EGYPTIAN
ARCHAEOLOGY
Natural light (left) and digitally enhanced (right) image of Anthes’ Graffito 14.
Digitally enhanced image: detail of lengthy unpublished red-paint hieroglyphic text of Neferkare Pepi II, giving the king’s name and the name of the Hatnub quarry.
In terms of content, the inscriptions in the quarry are varied. Some, as mentioned, include tableaux giving royal names and other royal insignia, as well as lists of participants in the expeditions. Quite a few texts give narrative details of the progress and accomplishment of the expeditions, including (for example) numbers of pieces of stone quarried. A few, much discussed, texts left in the name of the nomarchs apparently make allusion to unsettled political conditions in Egypt. Many of the texts also have a somewhat funerary commemorative flavour: they emphasise the good moral qualities of the senior expedition members (or sometimes those of the people who sent them out to the quarry). Rather as in a tomb inscription, these inscriptions address the reader directly, and appeal to them to ‘raise the hand’ (respectfully, in offering or invocation) to the person commemorated, in return for which a safe return home from the quarry will
be guaranteed. Many of these texts cluster very densely around one 7 m wide area of wall in the south-west of the quarry: one has the impression that the quarrymen are engaged in a dialogue over several generations with their forebears and successors, all coming to the quarry united by a common purpose, and all seeking to be remembered after their death. The funerary overtones are perhaps made even more explicit in this area of the wall by the addition of two carved eyes in the centre, reminiscent of the eyes found on coffins and false doors. Many of the Hatnub texts are executed in red pigment, applied directly to the minimally treated rock surface of the walls of the quarry. The fading of the red, and the patination and unevenness of the background rock, make reading these texts difficult. However, digital technology 11