene reconstructed.

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The banquet scene on the west wall before reconstruction, showing probably the family of the house enjoying a festive meal, accompanied by a musician playing the double aulos. In the register above the remains of a couple playing a board game can be seen.

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Detail: sea monster from a Perseus and Andromeda scene.

Four stages of painting Polis.

painters, my extremely skilled assistant Tamer Ramadan and me.

While working on the geometrical patterns it struck me again and again how cleverly constructed they are.

Every element is absolutely necessary, not a single line or a single dot can be omitted. The last details, often white highlights and a multitude of white dots and lines, bring the pattern to life. The dome pattern alone needed the dazzling amount of 17.920 lines, adding up to nearly a kilometre.

After finishing the dome I could finally move on to the spectacular figurative scenes of the Central Room.

While the geometrical patterns could be constructed using the original techniques (working from grid lines) the best result for copying the figurative scenes were obtained by projecting them on the walls and tracing them. In a first step, digital (or at least digitized) photographs had to be ‘restored’ and straightened out. They were then projected onto the walls and carefully traced with pencil.

The next step was to paint the sketches in red, which is the first ‘authentic’ step since underlying red lines can be observed in several figures.

The original paintings are often faded and some pigments even have lost their original hue altogether. Green, for instance, has the habit of changing into a greyish tint. It would have made little sense to reconstruct these magnificent paintings to their former glory while using faded shades, thus the colours had partly to be reconstructed as well. The palette is not that extensive but was extremely well used by the skilful painters of the original.

While working on study sketches for the figurative scenes I noticed that the best result, which resembles the original as closely as possible, could be obtained by working in layers: on a foundation, several more or less transparent layers are applied, over the course of the process highlighting folds or the modelling of the body. Pure white is only used for the final details. This technique is similar to the traditional technique used for classical Orthodox and

Byzantine icons. I have no definite proof yet that the painters actually employed what I call ‘icon technique’ but the results of my own application of this method look very convincingly like the originals. Further study, especially of the original and other contemporary paintings, will most probably reveal more information.

While working on the copies I considered various ways of indicating (or not) original work and reconstruction.

In the end, I decided not to differentiate between the two, simply because the results would have looked very odd. However, I did not invent images, scenes or figures, though always based at least on some small traces and details to build on. To help me with the reconstructions I used parallels, either from the Villa or from classical art.

Some details and scenes could not be completely reconstructed yet, as there are simply not enough traces on which to build a reliable reconstruction. One hopes that suitable parallels or more missing links will still be found, enabling us to complete more of the decoration.

For a future season I plan to decorate the Central Room making further use of the larger fragments found in the Villa. Now that there is a framework on the walls it should be possible to figure out where these larger blocks belong.

Since some of the fragments are truly spectacular it would be a pity not to include them in the final reconstruction.

We are currently working on plans to prepare the house for opening to visitors to provide them with a unique visitors centre. In the meantime, more information and numerous images can be found at www.amheida.org and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Villaof-Serenus/161742407197412.

 Dorothea Schulz is an Egyptologist and artist who has worked on the Amheida Project for several seasons. The project could not have been realized without the generous funding of the Embassy of the Netherlands in Cairo, the tremendous help of the Netherlands Flemish Institute in Cairo and the indispensable support of its director, Roger Bagnall, and all the wonderful members of the Amheida and DOP team. Special thanks to Peter Sheldrick and to my assistants Sophia Cecci and Tamer Ramadan. All photographs courtesy of Excavations at Amheida, New York University, Dakhleh Oasis Project (and Christopher Kleihege).

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Artefacts of excavation Alice Stevenson and Emma Libonati on the AHRC-funded project ‘Artefacts of Excavation’, which aims to examine the practice of object distribution and its impact on archaeology, Egyptology and museums.

In September 1883 Amelia B. Edwards stood before the Sixth Oriental Congress in Leiden and enquired: ‘Is there then no possibility of organising some system of enquiry by means of which information may be sought and collected throughout Europe and America, whereby the particulars of dispersed relics may be collected for the benefit of science?’ More than one hundred and thirty years later a new collaborative project between the University of Oxford, University College London, and the EES is attempting to address that very same problem, this time for material excavated by the EES and Petrie’s British School of Archaeology in Egypt (BSAE).

‘Artefacts of Excavation’ is a three-year project, funded by the UK’s Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), which is investigating the international distribution of archaeological finds from EEF/EES and BSAE excavations between 1880 and 1980. Scouring through museum collections, pouring over object catalogues, and sifting across archives for information about dispersed antiquities are activities on which many Egyptologists have spent countless hours, either tracking down objects from particular excavations or building up histories of specific museum collections. What there has never been is a critical examination of the whole practice of distribution or how it impacted upon the development of – and relationships between – archaeology, Egyptology, and museums. Previous work has also tended to focus only upon the early period of exploration up until 1925, the year Petrie left to excavate in ‘Egypt over the border’,

London exhibition of finds from the BSAE Hawara excavations of 1911. Some of the Roman mummy portraits that can be seen are now in museums in Brooklyn, Copenhagen, Edinburgh, Manchester and Oxford.

Finds from Grenfell and Hunt’s EEF-sponsored work in the Fayum, 1901, being crated and loaded onto a camel for transport.

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Palestine. Finds distribution, however, continued until the late 1980s, albeit in much changed social, political, and intellectual conditions.

The project is an ambitious undertaking, not least because of the sheer number of institutions that benefited from what was known as the ‘partage’ system. From the late 19th century onward such agreements permitted a share of finds from officially-sanctioned excavations to be exported after the Antiquities Service had made a selection. Following a temporary exhibition of the season’s work in London, assemblages of artefacts were then divided up. Division was principally on the basis of institutional sponsorship, or by taking into account geographical clusters of subscribers’ donations that enabled local and regional museums to benefit in kind.

We estimate that through such means more than 140 institutions around the world received material between the founding of the Egypt Exploration Fund in 1882 and the First World War alone: some 75 in the UK, about 35 in the US, and more than 30 others globally. Countries as far apart as Japan, South Africa, New Zealand, Australia and Canada were beneficiaries. In all, hundreds of thousands of objects were dispersed in this way.

By studying the necessity of an exchange in objects for patronage of excavation it is possible to trace how these finds became objects of colonial desire and to contribute to histories of late 19th- and 20th-century nationhood and imperialism. Similarly, by exploring their complex afterlives – as these finds continue to be circulated both institutionally and commercially – we aim to follow shifting attitudes to archaeological heritage through to the present day.

Whereas Edwards had to rely upon advertisements in literary journals and labour-intensive correspondence campaigns to gather information, today the internet provides a far quicker and easier way to re-connect the distributed mass of a century of fieldwork in Egypt. One of the project’s first tasks has therefore been to establish a website, hosted at the Griffith Institute in Oxford, that can both accommodate the outputs of our research and provide a tool for sharing information. This is important because untangling this history is no easy feat, especially for the non-specialist: it is a maze of paperwork, specialist terminology, and opaque site codes. The initial goal of the website is to provide institutions that received material – including museums, schools, and libraries – with background details that can help to identify and contextualize collections. To this end, we have not only made available the distribution lists held by the EES and UCL’s Petrie Museum, but also provided background information that we hope will assist non-specialists to understand these documents and permit them to make discoveries for themselves. For example, we are pulling together details about the people who worked on excavations and the different excavators’ marks that were written on finds from specific years of fieldwork.

Sharing data online is part of an ongoing endeavour and we welcome feedback as the project develops.

Although one aim of the project is to establish the scale and extent of the spread of objects, it is archival research that lies at the heart of the research. Our points of departure are the records held at the EES and the Petrie Museum, which document the division of excavated material and their intended destinations. Correspondence

files in these institutions, in the Griffith Institute, and in museums around the world give further insight into some of the diverse motivations to contribute funds to excavations and the responses that people had to the crates of Egyptian antiquities that turned up at the doors of museums, schools and libraries. It is here that the project begins to encounter the huge cast of characters who became caught up in the discovery and circulation of ancient Egyptian material culture. As noted in the Pitt Rivers Museum’s ‘relational museum’ project, people do not just collect objects - objects also collect people.

In terms of discovery, the exploits of Flinders Petrie are well known, but fieldwork is always a team effort, built upon the labour of numerous individuals. As Stephen Quirke (2010) has shown in his monograph of the same title, this includes the ‘hidden hands’ of Petrie’s Egyptian workforce. Through archival research in the EES and in the Petrie these people can be reinstated into tales of uncovering material in situ by identifying excavation findspot marks on objects, linking artefacts back to specific 28

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individuals whose names were not otherwise dispersed along with the finds.

That workforce also included numerous Western personalities who are mentioned only in passing in excavation memoirs and whose careers have made little impression upon the discipline. These people have a very limited presence in central London’s archives, but their stories remain to be uncovered in other repositories Far left: Old Kingdom stone vessel.The markings record its collection history from it excavation from Mostagedda (tomb 10012), its acquisition by Henry Wellcome (R4031/1537) and finally it being accessioned into the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, UCL (UC25504).

Left: Letter from Flinders Petrie to Edwin Ward advising him on what to wear on excavation. Courtesy of the National Museum of Scotland Library.

around the world. A case in point is Edwin Ward (1880–1934), a Museum Assistant in the art department of Edinburgh’s Royal Museum. Ward joined Petrie at Rifeh in 1907 and Memphis in 1908 in order – according to the Museum’s 1906 annual report – to bring the Museum ‘into closer connection with the work of archaeological exploration’. His archive in the National Museum of Scotland provides a different angle on how BSAE digs were organised and how they progressed. For instance, amongst Ward’s papers from Petrie are instructions on exactly what to wear on an excavation, how to get there, and methods of planning and building a dig house.

