Dust, Demons and Pots: Studies in Honour of Colin A. Hope (Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta, 289) 9042941367, 9789042941366

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O R I E N TA L I A L OVA N I E N S I A A N A L E C TA Dust, Demons and Pots Studies in Honour of Colin A. Hope

edited by ASHTEN R. WARFE, JAMES C.R. GILL, CALEB R. HAMILTON, AMY J. PETTMAN and DAVID A. STEWART

P E E T ERS

DUST, DEMONS AND POTS

Gillian Bowen, Colin Hope, Lesley Mills and Anthony Mills Dakhleh Oasis Project dighouse, Ain al-Gindi, Dakhleh Oasis, February 2017 (photograph © Carlo Rindi Nuzzolo).

ORIENTALIA LOVANIENSIA ANALECTA ————— 289 —————

DUST, DEMONS AND POTS Studies in Honour of Colin A. Hope

edited by

ASHTEN R. WARFE, JAMES C.R. GILL, CALEB R. HAMILTON, AMY J. PETTMAN and DAVID A. STEWART

PEETERS LEUVEN – PARIS – BRISTOL, CT 2020

A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. All rights reserved, including the rights to translate or to reproduce this book or parts thereof in any form. © 2020, Peeters Publishers, Bondgenotenlaan 153, B-3000 Leuven/Louvain (Belgium) ISBN 978-90-429-4136-6 eISBN 978-90-429-4137-3 D/2020/0602/64

TABLE OF CONTENTS

EDITORIAL PREFACE

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Anthony J. MILLS Dr Colin A. Hope: a personal reflection .

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Gillian E. BOWEN Introduction . .

Harry SMITH A brief tribute .

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BIBLIOGRAPHY OF COLIN A. HOPE .

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LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS .

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David A. ASTON Pottery of the Egyptian New Kingdom: a study. Eighteenth Dynasty Nile clay storage jars from the Valley of the Kings . . . . . . . . .

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Elizabeth BETTLES Pink in the Kellis mammisi and Kalabsha Temple: solar theology and divine gender in Roman period cultic monuments . . . . . . . .

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Jessie BIRKETT-REES Landscape modification in the South Caucasus highlands: the accuracy of remote feature identification . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Laurence BLONDAUX Conserving wall paintings in archaeological fields: a case study from Kellis, Dakhleh Oasis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Elizabeth BLOXAM Who were the quarry workers? Investigating the origins of stone crafting in Egypt’s Eastern Desert . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Malcolm CHOAT Earliest Christianity in the Great Oasis .

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Andrew CONNOR Two papyri from the Beinecke Library .

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89

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Jessica COX Changing aesthetics: Petrie’s Decorated Ware in the Naqada II and III periods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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John Coleman DARNELL and Colleen Manassa DARNELL, with a contribution by Alberto URCIA A settlement and its satellites in the desert hinterland of Moalla – new light on ‘enigmatic’ Late Roman sites in the Eastern Desert . . . . 113 Delphine DIXNEUF Sourcing the commodity supplies to Pelusium between the mid-fourth century and early fifth century . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149 Françoise DUNAND and Roger LICHTENBERG Embalmers’ workshops in Kharga Oasis . .

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Linda EVANS The Good Shepherd’s flock: insights from ancient Egyptian art .

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Frank FÖRSTER The king and the ‘murderer’: two sherd stories from the Abu Ballas Trail 191 James C.R. GILL A Bes-vessel from Bahariya Oasis, Egypt .

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Robyn GILLAM Towards a phenomenology of Middle Egyptian landscapes .

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Caleb R. HAMILTON An early Egyptian king in the Western Desert margin .

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Frederick E. HARDTKE The long reach of the Nile Valley – the Egyptianisation of Siwa and the western outer oases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241 Irmgard HEIN Painted pots from pharaoh’s palace .

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Jennifer HELLUM The questions of the maidservant and the concubine: re-examining Egyptian female lexicology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269 Stan HENDRICKX, Renée FRIEDMAN, Xavier DROUX and Merel EYCKERMAN Size mattered in Predynastic Egypt: a very large Decorated vessel in the British Museum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279 Caroline HUBSCHMANN The curation of ancient Egypt in the twenty-first century: how should the present engage with the past? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305

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Salima IKRAM, Gaëlle TALLET and Nicholas WARNER A mineral for all seasons: alum in the Great Oasis .

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Andrew JAMIESON The Egyptian branch of the Classical Association of Victoria and the development of Egyptology in Melbourne . . . . . . . . . . 335 Naguib KANAWATI Rise and fall of the Twelfth Dynasty noble family of El-Qusiya .

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Olaf E. KAPER The god Seth in Dakhleh Oasis before the New Kingdom .

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Barry KEMP Predynastic sherds from Malkata, Western Thebes

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Maxine R. KLEINDIENST, Charles S. CHURCHER, Mary M.A. MCDONALD and Ashten R. WARFE Holocene evidence and a copper axe head from prehistoric Locality MD-022, Kharga Oasis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 401 Christian KNOBLAUCH Between Egypt and Kerma: a strange Tulip-Beaker from Mirgissa .

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Paul N. KUCERA An oasis border in the fourth century CE: the evidence from Dakhleh . 425 Rudolph KUPER The ‘Ahmed Fakhry Desert Center Dakhla’: chronology of a lost hope . 437 Anthony LEAHY A Twenty-sixth Dynasty high priest of Seth at Mut al-Kharab (?)

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Nicolle LEARY and Alexandra WOODS Figural proportions for active figures: a case study. Drafting the fowling scene in the tomb of Khnumhotep II at Beni Hassan . . . . . . . 459 Fred LEEMHUIS The letters of Ḥasan ‛Abd Allāh Aḥmad to his mother Ḥalīma ‛Uthmān and others. Glimpses into the life of a divorced woman in the Qurashī family of Qaṣr Dakhleh in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries 469 Rosanne LIVINGSTONE Traditional Egyptian and Ptolemaic techniques used in the manufacture of Roman period tunics: as evidenced on an example from Kellis . . 481 Sylvie MARCHAND A funny Bes vase! Early fourth century BCE, Ayn Manâwir, Kharga Oasis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 493

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Lisa MAWDSLEY Burying the dead with textiles at the Naqada III cemetery of Tarkhan . 503 Mary M.A. MCDONALD The Egyptian Western Desert and the Nile Valley in the fifth millennium BCE: Baris B and the Tasian . . . . . . . . . . . . 515 Robert S. MERRILLEES An unwonted exchange: Egyptian antiquities from Beni Hasan and Esna (?) in the Cyprus Museum, Nicosia . . . . . . . . . . 529 Karol MYŚLIWIEC Was there a sanctuary of Osiris in the ex-quarry west of the Djoser funerary complex? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 545 Boyo OCKINGA and Susanne BINDER The stela of the Overseer of Potters Aku in the Museum of Ancient Cultures, Macquarie University . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 557 Laure PANTALACCI A rare funerary practice from the late Old Kingdom in Balat .

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Amy J. PETTMAN Evidence for production of double bread moulds in Dakhleh Oasis during the Old Kingdom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 587 Sarah M. RICKETTS The Sheikh Muftah cultural unit: insights into social relations with Old Kingdom Egyptians, Dakhleh Oasis and desert surrounds . . . . . 599 Heiko RIEMER Taking the long road: starting investigations on the Darb el-Tawil .

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Carlo RINDI NUZZOLO Broken faces: investigating evidence of regionalism in mummy mask fragments from the Kellis 1 cemetery . . . . . . . . . . . 635 Séamus SCORGIE Analysis of Second Intermediate Period ceramic material from Dakhleh Oasis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 645 Anthony SPALINGER Wrinkles in time . .

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Jeffrey SPENCER and Patricia SPENCER Sherborne School’s Egyptian collection .

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Anna STEVENS, with contributions by Pamela J. ROSE Death and burial at the Amarna Workmen’s Village: a community cemetery in context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 681 Pierre TALLET Glimpses on the early cult of Seth in Dakhleh Oasis .

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Günter VITTMANN Wine for the gods of Dakhleh (Ostracon Mut 38/70) .

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Ashten R. WARFE Why decorate a pot? Insights on social practice from mid-Holocene Dakhleh . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 739 Helen WHITEHOUSE The sun in the sign of Leo? A Nilotic scene from a funerary complex at Ostia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 755 Rachel YUEN-COLLINGRIDGE The physicality of genre in the papyri: the expression and subordination of content . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 765

EDITORIAL PREFACE

As the reader of this volume will quickly surmise, it remains a difficult task to measure the full impact that Colin Hope has had on the discipline of Egyptian archaeology. Although recognised foremost for holding a specialisation in the ceramics of all periods, along with illuminating the ancient presence in the Western Desert, and developing Egyptian archaeology in Australia as a field of dedicated research and public appeal, Colin’s contributions extend well beyond these areas. In conceiving this modest tribute to honour Colin’s career it was felt that a volume on Egyptian art, language, archaeology and interconnections with neighbouring regions would serve to encompass the full breadth of his interests. With this in mind, we approached colleagues and former and current students to set the volume in motion. The response was overwhelming, far greater than expected, which bears testimony to Colin’s standing amongst those who know him well. We would like to thank the individual authors for contributing papers to the volume, for entrusting us with publishing their research, and especially for their patience in the editing schedule. We hope the end result makes up for the longer than anticipated process in bringing the volume to publication. We offer special thanks to Gillian Bowen for advising on editorial matters and to Bert Verrept at Peeters Publishers for assistance in shaping the volume to the specifications of the Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta series. Our special thanks also to Carlo Rindi Nuzzolo for the front and back page photographs, and to Salima Ikram for providing the inspiration behind the volume title, which speaks fittingly to Colin’s research areas. Most importantly, Colin, we thank you – for your teaching and supervision, and for your support over the years. In reflecting on our individual paths in Egyptian archaeology, each of the editors acknowledges a debt of gratitude to your guidance and the opportunities you’ve afforded towards our professional growth. We hope this volume goes some way in conveying our appreciation and we trust that you will enjoy reading each of the papers contained within. The Editorial Team, Ashten Warfe James Gill Caleb Hamilton Amy Pettman David Stewart

A BRIEF TRIBUTE

Harry SMITH University College London, London

Colin Hope has made important contributions to Egyptology and Near Eastern Studies in Australia in three major ways. Firstly, he has throughout his career been a leading figure in the international group of scholars who have transformed the study of ancient Egyptian ceramics into a vibrant modern scientific discipline, with wide-ranging effects not only for the archaeological chronology of Egypt, but for the ancient cultures of the Near East, Eastern Mediterranean and North African littoral as well. Secondly, his surveys and excavations in the southern oases of the Sahara, both in collaboration with Canadian-led teams and independently, have yielded new and very significant evidence for the understanding of the development and interconnections of that area during imperial Roman rule. Thirdly, I believe that Colin’s curatorial work at Museum Victoria and his extra-mural courses at Monash did much to raise serious public interest in ancient Egyptian and Near Eastern history in Melbourne and Victoria, and his subsequent teaching and administrative work has helped vitally to give Monash University its present international reputation as a centre for these studies. I feel sure that I speak not only for his former fellow students and friends at Liverpool University and University College London in congratulating him upon his fine career, and wishing him a happy and hopefully a fruitful retirement.

DR COLIN A. HOPE: A PERSONAL REFLECTION

Anthony J. MILLS Dakhleh Oasis Project, Cornwall

I have been asked to write about the participation of Dr Colin A. Hope with the Dakhleh Oasis Project. This is a real pleasure for me and I only hope that I can do justice to the man who has been my colleague since 1977. In 1977 we successfully obtained the concession of the entire Dakhleh Oasis apart from places already under excavation by the Institut français d’archéologie orientale au Caire, namely the Old Kingdom sites ‘Ayn Aseel and Kila ed Debba. Our remit eventually became to understand the cultural evolution and the accompanying environmental evolution in the Dakhleh Oasis since man first appeared there – about 500,000 years ago. I began to assemble a team. When I spoke to Dr Dorothea Arnold, who had already worked in the oasis, she suggested that ‘young Colin Hope’ could be a good person to approach to record such ceramics as we found in the oasis. In Cairo, almost the first person I ran into in the Garden City House Hotel, was that same young Colin Hope. During a conversation in the hotel lift I asked him if he would be interested in joining a team in the Dakhleh Oasis, to which he replied, ‘Yes’. That was in 1977. He has been active with the project ever since. Colin, from the north of England, was a PhD student at University College London. He was with us in the field during our first season. The team was minimal that first season. Logistics were somewhat experimental, to say the least. Local people had no idea of what we were doing there or what we wanted, and our accommodation and resources had to be tricked out of the area as best we could. We began in September, 1978. The weather was extremely hot in western Dakhleh Oasis at that time of year and sleep was difficult; food was difficult – our local labourers brought eggs each day to eat for their breakfasts, we could not buy an egg anywhere! And almost the only vegetable available was the aubergine. We were so far from Cairo that organising a supply line was not really convenient. However, the fieldwork began. While we haggled with local government officials and potential landlords, Colin, undeterred by the vagaries of my organisational difficulties, spent his time looking at the ground and picking up potsherds around Mut, the central town and oasis capital and our initial camping place. Finally established by early October in the house of Sheikh Sabr Ahmed elMaohoub, in the village of Maohoub, we began a walking survey of the oasis

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land surface from its western approaches. We soon realised that there were potsherds scattered everywhere, both over the brown, barren areas and also throughout the verdant green cultivation. In many places there were also remains and traces of mudbricks, or scatters of flints, and it became obvious that there had been considerable habitation and occupation across the area, much more than the half dozen or so sites reported by Winlock (1936) after his visit from Kharga Oasis in 1906 – in fairness, Winlock only recorded above ground remains. Our survey took the form of the members of the team walking across the ground in extended order, searching for all traces of ancient activity, looking for both natural and man-made aspects of the area, recording and photographing whatever was thought to be important or interesting. Small tests were excavated to signal the content at each site. Through all of this, Colin was instrumental in developing strategy, amassing sample collections, identifying, judging and recording archaeological remains, and contributing to discussions. He also betrayed his doggedness on one windy day in the vicinity of Deir el Hagar, where he spent the day excavating a pit full of ash. Standing almost up to his neck in the pit with the wind swirling all around, Colin worked away until it was stopping time, then emerged looking like coal miner. Result? More sherd material as samples, perfect notes and a pit empty of ash. The whole oasis is centred on 25°30'N and 29°07'E at the town of Mut, and occupies an area of about 2000 km², a large area to investigate but one which would give us a good sample of the activities and development in the Eastern Sahara. Our survey of the whole oasis occupied five full seasons and concluded at the eastern entrance to Dakhleh, on the road from Kharga Oasis. It resulted in our indexing some 450 locations that display some trace of past human activity. Colin’s energy and knowledge were instrumental in our ability to separate the various historical periods, largely on the basis of the ceramics from each site. The only serious error was that all of us mistook many Ptolemaic sherds for Roman, but this was subsequently corrected by one of Colin’s students, Dr James Gill (2016). By the end of the survey, Colin had evolved systematic pottery recording, both from a technological viewpoint and from dating criteria. Throughout these survey seasons, Colin was assiduous in publishing reports on every season’s activity and particularly on the ceramics being collected by every surveyor, a massive undertaking as he had approached the typology by trying to assign examples based on internal criteria. It was felt that to use known, dated ceramics from the Nile Valley might lead one astray as that was at a considerable distance and a somewhat different environment and there could be various reasons, for example, raw materials supplies, local needs, stylistic variations and different production techniques, for a differing output from all the various local potters. In addition to the Pharaonic and Roman Egyptian ceramics, there were also prehistoric collections and in fact those of all periods of human habitation down to the present day.

DR COLIN A. HOPE: A PERSONAL REFLECTION

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By the final season of this archaeological survey, our team had grown considerably, with natural scientists, archaeologists and anthropologists joining the group to add their various skills and experience. We had indexed locations from all periods and types and became ready to investigate in greater depth the environmental and cultural history of the oasis. Colin has played a major part in this subsequent investigation. Initially, he began to investigate the Roman settlement site known as Ismant el-Kharab (‘ruined Smint’). As we were established in the eastern village of Ezbet Bashendi, it was convenient to begin with a site east of Mut. The survey had already established the considerable extent of the site as well as its date and Colin felt it would repay further exploration. Colin excavated in a group of three houses at Ismant and soon exposed some very important materials. These included texts and documents pertaining to the settlement at Kellis (the ancient name of the site) and revealed domestic, economic, and religious matters. In particular there were bound wooden books, one of which bore four consecutive years of accounts kept for an absentee landlord and which lists crops and commodities and gives an excellent insight into the farming and productivity of the oasis at the time (Bagnall 1997). Amongst the hundreds of ostraca and other documents on the floor of House 3, he found an archive containing a quarter of all the known texts of the gnostic cult originated by Mani as well as letters to relatives in the Nile Valley. Some asked for blankets complaining of the cold. Colin also gave his attention to the temple dedicated to Tutu, or Tithoes, a sphinx-like deity, at Ismant. The sandstone temple was largely ruined, but was surrounded by a series of mudbrick buildings. One of these, he discovered, is the mammisi of the Tutu temple complex, a shrine with painted decoration in two completely different styles – Pharaonic religious scenes and classical decorative areas. This temple is the only recorded temple in Egypt dedicated to the god Tutu, although he is known from several other sources in Pharaonic Egypt. Other parts of the Kellis site have also proven to be of immense interest. There are three churches which prove to be some of the earliest churches in Egypt. There are houses dating to the second century, with painted wall decoration of a non-figurative style; there is also a second temple or shrine dedicated to Nephthys, the mother of Tutu; there are workshop areas for industrial production. But Mut el Kharab (‘ruined Mut’) is Colin’s biggest site. This site is all that remains of the habitation area of the oasis long-term capital. Here is the main enclosure of the temple of Seth, the main deity of the Dakhleh Oasis. The entire settlement area has been subsumed under the present town streets and buildings. Somehow, the temple enclosure – the largest in the oasis – has not suffered the same overbuilding problem, but has endured depredations for building materials, principally of the stone of the temple structure. Careful excavation is slowly exposing the foundations and sub-foundation parts of the temple structure. From

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these scanty remains Colin is managing to reconstruct the history of the settlement of Mut from Old Kingdom times down to the Christian era through his accumulated knowledge of the archaeology of the oasis and of the history of the Nile Valley and Pharaonic civilisation. So, besides confirming much of what we had surmised, there is also a body of new knowledge being added to the archaeological and textual data about the oasis cultures and civilisation. Colin has brought to his excavations many, different people. Colleagues with expertise in one or another of the aspects of his sites, taken from the international community of scholars – Dutch, French, Australian, Austrian, to name but a few – all bring their specialist knowledge to the interpretation of Colin’s discoveries. And, most importantly, he also involves his students in the finding, recording, interpretation and publishing of his results. Under Colin’s supervision at Monash University several higher degrees have already been compiled, written, completed and are being published. Colin’s enthusiasm, scholarship, and his gift for conveying information and ideas, attracts many students, and his department at Monash has become a leader. Colin is a very good camper. He is always available for everything from a short conversation to an all night do with the Rolling Stones or Wagner – with a drink or two, or more! Over the years, we have had many a fun evening, enjoying whatever entertainment was to hand – a local band, when we all get up and dance and clap; or something a little more westernised. The ‘morning after’ may occasionally be a little slow, but Colin never fails to appear. Personally, I value Colin’s participation in the Dakhleh Oasis Project for his organisation, his light approach and his firm touch. He is hard-working and expects the same of others, he is independent but loyal and a good participant in a larger team. He is personable and knowledgeable, and has attracted many colleagues and friends internationally. He is always willing to help with a problem and will spend considerable time and energy to see a proper solution. His patience and thoroughness mean he is never slapdash. I hope he will be able to spend even more of his time with the Project now that he is retiring from teaching, but perhaps he will also take more rest. I have been very lucky to have had Colin Hope as a right hand. Bibliography BAGNALL, R.S. (ed.) 1997. The Kellis Agricultural Account Book, Oxbow Books, Oxford. GILL, J.C.R. 2016. Dakhleh Oasis and the Western Desert of Egypt Under the Ptolemies, Oxbow Books, Oxford. WINLOCK, H.E. 1936. Ed Dakhleh Oasis, Journal of a Camel Trip Made in 1908, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

INTRODUCTION

Gillian E. BOWEN Monash University, Melbourne

This work celebrates the contribution that Colin Appleby Hope has made to Egyptology in both research and education. To be invited to write the introduction to a close friend and colleague’s Festschrift is both an honour and a responsibility, if not a somewhat daunting commission. I am aware that the information included is both selective and presented from the perspective of an observer; it includes fact, anecdotes, which are remembered differently by different people, and personal assessments. I trust that it is a balanced biography. The Liverpool years Colin was born in Chester-le-Street, County Durham, England, the youngest in a family of five children. His fascination with the ancient world was evident from an early age. At the age of five, he received a prize for a school project and bought a book on ancient Egypt; his interest in this area continued and, while still at school, he taught himself to read Egyptian language using Gardiner’s Egyptian Grammar. His interests also included religion and philosophy and in 1969 he applied to Liverpool University to study Egyptology and philosophy. As the intake for Egyptology at Liverpool was restricted to a small number of students per year, a rigorous interview was conducted by H.W. Fairman, the Brunner Professor of Egyptology, who asked Colin why he would possibly want to study philosophy; the point was taken and any further thought of including philosophy was abandoned. Although Latin was a prerequisite for entry, Fairman waived this requirement and Colin enrolled in a full four-year degree in Egyptology; he graduated with Honours in 1973. During his time at Liverpool, Colin was fortunate enough to be taught by three eminent scholars: Herbert W. Fairman, Kenneth A. Kitchen and Colin C. Walters. Colin found Fairman inspirational but also a taskmaster who tried to direct his students’ Egyptological interests. They were permitted to take a single elective in first year (Colin chose T.G.E. Powell’s European Prehistory) and thereafter he was required to put his nose to the grindstone and restrict his studies to Egyptology, which focused particularly on language, including four years of Coptic. Any thought of expanding his horizon formally was not encouraged. Colin circum-

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vented the system by taking informal classes with Powell in the Prehistory of Britain and Ireland and introductory Akkadian. Colin’s fellow student at Liverpool was Stuart Munro-Hay. The two hit it off immediately and in 1971 set off for Egypt, Colin’s first visit; a study tour funded by Liverpool University followed in 1972. To supplement the government scholarship the two undertook part-time work in antique shops as well as bartenders in one of the Liverpool’s Chinatown pubs, which Colin describes as more of a brothel. Colin has many lively tales of his time at the ‘brothel’, none of which can be recounted here, but as he says, it was a real eye-opener for the young lad from Chester-le-Street. I don’t think he mentioned this line of work to Professor Fairman and it does not appear in his curriculum vitae. Near Eastern archaeology In spite of Fairman’s attempts to control the extracurricular activities of his students, Colin was able to foster his love of archaeology. A fortuitous opportunity came when Stuart Munro-Hay declined Crystal Bennett’s offer to work with her at the Iron Age site of Buseirah, the southern capital of the Edomites, in Jordan. Marion Oakeshot, a friend of Stuart’s and a site supervisor on Bennett’s excavations, suggested Colin for the position; he happily accepted and worked there, also as site supervisor, from 1971–73. Colin found this far more rewarding than his previous excavation experience on an Iron Age barrow in Yorkshire that yielded nothing but mud. The experience at Buseirah provided invaluable training for the budding archaeologist who was introduced to the delights of stratigraphic excavation by one of the more formidable female archaeologists of the day: Crystal Bennett, the founder of the British Institute at Amman for Archaeology and History, who was then director of the British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem; she was trained by Dame Kathleen Kenyon. Colin tells how Kenyon once arrived at the site by helicopter, complements of the Crown Prince of Jordan, wearing brogues and a tweed suit, in spite of temperatures in the mid-30 degrees; she demanded that excavators explain the stratigraphy of their trenches to her in detail. Kenyon took a genuine interest in the trainee archaeologists but, needless-to-say, the arrival of the grande dame on site was a cause for alarm and many were left feeling somewhat intimidated by her presence and questions. In the evenings the gin flowed as Bennett and Kenyon sang ‘Lloyd George knew my Father’ to the piano accompaniment dutifully played by one of the Hon. Vronwy Hankey’s sons. The young members of the team, who were ‘encouraged’ to join in the sing-along, tried valiantly to escape the festivities but to no avail. On days off, the team had unimpeded access to the Jordanian sites and Colin has fond memories of his time spent with the local people, especially during his visits

INTRODUCTION

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to Petra where he was entertained in the caves by the Bedouin and was invited to a Bedouin wedding. Colin’s ability as an archaeologist was duly recognised and in 1973 he was invited to join Tom Holland’s rescue excavations at Tell el-Sweyhat in northern Syria. In 1975/76 he was asked by Beatrice De Cardi to work at the so-called Palace of the Queen of Sheba, in Ras al-Kheymi, Oman, and by Diana Kirkbride to work with her in Iraq. The London years As with any undergraduate, the question Colin faced on completion of the degree was: ‘what now?’ Two choices were immediately available: he could undertake a PhD at University College London or take the opportunity to work at Axum, the capital of the ancient Aksumite kingdom in northern Ethiopia, which was offered to both him and Stuart. Colin chose the former and in late 1973 embarked upon a PhD researching the blue-painted pottery of the Eighteenth Dynasty under the supervision of Geoffrey Martin. Colin’s experience in Near Eastern archaeology proved to be invaluable in several ways but, importantly, it provided an excellent grounding in ceramic studies, an area in which Egyptian archaeologists had lagged behind their colleagues working on Near Eastern sites. This determined the choice of topic for his PhD. Stuart headed for Axum and went on to become an Ethiopologist and an authority on Aksumite coinage. Colin has some regrets at not visiting Axum but certainly chose the right path as far as his career was concerned. In 1974 Barry Kemp, who was aware of Colin’s research, asked him to study and publish the pottery from Malqata. The Malqata project, with Barry Kemp and David O’Connor, was Colin’s first experience of working in Egypt and was not only invaluable but essential for his dissertation. He continued with the project until 1977. During this time Dorothea Arnold invited him to participate in meetings of the International Group for the Study of Ancient Egyptian Pottery, which included Janine Bourriau, Manfred Bietak, Helen JacquetGordon and Hans-Åke Nordström. Kent Weeks, Director of Chicago House in Luxor, also extended an invitation to Colin to study the ceramics at Hierakonpolis, another project he regrets not having undertaken. Other people to whom Colin owes a debt of gratitude for facilitating the research for his dissertation include his close friend, Barbara Adams, curator of the Petrie Museum, who gave him unlimited access to the collection, and his mentor, Harry Smith, Edwards Professor of Egyptian Archaeology at University College London. While at UCL Colin chose to further his study of the Near East and undertook the Archaeology of the Levant with Peter Parr and Ancient History with Margaret Drower.

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In 1976 Colin was the recipient of a G.A. Wainwright Research Fellowship in Near Eastern Archaeology at the University of Oxford. The application was supported by I.E.S. Edwards. Colin’s presentation to the panel of his proposal to study Egyptian ceramics found in the Near East must have been stimulating for in spite of the fact that one of the panel members fell asleep (name supressed but he was closely related to Agatha Christie), he was awarded the scholarship for five years; it was the first time this prestigious scholarship had been awarded in the field of Egyptology. The award coincided with an offer of a position of lecturer in Egyptian Archaeology at his alma mater, Liverpool University, a position he declined much to the surprise of many! In 1978 Colin’s expertise in Egyptian ceramics was such that he was invited by Beno Rothenberg, Director of the Institute of Archaeo-metallurgy at the University of Tel Aviv, to join the South Sinai Survey to identify Egyptian ceramics from Timna and other sites in the region. This, of course, also gave him an excellent introduction to the local ceramic repertoire. Colin modestly maintains that such offers ‘were a matter of being in the right place at the right time’, and this certainly applies to the circumstances surrounding him joining a project with which he has now been associated for 40 years. The Dakhleh Oasis Project (DOP) In 1977, following Colin’s final season at Malqata, fate awaited in the form of Tony Mills who was just embarking upon the Dakhleh Oasis survey, a project that aimed to study human adaptation to a semi-arid environment. Tony needed a ceramicist for the Dakhleh Oasis Project and Dorothea Arnold had recommended Colin. By coincidence, Tony, Ali el-Khouli and Colin happened to be in the same lift at Garden City House, Cairo, and el-Khouli, who knew Colin from his days in London, introduced him to Tony. Tony extended an invitation and Colin accepted; he joined the project in its first season, October to December 1978, as a co-investigator responsible for the study of ceramics of all periods as well as kiln sites. And so a long collaboration and an enduring friendship began. The ceramic assemblage from the oasis includes the mid-/late Holocene Bashendi and Sheikh Muftah cultural units and ranges from the Old Kingdom to Mamluk, and all periods in between. Colin was faced with the task of identifying the forms and the local wares to compile the corpus of types. In the early years of the project he occasionally wondered whether he should have thought twice before accepting Tony’s invitation; his expertise lay in New Kingdom ceramics and as much of the material he encountered was from later periods, there were inevitable misidentifications. Over time these have been rectified and Colin remains one of the foremost authorities on the ceramics of the Western Desert.

