EGYPTIAN
going ships. The 5th to 4th century bc layer also yielded Egyptian plaque figurines in terracotta and wood, large quantities of Attic black glaze and other imported pottery, notably amphorae, and locally made Egyptian as well as Greek-style pottery. This important sequence will fill a gap in our knowledge of the Persian Period and 28th -30th Dyn Naukratis. http://www.britishmuseum. org/research/research_ projects/all_current _ projects/naukratis_the_greeks_in_egypt.aspx
Saqqara: The Leiden Museum/Leiden Univ team, now together with its new partner, the Museo Egizio of Turin and directed by Maarten J. Raven and Christian Greco, continued the fieldwork in the NK necropolis at Saqqara. The substructure of the anonymous 18th-Dyn tomb excavated in 2013 (‘tomb X’, see EA 43) was emptied and proved to consist of a 7.9 m deep shaft and two burial chambers, connected by a stairway. The stairway and lower chamber had already been explored in 2002 via a robbers’ tunnel from the adjacent tomb of Meryneith. The shaft and upper chamber contained some loose relief fragments, bricks stamped with the name of Amenhotep II, and other finds, but did not provide information on the identity of the tomb-owner. Two shallow platform structures against the W wall of the courtyard of tomb X contained a great quantity of broken pottery, mainly red funnel-necked jars and blue-painted ovoid jars. E of the tomb, a Ramesside floor level of rubble and potsherds was exposed. Here, a large shaft was emptied, again containing some relief blocks among which was one inscribed for Meryneith. It gives access to at least three tombchambers, which could not be explored due to lack of time. The shaft probably dates to the 18th Dyn and may be connected to some mud-brick walls enclosing the rubble floor in the S and E. In the debris to the S a large limestone falcon figure was discovered, probably from a private cult chapel of a Ramesside tomb. The removal of an accumulation of sand and rubble against the N wall of tomb X produced an in situ four-sided stela of a stonecutter, Samut. The expedition also consolidated the walls of the tomb of Sethnakht further E, which was then backfilled for protection. www.saqqara.nl
ARCHAEOLOGY
Upper Egypt Deir el-Barsha: Excavations were undertaken by Harco Willems and his team from the Univ of Leuven in an area on the S fringe of the village. This area contains dozens of mud bricklined tomb shafts, some of which lead to burial chamber to the N or S, while in some others the bottom of the shaft itself serves as burial space. Most burials were untouched, with the deceased lying on their backs, and orientated S-N. The burials contained hardly any finds, but based on the limited amount of pottery probably date to the FIP. On top, and often inside the shafts, numerous burials probably dating to the 4th7th century ad were found. Geomorphological research was carried out in the floodplain with the aim to link the cemetery site to its settlement setting in the floodplain. A hitherto unknown main bed of the Nile was detected due E of alBayadiya, but on the whole the hypothesis of a general eastward migration of the Nile bed as first proposed by Butzer was not confirmed. www.dayralbarsha.com
Amarna: Between 18 Oct and 13 Nov 2014 Anna Hodgkinson led a small team opening the investigation of an area (M50.15–16) in the Main City where glass-working had been reported in 1922, thus adding to our knowledge of local industries. Immediately following, Anna Stevens ran a month of recording and study of categories of material from the South Tombs Cemetery as part of the final preparation for a major publication. Work resumed on 10 Jan, when a conservation team (led by Lucy Skinner) devoted a month to stabilising further the decorated coffin fragments from the cemetery. This was followed (from 7 Feb) by seven weeks of re-clearance and repairs at the Great Aten Temple (directed by Barry Kemp), which is leading to a re-evaluation of how the ground around the temple was utilised; and (beginning on 27 Mar) by six weeks of excavation (directed by Anna Stevens) at a new site: a cemetery of the Amarna Period located behind the North Tombs and the next step in a study of the human population of Amarna. The rich assemblage of recovered bones became the focus of a month’s study (until 15 Jun) by a bio-anthropology
team from the Univs of Arkansas ( Jerry Rose) and Southern Illinois (Gretchen Dabbs). www. amarnaproject.com
Karnak: The CFEETK (MSA/CNRS USR 3172) programmes of archaeological and epigraphic research and conservation continued at Karnak under the direction of Mohamed Abdel Aziz and Christophe Thiers. Excavations led by Guillaume Charloux to the E of the Ptah temple brought to light a favissa containing 38 statues and cultic objects; they were probably buried at the end of LP/ beginning of Ptolemaic Period according to the study of pottery led by Stéphanie Boulet and Juliette Laroye. During this study, different mud-brick remains were uncovered around the temple, improving the understanding of the building sequence in
Saqqara (above): limestone statue of a falcon. (Photo: Leiden/Turin Mission) Karnak (below): small statue found in the precinct of the Ptah temple. (Photo: CNRS-CFEETK / J. Maucour)
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