Vignettes like these are not just illustrative, but make it possible to interweave more personal stories with the sweeping narratives of imperial exploration in Egypt. The complex tales that artefact distributions can tell affect both local and national histories, and many more insights can be gained by tracing the path of an object from the earth to the display case.

 Alice Stevenson is Curator of UCL’s Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology. Her research focuses on the archaeology of Predynastic and Early Dynastic Egypt. She also has an interest in disciplinary histories. Emma Libonati is a research associate on the AHRC-funded project ‘Artefacts of Excavation’. She is primarily interested in the material culture of the Hellenistic and Roman Near East, in particular the production of stone sculpture.

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Flinders Petrie and the image world of Akhetaten Marie Vandenbeusch, Gianluca Miniaci and Stephen Quirke look at the excavations directed

by Flinders Petrie at Akhetaten in 1891-92.The rarely seen small finds allow insights into the ancient city’s image world as well as into the distribution and display strategies of the museums that now house these objects. larger houses, the palace of the king, temple outlines and foundation deposits. Although glazing technology is not his target, he writes (Journal, 29 Nov- 5 Dec 1891): ‘it is instructive to notice the differences between this place and Gurob, of the same age,’ - ‘Moulds for pottery ornament abound here; but none occur there.’ In the new year, Petrie reported a mass find: ‘The main matter this week has been turning over some remains of amulet factories; over a thousand pottery moulds have been found, and much remains to be turned out yet. I have sorted out 70 or 80 varieties’ (Journal, 3 - 9 January 1892). A fortnight later, ‘A fresh factory of pendants has been found, and more hundreds of moulds come pouring in, some fresh types among them’ (Journal, 10 - 24 January 1892). In the 1894 publication, he gives the staggering tally of moulds from across the site (p. 30): ‘I brought nearly five thousand from Tell el Amarna, after rejecting large quantities of the commonest; and these comprise over five hundred varieties here illustrated, beside many smaller differences. All of these I have classified into series, and many of the sets have been given to public museums; other sets remain awaiting distribution to collections as opportunity may arise. Of the moulded objects about two thousand were found, including fragments.’ The task of sorting the hauls and publishing fully 596 ‘varieties’ deserves recognition as one of the great typological tools for understanding the ancient city, alongside its ceramic and sculptural repertoires.

The published result combines three different object categories: rings, pendants, and inlays. Petrie himself notes how one category may be more characteristic of one part of the site: ‘nearly all the broken rings, etc., with cartouches’ came from palace waste heaps explored from March 1892, while Aten moulds were found with moulds with the names Akhenaten and Nefertiti ‘north of the temple, in some part of the town, from whence the Arabs brought [them] to me’ (Tell el Amarna, 1894: 28). His composite approach offers the advantage of re-uniting a landscape of imagery common to faience producers and designers, at the site. Plates 14 - 15 start the series of ‘scarabs, rings, etc.’ bearing royal and divine

Few sites in Egyptian archaeology raise passions as intensely as Akhetaten, ‘Horizon of the Sun’, the city founded by king Akhenaten in his breach with religious tradition. The newly exclusive worship of the Creator, visible as Aten, the solar sphere, generated a visual style which confused or repelled 19th-century historians, and captivated audiences of art in the 20th century.

For archaeologists, the site is famous for other features: domestic life, preserved by the short time-span of the city’s inhabitation, and the production of glass and faience, filling its story with colour. That last, industrial story returned to life in excavations directed by Flinders Petrie in the winter of 1891-1892. Despite a report published in 1894, his contribution to our knowledge of the Akhetaten image world remains dormant in the general picture of the city, hidden in his archives and collections. Over the past five years, a new project at the Petrie Museum set out to restore this part of the picture to public and scientific attention.

The story of Petrie’s excavation can be retrieved in outline from his 1894 Tell el-Amarna report, from the appointment diaries in the Petrie Museum, and from his ‘Journals’, a kind of newsletter to select readers, at the Griffith Institute, Oxford (vivid excerpts in Margaret Drower, Letters from the Desert, 2004). As he was not yet professor, and freelance excavators were not permitted, Petrie negotiated an official work permit with the help of the occupying English authorities (his Journal records how Saqqara was his first choice, Abydos his second, but both were reserved for the Antiquities Service). On 17 November 1891, then 38 years old, he arrived at the site with five Fayoumi supervisors who had previously excavated with him, including his future right-hand man Ali Suefi of al-Lahun. Thirty-two names in his worklists probably record recruits from villages near the site.

We do not have their account of the season, and Petrie did not supervise closely, so exact find-places cannot be given for individual objects. Petrie wrote home: ‘It is an overwhelming site to deal with … After a few hours I concluded that I should not attempt to make a continuous plan of the whole place,’ and aimed instead at some 30

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Two pages of Petrie’s letter to his mother, reporting the first mass find of faience items, 3-9 January 1892. © Griffith Institute, University of Oxford.

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names, summarised by Petrie as ‘a few of Tahutmes III and Amenhotep III (doubtless brought here), and about 80 or 90 of Akhenaten, his family, and his successor, Rasmenkh-ka’ (sequence nos. 1-121); other motifs on rings and scarabs follow (nos. 122-160). The series continues with hieroglyphs, animals and plants (Plate 16, ‘moulds for rings’), hieroglyphs and figures for inlays or pendants (Plate 17, ‘moulds for figures’), and then the great mass of ‘moulds for conventional flowers’ (Plate 18, the rosettes) and ‘moulds for fruits and flowers’ (Plate 19). The title of his final plate, ‘moulds for leaves, etc.’, betrays its miscellaneous character, the leaves and petals ending with star and crescents at sequence no. 557, followed by more geometric shapes such as chevron column inlays and plain rings. Petrie aimed to share as widely as possible this new knowledge of types – an image world of Akhetaten as it unveiled itself to him that spring in Middle Egypt. In return, receiving museum authorities were expected to contribute funds for excavation. How many sets were in fact sent, or survive, has not yet been checked. At the Petrie Museum, the great residue survives, still amounting to several thousand moulds and finished faience products made from them. A selection has been on display at the Museum, most recently in a cabinet curated by Lucia

Gahlin, but the typology itself has slipped away from the ancient artefacts. The book plates are accessible online, but the finds lost their material presence. Even within the Museum, objects had been dispersed among other Petrie typologies – amulets, objects of daily use, scarabs and cylinders with names.

In 2010, Marie Vandenbeusch undertook a new curatorial project to identify all items of 1894 still in the Petrie Museum as the first crucial step in reassembling that original typological sequence. Several examples were also located in other collections, notably two gold rings: sequence no. 28, with the name of Akhenaten, is in the Manchester Museum (inv. 7199), no. 31 is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (MMA 26.7.767). A major obstacle in tracking down every ‘type’ is the discrepancy between the drawings published and the objects preserved in the museum – a surprising feature for a seemingly exhaustive typology. Some items match accurately, even showing the breaks. In other cases, minor differences raise the possibility that either the actual find has not yet been identified or the drawing is an ideal composite from multiple objects. For example, not all rosettes were found in the collection. They can be very similar, but showing a discrepancy in the number of 31

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petals, even though Petrie meticulously notes that number next to his rosette drawings. Furthermore, the drawings themselves seem variable, raising the question whether inconsistencies are due to execution by different hands.

Petrie speaks of ‘many smaller differences’; he does not explain his criteria for selection.

By relocating the material objects, researchers have a new chance to assess directly the evidence from Akhetaten, the city, as opposed to Tell el Amarna, the book. For the museum, this provides an opportunity to point out gaps in the existing evidence; complications of collection history are revealed in the fusion of 1891-2 excavation finds and purchased objects, the distribution to other collections, and the purchases made by Petrie every year he travelled to Egypt between 1880 and 1924.

Comparing his typology with more recent ones, we can observe that Petrie did not miss many categories. On the other hand, Petrie’s statement that he was ‘rejecting large quantities of the commonest’ (Tell el Amarna, 1894: 30) might explain why such common amulets as wedjat-eyes are so strikingly underrepresented. Beside these research gains, a primary objective of our project was public access.

The research by Marie Vandenbeusch provided the basis for Gianluca Miniaci and Stephen Quirke to prepare a display exactly in the form of the 1894 plates. Provisional supports were created by Petrie Museum Assistant Pia Edqvist, and the re-assembled ‘material plates’ can now be seen, perhaps for the first time since Petrie sorted them himself, in the main gallery of the Petrie Museum.

In the material sequence, moulds dominate in their bulk and colour. Yet the gloss and bold polychromy of the products still shine through, even where the objects are tiny amulets. The multi-coloured composition of the series and the variety of its patterns amply testify to the vitality of the Amarna period. The museum can thus offer a vivid new connection through Petrie to the makers of Akhetaten to general as well as research visitors.

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Plates 17 (opposite page) and 19 (above) of Petrie’s Tell el Amarna volume beside the photographs of the identified items preserved in the Petrie Museum.

Photograph by Gianluca Miniaci.

One row of amulets bearing royal and divine names from Plate 14 of Petrie’s Tell el Amarna volume above the identified items preserved in the Petrie Museum.

Photograph by Gianluca Miniaci.

 Marie Vandenbeusch is Project Curator at the British Museum.

Gianluca Miniaci is Marie Curie Research Fellow at the École Pratique des Hautes Études, Paris, and Honorary Research Associate at the Institute of Archaeology, UCL. Stephen Quirke is Edwards Professor of Egyptian Archaeology and Philology at the same Institute.