INTRODUCTION

Colin with the Qufti supervisors Reis Abdul Ghani Mahmoud (left) and Reis Ismayeen Khalal, Bashendi, Dakhleh Oasis, probably 1986.

Colin at Kellis, Dakhleh Oasis, 1993.

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The Australian years In 1979 Colin moved from London to Melbourne, Australia. In that same year he was given access to the Egyptian collection in the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) by the curator, Margaret Legge. He studied and catalogued the collection, which gave him an excellent training in objects and Museum Studies. He was similarly involved with the small Egyptian collection in the Melbourne Museum. Colin remains associated with both institutions and is currently an advisor to the NGV and a research associate with Museum Victoria. Colin’s archaeological expertise was recognised by the University of Melbourne which offered him a three-year post-doctoral position to work on early Christianity in Dakhleh; during his time there he undertook casual teaching in Near Eastern Studies. This was followed with the offer of a further post-doctoral fellowship, this time at Macquarie University, Sydney, where he worked on the ceramic assemblage from Naguib Kanawati’s excavations at el-Hawawish as well as the artefacts in the Ancient History Teaching Collection. In 1984, whilst at the University of Melbourne, Colin was the major consultant for an exhibition Tjeby: Life and Death in Ancient Egypt held at the Melbourne Museum and in 1988 his curatorial abilities were recognised by Robert Edwards, Director of Art Exhibitions Australia and later Director of Museum Victoria, who was instrumental in Colin being asked to curate an exhibition for the Australian Bicentenary: Gold of the Pharaohs, which toured most Australian capital cities between August 1988 and June 1989 and attracted more visitors than any previous exhibition in Australia. Later Edwards involved Colin in other major exhibitions: Ancient Makedonia, Civilization: Ancient Treasures from the British Museum, and Gold and Civilisation, the latter at the Australian National Museum. The success of Gold of the Pharaohs highlighted the enthusiasm the Australian public held for ancient Egypt, a fact that Colin was well aware of as his classes on ancient Egyptian history, culture, archaeology and language, offered since the early 1980s through the Council for Adult Education, filled almost as soon as they were announced. I met Colin in December 1988 when I joined a tour of Egypt that he had organised and conducted through the Council for Adult Education. I was about to commence a PhD at Monash University and approached Colin to see whether he would be prepared to supervise an appropriate topic; he agreed and so his initial association with Monash University began. I embarked on the study of early Christianity in Dakhleh Oasis and was the first of many to complete my PhD under his supervision. Colin was magnanimous enough not only to give me access to all the data from his excavations at Kellis but to entrust me with the excavation of the three churches on the site, two of which proved to be the earliest surviving Christian monuments known in Egypt. I benefitted enormously from his enthusiasm for the project, his constant encouragement and critical supervision.

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Colin (left) at the official visit of the Prime Minister of Australia The Hon. R.J.L. Hawke AC, MP, to Gold of the Pharaohs exhibition, Museum of Victoria, 22 March 1989 (courtesy R. Edwards, Director of Art Exhibitions Australia).

Egyptology was not taught at any Victorian university and as the undergraduate students were keen to have it included in the curriculum, I began a campaign to that end and undertook fundraising in an effort to bring it to fruition. I approached the relevant fund-raising bodies at Monash University for assistance but was told that they were busy raising money for a fountain in one of the courtyards and couldn’t help. Alan Henry, head of the then Department of Classical Studies at Monash, had been persuaded of the potential for the Department’s programme if Colin were to join the staff and with his support and that of academic staff members Peter Bicknell and Saul Bastomsky, and antiquities dealer Graham Geddes, we formed a committee with the aim of raising sufficient funds for a lectureship. In the interim, Colin was appointed on a sessional basis and offered a single unit that attracted in excess of 100 students. Our fundraising efforts fell far short of the required amount but fortuitously in 1991 Graham Morrison, Director of the Melbourne Museum, offered Colin a 0.5 position as curator of Mediterranean Antiquities; Monash University then established a 0.5 lectureship, which was later converted to a full-time tenured position. Colin, together with Peter Bicknell, then introduced the Archaeology of the Ancient Mediterranean into the Department’s curriculum.

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We were in the field when the Department was unexpectedly closed at the end of 1998 but on returning to Monash both Colin and I were welcomed into the newly established School of Historical Studies by the head, Barbara Caine, and her staff, and the Centre for Archaeology & Ancient History was created with Colin as Director, a role he continued to hold until his retirement in December 2017. In spite of initially having an academic staff of just two, with tutorial assistance, Colin was able to devise the curriculum in such a way that students could undertake a full degree in Archaeology and Ancient History, including Honours, with the focus on Egypt from the Predynastic to the Ptolemaic and Roman periods. Colin’s objective, however, was to place Egypt within a broader context and I undertook to offer units on Bronze Age and Classical Greece as well as Rome. Monash remains one of only two universities in Australia where a full programme in Egyptology is offered, the other being Macquarie. Over the years, with increased staff members, the offerings were expanded. The Centre, now renamed the Centre for Ancient Cultures, went from strength to strength and currently has four academic staff members who teach not only the archaeology, history and language of Egypt but also that of the Near East, Greece and Rome. During his time at Monash Colin has taught literally thousands of students, not only in Egyptian history but also that of the Near East and Nubia. Mindful of the need to equip students with the necessary skills to embark upon higher degrees, he gives freely of his time, over and above his allocated workload, assisting small groups to improve their Egyptian language skills. He is much sort after as a supervisor for higher degree research both nationally and internationally and for many years, his supervision load has well exceeded the university’s ceiling. Colin’s concessions in Egypt have given his students the opportunity to gain invaluable fieldwork experience and several have embarked upon careers in archaeology in Egypt and Australia. Current research Colin’s research focus since the mid-1980s has centred on Dakhleh Oasis. The DOP survey of historical sites continued until 1984 and the next phase was to study specific sites in detail in order to fulfil the aims of the project in terms of the historic period. Tony asked Colin to choose an appropriate site and to direct the excavations; there were three candidates that offered the necessary potential: Amhida, Mut al-Kharab and Ismant al-Kharab. After careful consideration, Colin chose the Roman period ruins at Ismant al-Kharab, ancient Kellis. His hope was to investigate a settlement site that offered a stratigraphic sequence covering the Ptolemaic and Roman periods. The architectural survey, conducted by James Knudstad, had revealed the presence of two temples and three churches, which indicated that the village spanned the transitional period

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Colin with Gillian Bowen overlooking the remains of the Temple of Tutu, Kellis, Dakhleh Oasis, 2005.

from the traditional religion to Christianity, while the numerous houses would afford the opportunity to study the domestic architecture and assemblages of various periods. The excellent state of preservation at Kellis, which was abandoned at the end of the fourth century CE, has yielded an unprecedented amount of information on a settlement site in the second to fourth centuries and is now recognised as one of the major type-sites for the period. Colin found the work at Kellis extremely rewarding but his first love is the Pharaonic period, especially the New Kingdom, and on occasions he has been heard to say that he was given a Roman period site for his sins. His sins were presumably forgiven when in 2000 he applied to the Supreme Council of Antiquities for a concession to excavate Mut al-Kharab in the present-day capital of the oasis and known to have once been the location of the temple of Seth ‘Lord of the Oasis’; the application was approved. Colin’s motivation for undertaking work at Mut alKharab was twofold: 1) the survey had revealed that the site had been occupied from at least the early Pharaonic period and should therefore provide a broad stratigraphic sequence of occupation; 2) the site was under threat as it was in use as the city’s garbage dump and housing was fast encroaching on the ruins. Excavations have justified Colin’s belief in the site’s potential and material from all major periods of Egyptian history dating from the Early Dynastic period through to Islamic times have been uncovered. The excavations at Mut al-Kharab have led Colin into a new area of research: the archaeology of cult practice and especially the so-called proscription of Seth. Colin is the recipient of three Australian Research Council Discovery Grants (one with Geoffrey Jenkins, one with Iain Gardner and the third with Gillian Bowen and Iain Gard-

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Colin in his workroom at Ain al-Gindi, Dakhleh Oasis, 2017.

ner), testimony to the importance of his research both at Ismant al-Kharab and Mut al-Kharab. Monash University has made significant financial contributions to the excavations and Roger Bagnall funded the work at Kellis for three years. Excavations at both sites are ongoing. In the 1990s, in spite of a heavy schedule, Colin found time to study the blue-painted pottery at Kom Rabia (Memphis) and Karnak North, at the request of Janine Bourriau and Helen Jacquet-Gordon respectively. His time spent with Helen and Jacques at Karnak can only be termed ‘magical’. The dig house was located partly on the walls of the temple. Walking in the eerie silence through the moonlit colonnades, long after the tourists had left, was indeed a surreal experience and more than compensated for listening to two or even three performances of Sound and Light each night in a variety of languages. Helen’s team members were thoroughly spoilt with an excellent cuisine and they were frequently driven to the Movenpick in the evenings to eat ice cream while listening to opera. Community service Community service plays an important role in Colin’s philosophy and he is singly responsible for bringing Egyptology to the general public in Victoria. Mindful of his time lecturing for the Council for Adult Education throughout the 1980s and the enthusiasm his courses generated, in 1990 he established the

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Egyptology Society of Victoria to promote the study of ancient Egypt. The society offers regular lectures and seminars for the general public presented by local and international Egyptologists. Numerous enthusiasts from his CAE courses were amongst its founding members and many continue to attend lectures, especially those presented by Colin himself. The Society has also raised considerable funds that have assisted with the purchase of library books, student scholarships and excavation in Egypt. A desire for excellence in teaching at all levels has prompted Colin to accept requests to offer lectures and seminars to school teachers, not only on Egypt but the ancient Near East; he has recently been involved in the curriculum context for the new Ancient History component of the Victoria Certificate of Education. At the request of Carol Henry of Arts Exhibitions Australia, he has arranged public seminars to complement major exhibitions including Gold of the Pharaohs, Civilization: Ancient Treasures from the British Museum and Suleiman the Magnificent. He has advised on the collection held by the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) in Hobart and has identified most of the Egyptian objects on display. Colin has close ties with the Egyptian community in Victoria, including the Coptic community and the Alexandrian Greeks, and makes himself available for public lectures at the request of these groups. He is frequently called upon by the media to comment on matters concerning the ancient world, be it Egypt, the Near East or Greece. The future Although ancient Egypt features prominently in Colin’s life, his interests are far reaching. They include music, ballet, contemporary dance, theatre and especially opera, travelling interstate for performances of Wagner and Philip Glass. Fine dining also plays an important role in his life and he has excellent culinary skills. Travel is on top of his list, especially within Southeast Asia. He is a regular visitor to Indonesia and has read widely on its history and culture; he has a fine collection of Indonesian ceramics and textiles. For a number of years he rented a house in Bandung, Java, where he would spend many happy weeks writing and on his retirement he purchased a villa in Bali. Colin is enjoying his retirement which gives him the opportunity to focus on his research. He will continue his fieldwork in Egypt, but retirement will also give him the freedom to indulge further his love of travel and a return to Myanmar, Japan, Morocco, Europe and, of course, England, are all on the horizon.

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Colin in Rome, 2016.

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2019 ‘A note on the Roman period sites in Dakhleh Oasis’, in G.E. BOWEN, C.A. HOPE and B.E. PARR (eds), The Oasis Papers 9: A Tribute to Anthony J. Mills after Forty Years of Research in Dakhleh Oasis, Oxbow Books, Oxford, 309–12. ‘Islamic sites in Dakhleh Oasis’, in G.E. BOWEN, C.A. HOPE and B.E. PARR (eds), The Oasis Papers 9: A Tribute to Anthony J. Mills after Forty Years of Research in Dakhleh Oasis, Oxbow Books, Oxford, 431–8. ‘The cemetery at ‘Ain Tirghi’, in G.E. BOWEN, C.A. HOPE and B.E. PARR (eds), The Oasis Papers 9: A Tribute to Anthony J. Mills after Forty Years of Research in Dakhleh Oasis, Oxbow Books, Oxford, 277–94. ‘The church at Dayr al-Malak in Dakhleh Oasis’, in G.E. BOWEN, C.A. HOPE and B.E. PARR (eds), The Oasis Papers 9: A Tribute to Anthony J. Mills after Forty Years of Research in Dakhleh Oasis, Oxbow Books, Oxford, 419–30 (with G.E. BOWEN). The Oasis Papers 9: A Tribute to Anthony J. Mills after Forty Years of Research in Dakhleh Oasis, Oxbow Books, Oxford (ed. with G.E. BOWEN and B.E. PARR). 2018 ‘A note on Islamic ceramics from Dakhleh Oasis’, BCE 28, 247–52. ‘Book review of Amheida II: A Late Romano-Egyptian House in the Dakhla Oasis. Amheida House B2, by Anna Lucille Boozer’, AJA 122, DOI: 10.3764/ ajaonline1221.hope. ‘The Egyptian annexation of Dakhleh Oasis: new evidence from Mut al-Kharab’, in K. KURASZKIEWICZ, E. KOPP and D. TAKÁCS (eds), ‘The Perfection that Endures ...’. Studies on Old Kingdom Art and Archaeology, Uniwersytet Warszawski, Warsaw, 191–207 (with A.J. PETTMAN and A. WARFE). 2017 ‘The proscription of Seth revisited’, in C. DI BIASE-DYSON and L. DONOVAN (eds), The Cultural Manisfestations of Religious Experience: Studies in Honour of Boyo Ockinga, Ugarit-Verlag, Münster, 273–83 (with A. WARFE). The Survey of Memphis X. Kom Rabia: The Blue-Painted Pottery, Egypt Exploration Society, London. 2016 ‘Reconstructing the image of Seth, Lord of the Oasis, in his temple at Mut alKharab in Dakhleh Oasis’, in R. LANDGRÁFOVÁ and J. MYRNÁROVÁ (eds), Rich in Years, Great in Victories, Czech Institute of Egyptology, Prague, 123–45.

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Housing and Habitat in the Ancient Mediterranean: Cultural and Environmental Responses, Peeters, Leuven (ed. with A.-A. DI CASTRO). ‘The Roman-period houses of Kellis in Egypt’s Dakhleh Oasis’, in A.-A. DI CASTRO and C.A. HOPE (eds), Housing and Habitat in the Ancient Mediterranean: Cultural and Environmental Responses, Peeters, Leuven, 199–229.

2014

‘The Kellis 1 cemetery: Roman period burial practices in Dakhleh Oasis’, in G. TALLET and C. ZIVIE-COCHE (eds), Le myrte & la rose: mélange offert à Françoise Dunand par ses amis, élève collègues, Université Paul Valéry, Montpellier, 325–48.

2012 ‘A history of Egyptology at Monash University, Melbourne’, in C.M. KNOBLAUCH and J.C. GILL (eds), Egyptology in Australia and New Zealand 2009: Proceedings of the Conference held in Melbourne, September 4th–6th, Archaeopress, Oxford, vi–vii. ‘Egyptian connections with Dakhleh Oasis in the Early Dynastic period to Dynasty IV: new data from Mut al-Kharab’, in R.S. BAGNALL, P. DAVOLI and C.A. HOPE (eds), The Oasis Papers 6: Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference of the Dakhleh Oasis Project, Oxbow Books, Oxford, 147–66; (with A.J. PETTMAN). The Oasis Papers 6: Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference of the Dakhleh Oasis Project, Oxbow Books, Oxford (ed. with R.S. BAGNALL and P. DAVOLI). 2011 ‘Egyptian interest in the oases of the New Kingdom and a new stela for Seth from Mut el-Kharab’, in M. COLLIER and S. SNAPE (eds), Ramesside Studies in Honour of K.A. Kitchen, Rutherford Press, Bolton, 219–36 (with O. KAPER). ‘Family papers from second-century A.D. Kellis’, CdE 86, 228–53 (with R.S. BAGNALL and K.A. WORP). ‘Possible mid-18th Dynasty examples of blue-painted pottery from the Egypt Exploration Society’s excavations at Memphis’, in D. ASTON, B. BADER, C. GALLORINI, P. NICHOLSON and S. BUCKINGHAM (eds), Under the Potter’s Tree: Studies on Ancient Egypt Presented to Janine Bourriau on the Occasion of her 70th Birthday, Peeters, Leuven, 495–512. 2010 ‘A governor of Dakhleh Oasis in the early Middle Kingdom’, in A. WOODS, A. MCFARLANE and S. BINDER (eds), Egyptian Culture and Society: Studies in Honour of Naguib Kanawati, Conseil Suprême des Antiquités de l’Égypte, Cairo, 219–45 (with O. KAPER). ‘Alum exploitation at Qasr el-Dakhleh in the Dakhleh Oasis’, in S. IKRAM and A. DODSON (eds), Beyond the Horizon: Studies in Egyptian Art, Archaeology and History in Honour of Barry J. Kemp, Conseil Suprême des Antiquités de l’Égypte, Cairo, 165–79 (with P.N. KUCERA and J.R. SMITH).

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‘Report on the 2010 season of excavations at Ismant el-Kharab, Dakhleh Oasis’, BACE 21, 21–54 (with D. JONES, L. FALVEY, J. PETKOV, H. WHITEHOUSE and K.A. WORP). ‘The 2010 field season at Deir Abu Metta, Dakhleh Oasis’, BACE 21, 7–20 (with G.E. BOWEN, L. FALVEY and D. JONES). 2009 ‘Ismant el-Kharab: an elite Roman period residence’, EA 34, 20–4. ‘Report on the 2009 season of excavations at Mut el-Kharab, Dakhleh Oasis’, BACE 20, 47–86 (with G.E. BOWEN, J. COX, W. DOLLING, J. MILNER and A. PETTMAN). 2008 ‘The excavation at Mut el-Kharab, Dakhleh Oasis in 2008’, BACE 19, 49–71 (with G.E. BOWEN, W. DOLLING, E. HEALEY, O.E. KAPER and J. MILNER). 2007 ‘Brief report on the 2007 excavations at Ismant El-Kharab’, BACE 18, 21–52 (with G.E. BOWEN, W. DOLLING and P.N. KUCERA). ‘Egypt and ‘Libya’ to the end of the Old Kingdom: a view from Dakhleh Oasis’, in Z. HAWASS and J. RICHARDS (eds), The Archaeology and Art of Ancient Egypt: Essays in Honor of David B. O’Connor, American University in Cairo Press, Cairo, 349–415. ‘Imported amphorae from Dakhleh Oasis’, CCE 8, 463–80. 2006

Akhmim in the Old Kingdom Part II: The Pottery, Decorative Techniques and Colour Conventions, Aris & Phillips, Oxford (with A. MACFARLANE). ‘A painted residence at Ismant el-Kharab (Kellis) in the Dakhleh Oasis’, JRA 19, 312–28 (with H. WHITEHOUSE). ‘Cobalt-blue painted pottery from 18th Dynasty Egypt’, in M. MAGGETTI and B. MESSIGA (eds), Geomaterials in Cultural Heritage, Geological Society of London, London, 91–9 (with A.J. SHORTLAND and M.S. TITE). ‘Miniature codices from Kellis’, Mnemosyne LIX, 226–58 (with K.A. WORP). ‘Reconstructing ancient Kellis part II’, Buried History 42, 17–24 (with G.E. BOWEN, T.T. CHANDLER and D. MARTIN). ‘Report on the excavations at Ismant el-Kharab and Mut el-Kharab in 2006’, BACE 17, 23–67 (with G.E. BOWEN, W. DOLLING, C. HUBSCHMANN, P. KUCERA, R. LONG and A. STEVENS).

2005 ‘Brief report on the excavations at Ismant el-Kharab and Mut el-Kharab in 2005’, BACE 16, 35–83 (with H. WHITEHOUSE and A. WARFE). Cultural Interaction in Afghanistan c. 300 BCE to 300 CE, Monash Asia Institute, Melbourne (ed. with A.-A. DI CASTRO).

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‘From Kellis to Begram: new evidence for an Egyptian origin of the painted glass in the Begram Hoard’, in A.-A. DI CASTRO and C.A. HOPE (eds), Cultural Interaction in Afghanistan c. 300 BCE to 300 CE, Monash Asia Institute, Melbourne, 19–31. ‘Mut el-Kharab: Seth’s city in Dakhleh Oasis’, EA 27, 3–6. 2004

Ancient Civilizations in the International Collections of the National Gallery of Victoria, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne (with A. DUNSMORE, A. FYFE, H. JACKSON, M. MILLER and J. RYAN). ‘A note on some ceramics from Mut, Dakhleh Oasis’, CCE 7, 99–121. ‘Ostraka and the archaeology of Ismant el-Kharab’, in K.A. WORP (ed.), Greek Ostraka from Kellis, Oxbow Books, Oxford, 5–27. ‘The excavations at Ismant el-Kharab and Mut el-Kharab in 2004’, BACE 15, 19–49.

2003 ‘Ancient Egypt in Melbourne and the State of Victoria, Australia’, in M. PRICE and J.-M. HUBERT (eds), Imhotep Today: Egyptianizing Architecture, UCL Press, London, 161–81. ‘The 2001–2 excavations at Mut el-Kharab in the Dakhleh Oasis, Egypt’, The Artefact 26, 51–75. ‘The excavations at Ismant el-Kharab from 2000 to 2002’, in G.E. BOWEN and C.A. HOPE (eds), The Oasis Papers 3: Proceedings of the Third International Conference of the Dakhleh Oasis Project, Oxbow Books, Oxford, 207–89 (with O.E. KAPER and H. WHITEHOUSE). ‘The gladiator jug from Ismant el-Kharab’, in G.E. BOWEN and C.A. HOPE (eds), The Oasis Papers 3: Proceedings of the Third International Conference of the Dakhleh Oasis Project, Oxbow Books, Oxford, 291–310 (with H. WHITEHOUSE). The Oasis Papers 3: Proceedings of the Third International Conference of the Dakhleh Oasis Project, Oxbow Books, Oxford (ed. with G.E. BOWEN). 2002

Dakhleh Oasis Project: Preliminary Reports on the 1995–1996 to 1998–1999 Field Seasons, Oxbow Books, Oxford (ed. with G.E. BOWEN). ‘Dedication inscriptions from the main temple’, in C.A. HOPE and G.E. BOWEN (eds), Dakhleh Oasis Project: Preliminary Reports on the 1994–1995 to 1998– 1999 Field Seasons, Oxbow Books, Oxford, 323–31 (with K.A. WORP). ‘Early and mid-Holocene pottery from the Dakhleh Oasis: traditions and influences’, in R.F. FRIEDMAN (ed.), Egypt and Nubia: Gifts of the Desert, British Museum Press, London, 39–61. ‘Excavations at Mut el-Kharab and Ismant el-Kharab in 2001–2’, BACE 13, 85–107 (with O.E. KAPER, H. WHITEHOUSE and K.A. WORP).

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‘Oases amphorae of the New Kingdom’, in R.F. FRIEDMAN (ed.), Egypt and Nubia: Gifts of the Desert, British Museum Press, London, 95–131 (with M.A.J. ECCLESTON, P.J. ROSE and J. BOURRIAU). ‘The excavations at Ismant el-Kharab during the 1995 to 1998–1999 field seasons’, in C.A. HOPE and G.E. BOWEN (eds), Dakhleh Oasis Project: Preliminary Reports on the 1994–1995 to 1998–1999 Field Seasons, Oxbow Books, Oxford, 167–208 (with G.E. BOWEN). 2001 ‘Egypt and Libya: the excavations at Mut el-Kharab in Egypt’s Western Desert’, The Artefact 24, 29–46. Egyptian Pottery, 2nd edn, Shire Egyptology, Princes Risborough. ‘Gold and the ancient world’, in T. STANNAGE (ed.), Gold and Civilisation, Art Exhibitions Australia National Museum of Australia, National Museum of Australia, Canberra, 113–22. ‘Observations on the dating of the occupation at Ismant el-Kharab’, in C.A. MARLOW and A.J. MILLS (eds), The Oasis Papers: Proceedings of the First International Symposium of the Dakhleh Oasis Project, Oxbow Books, Oxford, 43–59. ‘The excavations at Ismant el-Kharab and Mut el-Kharab in 2001’, BACE 12, 35–63. 2000 ‘A Greek account on a clay tablet from the Dakhleh Oasis’, in H. MELAERTS (ed.), Studia Varia Bruxellensia ad Orbem Graeco-Latinum Pertinentia V, Papyri in Honorem Johannis Bingen Octogenarii, Peeters, Leuven, 471–86 (with K.A. WORP). ‘Appendix: ‘Two fourth century accounts from Kellis’’, in H. MELAERTS (ed.), Studia Varia Bruxellensia ad Orbem Graeco-Latinum Pertinentia V, Papyri in Honorem Johannis Bingen Octogenarii, Peeters, Leuven, 508–9 (with R.S. BAGNALL and K.A. WORP). ‘Excavations at Ismant el-Kharab in 2000: a brief report’, BACE 11, 49–66. ‘Kegs and flasks from the Dakhleh Oasis’, CCE 6, 189–234 (with M.A.J. ECCLESTON, O.E. KAPER, S. MARCHAND and D. DARNELL). 1999 ‘A painted panel of Isis’, in C.A. HOPE and A.J. MILLS (eds), Dakhleh Oasis Project: Preliminary Reports on the 1992–1993 and 1993–1994 Field Seasons, Oxbow Books, Oxford, 95–100 (with H. WHITEHOUSE). ‘Dakhla Oasis, Ismant el-Kharab’, in K.A. BARD (ed.), Encyclopedia of the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt, Routledge, New York, 222–6. Dakhleh Oasis Project: Preliminary Reports on the 1992–1993 and 1993–1994 Field Seasons, Oxbow Books, Oxford (ed. with A.J. MILLS).

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‘Interim report on the West Tombs’, in C.A. HOPE and A.J. MILLS (eds), Dakhleh Oasis Project: Preliminary Reports on the 1992–1993 and 1993–1994 Field Seasons, Oxbow Books, Oxford, 53–68 (with J. MCKENZIE). ‘Pottery manufacture in the Dakhleh Oasis’, in C.S. CHURCHER and A.J. MILLS (eds), Reports from the Survey of the Dakhleh Oasis 1977–1987, Oxbow Books, Oxford, 215–43. ‘Some remarks on potmarks of the Late XVIIIth Dynasty’, in A. LEAHY and J. TAIT (eds), Studies on Ancient Egypt in Honour of H.S. Smith, Egypt Exploration Society, London, 121–46. ‘The archaeological context’, in I. GARDNER, A. ALCOCK and W.-P. FUNK (eds), Coptic Documentary Texts from Kellis, Oxbow Books, Oxford, 96–111, 115–22. ‘The excavations at Ismant el-Kharab in 1998/9: a brief report’, BACE 10, 59–66. 1998 ‘A new fragment of Homer’, Mnemosyne LI, 206–10 (with K.A. WORP). ‘Early pottery from the Dakhleh Oasis’, BACE 9, 53–60. ‘Objects from the Temple of Tutu’, in W. CLARYSSE, A. SCHOORS and H. WILLEMS (eds), Egyptian Religion: The Last Thousand Years, Part II. Studies Dedicated to the Memory of Jan Quaegebeur, Peeters, Leuven, 803–58. ‘Some Memphite blue-painted pottery of the mid-XVIIIth Dynasty’, in J. PHILLIPS (ed.), Ancient Egypt, the Aegean, and the Near East: Studies in Honor of Martha Rhoads Bell, Van Siclen, San Antonio, 249–86. 1997 ‘The archaeological context of the discovery of leaves from a Manichaean codex’, ZPE 117, 156–61. ‘The excavations at Ismant el-Kharab in 1995/6 and 1996/7: a brief report’, BACE 8, 49–64 (with G.E. BOWEN). ‘The find context of the Kellis Agricultural Account Book’, in R.S. BAGNALL (ed.), The Kellis Agricultural Account Book, Oxbow Books, Oxford, 5–16. 1996 ‘New Kingdom painted pottery from Karnak North’, BCE 19, 31–3. 1995 ‘Ismant el-Kharab (ancient Kellis) in the Dakhleh Oasis, Egypt’, Medit. Arch. 8, 138–43. ‘The excavations at Ismant el-Kharab in 1995: a brief report’, BACE 6, 51–8. 1994 ‘Excavations at Ismant el-Kharab in the Dakhleh Oasis’, EA 5, 17–18. ‘Isis and Serapis at Kellis: a brief note’, BACE 5, 37–42.