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Digging Diary 2014-15 Summaries of some of the archaeological work undertaken in Egypt since late summer 2014, with a brief supplement for late spring 2014.The sites are arranged geographically from north to south, ending with the oases.

Field Directors who would like reports on their work to appear in EA are asked to e-mail a short summary, with a website address if available, as soon as possible after the end of each season to: jan.geisbusch@ees.ac.uk Jan Geisbusch 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; GR Graeco-Roman; ERT Electrical Resistance Tomography.

Institutes and Research Centres: ARCE American Research Center in Egypt; AUC American University, Cairo; BA British Academy; BM British Museum; CFEETK Franco-Egyptian Centre, Karnak; CNRS French National Research Centre; DAI German Institute, Cairo; FNRS National Fund for Scientific Research, Brussels; IFAO French Institute, Cairo; MSA Ministry of State for Antiquities, Egypt; NVIC Netherlands-Flemish Institute, Cairo; OI Oriental Institute, University of Chicago; PCMA Polish Centre for Mediterranean Archaeology, Warsaw; Swiss Inst Swiss Institute for Architectural Research and Archaeology, Cairo; USR CNRS research group.

SRING - SUMMER 2014 Upper Egypt Luxor (Wadi Khatasum): Miguel Polo and his team continued work at TT 209 for a third season between May and June 2014. Built in the Wadi Khatasum, which flows from the Valley of the Colours to the Ramesseum in Luxor West Bank, this is one of the less-known, late Theban tombs.

Since its inclusion in the catalogue of Gardiner and Weigall in 1913 it has always been assigned a Saite chronology. The proprietor’s name has been given differently several times and in current literature is mentioned as Seremhatrekhyt (although this is one of his titles). Since 2012 this tomb is the centre of the ‘Proyecto dos cero nueve’ (Archaeological Mission of the University of La Laguna, Canary Islands, Spain). The field activities have focused on the courtyard and on the first of the underground chambers, the transversal hall. In the courtyard the goal was to

reach bedrock to clear the access leading into the inner chambers and to expand the excavation area to the north and east to identify the superstructure on the slope of the wadi. Conservation efforts have focused on the consolidation of the façade, which was weakened by a hole in the upper west side. Closing this has restored aesthetic value to this part of the tomb, removed a potential risk of weakening to the wall and has assured a proper support to the inner vaulted ceiling of the transversal hall. The stratigraphic excavation of the site revealed a complex deposit in which objects of different nature and chronology are interlaced: the construction of the tomb during the TwentyFifth Dynasty, the permanent erosive action of the wadi, the ritual use of the superstructure until, at least, half a millennium after the building of the tomb, the gradual collapse of the building around the first centuries ad, a possible reoccupation of the underground chambers during the Byzantine period and, in more recent times, the action of archaeologists, looters and residents of nearby villages. The registration of this deposit was performed using a rigorous procedure of excavation, with macroscopic distinction of each stratigraphical unit, photographic recording and GIS mapping. The identification of larger and more complex architectural structures than hitherto known provided a second set of new information. The tomb had a superstructure within the slope of the wadi: walls that surround the courtyard on three sides and a rectangular long chamber to the north have been already identified.

The underground chambers were accessed through a staircase of monumental width with a central flight of steps and two side ramps. In the inner transversal hall, a door leading to hitherto unknown underground spaces was found. It has not been possible to enter these areas, as they are covered by deposits that will need to be carefully excavated in next season. Inscriptions around the doors have allowed to identify the titles (among them ao HAt) and the name of the owner, Nisemro or Ashemro (the first hieroglyphic sign, Gardiner’s A26, can have both readings).

Karnak: The CFEETK (MAE/CNRS USR 3172) programmes of archaeological research and conservation continued at Karnak, directed

by Abdel Hakim Karar, then Mohamed Abdel Aziz (MAE) and Christophe Thiers (CNRS USR 3172). At the Ptah temple, excavations conducted by Benjamin Durand uncovered a

Roman-Byzantine settlement built against a southern enclosure wall of the temple. Excavation led by Guillaume Charloux (CNRS USR 3172) to the East of the temple brought to light a small limestone sphinx and many objects and statuettes thrown away in a huge pit. The epigraphic and conservation programme of the Akhmenu and the northern storerooms of Tuthmosis III continued, in cooperation with Christian Leitz (Univ.

Tübingen). The programme concerning the 8th pylon continued and a complete high-resolution orthophotographic survey was made for the southern side of the pylon by Ph. Soubias and J. Maucor (CNRS USR 3172). R. David (LabEx Archimede) and M. Naguib (MAE) organized a workshop in September devoted to the Ptolemaic Theban ceramic, and continued with colleagues the study of ceramics from the Ptah temple, the Treasury of Shabaqo and the Temple of Osiris the Coptite. The Karnak online project continued under the supervision of S. Biston-Moulin. http:// www.cfeetk.cnrs.fr/karnak.

AUTUMN 2014 Lower Egypt Buto: The survey work by the German Archaeological Institute Cairo, directed in the field by Robert Schiestl, was continued during October around Buto (Tell el-Farain) and the site of Kom el-Gir, 4 km northeast of Buto.

The focus of this season was the investigation of the ancient landscape in the region by means of auger core drilling. One central question was the tracing of a potential ancient branch of the Nile just east of Kom el-Gir, where currently the Masraf Nashart and the Masraf Bahr Nashart flow. A new percussion drill was used in the field to make two transects consisting of 12 cores, with depths between 7 and 12 m. The drillings provided evidence for an ancient watercourse.

Coring was also undertaken just beyond the current edges of Kom el-Gir to see whether the site continues into areas currently used as fields.

This, surprisingly, does not seem to be the case.

With the help of a Differential GPS a Digital Elevation Model of Kom el-Gir was created. The work was undertaken in cooperation with Andreas Ginau and Jürgen Wunderlich of the Department of Geography of the Goethe University Frankfurt am Main.

Bubastis: In September/October the fieldwork of the Austrian Academy of Sciences continued

Egypt Exploration Society Expeditions (www.ees.ac.uk)

SUMMER - AUTUMN 2014 Imbaba and Minufiyeh: Work continued on the Wadi Gamal terraces on the high ground southwest of the Neolithic settlement of Merimde Beni Salama (Imbaba) (September/October 2014).

Here, Joanne Rowland and her team (EES/Freie Univ. Berlin) carried out a 1 x 1 m gridded survey with recording and total collection in a sample of the grid squares that revealed further Middle Palaeolithic, Epipalaeolithic and Neolithic evidence. Investigations and analysis were carried out on the low ground in proximity to the north-south running gas pipeline construction project. In Minufiyeh (August/September 2014), work focussed on the archaeological cemetery

of Quesna, as a section of the older and newer building phases of the falcon necropolis were excavated to investigate the differences between these phases of use. Excavations at the site of the OK mud-brick mastaba tomb were completed.

Finds analysis will be ongoing in the spring 2015 season in both areas.

Sais: During August and September, the EES/ Univ. of Durham team led by Penny Wilson continued the excavation of the area next to the Late Ramesside house, which includes a magazine complex of the Late NK and a large wall with domestic quarters attached to it, probably from the very early TIP. The excavations confirmed the fact that there are two relatively well-preserved

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assemblages of material one on top of the other.

The magazine contained a fine array of Canaanite amphorae, meat jars, pot-stands and funnel-necked jars. All of them were in fragmentary condition and the process of reconstructing the vessels was begun, with several Egyptian amphorae and two large plates completed. The later large wall and its associated structures contained two huge hearth areas as well as a series of circular storage bins and other ephemeral mud-brick structures. More cobra figure fragments were found this season to take the total to over 100. In addition, the first evidence for a completely destroyed Late Antique structure at Kom Rebwa was also found.

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under direction of Manfred Bietak within the concession of the University of Würzburg at the site of the MK palace with surveying and laserscanning of the architecture. In spring a wing of an older MK palace was discovered. During this season ceramic material was studied, showing that the stratigraphy of the palace and the accumulations above contained, besides the Egyptian ceramic corpus of the Twelfth Dynasty, Levantine Painted Ware, Kamares Ware and other Middle Minoan Ware as imports.

Dahshur: For the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Dieter Arnold and Adela Oppenheim continued work on the pyramid complex of Senwosret III (October to December).

Excavations concentrated on the area between the southern outer enclosure wall and the socalled south temple. The excavation showed that the court area was paved with pebble layers, surrounded by walkways covered with a mortar surface, suggesting that the ‘empty spaces’ between buildings were organized and maintained. Three projections of the bastion configuration that encircled the pyramid foot were partially rebuilt east of the pyramid’s north chapel. Priority was given to the recording of material (human remains, relief fragments, potsherds) from previous seasons.

Upper Egypt Coptos: Work was resumed in October/ November 2014 by Laure Pantalacci for IFAO/ Université Lumière Lyon 2 south of the mammisi sanctuary of Ptolemy IV. It exposed slabs from the pavement of the courtyard or antechamber preceding the naos. East of the mammisi area, a Late Byzantine north-south gate, about 4 m wide and 6.5 m long, was identified. It had been installed between two Roman mud brick enclosures, on top of the levelled Ptolemaic enclosure wall of the main temple. Further east, the cleaning, conservation and anastylosis of the Roman colonnade also built on the top of this same Ptolemaic wall and dated to the 1st century ad, has continued. At the north-east corner of the Ptolemaic enclosure, this colonnade led to a chapel where a colossal statue from the reign of Emperor Vespasian was standing on a high limestone pedestal. Lastly, in the ‘Coptic’ area, to the west of the site, a test trench was opened under the enigmatic structure entirely built with blocks from a temple of Ptolemy IX Soter II. It appears that this ruined Christian building sits partly upon a huge dump area, including several complete amphorae (type AE3, 1st century ad), numerous stone tools and remains indicating an important cooking activity. http://www.ifao.egnet.net/ archeologie/coptos.

Medinet Habu: The OI epigraphic team under the supervision of J. Brett McClain continued documentation work in the small Amun temple of Hatshepsut and Thutmosis III on the final drawings for Medinet Habu X (now completed) and Medinet Habu XI and XII between October 2014 and January 2015. Epigrapher Jen Kimpton assisted by Anait Helmholz continued her preliminary survey and cataloguing of blocks and fragments of the destroyed Medinet Habu western High Gate, part of a comprehensive conservation and restoration programme for the entire southern and western sectors of the Medinet Habu complex. Preliminary conservation and cleaning of the house of Butehamun began in October under the supervision of conservator Lotfi Hassan, assisted by Nahed Samir. Lotfi and Nahed were also supervising the second year of the Epigraphic Survey’s two-year conservation student training programme for fourteen local Egyptian conservation students. Master mason Frank Helmholz, assisted by mason Johannes Weninger and the stone team, are in the final months of restoring and re-erecting the Domitian

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Gate with new sandstone blocks that replace the lowest courses destroyed by ground water salt.

Tina Di Cerbo and Richard Jasnow continued their digital documentation of Late Period and medieval graffiti in the northern Ptolemaic annex of the small Amun temple, a Ptolemaic gate on the south, plus the roof area of the Ramesses III mortuary temple. This season saw the collaboration of Chicago House and the Ramesseum team led by Christian LeBlanc and Philippe Martinez in the documentation of reused blocks from the Ramesseum in the Ptolemaic and Roman additions to the small Amun temple. The documentation, conservation, and restoration work at MH is funded by a grant from USAID Egypt. http://oi.uchicago.edu/research/projects/epi.

Luxor: The OI Epigraphic Survey under W. Raymond Johnson continued work between October and December. Chicago House architect/ artist Jay Heidel continued the facsimile epigraphic documentation of the Ptolemy I Bentresh inscription blocks, utilising a new Cintiq Wacom Companion drawing tablet for digital ‘penciling’ on site. He also continued to refine the new Luxor Temple blockyard data management programme for documenting and tracking the 50,000 inscribed architectural blocks and fragments stored and displayed there, and continued to enter data on the new database. Egyptologist/artist Krisztián Vertés continued his facsimile pencilling of the Tetrarchic Roman frescos in the Imperial Cult Chamber, south wall, eastern side, and will finish the entire southern wall this season. Luxor Temple conservator Hiroko Kariya conducted her annual condition survey, maintenance, and treatment of the blockyard material, and has started inventorying the entire collection with Heidel.

The work at Luxor Temple is supported in part by a grant from USAID Egypt. http://oi.uchicago.edu/ research/projects/epi.

Armant: The joint IFAO/Cnrs-Univ.

Montpellier 3/USR 3172 mission directed by Christophe Thiers (Cnrs, USR 3172-CFEETK) continued the archaeological survey in Armant, focusing on the area of the naos/pronaos of the Montu Temple. The bottom of the foundation pit of the naos and pronaos was reached. In the Ptolemaic naos, the first course of stone was lying on a layer of sand river, but the first course of the pronaos foundation was built directly on a previous archaeological level, which seems to date to the OK (mud brick structure and very few pot sherds were found). A fragment of an incense burner of Senwesret I, and part of a scribe statue, both in granodiorite, were uncovered on the destruction levels of the temple. When cleaning the foundation stones of the façade of the pronaos it was possible to identify a head of a colossus reused upside down. It was decided to remove two blocks of the upper course in order to reach the head of the colossus. These two blocks bear parts of scenes from the Hatshepsut temple. The pillar of the colossus bears the name of Tuthmose III. The colour of the face and of the reliefs is well preserved. Fragments of two other Osirian colossi bearing an inscription of Sethy II were also uncovered close to the colossus of Tuthmose III. Sandra Lippert (CNRS UMR 5140) studied the Demotic graffiti that were discovered on reused blocks from the NK, on the pylon and two lion gargoyles. Romain David (Univ. Montpellier 3-LabEx Archimede) continued the study of the Late Roman pottery coming from the kom.

Lilian Postel (Univ. Lyon 2) continued the study of the MK limestone blocks. Sébastien BistonMoulin (CNRS USR 3172) continued the epigraphic survey of the reused NK blocks. Pierre Zignani (CNRS UMR 5060), with the help of Olivier Onezime (topographer, IFAO), resumed the architectural survey of the foundations blocks. Olivier Onezime and Kevin Guadagnini

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(topographer, CFEETK) made ortho-images of the temple area. Hassan el-Amir (IFAO) continued the conservation-restoration programme of sandstone blocks lying around Bab el-Maganin, and on the blocks and fragments of the colossus found on the façade of the pronaos: http://recherche. univ-montp3.fr/egyptologie/ermant.

Aswan (Syene): The 15th season of work of the joint team of the Swiss Institute and the MSA Aswan, headed by C. von Pilgrim and Nasr Salama, and directed in the field by Wolfgang Müller, started end of August 2014. Fieldwork lasted until 13 December and concentrated on a salvage excavation (Area 84) located about 100 m north of the Isis Temple. In the long and narrow trench a sequence of well-preserved buildings of the Fatimid and Ayyubid Period was investigated.

At the bottom, an exceptional building of the Roman Period was discovered. It is built in mud bricks and the walls were provided with coloured plaster. Additional investigations were necessary in Area 61 to the east of the temple of Domitian after further work of the contractor had revealed a rock tomb at the edge of the area. It contained a number of skeletons, and some vessels of the late MK. Above the tomb, a masonry foundation built of well-shaped sandstone blocks became visible at the edge of the pit. The type of masonry points to a Ptolemaic date of construction. The wall may be connected to similar wall segments already recorded in adjacent areas evidencing the location of a temple at the south-western slope of a hill to the east of temple of Domitian. www.swissinst.ch.

Aswan (Elephantine): The joint DAI/Swiss Inst team directed by Stephan Seidlmayer, Felix Arnold and Cornelius von Pilgrim, continued fieldwork in October (until December), resuming investigation of H55 located immediately to the south of the Heqaib sanctuary. Work was conducted in close cooperation with J. Budka and her ECR project AcrossBorders. The main task of the season was the removal of a central baulk, which had been left during earlier excavations in order to study the debris above the ruined house. The house had been built into the slope of the eastern town mound at the beginning of the Eighteenth Dynasty. A second building phase was attested in the eastern part of the house, where two rooms were rebuilt on a higher level and a subterranean cellar was installed. The well-preserved back wall of the house has been only partially uncovered.

It is provided with ordinary mud-plaster that shows traces of a simple painting depicting sailing ships. After the house was abandoned the ruin was intentionally covered with debris most probably deriving from the area of the Khnum Temple when further construction activities took place in the reign of Amenhotep II. www.swissinst.ch.

WINTER 2014-15 Upper Egypt Dendera: The second campaign of the joint IFAO-Oriental Institute-Macquarie University mission was conducted in December 2014 (http:// www.ifao.egnet.net/archeologie/dendara). In addition to the study of the well-preserved sanctuaries, the aim of this new project is to investigate extensively and on a diachronic basis the combined development of settlement, necropolis and landscape at Dendera.

Pierre Zignani (CNRS-IFAO), co-director for the architectural study of the sanctuaries, focused his research on the Roman Mammisi. In addition to its architectural mapping, a deep trench has been opened in the northwestern corner of the monument in order to study the foundation techniques. This operation also confirmed that the great temple enclosure wall is made up of two successive phases, an earlier and another posterior to the Mammisi. A systematic XRF survey on the metallic door-sockets and dovetails has been conducted by Philippe Fluzin (CNRS). Gregory

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East, Dihmit-South and El Hisnein-West forts.

The perimeter walls at the El Hisnein-East and Dihmit-South forts include semi-circular bastions and loopholes, and these sites are additionally notable for the remains outside the forts, a collapsed hilltop redoubt at El Hisnein-East, and at DihmitSouth well-built and preserved houses with walls like those in the fort. All the mines beside these forts have been reopened in recent years with this gold-mining activity seriously damaging the El Hisnein-West site. All the forts are well dated by pottery to the Middle Kingdom, and especially the Twelfth Dynasty, with the one at Dihmit South also associated with several hieroglyphic inscriptions, one of which is dated to year 31 of Senusret I. Also, on the same sandstone block with these inscriptions, there is rock art attributable to the Nubian C-Group culture.

Marouard (OI, Univ. of Chicago) – co-director for the study of the settlement and enclosure walls, conducted multiple trenches and cleaning operations inside and outside the precinct. Nagada IIIC-D occupation resting on the natural sand deposits has been revealed in the southwestern part of the inner site, confirming previous observations

by B. Kemp (1978). Well-stratified OK layers from the late Third to early Sixth Dynasties have been revealed less than 20 m east to the Hathor temple and in the vicinity of the eastern face of the great temenos, where the OK settlement remains are preserved to a significant thickness. A resumption of the FIP area east of the enclosure wall has also been started this year. South of the Hathor Temple precinct, Yann Tristant (Macquarie Univ., Sydney), co-director for the cemetery area, has begun a re-excavation of the Abu Suten group of mastabas, previously studied

by F. Petrie (1898). In addition to archaeological and architectural complements, the late Third/ early Fourth Dynasty dating of the monuments has been confirmed by associated pottery, making it the oldest group known to date for the necropolis.