BIBLIOGRAPHY OF COLIN A. HOPE

XXXVII

1993 ‘A brief report on the excavations at Ismant el-Kharab in 1992–93’, BACE 4, 17–28 (with G.E. BOWEN and O.E. KAPER). ‘Pottery kilns from the oasis of el-Dakhla’, in Do. ARNOLD and J. BOURRIAU (eds), An Introduction to Ancient Egyptian Pottery, Fasc. 1, Philipp von Zabern, Mainz, 121–27. ‘The jar sealings’, in J. BAINES (ed.), Stone Vessels, Pottery and Sealings from the Tomb of Tut‘ankhamnjn, Griffith Institute, Oxford, 87–138. 1992 ‘Excavations at Ismant el-Kharab – 1992’, BACE 3, 41–9 (with O.E. KAPER and G.E. BOWEN). 1991 ‘Blue-painted and polychrome decorated pottery from Amarna’, CCE 2, 17–92. ‘The 1991 excavations at Ismant el-Kharab in the Dakhleh Oasis’, BACE 2, 41–50. 1990 ‘Dakhleh Oasis Project 1988–1989’, BCE 14, 30–2. ‘Excavations at Ismant el-Kharab in the Dakhleh Oasis’, BACE 1, 43–54. Living with Egypt’s Past in Australia, Museum of Victoria, Melbourne (with R.S. MERRILLEES and G.L. PRETTY). 1989 ‘Dakhleh Oasis Project: Ismant el-Kharab 1991–92’, JSSEA XIX, 1–26 (with O.E. KAPER, G.E. BOWEN and S.F. PATTEN). Pottery of the Egyptian New Kingdom: Three Studies, Victoria College Press, Melbourne. 1988 Gold of the Pharaohs (exhibition catalogue), Museum of Victoria, Melbourne. ‘Three seasons of excavations at Ismant el-Gharab in the Dakhleh Oasis, Egypt’, Medit. Arch. 1, 160–78. 1987 Ceramics from the Dakhleh Oasis: Preliminary Studies, Victoria College Press, Melbourne (ed. with W.I. EDWARDS and E.R. SEGNIT). ‘Dakhleh Oasis Project: Ismant el-Kharab 1988–1990’, JSSEA XVII, 157–76. Egyptian Pottery, Shire Publications, Princes Risborough. ‘Experiments in the manufacture of ancient Egyptian pottery’, in W.I. EDWARDS, C.A. HOPE and E.R. SEGNIT (eds), Ceramics from the Dakhleh Oasis. Preliminary Studies, Victoria College Press, Melbourne, 103–5. ‘Innovation in the decoration of ceramics in the mid-18th Dynasty’, CCE 1, 97–122. ‘The Dakhleh Oasis Project’, BCE 12, 30–2.

XXXVIII

BIBLIOGRAPHY OF COLIN A. HOPE

1986 ‘Dakhleh Oasis Project. Report on the 1987 excavations at Ismant el-Gharab’, JSSEA XVI, 74–91. ‘Egyptian antiquities in the history teaching collection at Macquarie University’, GM 90, 87–94. ‘El-Hawawish (Macquarie University excavations)’, BCE 11, 29–31. ‘The Dakhleh Oasis Project (University of Toronto)’, BCE 11, 45–7. 1985 ‘Concerning a blue-painted vessel from East Karnak’, JSSEA XV, 77–80. ‘Dakhleh Oasis Project: 1985 season’, BCE 10, 32–3. ‘Dakhleh Oasis Project: report on the 1986 excavations at Ismant el-Gharab’, JSSEA XV, 114–25. 1984 ‘Tby the Elder from Sheikh Farag Tomb 5105’, Abr-Nahrain 22, 7–28. ‘The Australian contribution to the archaeology of the ancient Near East’, Ancient Society 14, 143–51. 1983 ‘A head of Nefertiti and a figure of Ptah-Sokar-Osiris in the National Gallery of Victoria’, ABV 24, 47–62. Ancient Ceramics and Australian Archaeology in the Middle East, Department of Fine Art, Melbourne (ed. with J. ZIMMER). ‘A note on the collection of Egyptian antiquities in the National Gallery of Victoria’, GM 65, 45–50. ‘Ceramics and the Dakhleh Oasis Project’, in C.A. HOPE and J. ZIMMER (eds), Ancient Ceramics and Australian Archaeology in the Middle East, Department of Fine Art, Melbourne, 59–66. ‘Dakhleh Oasis Project – report on the study of the pottery: fifth season, 1982’, JSSEA XIII, 142–57. ‘Dakhleh Oasis survey (Dakhleh Oasis Project, University of Toronto)’, BCE 8, 31–2. ‘Early Christianity in the Egyptian Sahara – new finds’, in G.H.R. HORSLEY (ed.), New Documents Illustrating Early Christianity 3, Macquarie University, Sydney, 159–62 (with M. RIDDLE). ‘Frescoes in Dakhleh and Kharga Oases’, in G.H.R. HORSLEY (ed.), New Documents Illustrating Early Christianity 3, Macquarie University, Sydney, 162–4; (with M. RIDDLE). ‘Malkata/Dakhleh Oasis/The National Galley of Victoria’, in A.L. KELLEY (ed.), Papers of the Pottery Workshop: Third International Congress of Egyptology, Toronto, September, 1982, Benben Publications, Toronto, 7–8.

BIBLIOGRAPHY OF COLIN A. HOPE

1982

XXXIX

Ancient Egyptian Pottery from the Collections of the National Gallery of Victoria & the Australian Institute of Archaeology, R.M.I.T. Faculty of Art Gallery: An Exhibition of the Fine Art Department, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, June 1982, R.M.I.T. Fine Art Department, Melbourne. ‘Concerning Egyptian potters’ wheels’, JSSEA XII, 13–14.

1981 ‘Dakhleh Oasis Project – report on the study of the pottery and kilns: third season’, JSSEA XI, 233–41. ‘Dakhleh Oasis, survey (Dakhleh Oasis Project, University of Toronto)’, BCE 6, 20–1. ‘Two ancient Egyptian potters’ wheels’, JSSEA XI, 127–33. 1980 ‘Cobalt blue pigment on 18th Dynasty pottery’, MDAIK 36, 33–7 (with H.G. BACHMANN and H. EVERTS). ‘Dakhleh Oasis Project – report on the study of the pottery and kilns’, JSSEA X, 283–313. ‘Dakhleh Oasis, survey (Dakhleh Oasis Project, University of Toronto)’, BCE 5, 18–20. 1979 ‘Dakhleh Oasis Project – report on the study of the pottery and kilns’, JSSEA IX, 187–201. 1978

Jar Sealings and Amphorae of the 18th Dynasty: A Technological Study. Excavations at Malkata and the Birket Habu 1971-1974, Aris & Phillips, Warminster.

1977 ‘Two examples of Egyptian blue-painted pottery in the Medelhavsmuseet’, Medel. Mus. Bull. 12, 7–11.

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS AAMT

Advances in Archaeological Method and Theory

AAR

African Archaeological Review

Aborig. Hist.

Aboriginal History

ABSA

Annual of the British School at Athens

ABV

Art Bulletin of Victoria

AfO

Archiv für Orientforschung

AfP

Archiv für Papyrusforschung und verwandte Gebiete

AiO

Archaeology in Oceania

AIRA

American Indian Rock Art

AJA

American Journal of Archaeology

Ä&L

Ägypten und Levante: Internationale Zeitschrift für ägyptische Archäologie und deren Nachbargebiete

Am. Anth.

American Anthropologist

Am. Antiq.

American Antiquity

Anatol. Stud.

Anatolian Studies

Ancient Society

Ancient Society: Resources for Teachers

ANES

Ancient Near Eastern Studies

Ant. afr.

Antiquités africaines: L’Afrique du Nord de la protohistoire à la conquête arabe

Antiquity

Antiquity: A Review of World Archaeology

ARA

Annual Review of Anthropology

Arch. aerea

Archeologia aerea. Studi di Aerotopografia archeologica

Arch. Rev. Camb. Archaeological Review from Cambridge Archéo-Nil

Archéo-Nil: Revue de la société pour l’étude des cultures prépharaoniques de la vallée du Nil

ASAE

Annales du Service des antiquités de l’Égypte

ATN

Archaeological Textiles Newsletter

BA

Biblical Archaeologist

XLII

ABBREVIATIONS

BACE

Bulletin of the Australian Centre for Egyptology

BASOR

Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research

BASP

Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists

BCE

Bulletin de liaison de la céramique égyptienne

BES

Bulletin of the Egyptological Seminar

BHA

Bulletin of the History of Archaeology

BIE

Bulletin de l’Institut d’Égypte

BIFAO

Bulletin de l’Institut français d’archéologie orientale

BKMKG

Bulletin van de Koninklijke Musea voor Kunst en Geschiedenis

BMC

The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs

BMMA

Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art

BMSAES

British Museum Studies in Ancient Egypt and Sudan

BNE

Bioarchaeology of the Near East

BO

Bibliotheca Orientalis

BSFE

Bulletin de la Société française d’égyptologie: Réunions trimestrielles et communications archéologiques

BSGE

Bulletin de la Société de Géographie d’Égypte

BSOAS

Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies

Buried History

Buried History: The Journal of the Australian Institute of Archaeology

BzS

Beiträge zur Sudanforschung

CA

Current Anthropology

CAJ

Cambridge Archaeological Journal

Can. Hist. Rev.

Canadian Historical Review

CBC

Cahiers de la Bibliothèque copte

CCdE

Cahiers Caribéens d’Egyptologie

CCE

Cahiers de la céramique égyptienne

CCEC

Cahiers du Centre d’Études Chypriotes

CdE

Chronique d’Égypte: Bulletin périodique de la Fondation égyptologique Reine Élisabeth

CdK

Cahiers de Karnak. Centre franco-égyptien d’étude des temples de Karnak

ABBREVIATIONS

XLIII

Comunicazioni

Comunicazioni dell’Istituto Papirologico ‘G. Vitelli’

CPhil.

Classical Philology

CQuart.

Classical Quarterly: A Journal Devoted to Research in Classical Antiquity

CRAIBL

Comptes rendus (des séances) de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres

CRBC

Conservation-restauration des biens culturels. Revue de l’ARAAFU

CRIPEL

Cahiers de Recherches de l’Institut de Papyrologie et d’Égyptologie de Lille

CSSH

Comparative Studies in Society and History

DNHASP

Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society Proceedings

DZA

Digitalisierte Zettlearchiv des Wörterbuches der ägyptischen Sprache

EA

Egyptian Archaeology: The Bulletin of the Egypt Exploration Society

EDAL

Egyptian & Egyptological Documents, Archives & Libraries

EJA

European Journal of Archaeology

Enchoria

Enchoria: Zeitschrift für Demotistik und Koptologie

Endeavour

Endeavour: A Quarterly Magazine Reviewing the History and Philosophy of Science in the Service of Mankind

ENiM

Égypte Nilotique et Méditerranéenne

ER

The Ecumenical Review

Études et Travaux

Études et Travaux: Travaux du centre d’archéologie méditerranéenne d’Académie polonaise des sciences

EVO

Egitto e Vicino Oriente: Rivista della sezione orientalistica dell’ Istituto di Storia Antica, Università degli Studi di Pisa

Evol. Anth.

Evolutionary Anthropology

Facta

Facta: A Journal of Roman Material Culture Studies

FAP

Fontes Archaeologici Posnanienses

Genava

Genava: revue d’histoire de l’art et d’archéologie

GJ

Geographical Journal

GM

Göttinger Miszellen

HBK

Heinrich-Barth-Kurier

Historia

Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte

XLIV

ABBREVIATIONS

HThR

Harvard Theological Review

IAMS

Institute for Archaeo-Metallurgical Studies Newsletter

ICS

Illinois Classical Studies

IJNAUE

International Journal of Nautical Archaeology and Underwater Exploration

IPIϕ

IPIϕIris: Journal of the Classical Association of Victoria

JAA

Journal of Anthropological Archaeology

JAEI

Journal of Ancient Egyptian Interconnections

JAfA

Journal of African Archaeology

JAMT

Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory

JANER

Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Religions

JAOS

Journal of the American Oriental Society

JAR

Journal of Archaeological Research

JARCE

Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt

JAS

Journal of Archaeological Science

JbAC

Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum

JCMS

Journal of Conservation and Museum Studies

JDAI

Jahrbuch des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts

JdS

Journal des savants

JEA

Journal of Egyptian Archaeology

JEOL

Jaarbericht van het Vooraziatisch-Egyptisch Genootschap ‘Ex Oriente Lux’

JES

Journal of Egyptological Studies

JFA

Journal of Field Archaeology

JHC

Journal of the History of Collections

JHS

Journal of Hellenic Studies

JJP

Journal of Juristic Papyrology

JNES

Journal of Near Eastern Studies

JÖAI

Jahreshefte des Österreichischen Archäologischen Institutes in Wien

JONA

Journal of the North Atlantic

JRA

Journal of Roman Archaeology

ABBREVIATIONS

XLV

JRAI

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute

JRS

Journal of Roman Studies

JSAS

Journal of the Serbian Archaeological Society

JSSEA

Journal of the Society for the Study of Egyptian Antiquities

Kêmi

Kêmi: revue de philologie et d’archéologie égyptiennes et coptes

KMT

KMT: A Modern Journal of Ancient Egypt

KRI

KITCHEN, K.A. 1975–1991. Ramesside Inscriptions, Historical and Biographical, 8 vols, Blackwell, Oxford.

LCM

Les Cahiers de Mariemont: bulletin du Musée royal de Mariemont

Maarav

Maarav: A Journal for the Study of the Northwest Semitic Languages and Literatures

Ma’at

Ma’at: Archäologie Ägyptens

MDAIK

Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts, Abteilung Kairo

MDOG

Mitteilungen der Deutschen Orient-Gesellschaft

Med. Stud.

Mediaeval Studies

Medel. Mus. Bull. Medelhavsmuseet Bulletin Medieval Arch.

Medieval Archaeology

Medit. Arch.

Mediterranean Archaeology: Australian and New Zealand Journal for the Archaeology of the Mediterranean World

Minerva

Minerva: The International Revue of Ancient Art & Archaeology

MMJ

Metropolitan Museum Journal

Mnemosyne

Mnemosyne: A Journal of Classical Studies

MQMCHS

Memoirs of the Queensland Museum, Cultural Heritage Series

NeHeT

NeHeT: Revue numérique d’Égyptologie

NGSRR

National Geographic Society Research Reports

Novel

Novel: A Forum on Fiction

NSA

Notizie degli scavi di antichità

ODM

Ostracon Deir el-Medina

OMJ

Open Museum Journal

Paléorient

Paléorient: Pluridisciplinary Journal of Prehistory and Protohistory of Southwestern and Central Asia

XLVI

ABBREVIATIONS

PAM

Polish Archaeology in the Mediterranean

PBA

Proceedings of the British Academy

PBSR

Papers of the British School at Rome

PCPS

Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society

Pol. Arkh.

Polevye Arkheologicheskie Issledovaniia

PPS

Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society

PRSA

Proceedings of the Royal Society A

PSBA

Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archaeology

QI

Quaternary International

Radiocarbon

Radiocarbon: An International Journal of Cosmogenic Isotope Research

Ramus

Ramus: Critical Studies in Greek and Roman Literature

RCFO

Revue des conférences françaises en Orient

RCRF

Rei Cretariae Romanae Fautorum Acta

RDAC

Report of the Department of Antiquities, Cyprus

RdE

Revue d’Égyptologie

REAC

Ricerche di Egittologia e di Antichità Copte

Reception

Reception: Texts, Readers, Audiences, History

REGr.

Revue des Études Grecques

Rev. sci.

Revue scientifique

RPL

Res Publica Litterarum: Studies in the Classical Tradition

RSP

Rivista di Studi Pompeiani

RT

Recueil de travaux relatifs à la philologie et à l’archéologie égyptiennes et assyriennes

Rundbrief DAI

Rundbrief DAI Abteilung Kairo

Sahara

Sahara: Prehistory and History of the Sahara

SAK

Studien zur Altägyptischen Kultur

SB

PREISIGKE, F., F. BILABEL, E. KIESSLING, H.-A. RUPPRECHT, A. JÖRDENS, and R. AST. (eds) 1915–2016. Sammelbuch griechischer Urkunden aus Ägypten, Vols 1–29, K.J. Trübner, Strassburg.

Scot. Arch. Rev.

Scottish Archaeological Review

ABBREVIATIONS

XLVII

SDAIK

Sonderschrift des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts, Abteilung Kairo

SEP

Studi di Egittologia e di Papirologia: Rivista internazionale

SiC

Studies in Conservation

SKPAWB

Sitzungsberichte der Königlich Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin

Sǀkar

Sǀkar: Geschichte & Archäologie Altägyptens

Sov. Arkh.

Sovetskaya Arkheologia

TAPA

Transactions of the American Philological Association

TdE

Trabajos de Egiptología: Papers on Ancient Egypt

The Artefact

The Artefact: Pacific Rim Archaeology

Treb. d’Arq.

Treballs d’Arqueologia

Tyche

Tyche: Contributions to Ancient History, Papyrology and Epigraphy

UMC

University of Melbourne Collections

VChr.

Vigiliae Christianae

WA

World Archaeology

WAMCAES

Western Australian Museum Centre for Ancient Egyptian Studies News

Wb

ERMAN, A. and H. GRAPOW. 1925–1931, Wörterbuch der Aegyptischen Sprache, 1–5, Leipzig.

Yearbook Phys. Anth.

Yearbook of Physical Anthropology: Supplement to the American Journal of Physical Anthropology

ZAC

Zeitschrift für Antikes Christentum

ZÄS

Zeitschrift für Ägyptische Sprache und Altertumskunde

ZGE

Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft für Erdkunde zu Berlin

ZPE

Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik

POTTERY OF THE EGYPTIAN NEW KINGDOM: A STUDY. EIGHTEENTH DYNASTY NILE CLAY STORAGE JARS FROM THE VALLEY OF THE KINGS

David A. ASTON1 Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna

Introduction One might be forgiven for thinking that everything there is to know about Eighteenth Dynasty pottery is already known, not least because of Colin’s early works on the pottery from Malkata (Hope 1978; 1989, 1–45), on bichrome ware (Hope 1987), and on blue-painted wares (Hope 1991; 1997). Those early years also saw specialist studies on amphorae (Hope 1989, 86–126) and jar sealings from the tomb of Tutankhamun (Hope 1993), but from the 1980s onwards Colin has been more involved in the Dakhleh Oasis, and, with the notable exception of a foray into New Kingdom Oases amphorae (Hope 2002), his trips back to the Eighteenth Dynasty are nowadays confined to occasional Festschrift entries (Hope 1998; 1999; 2011) although since writing this article, Colin’s study on the blue painted pottery from Memphis has now appeared (Hope 2016). Nevertheless much of what we know about Eighteenth Dynasty pottery relies heavily on these early studies, which have since been complemented by various reports on the material from Eighteenth Dynasty tombs, principally those at Thebes and Saqqara, and ongoing excavations at Amarna. What is more, these modern studies can then be used to accurately date, type, and even understand the fabrics of Eighteenth Dynasty pottery illustrated in earlier excavation reports. 1

In the preparation of this article I have had recourse to much previously unpublished material and I would like to thank Otto Schaden† (KV 10 and 23); Don Ryan (KV 21, 27, 44 and 45); Nozumo Kawai and Kazumitsu Takahashi (KV 22 and WV A); Hanna Jenni and Elina Paulin-Grothe (KV 32); Susanne Bickel, Elina Paulin-Grothe and the University of Basel Kings’ Valley Project (KV 26, 30, 31, 33, 36, 40 and 64); Pamela Rose (KV 42); and Otto Schaden†, Salima Ikram and the Amenmesse Tomb Project (KV 63) for access to this pottery. I also thank Susanne Bickel for permission to include drawings of the jars from KV 26, 31, 33, 36 and 40; Pamela Rose for the drawing from KV 42, and the Amenmesse Tomb Project for the drawing from KV 63. I am beholden to Hussain Zaki for his help in drawing the jars from KV 36 and 40, and to Elke Schuster for preparing the drawings from KV 26, 31, 33, 36 and 40 for publication. I am also grateful to Bettina Bader and Susanne Bickel for their comments on a preliminary draft of this article.

2

D.A. ASTON

There are, however, very few typological studies devoted to Eighteenth Dynasty pottery, which is surprising since there are numerous well-dated contexts – both from tombs and settlement sites, on which such studies could be based. To take Colin back to his early years I will attempt here to produce a typological study of Eighteenth Dynasty storage jars. However, as this is a somewhat large topic I will concentrate on those jars with a composite contour, distinct neck and a modelled, externally thickened rim, being generally made in three parts, and with a height of around 60–75 cm. Such vessels are frequently found within Eighteenth Dynasty tombs in the Valley of the Kings, where they have usually been employed as containers for embalming materials – usually bags of natron and chaff, sticks, scraps of linen and broken pots2 – with those from the tombs of Maiherpere KV 36 (Cairo CG 24037–24046; Daressy 1902, 20–2), and Yuya and Thuya KV 46 (Cairo JE 95421–95429; New York MMA 11.155.6–9; Quibell 1908, vi) being the best known, even though the examples from KV 46 have never been published. However, intact, or at least archaeologically complete vessels have also been found in KV 21 (Aston et al. 2000, 27), KV 26 and 27 (Ryan 2010, 387; 2011, 37), KV 31 (Bickel 2013, 78), KV 33 and 40 (Bickel 2014, 30–1; 2015, 87; Bickel and Paulin-Grothe 2014, 24), KV 42 (el-Bialy 1999, pl. xlivB; Johnson 1999, 25; Rose unpub.), KV 48 (Ryan 2011, 42), KV 54 (Winlock and Arnold 2010, 27), KV 63 (Schaden 2007, 17, 22; 2008, 241, 249; 2009, 21, 29) and WV A (Takahashi et al. 2009, 81; Takahashi 2016a, 198, 207, fig. 6; 2016b, 158, 169, fig. 7), with diagnostic sherds also known from KV 30, 32 and 45, whilst Elizabeth Thomas (1966, 140) noted ‘a number of pieces of large pots, B(ig) W(hitened) in part’ in KV 37, and fragments of such jars were also found in KV 22 (Amenophis III: Nozomu Kawai, pers. comm., January 2015), KV 23 (Ay: Otto Schaden, unpub.), KV 34 (Tuthmosis III: CG 24956; Loret 1898, 94; Daressy 1902, 292), KV 35 (Amenophis II: Cairo CG 24882; Daressy 1902, 216), KV 43 (Tuthmosis IV: Carter in Davis 1904, vi), and KV 49 (Davis 1908, 16). The Valley of the Kings: chronological ordering of the tombs containing storage jars When considering the storage jars from the Valley of the Kings it is difficult to know in which order the tombs, in which such jars were found, should be placed. The (probable) earliest tomb in the Valley of the Kings is that of Hatshepsut, KV 20, and, it should not be forgotten that, at the time KV 20 was carved, the ‘Valley’ was just another wadi, like any other, in which Eighteenth Dynasty queens were buried. Whilst KV 20 is the earliest dateable tomb in the 2 An example from the Valley of the Queens, tomb VdR 32, reputedly bears an inscription reading Year 9, beer made from malt (Lecuyot 1996, 151).