Following the C. Fisher excavations (1915-1917), an inquiry about the Early Dynastic phases of the cemetery is in progress.

El Hisnein: James Harrell (University of Toledo, Ohio, USA) and his team investigated four newly discovered Middle Kingdom forts in the Eastern Desert south of Aswan. The discovery was made during a survey of ancient gold mines on the east side of Lake Nasser. Two of the forts occur together at the El Hisnein site in Wadi Siali or Sayyalah, 25 km southeast of Aswan. A third is in Wadi Dihmit, 37 km southeast of Aswan (the Dihmit-North site), with the fourth another 6 km to the southwest in an unnamed tributary of Khor Kolesseig or Saqr (the Dihmit-South site). All forts are built with dry-laid cobbles and boulders derived from the local granitic bedrock. The DihmitSouth and two El Hisnein forts guard gold mines and, for the former, also possibly a copper mine.

The Dihmit-North fort has no adjacent mine but may be associated with gold workings further up Wadi Dihmit. Whereas the El Hisnein-West fort has a low, weak perimeter wall (1-1.2 m high and one or two stones thick), the other three forts are more substantially built with walls about 2 m high (up to 2.4 m at Dihmit-South) that taper upward from about 1 m wide at the base to 0.5 m at the top. The areas covered by these structures range from 2000, 3800, 5900 to 9000 square meters, respectively, for the Dihmit-North, El Hisnein-

Above: view of the Dihmit-North fort (at lower left) from the west with the flooded and dry sections of Wadi Dihmit visible in the distance.

Right: the El-HisneinEast fort. Photographs by James A. Harrell.

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Gems in the desert: recent work at Wadi el-Hudi In May 2014, Kate Liszka and her team initiated the first Princeton University mission to Wadi el-Hudi.

Hidden in an arid landscape of granite and dolerite mountainous outcrops, 35 kilometres southeast of Aswan, lie at least 14 archaeological sites in an area called Wadi elHudi. These sites include fortified settlements, amethyst mines, over 100 rock inscriptions, and even an Egyptianstyle fortress, which date to the Middle Kingdom and the Roman Period. The degree of archaeological preservation is astonishing, with sites exposed like time capsules.

Dry-stone walls often stand at their original heights of approximately two metres, and artefact scatters appear on the surface where the Ancient Egyptians left them millennia ago. The patterns of artefact distribution are so clear that they can allow us to reconstruct the ancient activities that took place.

Previous examinations of the inscriptions, archaeology, and geology at Wadi el-Hudi have occurred sporadically and briefly over the last century. The geologist Labib Nassim first discovered the sites in 1917. In 1938, the Survey of Egypt desert topographers rediscovered the amethyst mines and removed several important inscriptions to the Cairo Museum. In 1952, Ahmed Fakhry published many of the inscriptions. In 1992, Ian Shaw led a short survey of the archaeological sites as part of a larger study of mining settlements, and Rosemarie and Dietrich Klemm examined some of the geology and ruins related to gold mining in 1993. Yet, for the most part, Wadi el-Hudi remains understudied despite its potential to shed light on questions of urbanism, organization of

Map showing the relationship between Site 5, Site 6, and Site 9. (Map by Bryan Kraemer.)

state-sponsored projects, the mechanics of semiprecious stone mining, interactions between Nubians and Egyptians, and much more. We anticipate that this initial season will mark the beginning of a long-term effort by the Wadi el-Hudi Archaeological and Epigraphic Survey to investigate these archaeological gems in the desert.

Although 14 sites are currently known from Wadi elHudi, work this season focused on the Middle Kingdom occupations of Sites 5, 6, and 9. Site 5 is an oval-shaped, 37

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terraced, and fortified settlement built onto a steep hill overlooking an amethyst mine; it is approximately 80 m x 60 m, and the top stands roughly 20 m above the desert surface. Site 9 lies one kilometre south of Site 5. It consists of a rectangular structure (approximately 50 m x 72 m) built in the shape of a Middle Kingdom fortress on the flat wadi surface in front of another amethyst mine. Site 6 is the highest peak between Sites 5 and 9 with clear sight lines to both settlements. Soldiers were stationed along its ridges to watch the surrounding landscape. All three of these sites date to the Middle Kingdom and possibly even functioned contemporaneously as a unit.

Inscriptions WH3 and WH4 from Site 5, published initially by Ahmed Fakhry, then reedited by Ashraf Sadek, demonstrate that the mining settlement was officially founded during the reign of Montuhotep (IV) Nebtawyre in the Eleventh Dynasty, while WH22-25 show that it was in use until the reign of Sobekhotep (IV) Khaneferre in the Thirteenth Dynasty. Middle Kingdom ceramics, especially chronologically distinct zirs, corroborate this date range. Interestingly, the same ceramic corpus is present at both Sites 5 and 9, perhaps demonstrating that they received supplies from the same places and were occupied at the same time. Additionally, the landscape around both sites was monitored by the soldiers posted at Site 6, indicating that soldiers watched both places at the same time. A previously undiscovered inscription dating

to the reign of Senwosret I occurs along the wadi route between the two sites. Contrary to previous suggestions, these two sites may have worked in tandem at least from the reign of Senwosret I onwards (also see WH14), perhaps sharing workers, supplies, and storage areas. We hope to explore this scenario in future seasons.

Inscriptions from Wadi el-Hudi (viz. WH4 and WH143) mention Nubians working alongside Egyptians at the amethyst mines. Their presence can also be

Above: sketch map of Site 9. (Plan of fort by Magdalena Wlodarska, map

by Bryan Kraemer.)

Top: Site 5 inscription WH59 of Smsw Nmty-anxw (sA) Inpw, Follower Nemty-Ankh (son of) Anubis, appearing inside of an individual house.

Looking west, the photograph also shows the lower terrace of Site 5, the exterior wall, and the mine.

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Site 5 amethyst mine in the foreground, Site 5 hilltop settlement in the rear, facing east.

corroborated through artefacts and architecture. Nubian pottery is present at both Sites 5 and 9, although it occurs in low quantities. Moreover, both domestic structures at Site 5 and ‘Area C’ in Site 9 display curved stone architecture that has traditionally been associated with Nubian settlements.

Site 5 follows a unique design: this hilltop settlement is surrounded by a dry-stone wall around its base, while the lower part of the settlement consists of houses and room complexes. Their stone walls stand approximately 1 m high, and some sort of temporary covering must have been used to extend the walls and roof the structures.

Most houses are made of one or two enclosed rooms.

Typically two or three houses shared a small courtyard organized along a path that runs in front of the house.

Domestic style ceramics are most frequently found along these paths. Halfway up the settlement occurs a second large dry-stone wall that separates the housing areas below from the administrative areas above. Only one path provides access to this more controlled area. This area is likely where quarried amethyst was stored prior to transport and where supplies for the expedition were kept under protection. Several very large boulders occur naturally on the hill chosen for this settlement and are often incorporated into the architectural design as walls or gateways. These boulders also provided excellent media for inscriptions. Our team located over 60 inscriptions at Site 5, several of which were not previously recorded.

Large inscriptions, especially historic ones, often appear on the exterior of the settlement or along outside paths

that people would have seen. However, some houses also have scrawled names and titles of individuals who perhaps were their inhabitants.

Site 6 consists of the ridges and hills between Sites 5 and 9. From here, soldiers attached to the mining expeditions looked over and guarded the landscape below. We discovered cairns on several cols of these hills.

A small hut and fire pit are also present. And the same Middle Kingdom zirs are also found at these installations.

However, at the top of the highest peak, nearly 50 inscriptions appear in one distinct area, some of which had not previously been recorded. Almost all of these inscriptions are images or names and titles of soldiers from the Middle Kingdom, most likely carved by those same individuals spending many dull hours on watch duty. However, some of these images appear to be much older. A depiction of a long-horned cow, other desert animals, and human figures drawn in the Predynastic style appear too. Occasionally, the Middle Kingdom soldiers incorporated these older petroglyphs into their design.

For example, one soldier depicted himself stabbing the petroglyph of a long-horned cow.

Future seasons at Wadi el-Hudi will also yield significant results. For the Middle Kingdom, Sites 5, 6, and 9 give us the rare chance to examine issues of governmental control over mining, state-organization of supplies for desert expeditions, the literacy and life of miners, as well as interactions between Egyptians and Nubians. We also look forward to examining many of these same issues for Roman sites as well.

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Site 6 multiple inscriptions on one boulder, including those of soldiers. In the lower right corner appears to be a Predynastic figure that may predate the other images.

North gate of Site 9 looking south into the structure.

ď ą Kate Liszka is the director of the mission to Wadi el-Hudi, and a Cotsen Fellow in the Society of Fellows at Princeton University.

Thanks are due to the Department of Art and Archaeology at Princeton for sponsoring the survey. She is very grateful to the Ministry of State for Antiquities for allowing this work to go forward, especially Dr. Mohamed Ibrahim, Dr. Mohammed Ismail, Mr. Hany Ahmed abo El azm, Members of the Permanent Committee, Mr. Fathy abo ziad Mahmoud, Mr. Shazly Ali abd elaziem, and everyone in the Aswan Inspectorate. Deep thanks also go out to Bryan Kraemer, Meredith Brand, Magdalena Wlodarska, and Nicholas Brown for all of their hard work, observations, and data from the season.