NILE CLAY STORAGE JARS FROM THE VALLEY OF THE KINGS

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Valley of the Kings, it is possible that KV 38 predates KV 20, but KV 38, in its general characteristics, was evidently designed as a queen’s tomb (cf. Reeves 2003, 69–73; Preys 2011, 319–20), and thus would not be out of place in this queen’s wadi. That the queens’ wadi, we now know as the Valley of the Kings, was evidently chosen as a royal burial ground by Tuthmosis III can be seen in the fact that not only did he have a tomb, KV 34, cut there for himself, but that he also planned a tomb, KV 42, for his wife, prepared several tombs for private burials in the vicinity of his own, namely KV 26, 31 and 33 (Thomas 1966, 157; Roehrig 2006, 248–51; Preys 2011, 322–4; Bickel 2016, 233), and reused a tomb, KV 38, for the reburial of Tuthmosis I. Personal observation of the pottery from KV 26, 31 and 33 confirms the date of these tombs, as all three contain much material with splash decoration (Aston 2006) whilst the pottery from KV 26 is very similar to that from the tomb of the three foreign wives of Tuthmosis III (Lilyquist 2003, 63–73, 91–105). The fact that KV 37, 59 and 64 are in the same minor wadi leading to the tomb of Tuthmosis III may indicate that these tombs were also cut at this time. KV 30 and KV 40 being located in this same ‘Tuthmosis III wadi’ are also usually ascribed to the reign of Tuthmosis III; however the recent re-clearance of KV 40 shows that it was used for the burials of several royal children of Tuthmosis IV and Amenophis III (Bickel 2014; 2015; Bickel and Paulin-Grothe 2014), whilst the pottery found in KV 30 is also more likely to date nearer the reign of Amenophis III than to that of Tuthmosis III. Hence if KV 30 and KV 40 were indeed originally cut under Tuthmosis III, then they were not used until much later, but as no Tuthmosis III period pottery was found, it is probable that these two tombs were not cut until the reigns of Tuthmosis IV or Amenophis III. That KV 26, 31 and 33 can definitely be dated to the reign of Tuthmosis III, has led to the suggestion made by several authors that the undecorated Eighteenth Dynasty tombs cut in the wadis leading to the tombs of Amenophis II and Tuthmosis IV should also be connected, respectively, with the reigns of these kings. If this is so, then it is extremely likely that KV 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 56 and 58 date to the reign of Amenophis II, although KV 58 may well have been usurped for Nakhtmin, son of Ay (Bickerstaffe 2010), whilst KV 21, 27, 28, 44 and 45 would date to the reign of Tuthmosis IV. Architecturally this makes good sense since the ‘Amenophis II’ group are all very similar to one another, as indeed are the ‘Tuthmosis IV’ group which are akin to each other, and significantly both groups differ from one another. In terms of their tomb plans, KV 36 and 61 are comparable to the ‘Amenophis II’ group, and, consequently, Preys (2011, 326–7) would associate these with the reign of that king. KV 64, not considered by Preys, has a similar ground plan, and should, perhaps, also be added to this group. KV 48 was used for the burial of the vizier Amenemopet, active under Amenophis II which makes it very likely that the ‘Amenophis II’ group were indeed cut during the reign of that king. Thirteen

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large storage jars were found in KV 36, the tomb of Maiherpere, but only the 10 intact vessels were sent to Cairo (Lakomy 2011; 2016, 195–8), whilst the three broken examples remained in the tomb. They were seen by members of the Theban Mapping Project in 1979,3 and were finally restored and recorded by the University of Basel Valley of the Kings project during the winter of 2013–2014. The date of this deposit, however, is disputed. A piece of linen found in the tomb was clearly made under Hatshepsut (CG 24099; Daressy 1902, 58) and, as a result, the tomb group is generally dated to the reigns of Hatshepsut/Tuthmosis III. Although not without criticism,4 the Hatshepsut/ Tuthmosis III dating is ascribed to the storage jars in the latest discussion of them by Lakomy (2011, 22; 2016, 55). However, as several commentators have pointed out, a date as early as the reigns of Hatshepsut/Tuthmosis III seems contradicted by the apparently later style of a number of objects from the tomb, the piercing of Maiherpere’s ears, so far unattested in men elsewhere before the reign of Amenophis II, whilst his title, fan-bearer on the right of the king, is also not otherwise attested before the reign of the same king, and Reeves (1990, 147) would date the burial into the reign of Tuthmosis IV. In a review of ‘intact’ Seventeenth and Eighteenth Dynasty tombs, Smith (1992, 194) is also of the same opinion. In this respect it should be noted, as Daressy (1902, 13–14) was already aware, that the marl clay vessel CG 24009 found in KV 36 would not be out of place in deposits dateable to the reign of Amenophis III, hence a dating into the reign of Tuthmosis IV cannot be far off the mark. Following the work of Nicholas Reeves (2003) and Catherine Roehrig (2010), it would appear that, in addition to the tomb of Hatshepsut, KV 20, evidently carved once she had assumed pharaonic status, KV 21, 32, 42, 46, 49 and 56 may all have been conceived as tombs for Eighteenth Dynasty consorts, to which René Preys (2011, 318–20), following an idea mooted by Reeves (2003, 72), would add KV 38. Most recently Roehrig (2010, 184) has proposed that the chronological order would be KV 42, 32, 49, 46 and 21. The unfinished KV 56, not considered by Roehrig, is not precisely dateable. Reeves and Preys postulate that KV 38, as a queen’s tomb, would predate all of them, to which Roehrig also agrees but sees KV 38 as a king’s tomb. Based on the foundation deposits found ‘in front of’ KV 42, it is usually assumed that this tomb was probably intended for Hatshepsut-Merytre, wife of Tuthmosis III, though whether she was actually buried in it remains unclear, and current opinion suggests that the tomb was cut by Tuthmosis III for the reburial of his father, Tuthmosis II (Reeves 2003, 69, 72–3; Polz 2007, 217–19; Eaton Krauss 2012, 57; cf. el-Bialy 1999, 177–8 fn.23 who suggested it was made for a king, with3

Barbara Aston pers. comm., January 1988. Daressy (1902, 58) says that if it were not for the inscribed linen he would have ascribed the tomb to the reigns of Amenophis II or III (see Reeves 1990, 140–7). 4

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out naming which). Whether or not Tuthmosis II was actually moved here is a moot point – the tomb appears to have been last used for the burial of Sennefer, mayor of Thebes under Amenophis II, and his wife Senetnai, hence the 20 to 30 large storage jars found here (Carter 1901, 197) should be dated to the reign of Amenophis II. Actually it is not absolutely certain that the foundation deposits of Hatshepsut-Merytre can be unequivocally associated with KV 42, and indeed might have been intended for the neighbouring KV 32, since the known Valley of the Kings foundation deposits were not always in close proximity to the tomb entrance (cf. Schaden 1984, 43). According to Roehrig (2006, 251; 2010, 182), KV 32 was also cut during the reign of Tuthmosis III, though her sole argument for such a belief seems to be its close proximity to both KV 42 and Tuthmosis III’s own tomb, KV 34. But Preys (2011, 332–3) argues that architecturally it was cut during the reign of Amenophis II, and considering its position near to the tomb of Tuthmosis III, he suggests that it was cut here by Amenophis II for his own mother, Hatshepsut-Merytre. Whatever the case, recent work by the University of Basel clearly indicates that KV 32 was used not for the burial of Hatshepsut-Merytre, but for the burial of Queen Tiaa, a minor wife of Amenophis II and mother of Tuthmosis IV, who appears to have died in or around Year 7 of her son (Bryan 1991, 108). Since Tiaa clearly died sometime during the reign of Tuthmosis IV the (incomplete) storage jars found within KV 32 probably date to the reign of the latter. It has also been suggested that KV 33 and KV 37 were also intended as queens’ tombs (Bickel 2016, 233); KV 33, being situated immediately below the tomb of Tuthmosis III, may have been conceived as the tomb for his first Great Wife, but it is hard to imagine for whom KV 37 would have been designed, although one might speculate (cf. below) that it was cut for a wife of Tuthmosis IV. The initial cutting of KV 46, 49 and 21 cannot be dated archaeologically, although KV 21 certainly contained pottery which has been dated between the reigns of Hatshepsut/Tuthmosis III to that of Tuthmosis IV, (Aston et al. 2000, 14–16), whilst KV 46 was utilised for the burials of Yuya and Thuya, the parents-in-law of Amenophis III (Davis 1907; Quibell 1908). Two female ‘royal’ mummies were found in KV 21 (Ryan 1991) and, if with Roehrig (2010, 182), KV 21 was cut during the reign of Tuthmosis IV – again on the reasoning that it is in the side wadi leading to the king’s own tomb – it is tempting to see these mummies as wives of the latter, perhaps Iaret and Nefertiry. However, Preys (2011, 329–32) argues that, on architectural grounds, the tomb was cut during the reign of Amenophis III, and thus was most likely made for Mutemwia, another wife of Tuthmosis IV and mother of Amenophis III. Zahi Hawass (2013, 170) has recently suggested that the DNA of one of the mummies found in the tomb, Mummy KV 21A, indicates that she is the mother of the two foetuses found in the tomb of Tutankhamun, which would imply that KV 21A ought to be Ankhesenamun. Gabolde (2013, 189–213), however, makes a good

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case to show that the mummy KV 21A is actually Mutemwia, which thus supports the view of Preys. If that is the case, and if Mutemwia has not usurped the tomb from an earlier occupant, then the earlier dating of the pottery found in the tomb must be revised to early in the reign of Amenophis III.5 If KV 46 predates KV 21, then it follows that KV 46 was most likely cut either by Amenophis II or Tuthmosis IV, presumably for the burial of one (or more) of their chief queens. But Roehrig (2010, 184) suggests that the unfinished KV 49, being located nearer to Amenophis II’s own tomb, would be a better candidate for a queen of Amenophis II. Again, whatever the case, KV 46 was used for the burial of Amenophis III’s parents-in-law, and the storage jars found within it can, in all probability, be dated to the reign of Amenophis III. It is interesting to note that finds from KV 45 indicate that it was used for the burial of the overseer of the fields, Userhet, known to have been active during the reign of Amenophis III. Hence, if KV 21, 45 and 46 were utilised for burials during the reign of Amenophis III, one probably needs to rethink the proposal that the uninscribed tombs in the side wadi leading to the tomb of Tuthmosis IV date to his reign; in fact they seem to date to the reign of Amenophis III. This begs the question as to where the private/royal family tombs dateable to the reign of Tuthmosis IV are located although this is not difficult to answer. Tuthmosis IV clearly buried his mother in KV 32, whilst finds from KV 40 indicate that that tomb was also associated with Tuthmosis IV’s immediate family. KV 32 and 40 are not so far from the tomb of Maiherpere, KV 36, who may have died during the reign of Tuthmosis IV (cf. above). Pottery from KV 30 also dates the use of that tomb nearer the reign of Amenophis III than Tuthmosis III, which might indicate that KV 30 was also cut during the reign of Tuthmosis IV. KV 29 and 61, which Preys (2011, 326) associates with the reign of Amenophis II on architectural grounds, are also in the vicinity of KV 30, 36 and 40, and could also conceivably have been cut during the reign of Tuthmosis IV. Finally, if Susanne Bickel (2016, 233) is correct in her supposition that KV 37 is a queen’s tomb, one might speculate that its location directly opposite KV 32, where Tuthmosis IV buried his mother, was specifically excavated by Tuthmosis IV for the burial of one (or more) of his Great Wives. The next dateable deposit is that from KV 62, the tomb of Tutankhamun, in which around twelve large white-washed storage jars were apparently placed in the descending corridor (Reeves 1990, 67, 84 n.65; Allen 2003), and later transferred to the tomb pit KV 54 where they were found by Theodore Davis (Winlock 1941; Winlock and Arnold 2010). Since the discovery of the undoubted embalmer’s cache, KV 63, in 2005 (Schaden 2008, 231; and cf. below), the idea that Tutankhamun’s jars were stored in his tomb, rather than 5 Note, however, that Habicht et al. (2016, 227–8) believe there is insufficient evidence to prove this identification.

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in a separate embalming cache, has come under question (Bickerstaffe 2007; Arnold in Winlock and Arnold 2010, 17, 68; Gabolde 2016a; 2016b). This is, perhaps, because in her plausible reconstruction of how the jars were placed in Tutankhamun’s tomb, Susan Allen (2003, 24) only referred to the storage jars found in KV 36 and KV 46, thus giving the impression that the presence of such jars was a somewhat rare occurrence. However, her argument is strengthened by the fact that such, albeit fragmentary, jars were found in the tombs of Tuthmosis III (CG 24956; Loret 1898, 94; Daressy 1902, 292), Amenophis II (Cairo CG 24882; Daressy 1902, 216), Tuthmosis IV (Carter in Davis 1904, vi) and, unpublished, and thus unknown to Allen, Amenophis III and Ay. Consequently it would be perfectly natural, and expected, that Tutankhamun’s jars containing his mummification materials would have been placed in his tomb. Tutankhamun’s storage jars are stylistically very similar to the 28 intact and 12 to 14 incomplete storage jars found in the embalmer’s cache, KV 63, with the inescapable conclusion being that both sets of jars must be practically contemporary with one another, and the inevitable inference is that KV 63 must relate to a royal burial close in time to that of Tutankhamun. Based on the model, postulated by both Dylan Bickerstaffe (2007) and Marc Gabolde (2016a; 2016b), that during the later Eighteenth Dynasty embalming caches were situated approximately 120 cubits away from the royal tomb they served, the only candidate possible would be that of Horemheb. To bolster their argument, they link KV 22 (Amenophis III) with its supposed cache WV A, Amarna TA 26 (Akhenaten) with TA 30, Amarna TA 29 (unknown) with TA 28, and KV 23 (Ay) with WV 24, with each pair being approximately 120 cubits apart. Unfortunately the only confirmed link – KV 62 (Tutankhamun) and KV 54 – are situated 207 cubits away from one another, whilst there is no evidence that any of the other supposed embalming caches – WV A, TA 30, TA 28 and WV 24 actually contained evidence of embalming materials. Moreover, fragments of large white-washed storage jars, presumably used to house such, were actually found in KV 22 and 23, whilst sherds of ‘large biconical vessels, usually unslipped or with a chalky white covering on the exterior’ (Rose 1989, 65) were also found in the royal tomb at Amarna, which rather makes the entire argument pointless. No storage jar sherds were found in Geoffrey Martin’s 2006–2007 re-excavation of the tomb of Horemheb (Aston forthcoming), which might imply that from the reign of Horemheb onwards such embalming jars may have been buried outside the tomb. However, not too much should be read into this, since Ayrton, who excavated the tomb in 1907, contributed nothing to the final publication (Davis 1912). Ayrton’s excavation report, which might, or might not, have included details of large white-washed storage jar sherds, was deemed too long for inclusion by Theodore Davis, and that archaeological report has since been lost (Martin 2016, 96). Very little pottery remained in the tomb proper at the time of Geoffrey Martin’s re-excavation since the tomb had,

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by then, been ‘cleared’ to make it accessible for tourists. Most of the remaining pottery was found in the debris which filled the well shaft where it had, in all probability, been thrown by Ayrton’s workmen and previous visitors to the tomb (Martin 2016, 97). In a recent article, however, Stephen Cross (Dodson and Cross 2016, 4) postulates that KV 63 was covered by a layer of flood debris which underlies the huts used by workmen during the construction of Horemheb’s tomb and hence must predate Horemheb’s death. That being the case, Dodson and Cross (2016, 5) consider KV 63 to be the embalming cache of Tutankhamun, arguing that all the material found in KV 54 belongs with a funeral meal. However Dodson and Cross do not indicate which huts they mean, nor, more importantly, how such huts are dated. They publish a photo showing the entrance to KV 63 with a clear section showing, at the top, the so-called East Huts located east of the entrance to KV 10 (cf. Schaden 2016, 140–2), the flood debris and the entrance to KV 63; the implication being that these are the huts to which they are referring. In fact more huts, or parts thereof, belonging to the same settlement had previously been found by Carter in 1922 (Reeves 1990, 328, Site 12), Reeves (2002, 9) in 1998, Schaden (2016, 140–2) in 2001, and subsequently by Hawass (2015, 228–39; 2016, 234–49) in 2008, all of whom had assigned these huts to the Nineteenth Dynasty. Moreover an inscription on an amphora from these East Huts dates to Year 1 of Sety II; whilst Years 38 and 40 of Ramesses II, and Years 8 and 9 of an unnamed king, presumably Merenptah, occur on ostraca found therein. In addition a docket on a pot found in the so-called West Huts, west of the entrance to KV 10 mentions Ramesses II. Hence, it is most likely that these huts date from late in the reign of Ramesses II to early in the reign of Sety II (Schaden 2016, 140–1).6 As such there is no reason to assume that the huts have anything to do with the workmen cutting the tomb of Horemheb, and, consequently, there are no grounds to assume that the flash flood which covered KV 63 predates the death of Horemheb. Moreover an attribution of all the material found in KV 54 to a funerary meal does not explain why bags of natron and chaff – typical leftovers from the mummification process – were present in KV 54, whilst the 28 to 40 jars found in KV 63 are too many for a single burial. The fact that 12 to 15 jars were found in KV 54, the right number for a single burial, convinces me that KV 54 is indeed the embalming material from the tomb of Tutankhamun. By contrast Marianne Eaton-Krauss (2009, 68–9) suggests that the material found in KV 63 relates to the person(s) reburied in KV 55, which actually has much to recommend it. KV 63 is unique in the sense that, at least as found, it was used solely to house embalming materials, whilst as noted above everyone down to, and including, Tutankhamun, buried in the Valley of the Kings were 6 Owing to the generosity of Otto Schaden the present writer not only had access to this pottery, but was given copies of the drawings, and can confirm the late Nineteenth Dynasty date.

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interred with their embalming materials. KV 63 is thus abnormal which suggests that these materials were deliberately cached here after being brought from somewhere else. Twenty-eight to 40 jars would be the right number for three adult burials, and if, with Dodson and Cross (2016, 8), KV 55 was utilised for a reburial of Akhenaten, Smenkhare and Tiye, this would fit very well with Eaton-Krauss’ suggestion. The storage jars in chronological order From the above, therefore, we might suppose the following chronology of the tombs known to have contained Eighteenth Dynasty storage jars: Tuthmosis III – KV 26, 31, 33, 34 Amenophis II – KV 35, 42, 48, 49 Tuthmosis IV – KV 32, 36, 43 Tuthmosis IV/Amenophis III – KV 30, 40 Amenophis III – KV 21, 22, 27, 45, 46, WV A Amarna Period – KV 63 Tutankhamun – KV 54 Ay – KV 23 And this might provide a beginning for a typological study. In the following descriptions all the jars which I have personally handled, that is those from KV 21, 26, 27, 30, 31, 32, 33, 36, 40 and 45, are made from a hard-fired Nile B2 clay and usually white slipped before use. As is usual for Thebes, the Nile B2 often contains some limestone, though not enough to be truly considered a Nile D, although one could perhaps coin the term Nile B2 near D. Once these vessels were filled – presumably with mummification materials – they were then sealed with mud or plaster seals, and then the whole vessel was given a secondary plaster coating which covered both the jar seal and the jar itself, at least as far as the maximum body diameter and often below. This secondary plaster coating was often heavily scraped. Where the jar seal has been lost a distinct clear edge is noticeable on the necks of these jars between the original white slip up towards the rim and the thick secondary plaster coating.

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Reign of Tuthmosis III Several broken storage jars were found in room Ja of the tomb of Tuthmosis III, KV 34, (CG 24956; Loret 1898, 94; Daressy 1902, 292) but nothing more is known of these. The recent re-clearance of KV 26 led to the discovery of four jars which could be restored from base to rim with a further 17 rims and one base also recovered. The complete vessels show that the base and lower walls are made in a mould and show many finger smoothing impressions usually running in a roughly horizontal direction. In this sense the makers of these vessels have adopted a technique known from the producers of marl clay vessels (cf. Bader 2001, passim). The mould made base is then attached to a handmade body, the interior of which also shows distinct marks of finger smoothing, though this time more often in a slightly vertical rather than horizontal direction. The rim and neck was turned on the wheel. The exterior, from below the neck join was then generally scraped, often in a vertical diagonal direction on the upper body, but in both vertical and horizontal directions on the lower body. They seem to come in two distinct variants, the more common being those without an incision at the base of the neck (Fig. 1a), with those having an incision (Fig. 1b) being the less common. Most of the jars from this tomb also tend to have trimmed rims, whilst the upper part of a vessel not illustrated in this paper is very similar to the example found in the tomb of Tuthmosis III’s three foreign wives (Lilyquist 2003, 91). Slightly more jars come from KV 31 (Fig. 1c–d), with 11 completely restorable vessels being found along with 44 rim sherds and five bases. Not surprisingly they are perfect parallels to those from KV 26. KV 33 has produced the most jars within the Tuthmosis III group with 29 completely restorable vessels being found, together with 13 almost complete and a further four rims and four bases. They are more diverse than the vessels from KV 26 and 31. Some are very similar, with or without neck ridges (Fig. 2a–b), but others (Fig. 2c) are very different and seem to be characterised by shorter necks. In fact one might speculate that KV 33, located immediately next to the king’s own tomb, was the first of the Tuthmosis III group to be used, and these short-necked versions may well be the earlier, the more so as they do not occur in later tombs. Reign of Amenophis II In KV 35, the tomb of Amenophis II, about 40 smashed jars were discovered (Cairo CG 24882; Daressy 1902, 216), but nothing more is known of them. In KV 42 at least 30 jars were found in room Ja; Carter (1901, 196) records 20 or 30 intact and broken jars, and some with their sealings still intact were present

NILE CLAY STORAGE JARS FROM THE VALLEY OF THE KINGS

Figure 1. a–d) storage jars from KV 26 and KV 31, reign of Tuthmosis III (all drawings courtesy University of Basel Kings’ Valley Project).

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Figure 2. a–c) storage jars from KV 33, reign of Tuthmosis III; d) storage jar from KV 42, reign of Amenophis II (Fig. 2a–c courtesy University of Basel Kings’ Valley Project; Fig. 2d courtesy Pamela Rose).

NILE CLAY STORAGE JARS FROM THE VALLEY OF THE KINGS

Figure 3. a–b) storage jars from KV 36, reign of Tuthmosis IV; c–d) storage jars from KV 40, reign of Amenophis III (all drawings courtesy University of Basel Kings’ Valley Project).

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when the tomb was officially opened in December 1900. Carter would not have removed the broken vessels but what happened to the intact ones remains a mystery. It is possible that they were left there only to be accidentally, or maliciously, broken later, or being intact were actually removed by Carter. Whatever the case, the tomb was re-cleared by Mohammed el-Bialy in 1999 (el-Bialy 1999), and the pottery, which Carter had clearly left in the tomb, was examined by Pamela Rose (unpub.) who records that there were, at that time, at least 30 jars, none of which were sealed. A restored vessel (Fig. 2d) is described by Rose as being: ‘… made in three distinct sections. The base and lower walls appear to have been formed in a mould, and show many finger smoothing impressions running diagonally. The middle body and lower neck are a separately-made section, also handmade, with finger smoothing impressions in the same diagonal direction, but the surface is not so rough and the impressions are narrower and more frequent. The neck and rim are wheelmade. On the exterior, the base and lower walls exhibit broad bands of scraping. The upper body and lower neck are covered with vertical trimming marks. There is a hole in the lower part of the body which may be an indication of deliberate breakage, but when (and if) this took place is unknown.’ At least two of the jars in KV 48 were restored in 2009 (Ryan 2011, 42), and from the published photos appear very similar to those from KV 36 (cf. Fig. 3a–b). Reign of Tuthmosis IV Within room Ja in the tomb of Tuthmosis IV, KV 43, Carter (in Davis 1904, vi) noticed ‘fragments of broken jars, with their sealings, and great quantities of grain reduced to chaff’. Undoubtedly these are the remains of broken storage jars which would have once held mummification materials. These were never restored, and the sherds are presumably long since lost. As discussed above the burial of Maiherpere is here also attributed to the reign of Tuthmosis IV, and whilst the 10 complete vessels were removed to the Cairo Museum, the three broken jars remained in the tomb. The two which could be restored from base to rim are shown in Figure 3. The first, KV 36-3 (Fig. 3a), and the incomplete KV 36-5 (not illustrated), are similar to the jars from the reign of Tuthmosis III but have a more rounded rim, as does the second KV 36-4 (Fig. 3b), though whether this has any chronological significance remains to be seen. KV 36-4 also has a distinct collar at the neck.

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Reign of Amenophis III KV 40 was used for various members of the families of Tuthmosis IV and Amenophis III, but it is hard to know whether the earliest burials should be dated to the reign of Tuthmosis IV – the only object specifically naming this pharaoh, is a faience bowl which bears the mAaxrw epithet – or whether they should all be attributed to the reign of Amenophis III. Forty complete and 18 almost complete jars, 34 rims and necks, and a further 72 rim and 28 base sherds were recovered from this tomb which have been preliminarily grouped into nine types.7 Type (i) storage jars (Fig. 3c) which are very similar to those dated to the reigns of Tuthmosis III to Tuthmosis IV in that the base and lower walls are made in a mould and show many finger smoothing impressions usually running in a roughly horizontal direction, which is joined to a handmade body, and thence attached to a wheel-made rim and neck, with the exterior being scraped and the rim usually trimmed. Type (ii) jars (Fig. 3d) made in the same technique, but being more slender in their overall proportions. A number of such slender vessels were also found in KV 31 and 33, but they are more numerous in KV 40. Type (iii) wide-bodied jars (Fig. 4a) made in the same technique (Bickel 2015, 87–8, figs 18 and 20). In the manufacture of the base, however, these diverge from the jars of types a and b, in that being made in a wider mould they often, but not always, tend to be pressed down with the tips of the fingers and then the lower walls are smoothed with the fingers in a horizontal direction. At the base of the neck these jars, more often than not have a distinct ridge, whilst the rims tend to be rolled rather than trimmed. Jars of type (iii) were by far the most common of all the jars found in KV 40. A unique example, type (iv), is represented by Figure 4b. It has the same wide, mouldmade base as the common jars of type Figure 4a, but the upper body is wheelmade and the neck is distinctly short. Where the wheel-made body joined the mould-made base it was supported by a strand of rope whilst it dried. The pottery from KV 40 also includes, for the first time, white-washed storage jars made entirely on the wheel. These come in two major groups: type (v) slender storage jars (Fig. 4c) made in three parts often with a distinct ridge/ledge at the base of the neck (Bickel 2015, 87, fig. 19), and type (vi), which is a wider version of the same (Fig. 4d). In both the rims are more rolled than trimmed. Variants of these wheel-made versions comprise type (vii), a unique example with a ledged rim (Fig. 5a), type (viii), another unique example with a distinctly undulating contour (Fig. 5b), and type (ix), a version with a wider neck (Fig. 5c), represented by at least three vessels. As mentioned above, it is likely that KV 30 was cut at around the same 7 Note these type numbers may change in the final publication of the ceramic material from KV 40.

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Figure 4. a–d) storage jars from KV 40, reign of Amenophis III (all drawings courtesy University of Basel Kings’ Valley Project).

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Figure 5. a–d) storage jars from KV 40 and KV 21, reign of Amenophis III (Fig. 5a–c courtesy University of Basel Kings’ Valley Project; Fig. 5d after Aston et al. 2000, 27).

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Figure 6. a) storage jar from WV A, reign of Amenophis III (after Takahashi et al. 2009, 81); b) storage jar from WV A, reign of Amenophis III (after Takahashi 2016a, 207); c) storage jar from KV 63 Amarna Period (?) (after P. Collet, unpub. courtesy Amenmesse Tomb Project); d) storage jar from KV 54, reign of Tutankhamun (adapted from Winlock 1941, pl. VIIA).

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time as KV 40, but only three base sherds were found in KV 30, and they probably derived from the type of jars shown in Figure 4a. Should KV 21 have been used for the burial of Amenophis III’s mother, Mutemwia, then, presumably the jars buried in KV 21 (Fig. 5d) can also be dated to the reign of Amenophis III. Altogether 24 vessels were found in KV 21 (Aston et al. 2000, 15 no. 1), and they are somewhat similar to the KV 40 type (ii) jars (Fig. 3d) in that they are slender vessels in which the base and lower walls are made in a mould and show many finger smoothing impressions usually running in a roughly horizontal direction, which is joined to a handmade body, and thence attached to a wheel-made rim and neck, with the exterior being scraped with a tool. It is perhaps of note that the rims are rolled but not trimmed. Although it is certain that Mutemwia must have survived into the reign of her son, it is not known when she died, but if the typological line of development outlined below is at all correct, then it would seem that the KV 21 vessels should date to the earlier part of Amenophis III’s reign. This rather contrasts with the view of Berman (1998, 5), who suggests that Mutemwia perhaps survived into the last decade of the reign. Of approximately the same date must be the jars from KV 46 since they were utilised for the burials of Amenophis III’s parents-in-law, although as mentioned above, these have never been published. A number of vessels from KV 27 were reconstructed in 2007, but only a photograph of one storage jar, in which the base technique is not clear, has been published (Ryan 2010, 287; 2011, 37). From its overall proportions that vessel would appear to be similar to the vessels shown in Figures 3d and 4c. Ten white-washed storage vessels were also found in WV A; one of the illustrated examples (Fig. 6a; Takahashi et al. 2009, 81) is clearly of the same type as that represented in Figure 4a, whilst a second example (Fig. 6b; Takahashi 2016a, 207, fig. 6; 2016b, 169, fig. 7) is somewhat similar but distinctly more slender. As these vessels bore post-firing potmarks it was assumed by the excavators that they belonged to the workmen making Amenophis III’s tomb rather than being used for embalming materials (Takahashi et al. 2009, 71). Amarna Period (?) If the embalmers’ cache in KV 63 should be associated with the people reputedly reburied in KV 55 then we can tentatively attribute the 28 complete jars (Fig. 6c) with fragments of up to 12 more to the reigns of Akhenaten and Smenkhare. From the published photos, and the unpublished drawings, also generously given to me by Otto Schaden, it is clear that these vessels are exact copies of those found in KV 54, which would not be surprising, given that there would only be 10 to 16 years between both deposits.

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Reign of Tutankhamun It is not certain how many storage jars were found in KV 54, since they were not published at the time of their discovery. Winlock (1941, 6), who saw them in January 1908, believed that there were between 12 and 15, although he points out that only 12 would have easily fitted into the pit (Winlock 1941, 6), and in Susan Allen’s (2003, 25, fig. 1) reconstruction of where they might have been placed in Tutankhamun’s tomb, 12 would be an optimal number. Whatever the case, by the winter of 1908–1909 only six remained. They are described by Winlock (1941, 6) as being ‘exactly alike’ Figure 6d: ‘the average height is 71 centimeters, the diameter at the mouth 35 centimeters, and the greatest diameter of the body 46.5 cms. They are made of a hard, resonant, light red clay. There are no inscriptions on them. The contents and the packing material came to within a few centimeters of the rim. In each case a layer of Nile mud had been smeared over all, and a layer of white lime and sand plaster poured on until it was flush with the top; this had been smoothed neatly, and the whole pot then whitewashed. An irregular spot on the outside of each of the pots at the very bottom did not get any colouring, and one of the pots had contained some wet material which leaked out through the top, leaving a brown stain.’ As Winlock realised, these are typical late Eighteenth Dynasty storage jars with several examples known from Late Eighteenth Dynasty tombs at Saqqara (cf. Bourriau et al. 2005, 38–40), and based on those, we can assume that the base was shaped by hand, probably in a mould, and was then joined to a wheelmade body, which was then joined to a wheel-made neck and rim. At the junction of the neck and upper body there is often a slight ledge which is both decorative and acts as a strengthener at the natural weakness of the join. Scratches present on the interior at the junction of neck and upper body may indicate that during the drying process this part of the vessel was supported by a framework made of twigs. Similarly string impressions are frequently found on the exterior which indicate that the pots were supported by string during the drying process. It is clear that these vessels have evolved from those shown in Figures 4a and 6a. Reign of Ay In the published preliminary report of the clearance of Ay’s tomb, Otto Schaden (1984, 51–2) mentions a few Eighteenth Dynasty potsherds, but does not mention any storage jar fragments. In his field notes, of which he gener-

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ously gave me a copy, several sherds from at least one jar with a cream wash are recorded, and Schaden suggests, by means of a small sketch, that they would have come from a jar of the type shown in Figure 6c–d. Typological conclusions Whilst much of the above is still speculative, we might suggest the following conclusions. At some point perhaps as early as the reign of Tuthmosis I, the manufacturers of Eighteenth Dynasty storage jars adopted methods of manufacture taken over from their marl clay compatriots. The earliest of the typical white-washed storage jars found in the Valley of the Kings, presumably those shown in Figure 2a–c from KV 33, have a short neck, and these appear to have been replaced sometime during the reign of Tuthmosis III by the ‘typical’ jars most often with trimmed rims, as evidenced in this article by the vessels from KV 26 and 31. The pottery from KV 26, as a whole, is remarkably similar to that from the tomb of the three foreign wives of Tuthmosis III, who seemed to have been buried anywhere between Year 22 and Year 42 of the reign (Lilyquist 2003, 333–6), which might give us a start date for these vessels.8 Very little pottery from the reigns of Amenophis II and Tuthmosis IV is available for study, but it might be that at some point during these reigns the rims of these jars were no longer so consistently trimmed. Under Amenophis III several new developments take place. At the beginning of the reign, the old ‘Tuthmosis III’ style probably continued, but it is replaced by more bulbous jars (e.g. Figs 3c and 4a). At the same time, experiments are being made with jars being made entirely on the wheel (Figs 4c–d and 5a–c). The more bulbous jars are obviously the forerunner of the ‘typical late Eighteenth Dynasty’ jars known from the tomb of Tutankhamun and the embalmers’ cache KV 63 (Fig. 6c–d). Bibliography ALLEN, S.J. 2003. ‘Tutankhamun’s embalming cache reconsidered’, in Z. HAWASS and L. PINCH BROCK (eds), Egyptology at the Dawn of the Twenty-first Century, vol. I, American University in Cairo Press, Cairo, 23–9. ASTON, D. 2006. ‘Making a splash. Ceramic decoration in the reigns of Tuthmosis III and Amenophis II’, in E. CERNY, I. HEIN, H. HUNGER, D. MELMANN and A. SCHWAB (eds), Timelines. Studies in Honour of Manfred Bietak, vol. I, Peeters, Leuven, 65–74. ASTON, D. forthcoming. ‘The pottery’, in G.T. MARTIN, The Re-clearance of KV 57 in the Valley of the Kings. ASTON, D., B. ASTON and D. RYAN. 2000. ‘Pottery from tombs in the Valley of the Kings KV 21, 27, 28, 44, 45 and 60’, CCE 6, 11–38. 8 The jars from the Valley of the Queens, tomb 32 (Lecuyot 1996, 151, 166, pl. IIc), are clearly of this type and should thus date to the reign of Tuthmosis III, and not the end of the Eighteenth Dynasty or beginning of the Nineteenth Dynasty as given.

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BADER, B. 2001. Tell el-Dab‘a XIII. Typologie und Chronolgie der Mergel C-Ton Keramik, Austrian Academy of Sciences Press, Vienna. EL-BIALY, M. 1999. ‘Récentes recherches effectuées dans la tombe 42 de la Vallée des Rois’, Memnonia 10, 161–78. BICKEL, S. 2013. ‘Ein neues Grab im Tal der Könige’, Antike Welt 1, 175–82. BICKEL, S. 2014. ‘KV 40. The Tomb of 18th Dynasty princesses and princes’, KMT 25:3, 22–32. BICKEL, S. 2015. ‘Das Grab KV 40 im Tal der Könige, Eine Familiengruft Amenophis’ III.’, Sǀkar 30, 78–89. BICKEL, S. 2016. ‘Other tombs. Queens and commoners in KV’, in K. WEEKS and R.H. WILKINSON (eds), The Oxford Handbook to the Valley of the Kings, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 230–42. BICKEL, S. and E. PAULIN-GROTHE. 2014. ‘KV 40. A burial place for the royal entourage’, EA 45, 21–4. BICKERSTAFFE, D. 2007. ‘Embalming caches in the Valley of the Kings’, KMT 18:2, 46–53. BICKERSTAFFE, D. 2010. ‘The enigma of Kings’ Valley Tomb 58’, KMT 21:3, 35–44. BERMAN, L. 1998. ‘Overview of Amenhotep III and his reign’, in D. O’CONNOR and E.H. CLINE (eds), Amenhotep III. Perspectives on His Reign, University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, 1–25. BOURRIAU, J., D. ASTON, M.J. RAVEN and R. VAN WALSEM. 2005. The Memphite Tomb of Horemheb III. The New Kingdom Pottery, Egypt Exploration Society, London. BRYAN, B. 1991. The Reign of Tuthmosis IV, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore. CARTER, H. 1901. ‘Report upon the tomb of Sen-Nefer found at Biban El-Melouk near that of Thotmes III no. 34’, ASAE 2, 196–200. CARTER, H. 1904. ‘Introduction’, in T.M. DAVIS, The Tomb of Thoutmosis IV, Constable, London, vii–xi. DAVIS, T.M. 1907. The Tomb of Iouyia and Touiyou, Constable, London. DAVIS, T.M. 1908. The Tomb of Siptah; The Monkey Tomb and the Gold Tomb, Constable, London. DAVIS, T.M. 1912. The Tombs of Harmhabi and Touatankhamanou, Constable, London. DARESSY, G. 1902. Fouilles de la Vallée des Rois, 1898-1899, Institut français d’archéologie orientale, Cairo. DODSON, A. and S. CROSS. 2016. ‘The Valley of the Kings in the reign of Tutankhamun’, EA 48, 3–8. EATON-KRAUSS, M. 2009. ‘Einbalsamierungdepots im Tal der Könige’, in E. DZIOBEK, M. HÖVELER-MÜLLER and C.E. LEOBEN (eds), Das Geheimnisvolle Grab 63. Die Neuste Entdeckung im Tal der Könige, Leihdorf, Rahden, 66–9. EATON-KRAUSS, M. 2012. ‘Who commissioned KV 42 and for whom?’, GM 234, 53–60. GABOLDE, M. 2013. ‘L’ADM de la famille royale amarnienne et les sources égyptiennes’, ENiM 6, 177–203. GABOLDE, M. 2016a. ‘Some remarks on the embalming caches in the royal necropoleis at Thebes and Amarna’, in J. VAN DIJK (ed.), Another Mouthful of Dust, Peeters, Leuven, 123–40. GABOLDE, M. 2016b. ‘Some remarks on the embalming caches in the royal necropoleis at Thebes and Amarna’, in M. ELDAMATY (ed.), Valley of the Kings Since Howard Carter, Ministry of Antiquities, Cairo, 37–50. HABICHT, M.E., A.S. BOUWMAN and F.J. RUHLI. 2016. ‘Identifications of ancient Egyptian royal mummies from the 18th Dynasty reconsidered’, Yearbook Phys. Anth. 159, 216–31.

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HAWASS, Z. 2013. Discovering Tutankhamun. From Howard Carter to DNA, American University in Cairo Press, Cairo. HAWASS, Z. 2015. ‘The Egyptian Expedition in the Valley of the Kings excavation season 2, 2008–2009: Part 1’, in P. KOUSOULIS and N. LAZARIDIS (eds), Proceedings of the Tenth International Congress of Egyptologists, vol. I, Peeters, Leuven, 221–66. HAWASS, Z. 2016. ‘The Egyptian Expedition in the Valley of the Kings. Excavation season 2, 2008–2009 – Part 2: the Valley of the Monkeys’, in J. VAN DIJK (ed.), Another Mouthful of Dust, Peeters, Leuven, 234–49. HOPE, C.A. 1978. Malkata and the Birket Habu IV. Jar Sealings and Amphorae, Aris & Phillips, Warminster. HOPE, C.A. 1987. ‘Innovation in the decoration of ceramics in the mid-18th Dynasty’, CCE 1, 97–122. HOPE, C.A. 1989. Pottery of the Egyptian New Kingdom. Three Studies, Victoria College Press, Melbourne. HOPE, C.A. 1991. ‘Blue-painted and polychrome decorated pottery from Amarna’, CCE 2, 17–92. HOPE, C.A. 1993. ‘The jar sealings’, in A. EL-KHOULI, R. HOLTHOER, C. HOPE and O. KAPER (ed. J. BAINES), Stone Vessels, Pottery and Sealings from the Tomb of Tutankhamun, Griffith Institute, Oxford, 87–138. HOPE, C.A. 1997. ‘Some Memphite blue-painted pottery of the mid-XVIIIth Dynasty’, in J. PHILLIPS (ed.), Ancient Egypt, the Aegean, and the Near East: Studies in Honour of Martha Roades Bell, Van Siclen Books, San Antonio, 249–86. HOPE, C.A. 1999. ‘Some remarks on potmarks of the late Eighteenth Dynasty’, in A. LEAHY and J. TAIT (eds), Studies on Ancient Egypt in Honour of H.S. Smith, Egypt Exploration Society, London, 121–46. HOPE, C.A. 2002. ‘Oasis amphorae of the New Kingdom’, in R. FRIEDMAN (ed.), Egypt and Nubia: Gifts of the Desert, British Museum Press, London, 95–131. HOPE, C.A. 2011. ‘Possible mid-18th Dynasty examples of blue-painted pottery from the Egypt Exploration Society’s excavations at Memphis’, in D. ASTON, B. BADER, C. GALLORINI, P. NICHOLSON and S. BUCKINGHAM (eds), Under the Potter’s Tree: Studies on Ancient Egypt Presented to Janine Bourriau on the Occasion of her 70th Birthday, Peeters, Leuven, 495–512. HOPE, C.A. 2016. The Survey of Memphis X. Kom Rabia: The Blue Painted Pottery, Egypt Exploration Society, London. JOHNSON, G.B. 1999. ‘Reconsideration of Kings’ Valley Tomb 42’, KMT 10:3, 20–33, 84–5. LAKOMY, C. 2011. ‘“Embalming caches” im Tal der Könige. Eine Bestandsaufnahme für die XVIII. Dynastie’, GM 228, 21–32. LAKOMY, C. 2016. “Der Löwe auf dem Schlachtfeld”: Das Grab KV 36 und die Bestattung des Maiherperi im Tal der Könige, Reichert Verlag, Wiesbaden. LECUYOT, G. 1996. ‘La céramique de la Vallée des Reines – Bilan préliminaire’, CCE 4, 145–69. LILYQUIST, C. 2003. The Tomb of Three Foreign Wives of Tuthmosis III, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. LORET, V. 1898. ‘Le tombeau de Thoutmès III à Biban el-Melouk’, BIE (3 Series) 9, 91–7. MARTIN, G.T. 2016. ‘Re-excavating the tomb of Horemheb in the Valley of the Kings’, in M. ELDAMATY (ed.), Valley of the Kings Since Howard Carter, Ministry of Antiquities, Cairo, 95–106.

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POLZ, D. 2007. Der Beginn des Neuen Reiches. Zur Vorgeschichte einer Zeitenwende, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin. PREYS, R. 2011. ‘Les tombes non-royales de la Vallée des Rois’, SAK 40, 315–38. QUIBELL, J.E. 1908. The Tomb of Yuaa and Thuiu, Institut français d’archéologie orientale, Cairo. REEVES, C.N. 1990. Valley of the Kings. The Decline of a Royal Necropolis, Kegan Paul, London. REEVES, C.N. 2002. ‘Huts and graffiti’, Newsletter of The Valley of the Kings Foundation, Special Issue 1 (2002): The Amarna Royal Tombs Project, 9. REEVES, C.N. 2003. ‘On some queens’ tombs of the Eighteenth Dynasty’, in N. STRUDWICK and J.H. TAYLOR (eds), The Theban Necropolis. Past, Present and Future, British Museum Press, London, 69–73. ROEHRIG, C.H. 2006. ‘The building activities of Tuthmosis III in the Valley of the Kings’, in E.H. CLINE and D. O’CONNOR (eds), Tuthmosis III. A New Biography, University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, 238–59. ROEHRIG, C.H. 2010. ‘Some thoughts on queens’ tombs in the Valley of the Kings’, in Z. HAWASS and S. IKRAM (eds), Thebes and Beyond. Studies in Honour of Kent R. Weeks, American University in Cairo Press, Cairo, 181–95. ROSE, P.J. 1989. ‘Appendix I. Pottery’, in G.T. MARTIN, The Royal Tomb at El-Amarna, II. The Reliefs, Inscriptions, and Architecture, Egypt Exploration Society, London, 65–6. ROSE, P.J. n.d. ‘Pottery from KV 42’, unpublished. RYAN, D.P. 1991. ‘Return to Wadi Biban el-Moluk. The 2nd (1990) season of the Valley of the Kings Project’, KMT 2:1, 26–31. RYAN, D.P. 2010. ‘The Pacific Lutheran University Valley of the Kings Project: work conducted during the 2007 field season’, ASAE 84, 383–8. RYAN, D.P. 2011. ‘The second phase of the Pacific Lutheran University Valley of the Kings Project’, KMT 21:4, 30–44. SCHADEN, O.J. 1984. ‘Clearance of the tomb of King Ay (WV-23)’, JARCE 21, 39–64. SCHADEN, O.J. 2007. ‘KV-63: an update. The final stages of clearance’, KMT 18:1, 16–25. SCHADEN, O.J. 2008. ‘The Amenmesse Project, season of 2006’, ASAE 82, 231–60. SCHADEN, O.J. 2009. ‘KV63 season 2009’, KMT 20:3, 8–29. SCHADEN, O.J. 2016. ‘The West Valley and Amenmesse Projects’, in M. ELDAMATY (ed.), Valley of the Kings Since Howard Carter, Ministry of Antiquities, Cairo, 135–53. SMITH, S.T. 1992. ‘Intact tombs of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Dynasties from Thebes’, MDAIK 48, 193–231. TAKAHASHI, K. 2016a. ‘A preliminary report on the pottery from KV A in the Western Valley of the Kings’, BCE 26, 193–211. TAKAHASHI, K. 2016b. ‘A preliminary report on the pottery from KV A in the Western Valley of the Kings’, in M. ELDAMATY (ed.), Valley of the Kings Since Howard Carter, Ministry of Antiquities, Cairo, 155–73. TAKAHASHI, K., S. YOSHIMURA and J. KONDO. 2009. ‘Preliminary report on the study on the pottery from the royal tomb of Amenophis III, 2006–2007’, JES 15, 71–92. THOMAS, E. 1966. The Royal Necropoleis of Thebes, privately published, Princeton. WINLOCK, H.E. 1941. Materials Used at the Embalming of King Tut-Ankh-Amun, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. WINLOCK, H.E. and DO. ARNOLD. 2010. Tutankhamun’s Funeral, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

PINK IN THE KELLIS MAMMISI AND KALABSHA TEMPLE: SOLAR THEOLOGY AND DIVINE GENDER IN ROMAN PERIOD CULTIC MONUMENTS1

Elizabeth BETTLES Netherlands Institute for the Near East, Leiden

With many thanks to Colin Hope, whose excavations at Kellis offered me the opportunity to discover first-hand the fascinating world of Roman Egypt. When a team from Monash University led by Colin Hope was excavating at Kellis in the Dakhleh Oasis they discovered a two-roomed brick-built shrine within the southwest corner of a temple enclosure. The temple was dedicated to Tutu, an apotropaic deity popular in the Graeco-Roman period (Kaper 2003) and was constructed probably in the early second century CE during the Antonine Dynasty. Features of this shrine indicate that the monument functioned as a mammisi (e.g. Hope 1991, 48–9; Kaper 1991, 64–6; 1999, 69–74; 2002, 217–22). Characteristically the main aim of such a building was to ensure the repeated rejuvenation and rebirth of the divine and earthly cosmos (Kockelmann 2011). This function was embedded within the painted iconography which covered the white-plastered walls and vaulted ceiling. While the base register incorporates depictions mainly of human activities, in the registers above, figures of hundreds of divinities are rendered: gods, goddesses and boy-gods. Each image is identified by an accompanying brief legend. In appearance these divinities exhibit a wide variation of bright polychrome features relating to patterns and styles of clothing and crowns. Their skin too varies in colour, being red, yellow, blue, green, black or pink. A preliminary study into the complex use of colour in the mammisi’s pharaonic decoration is in process of publication (Bettles forthcoming). The presence of pink, a colour created by mixing red ochre, green earth and white gypsum (Berry 2002), is noteworthy. As far as I am aware, this tone is not documented in decorative schema of cultic monuments dating to the Dynastic period. Its use in Room 1 of the mammisi is striking as it is observed only 1 With thanks to Professor O.E. Kaper for his comments on this article and his additions to the bibliography.

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Figure 1. Pink (shown here as grey) in the iconography of the mammisi and its focus on denoting the colour of divine skin. These images are of three of the Seven Hathors.

in one iconographic context: divine skin. That context includes the bare flesh of the figure of a deity and objects decorated with part of an image of a divine being (e.g. a sistrum decorated with the face of the goddess Hathor) (Fig. 1). No other colour in the mammisi’s decorative scheme is used in this highly targeted contextual manner. The other hues are applied to a variety of iconographic features (clothing; crowns, thrones and cultic objects as well as divine skin) making the paintings a vibrant polychromic vision of the divine cosmos. Gender is evidently a significant factor in the application of pink to flesh areas of adult divine figures. Whilst numerous goddesses are rendered with pink skin, no images of adult male divinities are attested except for the god Tutu when he is depicted in his sphinx form. In this instance the pink denotes his pelt (Table 1). This reluctance to render the skin of adult male divinities pink does not impact similarly on images of male deities in their youthful

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Table 1. Deities in the Kellis mammisi with skin that is rendered pink.

aspect. Indeed as regards figures of naked boy-gods, most display pink skin. No deity, female or boy-god, is rendered exclusively with pink skin. In some scenes images of Tapsais, a goddess local to Kellis and consort of Tutu, can display skin that is yellow, while in other instances it is pink. Images of Neith and Nephthys can be green- or pink-skinned. For Isis, Hathor and Seshat they can display red- or pink-skin. Similarly, while most boy-gods display pink flesh, they can sometimes be rendered with green or red skin. The implications of this fascinating feature will be studied in the future. As far as the extant colour remains suggest, this level of variability of divine skin colour was not characteristic of Dynastic period monuments. Before the Graeco-Roman period most images of gods had skin painted red. Exceptions included significant deities such Osiris, Anubis, Ptah, Min and Amun. Their flesh could sometimes be rendered green, black or blue in addition to red. This variability has been suggested to reflect specific aspects of the divine figure, for example vigorous life, regeneration, to indicate high status. During the Dynastic period the skin colour of goddesses was almost invariably rendered with one hue: yellow (Wilkinson 1999, 112–15; Robins 2001, 293). Texts written after the Dynastic period indicate that colour continued to reflect the powers of the divine being depicted. Roman period texts show that when the deity’s ba alighted on his/her carved or painted image on temple walls and united with it, the depiction was then referred to as sxmw ‘powers’ (Assmann 2001, 40–4). Egyptian gods were multivalent beings possessing a wide variety of powers which could be expressed through a multiplicity of manifestations (Hornung 1982, 109–28). In the Kellis mammisi skin colour variability was one such manifestation. In addition to the link between skin colour and divine ‘powers’, later linguistic sources suggest that divine skin colour also possessed connotations regarding the character of that divinity. In Ptolemaic the word for imn ‘skin’ bears the meaning of ‘character’ or ‘nature’ while the word iwn ‘colour’ can also have the definition ‘skin’ (Wilson 1997, 52, 84). From this one can surmise that when the Kellis painter(s) used the full range

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of his colour palette when painting areas of divine bare flesh he was evoking different aspects of their divine nature and their powers. The question then arises as to what aspect of a deity’s nature or powers the painter was attempting to denote when he applied the colour pink to skin areas of a divine image. The context of scenes where these pink-skinned images occur may hold the key to this question. A scene on the north wall indicates gender of adult deities played a significant role in the application of pink onto flesh areas divine figures. In this scene all but one of the deities are female. From left to right these are the right-facing Neith, who stands protectively behind the enthroned Tapsais, while facing them is a procession of goddesses comprising Lower Egyptian Meret, the Seven Hathors, the Lady of Punt (a form of Hathor), the beer-goddess Menqet and the four Meskhenets. Last in the line, and the only male deity in this scene, is the pink-skinned boy-god Ihy. From the section of this scene that has been reconstructed (from Neith on the left to part of the figure of the Lady of Punt on the right) every alternate figure starting with Tapsais, displays pink skin. The other goddesses in the scene exhibit flesh with a green hue, a colour which evokes newness of life, freshness and vigorous growth (Robins 2001, 291). All the female deities in this scene are known for their involvement with matters relating to women: to female fertility, birth, the nurturing of children, and production activities specifically undertaken by women. The presence of Ihy, a naked infant, at the end of the procession can be viewed as the successful fruit of female creative and nurturing activities. This scene, with its emphasis on female-related activities, is without parallel in the mammisi’s iconography. Even the presence of Tutu himself, to whom the temple was dedicated, is regarded as inappropriate for inclusion. This is the only scene in the mammisi in which he does not appear. Unusually also, Neith, mother of Tutu, plays a subsidiary role to Tapsais, standing protectively behind her while Tapsais sits enthroned, the focus of the scene. Exactly why Tapsais should play such a significant role in this scene is tantalisingly unclear. Little is known about this goddess who may have been a local woman deified. Her iconography reveals an association with queenship while her name suggests an ability to control human destiny (Kaper and Worp 1995). While the percentage of deities with pink skin is unusually high for a scene in the mammisi, this alternating pattern of pink and green is also singular. Alternating patterns of divine skin-colour is a rare feature in scenes in this shrine’s iconography, and this is the only one where such alternation of two tones occurs throughout the whole scene. Alternation is acting as the bringing together of two aspects either into a binary opposition or complementary duality, signifying a wholeness or completion (Wilkinson 1999, 111). Exactly what the complete concept of pink/green duality is attempting to evoke is debatable. Being part of iconography within a mammisi, it would doubtless involve the

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facilitation of (re-)birth, regeneration and rejuvenation of the divine cosmos, though, in this instance, the particular focus of this facilitation concerns two goddesses. This highlighting of the significance of females and their importance recalls what was happening contemporaneously in Egyptian funerary contexts. In Roman Egypt a distinct rise in representations of females in funerary art and an increased number of female burials is discerned. This is suggested to signal changes in how the society of the time was viewing gender and was reflecting ‘the social construction of distinct roles for men and women’ (Riggs 2005, 41). In addition to denoting aspects relating to female affairs, the iconographic context of pink divine skin highlights a connection between this colour, solar mythology and the powers of light. Above the doorway on the east wall of the mammisi is a scene including the images of 12 goddesses who are manifestations of the 12 Hours of the Day. Each figure is rendered with pink flesh (Kaper pers. comm., January 2009). This contrasts with a scene on the south wall with divine images who denote the 12 Hours of the Night. Eight of these night-time figures have survived the ravages of time: seven male and one female. None are pink-skinned. The male figures display flesh that is coloured yellow, red or black, while the goddess, who denotes the sixth Hour of the Night, is rendered with green skin. Clearly, for the mammisi painter, pink was the skin tone par excellence which evoked the power and nature of light as the sun deity traversed the sky hour by hour throughout the day. The conceptual link between sunlight and the skin of a solar deity existed already in the Dynastic period, with particular emphasis on light of early morning. One Morning Hymn from the Amarna period, speaking of the Aten, says ‘Your skin is the light’ (Assmann 1995, 181). In another hymn from the same time of day the light emanating from the divine skin of the Aten is said to have the power to give life, declaring that ‘Your radiant skin animates hearts’ (Assmann 1995, 94). Unfortunately the colour of the Aten’s skin is never stated. According to Egyptian myth the sun deity was born at dawn as a child and, as the day progressed, the child ages until at sunset he becomes an old man (Budde 2010). This myth is expressed iconographically on a ceiling in the tomb of Ramesses VI where, in a scene painted yellow on a blue background, the sky-goddess is depicted with the sun as a naked infant in her womb, about to be born (Hornung 1997, fig. 66). This group image is part of the scene which denotes the first hour of the Book of the Day (Roberts 2013, 163) An image of a solar deity as an infant is also attested on the Twenty-first Dynasty papyrus of Hirweben where a naked yellow-skinned divine infant sits inside a sun-disk whose outline is formed by a snake holding its tail (Hornung 1982, fig.18). This ouroboros emphasises the cyclical aspect of the sun’s birth as a child possessing the power to sustain the occurrence of this event for eternity.

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This notional link between an infant and the eternally repeated rising of the sun continued into the Roman period. At Edfu the king offers a tiny image of dawn with a naked infant rendered inside the sun’s disk and tells the god, ‘Take the horizon of the east where you shine like a child’ (Chassinat 1930, 271; 1933, 132). At Esna a legend emphasises the repeated nature of their birth, describing the local child deity Heka-pa-khered (‘Heka-the-child’) as being ‘The perfect youth, sweet of love, who repeats the births again and again.’ (Sauneron 1963, no. 51). In the Kellis mammisi, a scene rendered on the south wall highlights the significant role played by pink-skinned boy-gods on the First Occasion when the cosmos was being created. Four boy-gods are depicted clustering two before and two after the figure of the goddess Mut, who is rendered here with green-coloured skin. A legend identifies one boy-god as Khonsu, son of Mut and moon god, and a deity connected with the creation of new life (HouserWegner 2001). As legends associated with the images of the other three boygods have not survived their identity cannot be determined. These divine boys, naked, pink-skinned, with a finger to their mouth, carry over their right arm a large, multicoloured, striped piece of cloth. All four grasp a rekhyt bird in their left hand (Fig. 2). These five figures stand behind enthroned images of Tutu, Neith, Tapsais and Isis Lactans with Horus on her knee. Facing these deities is a procession of 20 gods with two seated potter-gods, Ptah and Khnum, at their head. Each pottergod perches on a stool while he creates a different form of life on a kick-wheel (an egg and homunculus respectively) (Bettles 2011). The exact roles these four pink-skinned boy-gods and Mut are playing in this scene are still under investigation, though their presence would emphasise the creative potency of light. As daughter of Re, Mut is described in a crossword hymn at Karnak as one ‘who illumines [the entire land with] her rays … [and] causes the land to prosper’ (Stewart 1971, 90). Khonsu would introduce the power of moon light. The location of this scene on the south wall, directly opposite a door in the north wall, highlights the significance that light would play on these painted figures. Once that door, which led onto the courtyard in the temple enclosure, was opened, rays of light from the sun or moon would have fallen directly upon the painted figures, imbuing them and their polychromy with vigorous life.2 A further demonstration of the link between the colour pink and light emanating from the sun god occurs above the doorway on the east wall in the mammisi. There the figure of Tutu is shown in his sphinx-aspect, with a lion’s body and human face. Among his many roles, Tutu was regarded as a solar deity (Kaper 2003, 66–7). Texts at Esna state that Neith gave birth to Tutu ‘to illuminate the entire land’ (Sauneron 1963, 223). Iconographically, when he is 2

My thanks to O.E. Kaper for pointing this out to me.

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Figure 2. Painted plaster fragments in the process of restoration showing two of the four pink-skinned boy-gods (greyscale) (photo © O.E. Kaper).

shown in his sphinx rather than in his human manifestation, this notion is expressed by a solar disk encircling his head. In the Roman period this transformed into a nimbus of solar rays (Kaper 2003, 290–2). In the mammisi the lion’s pelt portion of the sphinx’s body is rendered ‘pink/red’ (Kaper 2003, 288–9, R-70), a distinctly darker shade of pink than is characteristically painted in this monument.3 Presumably the inclusion of more red in the pigment mixture made the tone more fitting for his male skin colour, red being the skin colour most frequently used for images of adult male deities in this monument. In Ptolemaic the determinative for the word ‘Re’ sometimes takes the form of

3 This is not happenstance. In the Roman tomb of Petosiris at Muzzawaqa in Dakhleh I observed similarly that the ‘pink’ of Tutu’s pelt exhibits a darker shade than the pink tone displayed elsewhere in the tomb.