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Some recent discoveries at Saqqara Ali el-Batal, Saleh Soleiman and Ragab Turkey report on some hitherto unknown tombs at the site of Gisr el-Mudir, Saqqara.

Among the most impressive tombs in Egypt are brilliantly decorated private tombs of Saqqara, but those usually shown to the tourists represent only a small percentage of the whole necropolis.

The three years before the revolution of January 2011 witnessed intensive Egyptian archaeological activity at Saqqara, especially in the area of the Gisr el-Mudir site. Located west of the step pyramid of Zoser and the Unas pyramid at Saqqara, the name means ‘enclosure of the mudir’ (= director), after Selim Hassan who had conducted excavations here.This site has escaped attention until recently; three successive seasons of work (20082010) have now been carried out, revealing an extensive cemetery of nobles of modest rank dating to the Old Kingdom along the north side of the pyramid enclosure of Sekhemkhet (Third Dynasty).

Left: the shaft from which Tjeneh's tomb was discovered. Above: the false door inside Tjeneh’s tomb.

the offerings, while her left is placed on her breast. She is clad in a tight long robe and wears a long wig.

At the entrance, a lintel bears three lines and a column of inscription cut in a plaster coating over an earlier inscription, suggesting that the tomb was re-used for Tjeneh. The tomb is fronted by a courtyard measuring 3.5 m by 2.5 m, accessible via six steps. We suggest the late Fifth Dynasty as a date for the tomb. Ali el-Batal.

One discovery in the south-east corner of the site was the rock-cut tomb of the adorner of the king and overseer of the maid-singers,Tjeneh. Unfinished, it measures 5.2 m by 2.2 m, including the chapel, and is undecorated inside except for a false door, painted pink to imitate granite and featuring a scene of Tjeneh with her funerary repast.

Tjeneh is shown seated on a chair at the offering table loaded with loaves of bread, raising her right hand towards 41

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Above: southern façade of the tomb of Tjeneh. Right: steps leading to the courtyard, looking west.

Below:Tjeneh with lotus flower. Photographs by Ali El-Batal.

In 2010, the Egyptian expedition of the MSA (then SCA) under the supervision of Abd el-Hakeem Karer, Ali el-Batal and the author (Saleh Soleiman) discovered a further Old Kingdom tomb within the cemetery, a somewhat unexpected find as no other tomb of comparable decoration had been discovered among the 25 tombs of nobles and 150 commoner tombs excavated since 2008.

It consists of three levels: a top one representing its core, surrounded by an enclosure wall; a chapel on its second level, consisting of two rock-cut courts (the first open, the second vaulted) and an offering room, cased with Tura limestone. The third level represents its burial chamber.

The owner of this tomb has been identified as Ptahshepses, whose good name is Tjemi, who lived under three kings (Isesi, Unas and Teti) at the end of the Fifth and beginning of the Sixth Dynasties. The three kings’ names are still preserved in the offering room. The tomb 42

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is reached by rock-cut steps leading down east to west to the open courtyard, which includes the burial shaft of Ptahshepses’ wife. A gate to the west leads to the second court and on to the rectangular offering room.

Badly preserved, the restoration of the chapel took six months of work under often exhausting conditions, yet eventually revealed beautiful scenes of daily life, such as fishing and fowling, farming, dancing and music, the preparation of food, as well as the transporting of Ptahshepses’s funeral furniture.

Ptahshepses main title (of more than forty) was that of an inspector of the royal house. His chapel includes two limestone false doors; the first is uninscribed and located in the façade wall, south of the entrance; the second is inscribed and fixed in the west wall of the offering room, with a platform with a ḥtp-sign cut into it. Saleh Soleiman.

Top: the site before excavation.

Centre: the three levels of Ptahshepses’s tomb Bottom: part of the site after excavation, showing the location of Ptahshepses’s tomb (west to east, showing the Step Pyramid in the background).

Photographs by Saleh Soleiman.

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Left: the restorer Bakr Hashem working on the west wall in the tomb of Ptahshepses.

Below: some of the workshop activities on the east wall, showing sculptors, carpenters and metal-workers.

Photographs by Saleh Soleiman.

While I was at my work documenting the objects in the store-room behind the Imhotep Museum at Saqqara, I was called by my colleagues Ali el-Batal and Saleh Soleiman to go up to the site, as something new had been discovered: a tomb and inscription of Sennedjem, a high official during the Old Kingdom.

Senedjem had constructed a huge mud-brick mastaba, with a large limestone false door of 0.9 m by 0.5 m by 0.3 m. Due to the size of the inscription we were obliged to transfer it from its original place to the museum storeroom where there is more security.

The tomb itself measures 17.9 m north-south by 12.5 m east-west. The facades of the mastaba were decorated with panelling of compound niches.The outer faces of the recessed panelled walls were coated with a very thin layer of mud-plaster and covered with white stucco bound with straw.The upper part is missing.Attached to the north-east side of the eastern façade is a separate mudbrick structure with an entrance at the western end of its south wall.The walls on either side are damaged.The remains of potsherds and limestone fragments on the solid tafl ground could bear witness to its function as an offering place. Remnants of white painted stucco on the surfaces of the retaining walls were observed. Ragab Turkey.

Above: the lower part of the false door of Senedjem. Photograph

by Ragab Turkey.

ď ą Ali Abdalla El-Batal and Saleh Soleiman are Inspectors of Antiquities for the Saqqara inspectorate. Ragab Turkey is Director of the Museum store-room II at Saqqara 44

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A new Ptolemaic temple at Gebel el-Nour From 15 April to 15 June 2014, excavations were carried out by a team of the Ministry of State for Antiquities at the site of Gebel el-Nour, in the area of Beni Suef inspectorate, the ancient 20th province of Upper Egypt. Mansour Boraik relates the discovery of this new monument and presents preliminary results.

The excavation area is located about 500 m to the south of a modern village known as Gebel el-Nour, approximately 25 km to the south of Beni Suef on the eastern bank of the Nile. The archaeological area of Gebel el-Nour is bounded in the east by the Eastern Desert way that links Cairo and Upper Egypt; its western borders reach to about 1 km to the east of the Nile. The southern end of the Gebel el-Nour archaeological area is surrounded by agricultural lands. All in all, it measures about 49 acres.

The 2014 excavations concentrated on an elevated area called ‘el Perba’ by the local people, near the western end of the area, measuring about 10 acres.

During September 2013, thieves dug at el Perba, searching for gold and treasures. They exposed the remains of two limestone walls, forming an L-shape.

Two weeks later, they dug another pit, located about 15 m to the east of the first one, again discovering remains of limestone walls. The Inspectors of the site informed the general directors of Beni Suef, resulting in the proposal of a salvage excavation project to determine the function of the limestone architectural elements and the dating of this monument.

Stratigraphic analysis of the primary archive generated during fieldwork carried out in Gebel el-Nour area has so far revealed eight phases. These are local phases and we have not yet tied them into the overall site-wide phasing.

The main phase represents the construction of a rectangular limestone building orientated east to west and measuring approximately 16.5 m (N-S) by 25 m (E-W). According to the hieroglyphic texts combined with scenes of gods, goddesses and kings and inscribed on the outer face of the eastern external wall, the building was a temple built during the reign of Ptolemy II Philadelphus, dedicated to Isis. The inscriptions, mainly from a soubassement procession, give the name of the site: ‘Isis is Mistress of Merwa’, a locality apparently unattested until now.

The temple comprises 27 limestone walls, forming about 17 rooms. All of the internal walls are about 0.5 m wide, while the external boundary walls are 2 m wide.

The plan of the temple may be described as follows:

R.1 could be a hypostyle hall (no column bases), followed by two main halls preceding the sanctuary.

Sanctuary (R.4) with four lateral rooms (R.11-14), two on each side of the sanctuary Crypts inside the width of the back wall of the sanctuary, with access from the northern chapel (R.13). A second crypt inside the wall between the rooms R.5 and R.7 Phase II represents a modification process to the Ptolemy II temple, apparently carried out by the inhabitants over two sub-phases (designated Phase IIa and IIb by the team).

Phase IIa is defined by the construction of a limestone floor located directly against the outer faces of the temple’s external limestone boundaries. This floor is very visible in the northern, southern, eastern areas outside the temple.

Its limestone blocks are very smooth; some of them are rectangular, while the others are semi-square. Phase IIb is defined by a sequence of ten square red brick pillars that had been constructed on top of the limestone floor of phase IIa. The builders of these modifications thus constructed a very compact foundation of limestone blocks to carry the brick pillars. Six of them are located directly to the north of the temple, two abut the outer face of the eastern external limestone wall, and one abuts the outer face of the southern external limestone wall, while the final one has been exposed within the temple, located at the entrance that leads from Room 11 to Room 10. The westernmost pillar of the northern group stands about 1.2 m from the outer facade of the northern wall and abuts the eastern face of a possible main hypostyle hall. At the same time, we observed that the fourth pillar located to the west on the northern group seems to be located about 0.35 m from the external face of the northern wall.

We believe that the temple was in very good conditions and its walls still reached their full height at the time of the brick pillars’ construction. Our hypothesis depends on the architectural design of the easternmost pillar at the northern part of the site. It abuts the corner formed by the eastern and northern external walls of the temple.The pillar survives to a height of about 1.5 m, indicating that the walls at that time were at least as high. We assume 45

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The eastern wall with inscriptions. Photograph

by Mansour Boraik.

that the builders enlarged the temple, extending it in all directions when building these pillars, which seem to have carried the roof of what might have been their new church or basilica in later times.