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a lion (Kurth 2008, 201), a feature confirming the notional link between the sun’s power and depictions of this member of the big cat family. While contextual evidence in the Kellis mammisi suggests that a bright tone of pink evoked the power and nature of female deities and the repeated solar phenomenon of dawn, searching for comparative material in other Roman period cultic monuments which might be analogous had limited success. In most monuments dating to this time colour traces have not survived, or where they have, they have not been fully published.4 Fortunately colour traces in the temple of Kalabsha, south of Aswan, were documented (according to the standards of the time) before the waters of the Nile washed them away, its polychrome reliefs and texts in the two innermost rooms being recorded in the early decades of the last century (Gauthier 1911–1914). These rooms with their painted reliefs functioned as the god’s home, with the sanctuary housing the statue of Mandulis, the god to whom the temple was dedicated. Mandulis, a god local to Nubia, was a solar deity. Iconographically he manifests two aspects: the younger, entitled Mandulis the Child, denoted the renewing power of the sun. The older ‘Mandulis the Great God’ evoked the sun at its zenith (Desroches Noblecourt 1985, 201–7). The image of Augustus carved on the temple walls indicates that the decorum of this temple was painted about a century or so earlier than the paintings in the Kellis mammisi. From descriptions given by Gauthier, the colour palette used by the painter(s) in Kalabsha comprised red, blue, green, rarely yellow, and a hue which he terms ‘violet’ or, less often, ‘violette’.5 I interpret ‘violet’ and ‘violette’ as denoting darker or lighter shades of purply-pink, and thus being an equivalent to the pink tone observed at Kellis. Sadly Gauthier’s identifications of colours in their iconographic contexts cannot be confirmed as no colour traces in the monument have survived.6 From his documentation a close similarity exists between what is observed regarding ‘violet/violette’ at Kalabsha and the contextual use of pink in the Kellis mammisi. In both monuments flesh areas of certain female deities, boy-gods and deities displaying a leonine aspect are rendered with this rose-tinted shade. Similarly, no adult male divinities manifesting human form bear traces of pink/‘violet’-coloured flesh (Table 2). At Kalabsha sufficient colour traces had survived on eight of the 13 images of Isis for Gauthier to record that their flesh had been painted a shade of ‘violet’ (Gauthier 1911–1914, 17, 19–21, 26–8, 71–2, 86–7, 89–90, 90–1, 96–8). 4 I look forward to the publication of colour data relating to the painted reliefs in the temple of Deir Shelwit which have recently been cleaned and conserved. 5 Champollion observed the presence of pink at Kalabsha, stating this was the first time he had encountered such a colour in painted reliefs (Gauthier 1911–1914, xxviii). 6 A painted fragment from Kalabsha with colour traces extant can be seen in the Musée Fenaille at Rodez. It includes an image of a red-skinned Augustus wearing a necklace with one of its bands painted dark violet (Dewachter 1981, 8).

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Table 2. Images of deities rendered with pink skin in the two innermost rooms at Kalabsha, according to Gauthier (1911–1914).

Other pink-skinned goddesses include Satet, goddess associated with the First Cataract region, Wadjet, Hathor, Nephthys, Mut and Tefnut. Indeed of the 23 images of goddesses displaying colour remains in Gauthier’s time the majority, 16, were pink-skinned. The other seven exhibited flesh that had been painted green or, dissimilar to Kellis, some goddesses displayed blue-coloured skin. Legends accompanying these images of pink-skinned goddesses are notable in their mention of solar myth.7 Those accompanying Isis speak of her as a solar deity akin to Re, describing her as ‘female Re of the circuit of the sun’ (Gauthier 1911–1914, 89) and ‘female ruler of the circuit of the sun’ (Gauthier 1911– 1914, 18, 20). A legend relating to Satet (Gauthier 1911–1914, 91) states she is one ‘who gave birth to the sun-disc’. She is also described as being one who possesses powers related to the movement of the sun. In two scenes (Gauthier 1911–1914, 91, 110) she tells the king: ‘(I) give you the circuit of the sun’. In one scene the connection between Satet and the sun is highlighted visually and materially by the application of gold leaf over her face (Gauthier 1911–1914, 110–11). This recalls the application of gold leaf on the eye of the cat in the fowling scene in the Eighteenth Dynasty tomb of Nebamun where the gold, with its eternal brilliance, evokes a link between the cat and the sun-god (Miller and Parkinson 2001). Legends accompanying pink-skinned images of Hathor, Mut, Nekhbet, Tefnut, Wadjet and Satet describe these female deities as ‘Eye of Re’, the violent counterpart of the sun god. Only pink-skinned Nephthys lacks a mention of solar connections in her legend. She appears in a scene where she, along with Osiris and Isis, receives an offering of the sign of ma’at from the king and queen. In reply to their actions she tells them, ‘(I) give you all life and power and all health’ (Gauthier 1911–1914, 41). At Kalabsha this life-giving aspect of pink-skinned goddesses 7 While Gauthier published the texts, he didn’t publish a translation of them. I am therefore grateful to Dr Carina van den Hoven for allowing me access to hers and giving me permission to publish some of them here. Complete publication of the texts and the decoration system of the temple of Kalabsha by her is forthcoming.

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also receives particular attention in legends associated with images of Isis. They consistently refer to her as being one ‘who gives life’. This recalls how Isis is described on walls of the temple at Dendera. There legends state that the blackhaired Isis is ‘à la peau rose, pleine de vie’ (Cauville 1998, 64.3, 87.5). The translation of the word dSrt as ‘pink’ in this instance is unusual. Normally this word is translated ‘red’. From current knowledge no specific word for ‘pink’ exists in the hieroglyphic language to confirm the meaning ‘rose’. Whether colour traces survive on those reliefs of Isis which would confirm this translation is unknown. The carved and painted images of Mandulis the Child on the temple walls at Kalabsha indicate that the colour pink, when applied onto an image of the boy-god, evoked the earliest phase of divine childhood. Iconographically this child deity is depicted with two manifestations according to age: the youngest shows him as a plump, naked infant with his finger to his mouth and a sidelock of hair, thus resembling the depictions of boy-gods in the Kellis mammisi; the manifestation of him as a youth shows him wearing a short skirt and vest but still with a sidelock of hair (e.g. Gauthier 1911–1914, 21–2, 31, pls VIIB and VIIIA). All images of Mandulis the Child in his youngest form are described by Gauthier as having flesh coloured pink. The figures showing the child in his older manifestation are said to display traces of green on the skin, a hue associated with rebirth, or blue, a colour denoting sky and high status (Robins 2001). As at Kellis, the colour pink is rendered on images whose contexts recall the First Occasion when light appeared. On the north wall of the inner vestibule at Kalabsha a figure of Mandulis the Child in his youngest aspect, naked and pink-skinned, is shown sitting curled up on a flowering lotus with his finger to his mouth and holding a flail (Gauthier 1911–1914, 111, pl. XXXVB). This image renders the event when the solar deity, as a child, emerged from a blossoming lotus flower growing out of the primeval waters of nun. A legend declares, ‘May you rejuvenate like Re rejuvenates, every day’, revealing that this delicate, pink-skinned infant deity was regarded as possessing the powers of light and eternal rejuvenation which would ensure the continued existence of the cosmos. Other legends accompanying images of the infant Mandulis the Child assert his connection with the sun at dawn and its life-giving potency. In the sanctuary one legend describes him as one ‘who rises in the east, the great god who is in the east’ (Gauthier 1911–1914, 38, pl. XIIIB). In another he is characterised as one ‘who makes the Two Lands beautiful when he comes from the east, who provides strength for the living’ (Gauthier 1991–1914, 55–6, pl. XVIIB). Just as the lion-bodied sphinx form of Tutu at Kellis was rendered with a pink pelt, so at Kalabsha the lion-headed human figure of Tutu was pinkskinned (Gauthier 1911–1914, 85–6). In addition, the goddess Tefnut, appearing in her lion-headed form, too displays pink flesh. This leonine aspect reflects

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the myth told in a late papyrus how, after a quarrel with the sun-god, she adopted this form as she flew to Nubia in a rage (Wilkinson 2003, 183). At Kalabsha an epithet accompanying her image announces her as ‘daughter of Re’ (Gauthier 1911–1914, 99), once again illustrating a solar link connecting pink skin and deities with leonine features. While the above observations reveal a highly analogous situation between how pink was used in Kellis and Kalabsha, dissimilarities of its iconographic use exist between the two monuments. At Kellis pink was employed specifically to colour the context of divine skin. At Kalabsha this tone was also used in depictions of ankh sceptres, symbols of the gods’ power to increase years of life, which the deities are shown grasping in their hands, In the Kellis mammisi, these sceptres are rendered red and green or red and blue. At Kalabsha the uraeus, the rearing cobra at the front of crowns worn by king and divinities alike, is denoted the colour pink, whereas at Kellis the body of the uraeus is characteristically painted yellow, the hue more traditionally employed to evoke solar symbolism. The uraeus indeed possessed powerful mythological solar associations. On a stela of Ramesses IV it is said of the sun deity that ‘his uraeus has illuminated the globe’ (Assmann 1995, 77). In the sixth Hour of the Day the uraeus defeated the enemy of the sun, Apophis, by spitting fire at him (Assmann 1995, 52–3). As painters at Kalabsha very rarely applied yellow onto the temple’s carved reliefs, it seems that when their intention was to evoke solar symbolism their choice fell on the colour pink as the most suitable substitute. The powers of pink The Egyptians believed that skin was one of the features of a divine being which denoted their powers and roles in the cosmos. The painters at Kellis and Kalabsha, despite being some considerable distance apart on the fringes of Egypt, adopted a highly analogous strategy when applying the colour pink onto areas denoting skin of divine images. As regards adult divine figures, they both adopted a strategy to express visually features associated with divine gender. Pink skin was appropriate for goddesses known for their involvement with female matters relating to birth and nurturing, the creation of life and familial relationships with the sun deity. Used in duality with green, pink skin emphasised the nature of goddesses to act in ways to the benefit of other goddesses (in the case of Kellis, Tapsais and Neith). This suggests a notion of divine ‘sisterhood’, where activities relating to female deities were regarded as separate from those of male divine beings (which included the deity to whom the the temple was dedicated). The presence of the pink boy-god Ihy at the end of this particular scene, as the only male, may indicate that infant boy-gods were regarded as being more closely affiliated to goddesses than gods. At Kalabsha this proposal may be extended by the fact that in his youngest manifestation

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Mandulis the Child is rendered as a plump, pink-skinned infant, while as a youth his skin is blue or green, reflecting characteristics of an adult male deity. The implication is that pink was being employed to denote recent birth, as it also evokes the sun at dawn. The energising and invigorating powers of the colour pink, its symbolic relationship with light at dawn and its solar mythological affiliations, were not considered appropriate for skin areas of figures of male divine beings. However such a proscription on using pink in relation to things masculine did not extend to humans and their funerary contexts. Roman period mummy-cases belonging to adult males can exhibit a vibrant and luminous shade of pink on the rendering of clothing, the floral coronet and flowers grasped in the hand of the deceased (e.g. BM EA29584: Walker and Bierbrier 1997, 30 no. 2). Pink is also a feature of mummy-cases belonging to adult females (e.g. BM EA29587: Walker and Bierbrier 1997, 35 no. 9). The popularity of pink at this time is undoubtedly due to the vibrancy of hue which, from the Ptolemaic period, was achievable technically by employing lake madder, a dyestuff derived from the root of the madder plant (Lee and Nicholson 2000, 113).8 The level of brightness that madder could attain was more luminous than a mixture of earth pigments. It produced a radiance that the Egyptians could associate with light and its associated powers of (re-)birth, regeneration and new life. This solar symbolism of the colour pink took precedence over the symbolic associations relating to divine female gender. To conclude, from current evidence the incorporation of the colour pink to render divine skin in the iconography of these two Roman period cultic monuments appears innovative when compared to cultic monuments of the Dynastic period. Whether this is an indication of innovation in religious thought is debatable. As Dunand (Dunand and Zivie-Coche 2004, 269) has commented, the Graeco-Roman period in Egypt was a time when ‘theological reflection was pursued intensively … leading to many transformations in the written myths and their pictorial expression’. The iconographic use of pink as studied above may be viewed in this light, as an innovative pictorial expression of theological reflections at this late stage of the ancient Egyptian civilisation.

8 In a first century CE tomb at Hawara a deceased male was accompanied by six pottery containers. In each one traces of different colour remained: red/brown, light blue, yellow, reddishorange, white and pink. These colours correspond to those used on cartonnage masks. Analysis of the pink remains confirmed the presence of rose madder (BM 1888.0920.27; Walker and Bierbrier 1997, 201 no. 278).

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Bibliography ASSMANN, J. 1995. Egyptian Solar Religion in the New Kingdom: Re, Amun and the Crisis of Polytheism, trans. A. ALCOCK, Kegan Paul International, London. ASSMANN, J. 2001. The Search for God in Ancient Egypt, trans. D. LORTON, Cornell University Press, London. BERRY, M. 2002. ‘The study of pigments from Shrine I at Ismant el-Kharab’, in C.A. HOPE and G.E. BOWEN (eds), Dakhleh Oasis Project: Preliminary Reports on the 1994–1995 to 1998–1999 Field Seasons, Oxbow Books, Oxford, 53–60. BETTLES, E. 2011. ‘The divine potters of Kellis’, in D. ASTON, B. BADER, C. GALLORINI, P. NICHOLSON and S. BUCKINGHAM (eds), Under the Potter’s Tree: Studies on Ancient Egypt Presented to Janine Bourriau on the Occasion of Her 70th Birthday, Peeters, Leuven, 215–51. BETTLES, E. forthcoming. ‘Complexity of colour use in the pharaonic-style paintings at Kellis – insights from the Seven Hathors’, for submission to the Dakhleh Oasis Project Monograph series. BUDDE, D. 2010. ‘Child deities’, in W. WENDRICH (ed.), UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, http://digital2.library.ucla.edu/viewItem.do?ark=21198/zz0025sr1m CAUVILLE, S. 1998. Dendara I: Traduction, Peeters, Leuven. CHASSINAT, É. 1930. Le Temple d’Edfou V, Institut français d’archéologie orientale, Cairo. CHASSINAT, É. 1933. Le Temple d’Edfou VIII, Institut français d’archéologie orientale, Cairo. DESROCHES NOBLECOURT, C. 1985. ‘Les zélateurs de Mandoulis et les maîtres de Ballana et de Qustul’, in P. POSENER-KRIÉGER (ed.), Mélanges Gamal eddin Moktar, vol. I, Institut français d’archéologie orientale, Cairo, 199–218. DEWACHTER, M. 1981. ‘Nubie: notes divers (III): §9 à 11’, BIFAO 81, 3–10. DUNAND, F. and C. ZIVIE-COCHE. 2004. Gods and Men in Egypt 3000 BCE to 395 CE, trans. D. LORTON, Cornell University Press, London. GAUTHIER, H. 1911–1914. Le Temple de Kalabchah, Institut français d’archéologie orientale, Cairo. HOPE, C.A. 1991. ‘The 1991 excavations at Ismant el-Kharab in the Dakhleh Oasis’, BACE 2, 41–50. HORNUNG, E. 1982. Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt: The One and the Many, trans. J. BAINES, Cornell University Press, New York. HORNUNG, E. 1997. The Ancient Egyptian Books of the Afterlife, trans. D. LORTON, Cornell University Press, New York. HOUSER-WEGNER, J. 2001. ‘Khonsu’, in D.B. REDFORD (ed.), The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt, vol. I, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 233. KAPER, O.E. 1991. ‘The god Tutu (Tithoes) and his temple in the Dakhleh Oasis’, BACE 2, 59–67. KAPER, O.E. 1999. ‘Epigraphy at Ismant el-Kharab 1992–1994: interim observations’, in C.A. HOPE and A.J. MILLS (eds), Dakhleh Oasis Project: Preliminary Reports on the 1992–1993 and 1993–1994 Field Seasons, Oxbow Books, Oxford, 69–74. KAPER, O.E. 2002. ‘Pharaonic-style decoration in the mammisi of Ismant el-Kharab: new insights after the 1996–1997 field season’, in C.A. HOPE and G.E. BOWEN (eds), Dakhleh Oasis Project: Preliminary Reports on the 1994–1995 to 1998– 1999 Field Seasons, Oxbow Books, Oxford, 217–23. KAPER, O.E. 2003. The Egyptian God Tutu: A Study of the Sphinx-God and Master of Demons with a Corpus of Monuments, Peeters, Leuven.

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KAPER, O.E. and K.A. WORP. 1995. ‘A bronze representing Tapsais of Kellis’, RdE 46, 107–18. KOCKELMANN, H. 2011. ‘Mammisi (birth house)’, in W. WENDRICH (ed.), UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, http://digital2.library.ucla.edu/viewItem.do?ark=21198/ zz0026wfgr KURTH, D. 2008. Einführung ins Ptolemäische, Backe, Hützel. LEE, L. and P. NICHOLSON. 2000. ‘Painting materials’, in P.T. NICHOLSON and I. SHAW (eds), Ancient Egyptian Materials and Technology, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 104–20. MILLER, E. and R.B. PARKINSON. 2001. ‘Reflections on a gilded eye in “Fowling in the marshes” (British Museum EA37977)’, in W.V. DAVIES (ed.), Colour and Painting in Ancient Egypt, British Museum Press, London, 49–52. RIGGS, C. 2005. The Beautiful Burial in Roman Egypt: Art, Identity, and Funerary Religion, Oxford University Press, Oxford. ROBERTS, A. 2013. ‘Invisible Hathor: rising dawn in the Book of the Day’, in E. FROOD and A. MCDONALD (eds), Decorum and Experience: Essays in Ancient Culture for John Baines, Griffith Institute, Oxford, 163–9. ROBINS, G. 2001. ‘Colour symbolism’, in D.B. REDFORD (ed.), The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt, vol. I, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 291–4. SAUNERON, S. 1963. Le temple d’Esna, vol. II, Institut français d’archéologie orientale, Cairo. STEWART, H.M. 1971. ‘A crossword hymn to Mut’, JEA 57, 87–104. WALKER, S. and M. BIERBRIER. 1997. Ancient Faces: Mummy Portraits from Roman Egypt, British Museum Press, London. WILKINSON, R.H. 1999. Symbol and Magic in Egyptian Art, Thames & Hudson, London. WILKINSON, R.H. 2003. The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt, Thames & Hudson, London. WILSON, P.A. 1997. A Ptolemaic Lexicon: A Lexicographical Study of the Texts in the Temple of Edfu, Peeters, Leuven.

LANDSCAPE MODIFICATION IN THE SOUTH CAUCASUS HIGHLANDS: THE ACCURACY OF REMOTE FEATURE IDENTIFICATION

Jessie BIRKETT-REES Monash University, Melbourne

Introduction Colin Hope has dedicated decades to the study of the Dakhleh Oasis, both as a regional entity with distinctive local traditions and as a microcosm of wider trends in Egypt and beyond. His substantial contributions have focussed on understanding the cultural development of the oasis and the ways in which people have adapted to their changing cultural and natural world. The following paper addresses a landscape distant from Dakhleh and its neighbours but engages with these same themes. I investigate methodologies for recording the material remains of inhabitation in a remote area, the highlands of the South Caucasus. I am interested in how people lived in the highlands, how they modified their landscape and adapted to marginal environments through terracing, construction of seasonal villages and development of burial landscapes. A Festschrift is the ideal context in which to offer a few words on the topic of legacy and to highlight the value of what has come before to the success of current research in archaeology. My contribution addresses the ways that we can use legacy data to further current research, a topic common to many archaeological research projects. Legacy data is the findings of previous research, whether artefacts, publications, field notes or archival records including maps and, in the case of this paper, aerial photographs. A key methodological interest in current archaeological research is the use of remote sensing data, whether terrestrial data such as Ground Penetrating Radar or aerial imagery, including photographs and multi-spectral satellite imagery, to map and understand archaeological landscapes. I draw on the work of an ongoing research project in the South Caucasus highlands and discuss the ways in which we have tested and made use of an archive of aerial photographs to examine large scale survey techniques. This project is indebted to the broader Georgian-Australian Investigations in Archaeology (GAIA) project, which for more than a decade has seen collaborative work between Georgian and Australian teams from the University of Mel-

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bourne, La Trobe University, Monash University, and the University of Adelaide. We are also grateful to the Georgian National Museum and its director, David Lordkipandize, for permission to conduct this collaborative research in Georgia and to our Georgian director, Kakha Kakhiani. The work presented here was undertaken by the Landscape Archaeology in Georgia (LAG) project team, who have spent seven seasons surveying numerous parts of the Republic of Georgia (Anderson et al. 2014; Anderson et al. 2018). Most recently the survey project has been investigating the diachronic record of the landscape of the southwest highlands of Georgia. This survey was initiated in association with the archaeological excavations of Chobareti, a composite site consisting of a terraced Kura-Araxes settlement and burial and a medieval hilltop structure (Kakhiani et al. 2013). The LAG research has since expanded to examine contexts from the Kura River valley to the highland plains. Background The Caucasus is a relatively small land mass, an isthmus linking the Near East with the expansive Eurasian Steppes (Fig. 1). The South Caucasus has consistently revealed itself to be home to distinctive local cultural complexes and has also exercised, from time to time, substantial influence on the cultural development of surrounding regions (Rayfield 2012; Sagona 2017). The geography of the South Caucasus creates important partitions and connective routes, for instance mountain ranges and river valleys, the latter forming long standing corridors through the Caucasus. We should not imagine that even the great Caucasus mountain range could prevent human passage, and nor do the major rivers appear to have severely restricted cultural interaction, but to cross these natural features was a significant physical undertaking. Many of these features became conceptual and cultural boundaries over long periods. The present research is focussed on the southwest highlands of Georgia. The Kura River flows through these highlands, forming a corridor for movement in the past and an arc across modern political boundaries. The highlands serve as an area for seasonal inhabitation and animal pasture and are an important connective zone between the year round settlements situated at lower altitudes on elevated plains and in the river valleys. Yet, as a militarised frontier during the Soviet period, interactions in the southern Georgian highlands were limited, as was archaeological research and international collaboration. Key surveys and excavations in the region include the works of T. Chubinishvili (1957), O. Djaparidze (1981) and O. Gambashidze (et al. 1980; et al. 1984; et al. 1985; et al. 2004). This previous archaeological fieldwork has been somewhat sporadic yet its results clearly indicate the potential of research in the region and the opportunities presented to integrate new results with the findings of past studies. The potential in investigating these regions and examining the diachronic

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Figure 1. Regional map of the Republic of Georgia indicating the survey area in the southwestern highlands.

record has been skilfully demonstrated by the ArAGATS Project in Armenia (Smith et al. 2009). The highland plateaus and mountain ranges which rise across southern Georgia, Armenia and northeastern Turkey form a complex setting in which to investigate long-term trends, processes and interactions between people and landscapes (Anderson et al. 2018). In the southwest highlands of Georgia there remains scope for a multi-period approach to the region’s archaeological landscape. Furthermore, the region is undergoing increasing modern development, including the 2003–2006 installation of the South Caucasian and Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipelines (Gamkrelidze 2010) and the current construction of a dam to the northeast of Aspindza. In this context of urban and industrial development, and in the current climate of renewed collaborative international research, it is timely to investigate the record of anthropogenic features in the highlands. With large scale landscape survey in mind, this paper presents a useful test of the utility of aerial photography to support archaeological survey in the highlands. The work seeks to evaluate the degree to which visual analysis of

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aerial photographs may aid in the accurate identification and recording of anthropogenic features in the expansive grasslands of the highland zone. Method Aerial reconnaissance continues to be a significant aide to landscape-based archaeological research. Aerial imagery has a long history in the archaeologist’s toolkit, having been used to support field survey and recording of sites since the early twentieth century (Reeves 1936). Aerial archaeology has since developed into a specialty subfield, in which air photographs are often grouped within the suite of remotely sensed imagery and data available to modern archaeological research. Numerous works have been completed to critically assess the advantages and weaknesses in the use of remote sensing data sources in landscape archaeology; with these in mind, the utility of aerial imagery for archaeological prospection, landscape analyses and heritage management are well established (Raczkowski 2002; Bourgeois and Meganck 2003; Brophy and Cowley 2005; Parcak 2009; Cowley 2013). A series of aerial photographs were sourced for the Akhaltsikhe and Aspindza regions of southwest Georgia. The most recent suite of photographs date to the year 2000 and were commissioned by the Georgian National Agency of Public Registry (GNAPR), which manages land and titles. Economic recovery and intensification of land use in the late 1990s and 2000s means that this imagery is all the more valuable, capturing features which may since have been modified or obscured. In comparison with Google Earth satellite imagery from 2016, urban areas such as Aspindza town show evidence of change but there appears to be little difference in the configuration of features visible in the highland zone. The photographs are black and white 8 Bit images scanned and georeferenced at a resolution of 20 cm per pixel, or 1:40, which is very high resolution. Practically, the smallest objects which can be identified include small cars (4 m), haystacks (3–4 m), small sheds and outbuildings, but not outhouses (1–2 m) or beehives ( DERXWRQHRXQFH@RIUHGVLON,QWKH OHWWHURI6KDZZƗO-DQXDU\UHJQR'E KHDQQRXQFHVWKDWKH KDVVHQWZLWK$তPDG0XতDPPDG'ƯEƯFXELWVRIPDGUDVRIWKHEHVWTXDOLW\ DQGDQRXQFHRIVLON:HGRQRWNQRZZKDWণDOƯPDGLGZLWKWKHIDEULFV8VH LWIRUKHUVHOIRUVHOOLW"

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TRADITIONAL EGYPTIAN AND PTOLEMAIC TECHNIQUES USED IN THE MANUFACTURE OF ROMAN PERIOD TUNICS: AS EVIDENCED ON AN EXAMPLE FROM KELLIS

Rosanne LIVINGSTONE Monash University, Melbourne

Introduction In 2006 Colin Hope, director of excavations at Ismant al-Kharab, the site of the Roman period village of Kellis in Dakhleh Oasis, gave me access to the textile and textile-related material recovered from the site. This material formed the basis of my PhD thesis on dress and identity. During his decades of studying the site, Colin Hope has discovered that Egyptian, Greek and Roman culture are all present in artefacts, architecture and art found there (Hope 2003, 226, 257, 286; 2014, 329, 333; 2015, 226). In this paper I draw on one item of clothing, a linen tunic, to demonstrate that all three cultures were also present in dress in Kellis during the Roman period. The example I use shows how the techniques and technology used to make it incorporated many of the methods used in the manufacture of the traditional Egyptian bag tunic, and to a lesser extent, tunics worn during the Ptolemaic period. The Kellis tunic The example is the remnants of a late third to late fourth century CE linen tunic (31/420-C5-2/360) found in disturbed soil above the burial of a five-yearold child in Kellis 2, the Christian cemetery (Williams 2008, 172; Bowen 2012, 369). The tunic had been taken apart and re-stitched together to produce a roughly rectangular textile (Fig. 1). The textile was recovered from top soil and, since the child’s body was already wrapped in a shroud, the excavators concluded that it was not associated with the burial. The function of the textile and its relationship, if any, to the burial are unknown, although the original tunic would have fitted a five to six-year-old child. The tunic was a dalmatic, a style of tunic that had originated in the eastern provinces and, from around the third century CE, was commonly worn throughout the Roman Empire. Like other tunics of the period, the dalmatic was wide in the body, but unlike other tunics it had very wide sleeves (Fig. 2). In its

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Figure 1. The textile (31/420-C52/360) as found in Grave 360. Photograph by R. Livingstone. Prepared for publication by B. Parr.

original state the dalmatic would have been 505 mm wide and 500 mm long with sleeves 250 mm wide. The linen ground weave is off-white in colour and is decorated with 11 mm wide dark blue wool bands (clavi) that would have extended from either side of the neck to the hem, on both the front and back. Two similar bands are located on the cuff of each sleeve. Long, loosely twisted tassels extend out from each side of the tunic forming a fringe which, together with an adjacent narrrow blue band (pin band), provide additional decoration (Livingstone 2015, 49). The dalmatic had been worn in life. Two small patches are located near the shoulder area on either side of the neck opening, on what appears to be the back of the tunic (Livingstone 2015, 49). The reasoning behind this tentative identification is that the stress on the fabric at the back of the shoulders would have been greater than the front, and therefore would be more likely to cause fractures requiring patching. There is also a long mend across what is probably the front of the dalmatic at approximately knee height, an area prone to wear on children’s clothing.

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Figure 2. Line drawing of the original dalmatic (31/420-C5-2/360). Drawing by R. Livingstone. Prepared for publication by B. Parr.

Manufacture of the dalmatic In the Roman world, fibres were normally dyed or bleached before they were spun. The off-white colour of the linen threads suggests that the flax fibres were EOHDFKHG E\ EHLQJ ODLG RXW LQ WKH VXQ %DUEHU  ௅  &RQVLVWHQW ZLWK common practice at the time, the wool would have been dyed in the fleece; the dyestuff used was indigotin extracted from the leaves of either indigo or woad (Verhecken 2007, 208, 211). The fibres would then have been combed and wrapped around a distaff, from where the fibres were pulled out and spun in an anticlockwise direction (S-spun) using a high-whorl spindle (see below). Early Roman period tunics were woven in two pieces. By the time that the Kellis dalmatic was made tunics were constructed from one or more pieces of fabric. The dalmatic was woven in four pieces (front, back and two sleeves). These would have been woven successively on the same 500 mm-wide warp (the threads attached to the upper and lower parts of the loom). The weft thread was woven in, over and under alternate warps, producing tabby weave. The tunic’s linen ground weave is warp-faced tabby, with 22 warp ends and 10 weft threads per centimetre. The blue bands have around 40 weft threads per centimetre. To accommodate the considerable increase in numbers of weft threads within the bands the warp ends were grouped in a 4:1:4:1 etc. sequence, with groups of three warp ends temporarily eliminated from the weaving to float on the reverse (Livingstone 2015, 345) (Fig. 3).

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Figure 3. Eliminated warp ends floating on the reverse of a clavus on dalmatic 31/420-C5-2/360. Photograph by R. Livingstone. Prepared for publication by B. Parr.

On the two pieces that formed the body of the tunic, three rows of self bands (rows that contain more than one weft, in this case three wefts) extend 140 mm from the selvedge along the outer side of each clavus. These would have both strengthened those areas and provided a decorative effect. Further decoration took the form of two pin bands, consisting of two weft rows of blue wool, woven in 20 mm from the top and bottom edges of the weaving respectively (Livingstone 2015, 345). After the weaving was removed from the loom the leftover ends of the warp at the start and finish of the weaving were gathered into groups of approximately 50, and secured with a row of whip stitch. This formed secure borders that prevented the weaving unravelling, but like the self bands, the borders were also decorative. On what would become the bottom

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part of the dalmatic the warp ends were trimmed to 110 mm and twisted loosely in an S-direction to form tassels. The warp ends located where the sleeves would attach were cut short. The sleeves were woven in a similar manner to the body pieces, except that on these, two bands (sleeve bands) were placed 3 mm apart near the cuff, and a pin band inserted 20 mm from the edge of the cuff (Livingstone 2015, 345). Four self bands are positioned on either side of the pairs of sleeve bands. All of the leftover warp ends on the sleeves were grouped, secured and cut short. When the two pieces comprising the body of the tunic were removed from the loom they were turned 90 degrees so that the warp lay in a horizontal direction, and the selvedges were located at the neck and shoulder area, and the hem. The effect of this was that the clavi now lay in a vertical direction on the completed dalmatic. Characteristics of the Roman period tunic The reason why the body of the tunic was woven ‘sideways’ was to facilitate the compacting of the weft threads in the bands/clavi so that these became extremely weft-faced. As a consequence the warp ends were completely covered, making the coloured clavi highly visible. This was important because clavi communicated to others that the wearer lived under the jurisdiction of the 5RPDQ(PSLUH+DQGOH\௅  Clavi were often purple, the predominant colour in the Roman world (Pritchard 2006, 60). The most highly valued purple dye was produced by marine whelks, but this was extremely expensive and rarely used. Imitation purples, ranging from dark blue to brownish-red, were used on most garments (Granger-Taylor 1993, 15); the dark blue of the clavi and sleeve bands on the dalmatic were intended to represent purple. Wool was the major fibre used by the Romans for making textiles and this is apparent in the dress and dress fragments found in Kellis where 72 per cent of the ground weaves, and most decorations, are woven in wool (Livingstone 2015, 92). Tunics made from wool were also turned 90 degrees after being removed from the loom, but the weaving techniques used on these differed slightly from those on linen tunics. The ground weave was weft-faced tabby. As a consequence, although the warp ends might be paired or grouped within the band it was not necessary for any to be eliminated. Even intermittent pairing was often sufficient for the warp ends to be covered by the weft threads, thus ensuring the clavi were still highly visible. Other characteristics of wool tunics include the grouping of warp ends into bundles at the selvedges, cordlike starting and finishing borders, and rows of countered twining instead of self bands for reinforcement (de Jonghe and Verhecken-Lammens 1993, 46). These weaving techniques appear to have been commonly used across the

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empire. In Egypt and neighbouring regions, however, wool was S-spun using a high-whorl spindle whereas in other regions of the empire it was spun in a clockwise direction using a low-whorl spindle, producing Z-spun thread (Pritchard 2006, 29). The traditional Egyptian bag tunic Wool was rarely used in clothing manufacture during the Pharaonic period; the vast majority of garments were made from linen, which was often bleached (Kemp and Vogelsang-Eastwood 2001, 54, 158). The bag tunic appears to have been first worn in the New Kingdom; it changed little in appearance over the next five centuries (Rooijakkers 2011, 73). Like the later Roman tunics, the bag tunic was wide in the body. However, the bag tunic was constructed differently. It was generally woven in one piece, in all likelihood on a vertical two-beam loom, and when the weaving was removed from the loom it was folded crosswise so that the ends of the weaving formed the hem. The warp lay in the vertical direction on bag tunics. In addition, unlike Roman tunics where the tunic was entirely woven to shape, some areas of bag tunics were cut to shape (Kemp and Vogelsang-Eastwood 2001, 202). The best example of such tailoring is the neckline. Here, a hole and a slit were cut in the vicinity of the fold to make a neck opening. These were hemmed and ties were attached to the top corners of the slits to fasten the corners together. Bag tunics often had a fringe around the hem (Fig. 4), and sometimes sleeves were added; these were also tailored, tapering towards the cuff (Kemp and Vogelsang-Eastwood 2001, 204). The techniques and technology involved with the spinning and weaving of the bag tunic had some features in common with the linen tunic of the Roman Period, but there were also differences. Prior to spinning, the flax fibres were spliced together (the ends twisted around each other and glued with saliva) forming a continuous thread; this dispensed with the need for a distaff. The spinning method used was the precedent for that used in the later periods. Using the right hand, the high-whorl spindle was rolled down the thigh of a raised knee to produce S-spun thread (Barber 1991, 46). In contrast with Roman practice, it was usual for two threads to be S-plied together (S2S) in preparation for weaving. Otherwise, similar techniques for weaving linen were used during both periods. The predominant weave during the New Kingdom was warp-faced tabby; selvedges were plain, and the starting and finishing borders sometimes consisted of groups of warp ends secured with a thread and then plaited to form a fringe (Kemp and Vogelsang-Eastwood 2001, 143). Self bands were frequently found near the borders of textiles recovered from the New Kingdom site of Amarna. They appear to have been used for reinforcement and anchorage for fringes as well as for decoration (Kemp and Vogelsang-Eastwood 2001, 109, 142).

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Figure 4. Line drawing showing the general shape of a traditional Egyptian bag tunic. Drawing by R. Livingstone. Prepared for publication by B. Parr.

Tunics from the Ptolemaic period During the Ptolemaic period a tunic known as a chiton was frequently referred to in texts (Rooijakkers 2011, 74). It is not known precisely what a ‘chiton’ was since no Ptolemaic period tunics survive, although some indication of their appearance and construction can be gleaned from works of art such as wall paintings and statues. After examination of wall paintings in the c. 300 BCE tomb of a high priest, Petosiris, at Tuna el-Gebel, Rooijakkers (2011, 74) concluded that both the bag tunic and the classical Greek chiton were worn there during this period. She observed that both types of tunics are sometimes depicted in the wall paintings in various colours, indicating that they were dyed. This suggests that they were made from wool since linen does not dye easily (de Jonghe and Verhecken-Lammens 1993, 35).

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The tunics would probably have been woven on a warp-weighted loom, a loom believed to have been introduced into Egypt by Greek settlers during the Ptolemaic period (Crowfoot 1936/37, 36). It was in use there until the early Roman period. Loom weights dating from between the first and third centuries CE have been found in Kellis, evidence that this loom was used in the village (Hope 2003, 244). The fabric produced on a warp-weighted loom was beaten upwards, requiring the weaver to stand, unlike that woven on a vertical twobeam loom, which was beaten downwards allowing the weaver to be seated (Crowfoot 1936/37, 36). Techniques used in the manufacture of the dalmatic Overall, the dalmatic is Roman in style. It is decorated with iconic Roman clavi, and these and its sleeve bands were dyed dark blue to imitate purple. They were made using Roman period techniques; the warp ends were manipulated by grouping and elimination to allow the weft to be heavily beaten in. Furthermore, on the finished tunic the warp lay in the horizontal direction on the tunic, with the selvedges forming the neckline and the hem. On the other hand, when examined closely it can be seen that the threads have been S-spun following traditional Egyptian practice. The linen ground weave is also typically Egyptian; it is warp-faced, and has self bands, plain selvedges and fringed borders; these are all traditional practices. It is possible that the dalmatic was woven on a vertical two-beam loom; these were used during both the Pharaonic and Roman periods (de Jonghe and Verhecken-Lammens 1993, 31). It is possible, though, that the warp-weighted loom introduced by the Greeks continued to be used throughout the empire for weaving linen. The main evidence for this is found in a commentary on Virgil’s Aeneid written by Servius (7.14) in the fourth century CE, in which he observed that weavers in the past used to stand at the loom just as linen weavers in his day still did. Despite the lack of textile evidence from the Ptolemaic period it is possible that some materials, techniques and technology used in the manufacture of the dalmatic reflect Greek cultural influences. These possibilities include use of the warpweighted loom and the use of dyed wool in the manufacture of tunics. Discussion The basic item of dress, worn throughout the Roman Empire, was the tunic, often decorated with clavi. The latter identified the wearer as being Roman. Roman identity (romanitas) was highly valued. Ideally, a person with romanitas abided by the morals, customs and lifestyle expected of civilized Romans, as RSSRVHGWRRWKHUVZKRZHUHYLHZHGDVEDUEDULDQV:RROI௅  Certain elements of Roman material culture conveyed romanitas, and dress,

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being easily seen, played an important role in this. When the family of the child dressed it in the Kellis dalmatic decorated with clavi they were expressing, consciously or not, their romanitas. Yet this dalmatic was only Roman in its overall appearance. This reflected common practice, indicating that non-Roman techniques and technology could be used in the manufacture of garments as long as the garments looked Roman As a consequence, the spinners and weavers of Kellis, and elsewhere in the province, had no need to learn a whole range of new techniques. To some extent they could continue to spin and weave linen as they had done before. Notwithstanding, by retaining some traditional Egyptian and earlier-introduced Ptolemaic techniques and technologies in the manufacture of linen tunics, it was necessary to invent a new technique. This was the sequential grouping and elimination of warp ends within the clavi and sleeve bands. This technique was required to facilitate the transformation from a warp-faced tabby linen ground to a weft-faced tabby wool band; it was an adaptation that appears to have been unique to Egypt and neighbouring regions during the Roman Period. The Kellis dalmatic is an example of how Roman period Egyptians both adopted and adapted the material culture of their three heritages in their dress. As mentioned in the introduction, a combination of cultural heritages is also found in some of the artefacts, art and architecture, in the village. This is particularly evident in the early Roman period painted residence, B/3/1, which is curUHQWO\EHLQJH[FDYDWHGE\&ROLQ+RSH+RSH௅ 7KHIRXUWKFHQWXU\ houses excavated to date are more traditionally Egyptian in their architecture, although they sometimes include classical elements such as the ‘stibadium’, a Roman-style dining couch, present in House 1 (Hope 2015, 216). The fragments of soft furnishings recovered from the fourth century houses are essentially Roman in style (Livingstone 2009, 84), suggesting that while the exterior was traditional, elements of the interior were influenced by Roman cultural traditions. The combination of Egyptian, Greek and Roman cultures represented in the dress worn by the people of Kellis mirrors that of other material culture excavated and studied by Colin Hope. Acknowledgements This research and my findings would not have been possible without the advice, direction and encouragement from Colin Hope, and my main PhD supervisor, Gillian Bowen. I wish to thank them for their ongoing support, and for giving me the opportunity to join the 2007, 2008 and 2010 fieldwork seasons in the Dakhleh Oasis. My grateful thanks also to the directors and members of the Dakhleh Oasis Project, and my fellow students and staff in the School of Philosophical, Historical and International Studies at Monash University for their encouragement and assistance.

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Bibliography BARBER, E. 1991. Prehistoric Textiles: The Development of Cloth in the Neolithic and Bronze Ages with Special Reference to the Aegean, Princeton University Press, Princeton. BOWEN, G.E. 2012. ‘Child, infant and foetal burials of the Late Roman period at Ismant el-Kharab, ancient Kellis, Dakhleh Oasis’, in M.-D. NENNA (ed.), L’Enfant et la mort dans l’Antiquité II. Types de tombes et traitement du corps des enfants dans l’Antiquité gréco-romaine&HQWUHG¶eWXGHV$OH[DQGULQHV$OH[DQGULD௅ CROWFOOT, G.M. 1936/37. ‘Of the warp-weighted loom’, ABSA௅ DE JONGHE, D. and C. VERHECKEN-LAMMENS. 1993. ‘Technological discussion’, in A. DE MOOR (ed.), Koptisch Textiel uit Vlaamse Privé-Verzamelingen / Coptic Textiles from Flemish Private Collections, Provinciaal Archeologisch Museum van =XLG2RVW9ODDQGHUHQ=RWWHJHP௅ GRANGER-TAYLOR, H. ‫ދ‬7KHGHFRUDWLRQRI&RSWLFWH[WLOHV¶LQ$ DE MOOR (ed.), Koptisch Textiel uit Vlaamse privé-verzamelingen / Coptic Textiles from Flemish Private Collections, Provinciaal Archeologisch Museum van Zuid-Oost-Vlaanderen, =RWWHJHP௅ HANDLEY, F.J.L. 2000. ‘The Roman textiles from Myos Hormos’, ATN௅ HOPE, C.A. 2003. ‘The excavations at Ismant el-Kharab from 2000 to 2002’, in G.E. BOWEN and C.A. HOPE (eds), The Oasis Papers 3: Proceedings of the Third International Conference of the Dakhleh Oasis Project2[ERZ%RRNV2[IRUG௅ HOPE, C.A. 2014. ‘The Kellis 1 cemetery: Roman Period Burial Practices in Dakhleh Oasis’, in G. TALLET and C. ZIVIE-COCHE (eds), Le myrte et la rose: mélanges offerts à Françoise Dunand par ses élèves, collègues et amis, Université Paul 9DOpU\0RQWSHOOLHU௅ HOPE, C.A. 2015. ‘The Roman-period houses of Kellis in Egypt’s Dakhleh Oasis’, in A.A. DI CASTRO and C.A. HOPE (eds), Housing and Habitat in the Ancient Mediterranean: Cultural and Environmental Responses3HHWHUV/HXYHQ௅ KEMP, B.J. and G. VOGELSANG-EASTWOOD. 2001. The Ancient Textile Industry at Amarna, Egypt Exploration Society, London. LIVINGSTONE, R. 2009. ‘Late Antique household textiles from the village of Kellis in the Dakhleh Oasis’, in A. DE MOOR and C. FLUCK (eds), Clothing the House: Furnishing Textiles of the 1st Millennium AD from Egypt and Neighbouring Countries/DQQRR7LHOW௅ LIVINGSTONE, R. 2015. Dress and Identity in Kellis, a Roman-Period Village in Egypt, vols I and II, unpublished PhD thesis, Monash University, Melbourne. PRITCHARD, F. 2006. Clothing Culture: Dress in Egypt in the First Millennium AD, Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester. ROOIJAKKERS, C.T. 2011. ‘Reconfiguration theory: an archaeological perspective on changes in dress’, in A. DE WITT-PAUL and M. CROUCH (eds), Fashion Forward, ,QWHUGLVFLSOLQDU\3UHVV2[IRUG௅ SERVIUS, 2001. Servius Grammaticus on Virgil’s Aeneid Book VII, trans. and commentary by A.M. LEVEN, University of Georgia Press, Athens GA. VERHECKEN, A. 2007. ‘Relation between age and dyes of 1st millennium textiles found in Egypt’, in A. DE MOOR and C. FLUCK (eds), Methods of Dating Ancient Textiles of the 1st Millennium AD from Egypt and Neighbouring Countries, Lannoo, Tielt, ௅

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WILLIAMS, L.J. 2008. Investigating Seasonality of Death at Kellis 2 Cemetery Using Solar Alignment and Isotopic Analysis of Mummified Tissues, unpublished PhD thesis, University of Western Ontario, London ON. WOOLF, G. 1994. ‘Becoming Roman, staying Greek: culture, identity and the civilizing process in the Roman east’, PCPS௅

A FUNNY BES VASE! EARLY FOURTH CENTURY BCE, AYN MANÂWIR, KHARGA OASIS1

Sylvie MARCHAND Institut français d’archéologie orientale, Cairo

Ce petit vase curieux, en hommage amical et respectueux à Colin. Voici un vase qui devrait piquer sa curiosité! The work carried out by l’Institut français d’archéologie orientale le Caire (IFAO) in Kharga Oasis since 1994, comprises several excavated sites including that of Ayn Manâwir. In addition to this excavation work, a systematic survey of the region has been undertaken since 2000, which has enabled a geographical and chronological assessment of human occupation and the exploitation of water in the region from the Palaeolithic to the Medieval and modern periods.2 The site of Ayn Manâwir, which is of particular interest to this contribution, includes a set of hydraulic installations that led water through tunnels dug into the terrain, known as qanâts (Chauveau 2005), to extensive plots on the plain. Other remains that have also been identified are a brick temple dedicated to Osiris with its associated buildings dating from the Late Period (Dynasties XXVII–XXX), and living quarters occupied from the Persian period to the Ptolemaic and Roman periods. There are also some tombs constructed during Roman times and used at least until the third century CE, a period that appears to be the date of abandonment for the village. The archaeological and historical richness of this site is well established, that of its ceramics also (Marchand 2007; in press). This short paper does not present any part of the ceramic corpus from these excavations nor from the exploration of Kharga Oasis, but more simply it adds to our knowledge a curious 1

I thank Ayman Hussein (IFAO) for the drawings of the ceramics and Hihâb Mohamed Ibrahim (IFAO) for the photos. 2 Recall that these are the excavations carried out since 1994 by our late colleague Michel Wuttmann, for which see Wuttmann et al. (1996; 1998). In addition to the work undertaken at Ayn Manâwir, other archaeological sites in the southern basin of Kharga Oasis have also been the focus of archaeological exploration. They are dated to the late Neolithic period (sites KS043 and KS052; cf. Briois et al. 2012, 182, 184, fig.7), the first dynasties (sectors DAA/DAB at Dush; cf. Marchand in press), the Persian and Ptolemaic periods (Ayn Ziyada, sectors DEN and DEW at Dush; cf. Marchand in press). Excavations by IFAO at Dush between 1985 and 1990 under the direction of M. Reddé revealed structures dating from the Roman and Late Roman periods. For the publication of the ceramics, see Ballet (2004).

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Bes vase, dated to the early fourth century BCE, with a very unusual feature in the Egyptian ceramic repertoire. General information on Bes vases in Egypt during the Late Period In recent years, the study of ceramic vases with an image of Bes has attracted a growing interest among ceramicists. Examples in the Egyptian corpus are known from the New Kingdom to the Graeco-Roman period (Kaiser 2003). Several recent studies are now available to us for the Late Period (Aston and Aston 2003; Defernez 2009; 2011), and these very detailed contributions improve our knowledge of Bes vases in Egypt, but also in the Levant (Defernez 2009). They address questions of typology, production, iconography, but also the thorny problem of their function, which is the main subject of this modest contribution. The Western Desert and the oasis of Dakhleh is not left out, with the publication of a corpus of Bes vases dating from the Late Period and the Ptolemaic period from the site of Mut al-Kharab (Gill 2016). Largely represented in funerary contexts, the ceramic vase decorated with Bes is only rarely represented in urban contexts, and likewise in military contexts (Defernez 2009, 171). The most commonly accepted function of the vase is one of cultic use related to a magical practice. This dimension is widely discussed by Kaiser (2003), and reprised and discussed by Defernez (2009, 173), who further questions the function of Bes vases found within the context of domestic worship at Tell el-Herr, and proposes an additional protective aspect for the removal of harmful forces. The personality of the god Bes who adorns these vases is well known to Egyptologists and ceramicists as a guardian spirit, especially of childbirth and newborns, and many other aspects that change over time; however, the crucial question of the function of the ceramic container itself bearing the mask of Bes is still largely debated. One hypothesis is that they functioned as a container for liquid, which is perhaps obvious given that they are jars, and in particular for water or milk (Kaiser 2003, 342–7; Defernez 2009, 171–4). The range of vase forms with Bes decoration is wide and they are also quite varying in size. There are jars, pitchers, and open forms such as cups, and we have also identified large storage jars.3 The workmanship and the fabric can be very fine or coarse; the techniques used in the representation and manufacture are often many, be it painting, molding, or the addition of clay, pellets or incisions, etc. The chosen iconography of Bes can be elaborated or simplified, as is the case in later periods. The iconography of Bes, the forms and the tech3 See Chauvet and Marchand (1998, 348, fig. 24). This fine example of a storage jar bearing an image of Bes comes from a pit dug in the Great Temple of Amun at Tanis. Dating: possibly end of the Third Intermediate Period.

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niques, of course change over time. It is beyond our purpose to put forward hypotheses within the scope of this modest contribution. Most have also been masterfully exposed and developed by the authors whose names and articles are cited above. Form and function of the ‘magical’ Bes vase from Ayn Manâwir After this presentation which summarises very briefly the numerous hypotheses put forward by the specialists, let us concentrate on the Bes vases discovered at Ayn Manâwir. It is first necessary to clarify some statistics. Indeed, the number of vessels bearing the image of Bes, which date from the fifth to fourth centuries BCE, and which were discovered during the excavations of the houses in the village at Ayn Manâwir, is very small, almost anecdotal; it amounts to four examples. Two belong to the category of small jars with a pouring spout (Fig. 1), the other two are fragments of small cups. Another example given here (Fig. 2) is to add to the general count; it was collected from the surface of another site (KS016.062 habitat) during a survey in the southern basin of the oasis. Among the vessels at our disposal, we have chosen one to discuss (Fig. 1a–c). This is a unique example in the vast corpus of pottery excavated at Ayn Manâwir for all periods of its history, or elsewhere in the Kharga Oasis, in the present state of our knowledge. The vase from Ayn Manâwir (Fig. 1a–c) is made of local oasis clay of medium texture (Fabric 1B), and is covered with a poorly smoothed white slip. The shaping of the vase is irregular and its workmanship not very neat. The Bes mask is unfortunately damaged but its condition is sufficient to determine that the image of the god is very roughly suggested. The elements that remain are: one of the two eyebrows is marked by a strand of applied clay bearing traces of decoration with a stamp; traces of arms can also be recognised and one can clearly identify the hands, whose fingers are articulated by incisions. Finally, a circular pellet of clay is placed on the body of the vase, but not between the eyebrows as one might expect. The rest of the characteristic elements are missing or exist only as traces on the surface of the vase. The iconography of this Bes, which is very basic, seems representative of some productions with little elaborate decoration, dated from the Late Period (Aston and Aston 2003; Defernez 2009). The peculiarity of this vase depends more on its form, however, and especially the curious device hidden inside. The state of conservation of the object is sufficient to understand its function (Fig. 1a). It can be described as follows: the upper part is completely closed and ends with a button, a hole that pierces the wall into the belly of the jar was created before firing, it is the location of a spout that has been torn off. The now fragmentary foot, or ‘pedestal’, should have originally been of a good height, as it is the only clear opening through

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a

b

c Figure 1. a–c) ‘Magic’ vase with mask of Bes, provided with an inner tube and a spout location, inv. 6373. Local Kharga Oasis clay of medium texture (Fabric 1B, white slip, natural grey surface sealing). IFAO excavations at Ayn-Manâwir (Kharga Oasis), house MMA US 480. Dating: Phase 2, Dynasties XXVIII–XXX. © IFAO.

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Figure 2. Body fragment of a jar with a spout and a Bes mask, inv. 7322. Local Kharga Oasis clay, medium texture (Fabric 1B, eroded surface). IFAO survey of Kharga Oasis, from the surface of site KSO16.062. Dating: Phase 2–4, Dynasties XXVIII–XXX or beginning of the Ptolemaic period, fourth century BCE. © IFAO.

which to fill the vase, by turning it upside down. It is therefore through the base of the vessel that the internal device hidden inside the container is accessed. The latter is constituted by a narrow and long vertical clay tube competently integrated at the moment of shaping of the piece. Once the liquid has been introduced into the interior, it is then trapped, so that holding the vessel in its normal position with the base downwards, it can only flow through the pouring spout provided in the lower part of the vessel body. What may be the function of this particular Bes vase within a domestic context? Let us recall once more that the scientific literature predominantly presents Bes vases in funerary contexts for the Late Period (Defernez 2011, 172). In this instance, should we see it as an object for ritual use connected to a magical practice, as suggested by many authors or, given its particular features, a simple game, a ‘magical’ vase? The more general question is the role played by the rare Bes vases that are more ordinary or common, such as jars and cups, discovered in domestic contexts. In my opinion their meaning remains enigmatic. How, for example, can one interpret the small number of examples found during the excavation of

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houses in the village of Ayn Manâwir during the Late Period (fifth to fourth centuries BCE), as well as at other sites in the Nile Valley? Future archaeological research will likely solve this puzzle. In conclusion: ‘magic’ vases in other places and at other times It is tempting to conclude the investigation of this funny vase by seeking parallels that are technically and morphologically similar and/or acceptable. One simply has to accept to break away from the image of the god Bes adorning its surface. It turns out that this surprising device of a tube integrated into a terracotta vase, which is sealed in its upper part and equipped with a spout, is well known in both the Greek world and in Cyprus between the tenth and the fourth centuries BCE. It is associated with vases of very fine form, which are related to certain classic families in the Greek repertoire such as kantharoi with lids, or ‘closed’ forms such as the oinochoe and askos. Several vases of Cypriot origin, which display a device identical to that of our Bes vase from Ayn Manâwir, have been discovered in tombs and have been published (Kefalidou 2009, 173–5) (see Fig. 3). Beyond this, in another time, in present-day Egypt, we find vases using the same device. This is the case of a jug with a dummy neck, fitted with a handle

Figure 3. Some examples of ‘magic’ vases with tubes of Cypriot origin dated to the first millennium BCE. Oinochoe or askos. From Kefalidou (2009, 173–5, figs 1–3).

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a

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Figure 4. a–c) ‘Magic’ vase for children, bought and manufactured in 2000 in the pottery workshop of the amusement park Doctor Ragab Papyrus, Corniche el-Nil in Cairo. Jug with handle and spout, inner tube. Aswan pink clay. © IFAO.