The other phases are defined by partial abandonment and late red-brick buildings that we have not yet fully excavated. Their exact dimensions, especially their lengths, heights and stratigraphic relationships to one another, require further investigation. The last evidence of occupation are two rounded red-brick ovens built against the temple walls. Further investigations are planned this coming season.

ď ą Mansour Boraik is Undersecretary of State for Middle Egypt, Ministry of State for Antiquities. He would like to thank Nadia Ashour, Director General of Beni Suef, and the team directed by Dr Ahmed Galal, and archeologists Aml Farag el Shaikh, Shimaa Ibrahim, Amr Mamdouh, Melad Nagiub, as well as Rabee Akl, Rabee Eissa, Ahmed Sayed, Ahmed Gabr, Mohamed Ibrahim who joined the team for a field-school. Thanks also to Mohamed Abd-Elbast for surveying the excavations 46

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Bookshelf

Koenraad Donker van Heel, Mrs. Tsenhor: A Female Entrepreneur in Ancient Egypt. AUC Press, 2014 (ISBN 978 977 416 634 1). Price: £ 25.00.

Ok, disclaimer first: the author of this book is a friend, and I loved his previous work, Djekhy & Son: Doing Business in Ancient Egypt. EES members who heard Dr Donker van Heel speak at the study day on the Late Period in December 2013 will know that he is a specialist in the Demotic and Abnormal Hieratic scripts (the second of which he says ‘borders on cryptography, something that might have been designed in a dream by Salvador Dali on LSD, 2,500 years ago’), and has a great gift for making the very complex material he works on accessible to nonspecialists. Furthermore, he generally manages to make his audience laugh while doing so.

This book confirms these talents, and is highly recommended.

It focuses on Tsenhor, a lady born around 550 bce in Thebes. Incredibly, for someone of relatively ordinary status, her name crops up in numerous documents now scattered across a series of museum collections in Europe which, collectively, constitute an archive of papyri that provide us with an insight into her work, commercial and legal dealings, relationships and family. We know that she worked as a choachyte – someone employed to bring funerary offerings to the tombs of those buried in the necropolis across the river from Thebes. She was wealthy enough to acquire a slave and a plot of land, to add to further land owned by the family. The documents name her parents, (half-)siblings, and children, and also reveal that she married twice. As the author himself says: ‘…what we have here is an unprecedented and privileged peek into the life of an ancient Egyptian next door that will never make it into the official history books.’

We learn of the potentially lucrative business of being a choachyte (as the author notes,

‘The supply obviously never stopped.’), the question of whether they kept mummies at home(?!), of the changes brought about by the transition from Saite to Persian rule under Cambyses (‘Mad King or Just a Bad Hair Day’), and, fascinatingly for those of us who know it, something of the landscape in which Tsenhor worked. Death, it seems, was big business by the Twenty-Sixth Dynasty: tombs were repeatedly re-used for the burial of new mummies, and what one might imagine to have been a tranquil space may in fact have been bustling with life. Donker van Heel speculates that Tsenhor may have worked in and around the tombs of the Asasif, including that of the Chief Steward of the God’s Wife of Amun, Pabasa (TT 279), which many readers will have visited. One of the documents, now kept in the Louvre (P.Louvre E 10935), tells us that Tsenhor was given some land as a mortuary foundation by her son, Nesmin, and provides the entire purchase history of the land, including that Pabasa himself had been one of the previous owners.

Information like this sheds light on the lives of these individuals in a way that Pabasa’s tomb and others like it, beautiful though they are, simply do not. Indeed, what is most striking about the texts, but also the skill of the author in drawing out their significance for the reader, is not how different things were for ordinary people living so far away in time and space from most of us reading this magazine, but how similar. The texts deal with births, deaths, marriage, adultery, divorce, inheritance and so on: aspects of human life which in essence have not changed all that much over the last few millennia. I’d be very surprised if anyone reading this book did not feel closer to Mrs Tsenhor by the end of it, and by extension to people in ancient Egypt.

I have always felt that the aim of Egyptology should be to help us to understand what it was like in that part of the world in the past, and this book delivers as good a job in doing this as any I have had the pleasure to read.

CHRIS NAUNTON

In 1977, Manfred Bietak rectified Wilkinson’s 1960 dictum of Egypt being a ‘civilization without cities’ by synthesising a wealth of environmental, historical and archaeological data. Over the following decades, settlement excavations and surveys have added to our knowledge of the organisation of communities, the material conditions of life, and regional settlement patterns. Much of the discussion, however, sits on the bookshelf of Egyptology libraries. Stephen Snape’s The Complete Cities is the first concise summary presenting Egyptian settlement archaeology to a wider audience.

It is a commonly held opinion that settlements are visually less rewarding than temple walls, tomb decoration and the fine arts. Snape’s lavishly illustrated book speaks to the contrary. One can read it almost by the illustrations and captions only and still get a sense of the author’s major ideas. The photos of the landscapes in which cities and their modern ruins are embedded are particularly welcome as a counterbalance to the sober maps of settlements, many of which were published fifty or hundred years ago and have been reprinted ever since.

Part I introduces the reader to questions of urbanism and population estimations, a good basis for understanding Egyptian cities. The typology of cities (Part II) would have profited from inclusion of one of the organically grown towns mentioned in the previous chapter and presented in the gazetteer, to avoid the overemphasis on programmatic town planning that tends to dominate older discussions of Egyptian urbanism. Snape understands the book not simply as a review of extant settlement remains, but also as a lens for exploring people in cities (Part III).

There is a slight risk here of suggesting that settlement archaeology is equal to what is often called ‘daily life’ (not Snape’s words) as if temple cult and death were not part of the daily experience in a town. The final part of this chapter ‘Death in the City’ misses this point and rather presents tombs as houses and cemeteries as cities of the dead. Part IV covers Graeco-Roman Egypt outlining what emerges from Greek sources as the ideal city.

This chapter would have been an excellent opportunity to explain different types of urbanism and culturally bound templates of a city, thus to set the Pharaonic evidence in a sharper comparative perspective.

The gazetteer of cities is well balanced between the Nile Valley and the Delta, the latter being the source of much recent archaeological discoveries. It is excellent to see a series of ‘lesser’ sites reviewed here that often fall under the radar of discussions. The rather lengthy chapter on Amarna could have been condensed to expand the few pages on settlements outside the heartland of Egypt, particularly in Nubia, the deserts and potentially in the Levant.

Steven Snape, The Complete Cities of Ancient Egypt. Thames & Hudson, 2014. ISBN 978 0 500 05179 5). Price: £ 24.95.

47

EGYPTIAN

The Complete Cities is informed by the author’s first-hand knowledge of sites and research literature. One might have wished that he had ventured further out beyond the description of the evidence and the discussions associated with it. That said, the book is a pleasant read for all those interested in the more mundane aspects of life in ancient Egypt.

The bibliography is short, but useful and up-to-date. There is currently no alternative single-authored overview of ancient Egyptian settlements written by a leading researcher in the field. Recommended.

RICHARD BUSSMANN

ARCHAEOLOGY

visual products and the primary ancient functions of sculpture are particularly valuable.

The author’s ability to provide genuinely new insights on the turgid topic of the display of Egyptian human remains, and especially the meaning of mummification, stands out. Yet Riggs’ sympathy for the ancient actors does not extend to her Egyptological forebears, and some sections are of a jarringly personal character.

With regard to Riggs’ objections to the ‘scientific’ investigation of mummies, it is difficult to visualise an alternative to the human curiosity that motivated the investigations, and which continues to produce presentations like the British Museum’s current (extended) ‘Ancient Lives’ exhibition.

Object biographies, as Riggs herself contends, do not end simply because things are placed in museums. The discussion, therefore, perhaps underplays the validity of new meanings given to museum objects, including mummies, in modern times.

Riggs is, undeniably, spot-on with many of her observations. She is deliberately provocative and hopefully this book – an affordable paperback that reach a wide audience – will not simply be dismissed as ‘trendy’ by the Establishment she critiques.

How those critiques inform future discussions and presentations of ancient Egypt remain to be seen, though it should please the author that the book – perhaps the single most important on the subject of ‘Egyptology’ as a discipline of the last ten years – is already on the set reading list of archaeology students at Manchester University.

CAMPBELL PRICE

Christina Riggs, Unwrapping Ancient Egypt.

Bloomsbury, 2014 (ISBN 978 0 857 85677 7). Price: £24.99.

Despite its innocuous title, much of this book makes discomfiting reading. Riggs combines an evaluation of the ancient practice of wrapping with textiles as part of the creation and maintenance of sanctity, together with critiques of modern constructions of ‘Ancient Egypt’. The author opens with evocative examples (for example, of ‘desecration’) from the Egyptian revolution of 2011, illustrating many of the ironies of our modern Western awareness of, and engagement with, Pharaonic antiquities. Discussion proceeds to address modern interpretation versus ancient intentions, ranging over a wide selection of topics but based on densely referenced evidence. Many established clichés within Egyptology, some of which have been previously considered elsewhere, are challenged, with critique of everyone with a professed interest in ancient Egypt from the Egypt Exploration Society (with its ‘Victorian conceit of Exploration’, p.59) to museum visitors, social media commentators and non-professional societies. This provocative framework provides a welcome opportunity to advance many observations on the original meaning and modern interpretation of ancient object categories. The exploration of the modern aesthetic appeal of (certain) Pharaonic

Introduction, the book under review attempts to provide a concise account of the Egyptian mythical world, from Chaos through to the triumph of Horus in Part One, the role of the gods and mankind’s engagement with the world of the divine in Part Two, and the journey from death to eternal life in Part Three.

Part One begins by pointing out the diverse threads of creation-myths that are now extant, but argues that the conventional stovepiping of them into mutually exclusive geographical norms obscures the underlying commonality of themes within them. It then goes on to discuss the main players in the act of creation and how they facilitated and played their roles in its achievement. The story is then carried through the ‘reigns’ of the gods who directed the affairs of the newly-minted world, successive chapters covering those of Re, Shu and Geb, Osiris, and Seth and Horus. As well as quoting and retelling narratives relating to these deities, these chapters also include box-features on other significant gods and goddesses, and are illustrated by a range of divine images, in two and three dimensions and various media. The box features, which are found throughout the book, also include wider topics, including an interesting one that points out the use made by the 15th-century ad Pope Alexander VI of ancient Egyptian divine motifs to create a family link between this Catholic Christian pontiff to the pagan deity Osiris!

Part Two first considers the nature and limitations of the gods, their roles in maintaining the world and how the land, the sky the sun and the moon fitted into the mythic structure – together with the Duat, a thing equally real to the Egyptians. It then looks at how humans dealt with ‘the invisible’ in their daily lives, through such things as personal addresses to the gods, festivals and oracles, household deities, birth and dreams.

Fittingly, Part Three deals with the mythology of death, a huge topic which is boiled down to essentials of passage through the Duat, with the Book of the Dead as the dead person’s principal guide, although noting the earlier guide provided by the Middle Kingdom Book of Two Ways. Its final chapter covers the last judgement and the afterlife that would be the lot of a justified akh, plus the magicians Setna and Meryre’s visits to the Duat while very much alive – and the apparently alien concept that a god might die. The book ends with an extensive list of further reading, beginning with overarching works, and continuing with those arranged by chapter.

Garry J. Shaw, The Egyptian Myths: A Guide to the Ancient Gods and Legends. Thames & Hudson, 2014 (ISBN 978 0 500 25198 0). Price: £12.95.

The myths of ancient Egypt are often difficult for the uninitiated to appreciate, their often apparently contradictory content contrasting with the broadly coherent relationships and narratives to be found in Classical mythology and the doctrines of monotheistic faiths. They also suffer from being often attested only by fragments and oblique references, making it thus difficult to produce complete narrative.

Against this background, fully set out in its 48

The tone of the book is informal throughout, but in particular Part Three, where the visit to the Duat is personalised, with the reader directly addressed as a participant, and whose final paragraph has a heading referencing an R.E.M. song! It provides an excellent introduction to the myths of ancient Egypt and is to be recommended to anyone who is trying to get their head around the subject.

AIDAN DODSON

The Egypt Exploration Society

Publications of the Egypt Exploration Society

Since its founding in 1882 the Egypt Exploration Society’s mission has been to explore ancient Egyptian sites and monuments, to create a lasting record of the remains, to generate enthusiasm for, and increase knowledge and understanding of, Egypt’s past and to raise awareness of the importance of protecting its heritage. Today the Society supports archaeological research projects throughout Egypt. We rely almost entirely on the support of our members and the wider public to fund our work and run an extensive programme of educational events in Egypt, the UK and beyond to convey the results to our audience.

So what does it mean to be an EES Member?

1. Protecting Egypt’s heritage Precious archaeological sites continue to be lost or damaged as the land becomes more and more valuable, environmental pressures increase, and looting continues. Unfortunately the rate of destruction is constantly increasing and our teams are working harder than ever to recover ancient material and information before it is lost entirely. By joining you will be helping to protect Egypt’s heritage for future generations to explore.

2. Keeping up-to-date with Egyptological research Through this magazine and The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology the Society publishes the latest information in Egyptology throughout the world. Full EES members receive two copies of Egyptian Archaeology a year. You can also add on JEA for a small additional fee, and take advantage of discounts on all our publications.

The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology One of the leading periodicals within the discipline of Egyptology, published by the Egypt Exploration Society. Volumes can be bought individually at a full price of £90 or by subsription as £25 (£31 overseas) add-on to an EES membership.

For further details, check out: http://ees.ac.uk/ publications/journal-egyptian-archaeology.html

3. Maintaining a permanent record of the past The Lucy Gura Archive contains documentation from over a century of exploration and excavation in Egypt making it one of the most important Egyptological archives worldwide and is regularly consulted by researchers. Donations from members are crucial to the preservation and survival of these irreplaceable records and to increasing access to them.

Geoffrey T. Martin: Tutankhamun’s Regent: Scenes and Texts from the Memphite Tomb of Horemheb

4. Access to a leading Egyptological library

(EES Excavation Memoir 111)

With over 20,000 publications the Ricardo Caminos Memorial Library is one of the leading Egyptological libraries in the UK. The library is open Monday-Friday 10:30-16:30, and members are welcome to use our research facilities and borrow up to three books at a time.

A revised edition of the 1989 landmark volume, The Memphite Tomb of Horemheb, Commander-inChief of Tutankhamun (EES Excavation Memoir 55), with changes made to take account of new finds and scholarly articles.

5. Meeting the experts Our events put you into direct contact with the world’s leading specialists as they present their current research. Members benefit from reduced ticket prices for these events and are regularly invited for free lectures given at our London Office.

Thank you Your support will make a very real difference to what we can achieve

Hardcover, ca. 430 pages, incl. 30 foldouts, numerous black/white images.

EES members’ price: £59.50 Full price: £70.-

For more information about the benefits of joining the Society and what your support will help us achieve please visit our website: www.ees.ac.uk, or speak to our team at the London office.

Address: The Egypt Exploration Society, 3 Doughty Mews, London, WC1N 2PG Phone: 0207 242 1880 Email: contact@ees.ac.uk

Visit our website today!

Don’t forget that you can also follow us on social media!

Twitter: @TheEES Facebook: The Egypt Exploration Society The Egypt Exploration Society is a Company limited by guarantee and registered in England No. 25816.

Registered charity No.212384

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EES publications can be purchased from: The Egypt Exploration Society 3 Doughty Mews, London WC1N 2PG, United Kingdom T: +44 (0)207 242 1880 E: maria.idowu@ees.ac.uk W: www.ees-shop.com

Special offer for members of the EES and Friends of Saqqara: Get Tutankhamun’s Regent for £35 when you buy before end of March 2016. www.ees-shop.com

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No. 47 Autumn 2015

Graeco-Roman Archives from the Fayum

EGYPTIAN ARCHAEOLOGY

By K. Vandorpe, W. CLarysse & H. VerretH the Fayum is a large depression in the western desert of egypt, receiving its water directly from the nile. In the early ptolemaic period the agricultural area expanded a great deal, new villages were founded and many Greeks settled here. When villages on the outskirts were abandoned about ad 300-400, houses and cemeteries remained intact for centuries. Here were found thousands of papyri, ostraca (potsherds) and hundreds of mummy portraits, which have made the area famous among classicists and art historians alike. Most papyri and ostraca are now scattered over collections all over the world. the sixth volume of Collectanea Hellenistica presents 145 reconstructed archives originating from this region, including private, professional, official and temple archives both in Greek and in native demotic.

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T he B ulletin of T he E gypt E xploration S ociety

2015 – Collectanea Hellenistica 6 496 p.

105 euro IsBn 978-90-429-3162-6

Engineering and Construction in Egypt’s Early Dynastic Period

O r i e n tA L i A L O vA n i e n s i A A n A L e c tA

A.s. LA LOggiA – engineering And cOnstructiOn in egyPt’s eArLy dynAstic PeriOd

OLA 239

By a.s. La LoGGIa

Engineering and Construction in Egypt’s Early Dynastic Period

by angela sophia la loggia

Peeters

Peeters

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2015 – orientalia Lovaniensia analecta 239 X-208 p.

85 euro IsBn 978-90-429-3181-7

SYLVIE CAUVILLE MOHAMMED IBRAHIM ALI

DENDA R A ITINÉRAIRE DU VISITEUR

Price £5.95

throughout history people have marvelled at the pyramids, from the elemental beauty of the step pyramid of djoser to the monumental scale and engineering achievement of the Great pyramid in Giza. the knowledge needed to build such grand monuments was vast, but not acquired overnight. the precursors to the pyramids, the massive mud brick tombs of the First and second dynasties, reveal a high degree of proficiency, ingenuity and capability by the architects, engineers and builders of that time. these mud brick structures, built almost five centuries before the Giza pyramids, reveal a structured and well organised society with well developed construction and management skills. In fact, the construction time and labour force requirements in these earlier structures were efficient and small in comparison to ventures in the proceeding dynasties. It is through these structures – and the development of the skills and diversity of industries required to sustain the building of them – that the foundation for the economic and social development of future generations and the dawn of large scale stone construction was laid.

Dendara Itinéraire du visiteur par s. CauVILLe & M. IBraHIM aLI Le site de dendara, avec ses temples et ses dépendences, est un des plus beaux et des mieux préservés de l’Égypte entière. L’Itinéraire en décrit tous les édifices en insistant particulièrement sur les plafonds étoilés à sujet astronomique, l’ensemble osirien – unique dans le pays – et des multiples rituels représentés, en hiéroglyphes et en images, sur les parois. Celles-ci viennent d’être restaurées par le service des antiquités de l’Égypte et les somptueuses couleurs du passé revivent; quelque trois cents photos rendent compte de cette splendeur retrouvée.

PEETERS

• • • •

2015 IV-327 p.

39 euro IsBn 978-90-429-3282-1

Peeters

Publishers and booksellers http://www.peeters-leuven.be Bondgenotenlaan 153 B-3000 Leuven peeters@peeters-leuven.be

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