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and a spout, and with a high foot (Fig. 4a–c). The ‘magic’ function of this vase is obvious, as it is manufactured and distributed at a well-known amusement park in Cairo, where it amuses both young and old during family celebrations. Bibliography ASTON, D.A. and B.G. ASTON. 2003. ‘The dating of Late Period Bes vases’, in C.A. REDMOUNT and C.A. KELLER (eds), Egyptian Pottery: Proceedings of the 1990 Pottery Symposium at the University of California, Berkeley, University of California, Berkeley, 95–113. BALLET, P. 2004. ‘Jalons pour une histoire de la céramique romaine au sud de Kharga, Douch, 1985-1990’, in M. REDDÉ, P. BALLET, A. LEMAIRE and C. BONNET, Douch III. Kysis. Fouilles de l’Ifao à Douch oasis de Kharga (1985-1990), Institut français d’archéologie orientale, Cairo, 209–40. BRIOIS, F., B. MIDANT-REYNES, M. DE DAPPER, J. LESUR-GEBREMARIAM, S. MARCHAND, C. NEWTON, Y. TRISTANT and M. WUTTMANN. 2012. ‘The occupation of an artesian spring area at the beginning of the Late Holocene major arid phase in the Kharga Oasis’, JFA 37, 178–91. CHAUVEAU, M. 2005. ‘Irrigation et exploitation de la terre dans l’Oasis de Kharga à l’époque perse’, in J.C. MORENO GARCÍA (ed.), L’agriculture institutionnelle en Égypte ancienne: État de la question et perspectives interdisciplinaires, CRIPEL 25, 157–63. CHAUVET, V. and S. MARCHAND. 1998. ‘Le matériel céramique pré-ptolémaïque des fosses de l’avant-cour du temple d’Amon de Tanis’, in P. BRISSAUD and C. ZIVIE (eds), Tanis. Travaux récents sur le tell de Sân el-Hagar, Noesis, Paris, 335–50. DEFERNEZ, C. 2009. ‘Les vases Bès à l’époque perse (Égypte-Levant). Essai de classification’, in P. BRIANT and M. CHAUVEAU (eds), Organisation des pouvoirs et contacts culturels dans les pays de l’empire achéménide, de Boccard, Paris, 153–215. DEFERNEZ, C. 2011. ‘Four Bes vases from Tell el-Herr (North-Sinai): analytical description and correlation with the goldsmith’s art of Achaemenid transition’, in D.A. ASTON, B. BADER, C. GALLORINI, P. NICHOLSON and S. BUCKINGHAM (eds), Under the Potter’s Tree. Studies on Ancient Egypt Presented to Janine Bourriau on the Occasion of her 70th Birthday, Peeters, Leuven, 287–323. GILL, J.C.R. 2016. ‘A corpus of Late Period and Ptolemaic Bes-vessels from Mut elKharab, Western Desert of Egypt’, in B. BADER, C.M. KNOBLAUCH and E.C. KÖHLER (eds), Vienna 2 - Ancient Egyptian Ceramics in the 21st Century: Proceedings of the International Conference held at the University of Vienna 14th18th of May, 2012, Peeters, Leuven, 211–28. KAISER, K.R. 2003. Water, Milk, Beer and Wine for the Living and the Dead: Egyptian and Syro-Palestinian Bes-vessels from the New Kingdom through the GraecoRoman Period, University of California, Berkeley. KEFALIDOU, E. 2009. ‘Suction dippers: many shapes, many names and a few tricks’, in A. TSINGARIDA (ed.), Shapes and Uses of Greek Vases (7th–4th centuries B.C.), CReA-Patrimoine, Brussels. MARCHAND, S. 2007. ‘Les conteneurs de transport et de stockage de l’oasis de Kharga. De la Basse Époque (XXVIIe–XXXe dynasties) à l’époque ptolémaïque’, in S. MARCHAND and A. MARANGOU (eds), Amphores d’Égypte de la Basse Époque à l’époque arabe, CCE 8, 489–502.

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MARCHAND, S. in press. ‘La céramique de l’Ancien Empire à l’époque médiévale. Fouilles et prospection de l’Ifao (1994–2013)’, in S. MARCHAND (ed.), La céramique du désert Occidental de la fin du Néolithique à l’époque médiévale. La Marmarique et les oasis de Bahariya, Dakhla et Kharga, CCE 11. WUTTMANN, M., H. BARAKAT, B. BOUSQUET, M. CHAUVEAU, T. GONON, S. MARCHAND, M. ROBIN and A. SCHWEITZER. 1998. ‘Ayn Manâwir (Oasis de Kharga). Deuxième rapport préliminaire’, BIFAO 98, 367–462. WUTTMANN, M., B. BOUSQUET, M. CHAUVEAU, P. DILS, S. MARCHAND, A. SCHWEITZER and V. VOLAY. 1996. ‘Premier rapport préliminaire des travaux sur le site de ‘Ayn Manâwir (Oasis de Kharga)’, BIFAO 96, 85–451.

BURYING THE DEAD WITH TEXTILES AT THE NAQADA III CEMETERY OF TARKHAN

Lisa MAWDSLEY Monash University, Melbourne

The vast Naqada III period cemetery of Tarkhan is one of the most diverse funerary landscapes in northern Egypt, made all the more exceptional by the preservation of often highly perishable man-made and raw materials deposited with the dead. One such category of material is that of textiles, which range from coarse to fine woven linen (Petrie et al. 1913; Petrie 1914; Midgley 1915). Although considered rare in archaeological contexts, the survival of such textiles has increased our understanding of the development of a highly specialised industry. Furthermore, the study of funerary textiles has demonstrated the importance of this craft to the treatment of the body and the provisioning of the dead in the Predynastic and Early Dynastic periods (Jones 2007, 979–89; 2008, 120–5; Jones et al. 2014). In order to contribute to this developing knowledge base, this paper will present a brief survey of the range of textiles uncovered at Tarkhan.1 The cemetery Tarkhan is situated on the west bank of the Nile in the northern Fayum region, approximately 60 km south of modern day Cairo. The cemetery was excavated by Flinders Petrie and a small team during the Egyptian winter seasons of 1911–1912 and 1912–1913 (Petrie et al. 1913; Petrie 1914; Petrie and MacKay 1915). It is a widely dispersed site, with a series of small hills or knolls running from north to south for nearly 1.5 km (Fig. 1). These hills are intersected by a natural wadi that cuts through the middle of the site. Burials are distributed throughout the hills and the wadi and these topographic areas are commonly referred to as the valley cemetery and the hill cemeteries. During two seasons of work at the site more than 2000 Naqada III period graves were excavated. It is unfortunate, however, that at least 600 pits scattered throughout the hills were excavated but not recorded on the standard tomb cards used by Flinders Petrie (Mawdsley 2012, 24–6) (Fig. 2). As a result, there are signifi1 I would like to thank Janet Davey for making useful comments on a draft of this paper. Any faults or omissions are my own.

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Figure 1. Map of Tarkhan (taken from Petrie 1914, pl. XLVII).

cant interpretative problems associated with understanding how the cemetery was used over time. Of the recorded graves, 1315 can be dated according to the conventions of the Naqada chronology.2 The earliest graves can be assigned to the Naqada IIIA2 period with use through to the late Naqada IIIC2 period (Hendrickx 1996; Mawdsley 2012). The majority of dateable graves are situated in the Naqada IIIA2–B periods (n=969) with a smaller number attributable to the Naqada IIIC1–2 periods (n=346). Previous textile research Tarkhan has the largest number of extant examples of First Dynasty textiles in Egypt (Jones 2008, 121). These textiles originate from the substantial mudbrick mastabas 1060, 2038 and 2050, all of which can be dated to the Naqada IIIC2 period.3 The range of fabrics included coarse weaves to fine white2

A previous figure of 1364 dateable graves (Mawdsley 2012) has been since revised. Linen from the mastabas was distributed to the Bolton Museum, Manchester Museum (5848, 5850, 5852–5867), The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (14.4.76–86) and the Dorman Museum, Middlesbrough. Linen from mastaba 2050 can be also be found in the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology UC 17018–17044, 28550, 28562–28569, 28614–28615, 28678 and 28680. Fragmentary pieces of coarse and fine linen in a parcel marked ‘2040?’ may have originated from subsidiary grave 2040, which was located in the corridor of mastaba 2038 (see UC 28615). The tomb card, however, does not record the presence of any linen associated with this subsidiary burial. Further linen fragments from ‘Mastaba 2040’ (UC 28674–28675) would suggest that a mistake had been made during the process of labelling the linen parcel and that this material actually originated from mastaba 2038. Further collections with linen attributed to the First Dynasty include: the Ashmolean, Oxford; Bristol Museum and Art Gallery; Glasgow Museums; Heidelberg; Iziko Museums of South Africa; Horniman Museum, London; Touchstones Rochdale and World Museum, Liverpool. 3

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Figure 2. Tomb card for valley grave 920 (Naqada IIIC2) indicating that the body was wrapped in cloth (Courtesy of the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, UCL).

bleached linen, samples of which were analysed in 1912 by textiles expert, William Midgley (1915, 48–51, pl. LVII–VIII).4 Exceptionally fine linen samples from mastaba 2050 were micro-photographed with surprising results. The quality and preparation of this flax fibre was considered superior to the finest Irish linen (Midgley 1915, 48, pl. LVII.1–3; Jones 2008, 121), thus demonstrating the diversity and sophistication of textile production during the First Dynasty. In 1977 a tailored V-necked dress with pleated sleeves and bodice was discovered turned inside out amongst a pile of dirty linen associated with mastaba 2050 (UC 28614B1) (Landi and Hall 1979; Hall 1982; 1986, 27; Jones 2008, 121; 2014; Stevenson and Dee 2016). The dress had not been identified in the original excavation report, although it was stated that a ‘great pile of linen cloth of various qualities’ was discovered ‘dragged out’ from the central pit of mastaba 2050 (Petrie 1914, 6).5 Now known as the Tarkhan Dress, it has since been 4 I would like to thank Alice Stevenson for providing me with a copy of the letters W. Midgley wrote in March and April 1912 regarding his report on the textile samples. These letters were discovered by Alice Stevenson in G.W. Wainwright’s copy of Tarkhan I and Memphis V held in the collection of the Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford. Surprisingly, a sample of ‘black burnt’ textile associated with mastaba 1060 was also found within Wainwright’s copy and has since been accessioned into the collection of the Museum (see Midgley 1915, 50). 5 The Accession Register for the Petrie Museum records that numerous linen fragments were divided into parcels and numbered 1–10 by the excavators. These parcels were labelled ‘Mastaba 2050’ (UC 28614). The linen was subsequently re-numbered from A1 to B9, with B1 representing the Tarkhan Dress. The majority of these pieces are fragmentary.

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Table 1. List of valley graves containing textiles (n=12).

confirmed as the world’s oldest woven garment with a radiocarbon determination of 3482–3102 cal. BC (OxA-32331; 95.4 per cent probability) (Stevenson and Dee 2016). This date is earlier than expected given the association of the garment with mastaba 2050. Creasing around the elbows and armpits was identified prior to conservation, possibly indicative of use in life (Hall 1986, 27). Some consideration must therefore be given to the possible heirloom status of the garment.6 Brief textile survey The tomb cards and additional museum data record the presence of linen in association with bodies from 59 graves across the cemetery. These represent only 4.5 per cent of the 1315 dateable graves available for study (Tables 1 and 2). An additional nine graves containing linen could not be dated precisely but are considered Naqada III period contexts. With the inclusion of these data the recorded total of tombs associated with textiles can be increased to 68.7 This combined figure is far lower than expected given the number of graves excavated at the cemetery. There are, however, more than 100 tomb cards annotated with a question mark in the section marked ‘clothing’. Many of these tomb

6 The style of the pleated V-necked long-shelved dress was once thought to have developed from Old Kingdom sheath dresses and restricted in use to low-status burials at provincial sites during the Old and Middle Kingdoms. Significantly, the Tarkhan Dress, together with epigraphic data from the cemetery of Helwan, would suggest that the pleated dress was in use during the Naqada III period and had elite associations (Jones 2014). I would like to thank Jana Jones for providing me with a copy of her article. 7 These graves have been included in Tables 1 and 2 and identified with ND (No Date) in the column marked Date. Mastabas 1060, 2038 and 2050, along with subsidiary grave 2040 are not listed in Table 2 as sufficient detail has already been provided in footnote 3.

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Table 2. List of hill graves containing textiles (n=52).

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cards fall within the 600 and 700 number sequences assigned to the valley cemetery and suggest that there was uncertainty on the part of the excavators relating to the presence of linen within these burials. It would appear that hill graves had a greater recorded association with textiles; however, this may be an accident of preservation rather than evidence of preferential funerary practice (see Table 2). Both areas of the cemetery were subjected to differing environmental processes over time, with rising groundwater in the valley and poor soil quality throughout the hills (Petrie et al. 1913, 8; Petrie 1914, 2, 22–3). Such processes, together with extensive physical disturbance of burial contexts, would have negatively affected the preservation of skeletal remains and any associated linen. Evidence of problematic preservation can be seen on the tomb cards where reference was made to the discovery of only a trace or traces of linen within a number of graves. Given such information it is likely that the funerary use of linen at the cemetery was more widespread than the recorded data would suggest.8 Of particular interest to this survey is the presence of linen within small-scale graves. Of the 68 graves documented here, 41 are under 3 m³ in volume. Such data may indicate that the use of linen within a funerary context was not socially restricted. That being said, it has not been possible to assess the quality of linen in non-elite contexts given the unrepresentative sample of preserved linen in museum collections. There is, however, an observable increase in the number of graves containing linen over time, which may signify changes in ritual practices associated with the treatment of the body. The peak period of consumer demand seen at the cemetery in the Naqada IIIC2 period likely corresponded with a greater productive capacity by specialist workshops at this time (Jones 2008, 120–1). Agricultural estates dedicated to cultivating flax, and workshops processing and weaving various qualities of linen may have been present within the broader Memphite-Fayum region, although there is no explicit evidence for these in the Naqada III period (Jones 2008, 125–6). Textile weaves and treatments Linen samples are described as either coarse or fine and all were produced from ‘S’ spun yarns. By the Naqada IIB period a universal change in textile production had occurred from ‘Z’ to ‘S’ spinning. This technological innovation produced a stronger single yarn enabling the creation of finer textiles (Jones 2008, 111, 115).9 The exceptional nature of samples from Tarkhan attest to the 8 The random nature of textile preservation is well-documented at Hierakonpolis, where linen from the non-elite cemetery HK43 was more favourably preserved than material from the elite cemetery HK6 (Jones 2008, 101, 117). 9 For an in-depth discussion of the technological change from ‘Z’ to ‘S’ spinning see Jones (2008, 105–19).

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expertise of textile producers throughout the Naqada III period. One fine weave from mastaba 2050 was found to be inserted with darker threads (UC 28568), which may have been dyed with iron oxide. A grey coloured yarn interwoven into the warp is still visible on the Tarkhan Dress (Landi and Hall 1979, 143; Barber 1991, 148). Further examples from the same mastaba appear to have been dyed brown or bleached white (Manchester 5850, 5855), and such treatments are consistent with those identified on linen samples from mastaba 1060 by Midgley (1915, 50).10 A range of sewing and decorative techniques, such as the creation of seams, hemmed edges (Manchester 5850) and fringing are also visible on samples from the First Dynasty mastabas. Interestingly, a large well-preserved sheet of fine fringed linen was removed from elite hill grave 415 (UC 28670). The significance of funerary offerings of linen has been observed on late First and Second Dynasty stelae from Helwan, where fringed textiles appear to be graded according to various criteria, such as size or finish (Jones 2008, 123–4). Based upon such evidence it is possible that the fringed linen from grave 415 was presented as a funerary offering rather than used as a shroud or clothing. Importantly, the presence of such high-quality decorative linen links the cemetery to the broader network of elite funerary-driven consumptive practices seen at Abydos, Helwan and Saqqara (Jones 2008, 117–27). Beaded linen One of the most outstanding pieces from the cemetery is an extremely delicate linen band discovered in hill grave 36 (Naqada IIIB) (UC16355) (Fig. 3).11 It is a medium weave that was probably dyed brown. Although fragmentary, it is clear that the piece was designed to wrap around the forehead or waist. One end of the textile is gathered to form a narrow band and there is some staining in this area, which may be suggestive of use in life. This design would have been reproduced on the opposite end thus enabling the wearer to secure and knot the item into position. The current width is measured at approximately 10 cm and length at 50 cm. It is difficult to estimate the original length but at least another 10–20 cm is likely. A series of small disc-shaped carnelian beads were threaded into groups of five upon long strands of fibrous material, which were then sewn or woven into the linen (Xia 2014, 87). The beads are consistent in 10 Salt may have been used as a bleaching agent in the production of white linen (Jones 2008, 122–3). On textile dyes see Barber (1991, 223–43), Vogelsang-Eastwood (2000, 278–9) and Jones (2008, 117). A thick mass of folded white linen was also reported for hill grave 143 (Naqada IIIC2). Unfortunately, the whereabouts of this material is unknown. 11 The substructure pit of grave 36 was 10.71 m³ in volume and represented the third largest construction in the hills for this period. This grave may have belonged to an elite member of the community at this time.

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Figure 3. Carnelian-beaded linen (UC 16355) from hill grave 36 (Courtesy of the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, UCL).

shape but range in colour from light to dark orange and may have been selected for this reason in order to enhance the visual appeal of the band. Currently there are only three rows of beaded threads, although from the original excavation photograph it would appear that at least six rows were interwoven into the fabric (Petrie et al. 1913, pl. III.5). Beads from the textile have been retained, suggesting that damage occurred during the process of packaging and shipping to London. To the author’s knowledge, this is the only beaded textile dating to the Naqada IIIB period known from cemetery contexts in Egypt (Petrie et al. 1913, 22). It is an extraordinary example of textile design, yet the origins of this form of elaboration remain unclear. Linen use There are several references on the tomb cards to bodies in clothing but often the distinction between the attire of daily life and funerary wrapping is unclear, particularly for those graves containing remnants of linen. Interestingly, there are five occurrences of children buried with linen. Each of the basic descriptions would suggest that the small bodies were clothed rather than wrapped. One child in hill grave 191 (Naqada IIIC2) was discovered with the remains of

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both hair and clothing. Another example of coarse quality linen was observed on a child’s body in grave 180 (Naqada IIIA2). While speculative, it is possible that children were buried in clothing in order to convey an image of sleep rather than death. The unusual treatment of a female found in undisturbed valley grave 1283 (Naqada IIIA2) is particularly noteworthy. The body was wrapped or dressed in linen and positioned within a wooden coffin, while a cushion was found placed under the skull. Comparative data are sparse, with the earliest known examples of linen or leather pillows discovered in two burials from cemetery HK43 at Hierakonpolis (Naqada IIB–C) (Jones 2006, 24). Another linen pillow from a Naqada IIIC1 context was found to be stuffed with grain and placed under the head of a male at Elephantine (Jones 2006, 24). Unfortunately, the tomb card does not record whether the Tarkhan cushion was made of linen or leather, nor provide any further information regarding its state of preservation.12 While the evidence is minimal, the application of linen did form part of the ritual preparation of certain bodies from the Naqada IIIA2 period. Linen applied as wrapping to the body was observed in valley grave 1331 (Naqada IIIA2). Hands and limbs were wrapped in cloth in valley graves 761 (Naqada IIIB) and 923 (Naqada III). For the Naqada IIIC2 period, the deliberate application of linen as ‘mummy’ wrapping was noted for hill graves 1030 and 1035, while another body in valley grave 920 was found to be wrapped in cloth (Fig. 2). As all of the above graves are small-scale constructions, it is reasonable to suggest that specialised wrapping of the body was not a restricted or exclusively elite funerary practice at Tarkhan. This view is consistent with evidence from non-elite contexts in Upper Egypt from the mid-Predynastic (Jones 2007, 979; 2008, 117). To date, resinous substances have not been detected on the Tarkhan linen, although a body discovered in hill grave 175 (Naqada IIIC2) was described as wrapped in a ‘large quantity of cloth which was very much stained’ (Petrie et al. 1913, 10). The disarticulated bones of a second body from the same grave were also found placed upon stained linen. There are also references to ‘carbonized’ bandages or linen from hill grave 1955 (British Museum EA 52888), valley grave 1788 (Naqada IIIB) (UC 28570) and mastaba 1060, while pieces of skin were found amongst the linen parcels associated with mastaba 2050 (UC 28614A–J). The nature of such staining or carbonisation could relate to the decomposition process, although the treatment of these bodies with organic substances should be also considered. The application of numerous plant and animal fats and oils, including conifer resins, have been chemically identified

12 The cushion was not recorded in the register entry for grave 1283 (Petrie 1914, pl. XXXIV), nor was it found in the museum distribution lists for Tarkhan. These lists do not always accurately reflect distribution pathways, so collection-based investigation is still ongoing and may yet reveal its whereabouts.

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soaked into funerary wrappings obtained from the Middle Egyptian cemeteries of Mostagedda and Badari, thus demonstrating that experimentation with softtissue preservation occurred during the Late Neolithic (Jones et al. 2014, 1–13). Given this long history of experimentation it is likely that processes associated with preserving the body were also undertaken at Tarkhan. This brief survey has demonstrated the diversity of textile use at Tarkhan, which was both innovative and practical. Importantly, it has also established that textiles were attested from the Naqada IIIA2 period in a range of burials across the cemetery. Furthermore, the use of linen as a protective wrapping highlights the increasing interest in preserving the body over time. Like the Tarkhan Dress, the carnelian-beaded headband or waistband represents another first for the cemetery and this exceptional piece certainly warrants further examination. Clearly, more research is required on the Tarkhan linen in order to enhance our understanding of the funerary treatment afforded to both elite and non-elite individuals during the Naqada III period. Bibliography BARBER, E.J.W. 1991. Prehistoric Textiles, Princeton University Press, New Jersey. HALL, R.M. 1982. ‘Garments in the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology’, Textile History 13, 27–45. HALL, R.M. 1986. Egyptian Textiles, Shire Egyptology, London. HENDRICKX, S. 1996. ‘The relative chronology of the Naqada culture, problems and possibilities’, in A.J. SPENCER (ed.), Aspects of Early Egypt, British Museum Press, London, 36–69. JONES, J. 2006. ‘Pillow talk’, Nekhen News 18, 24. JONES, J. 2007. ‘New perspectives on the development of mummification and funerary practices during the pre- and Early Dynastic periods’, in J.-C. GOYON and C. CARDIN (eds), Proceedings of the Ninth International Congress of Egyptologists, vol. 1, Peeters, Leuven, 979–89. JONES, J. 2008. ‘Pre- and Early Dynastic textiles: technology, specialisation and administration during the process of state formation’, in B. MIDANT-REYNES and Y. TRISTANT (eds), Egypt at its Origins 2, Proceedings of the International Conference “Origin of the State. Predynastic and Early Dynastic Egypt”, Toulouse (France), 5th–8th September 2005, Peeters, Leuven, 99–132. JONES, J. 2014. ‘The enigma of the pleated dress: new insights from Early Dynastic Helwan reliefs’, JEA 100, 209–31. JONES, J., T.F.G. HIGHAM, R. OLDFIELD, T.P. O’CONNOR and S.A. BUCKLEY. 2014. ‘Evidence for prehistoric origins of Egyptian mummification in late Neolithic burials’, PLOS ONE 9: e103608. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0103608. LANDI, S. and R.M. HALL. 1979. ‘The discovery and conservation of an ancient Egyptian linen tunic’, SiC 24, 141–52. MAWDSLEY, L. 2012. ‘Rediscovering Tarkhan’, WAMCAES News 9, 23–32. MIDGLEY, W.W. 1915. ‘Reports on early linen’, in W.M.F. PETRIE and E. MACKAY (eds), Heliopolis, Kafr Ammar and Shurafa, School of Archaeology in Egypt and Bernard Quaritch, London, 48–50, LVII–VIII.

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PETRIE, W.M.F. 1914. Tarkhan II, British School of Archaeology in Egypt and Bernard Quaritch, London. PETRIE, W.M.F. and E. MACKAY. 1915. Heliopolis, Kafr Ammar and Shurafa, British School of Archaeology in Egypt and Bernard Quaritch, London. PETRIE, W.M.F., G.A. WAINWRIGHT and A.H. GARDINER. 1913. Tarkhan I and Memphis V, British School of Archaeology in Egypt and Bernard Quaritch, London. STEVENSON, A. and M.W. DEE. 2016. ‘Confirmation of the world’s oldest woven garment: the Tarkhan dress’, Antiquity 349, http://antiquity.ac.uk/projgall/stevenson349. VOGELSANG-EASTWOOD, G. 2000. ‘Textiles’, in P.T. NICHOLSON and I. SHAW (eds), Ancient Egyptian Materials and Technology, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 268–98. XIA, N. 2014. Ancient Egyptian Beads, Springer, Heidelberg.

THE EGYPTIAN WESTERN DESERT AND THE NILE VALLEY IN THE FIFTH MILLENNIUM BCE: BARIS B AND THE TASIAN

Mary M.A. MCDONALD University of Calgary, Calgary

Introduction In the fifth millennium cal. BCE, cultures in the Egyptian Western Desert were adjusting to severe aridification following the end of the African Humid Period, while in the second half of the millennium, the Badarian culture, which preceded the Predynastic and Egyptian state formation, was evolving in the Nile Valley. There is considerable evidence to suggest that developments in the two areas are related: that groups dusted out of the desert sought refuge in Middle Egypt and contributed to the development of the Badarian (Kuper and Kröpelin 2006). In the last decade or so, evidence has been emerging to suggest that there were significant ties between the desert and the river valley even before the Badarian, in the first half of the fifth millennium and earlier, and that these ties may have extended far upstream to Nubia and beyond (Fig. 1). The new evidence includes survey data from the eastern escarpment of Kharga Oasis bearing on the Baris B Cultural Unit (McDonald 2006), the easternmost version of mobile forager-pastoralists who inhabited the three large oases of the central Western Desert, including Dakhleh and Farafra. Contemporary material representing a very different adaptation has been excavated on the floor of Kharga Oasis at the stratified spring-side site of KS043 (Briois et al. 2012). Extensive survey sweeps of the Western Desert beyond the oases by archaeologists and palaeoclimatologists based in Cologne help elucidate the picture of regional settlement history against a background of climate change through the midHolocene (Riemer and Kindermann 2008; Riemer et al. 2013). As for ties with the Egyptian Nile Valley, the Darnells (Darnell 2002; Darnell and Darnell 2009) have recorded sites suggesting travel between the Nile Valley and Kharga Oasis starting in the mid-Holocene. Finally, Ehrenfeld (2014) has reassessed the Tasian, a poorly understood cultural entity seemingly shared by the desert and the Nile Valley just before or during Badarian times. Some of the evidence cited comes from recently published cemetery sites at Gebel Ramlah near Nabta in southern Egypt, and others in the Kerma region in Nubia.

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Figure 1. Map of Egypt and Nubia showing places mentioned in text.

This paper focuses on the Baris B1 Unit, the fifth millennium forager-pastoralists who camped on the escarpment above Kharga, which is the Western Desert oasis closest to the Nile Valley. Certain cultural traits shared with the Tasian entity, as well as the distribution of sites on the long north-south trending escarpment, shed light on the relationships between Baris B and groups in Middle and Upper Egypt, and with others far upstream. 1

a.k.a. the ‘Late Baris’ Unit (cf. McDonald et al. 2006; McDonald 2009).

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KH/MD-022 and other Baris B localities in the Wadi el-Midauwara area The Wadi el-Midauwara area (MD) is one of several passes on the escarpment face of the Libyan Plateau bordering the Kharga Oasis depression (Fig. 2a) that were explored by the Kharga Oasis Prehistory Project (KOPP) (Hawkins et al. 2002; Kleindienst et al. 2009). Midauwara proved to be particularly rich in prehistoric remains dating to both the early Holocene (the ‘Midauwara’ Cultural Unit) and the mid-Holocene (the ‘Baris’ Unit) (McDonald 2006). As with the mid-Holocene Bashendi Unit in nearby Dakhleh Oasis, the Baris Unit is divisible into Baris A (or ‘Early Baris’), featuring clusters of slab structures, and the later Baris B, where sites consist of groups of hearth mounds left by mobile forager-pastoralists. Baris B also overlaps in time with the Badarian of the Nile Valley. The most thoroughly studied Baris B site is KH/MD-022, located in a large basin deeply eroded into the Pleistocene lacustrine silts of the Wadi el-Midauwara embayment (Fig. 2b; McDonald 2006; Kleindienst et al., this volume). North of the basin lies the modern highway and its precursor, the Dharb elGaga, running from the Kharga village of Bagdad or Gaga to near Luxor in the Nile Valley. Locality MD-022 consists of hearth mounds in five separate clusters, with associated scatters of chipped stone, other stone artefacts, and some pottery. The chipped stone has a strong bifacial component and includes such typical Baris B tools as scrapers on side blow flakes, tranchets or planes, ‘Armant axes’, denticulates, and a few knives (Fig. 3). Grinding slabs and handstones occur, some on imported material such as black and white syenite, puddingstone, and ‘Aswan’ granite. A rich ground stone industry includes artificially rounded balls of various sizes (Kleindienst et al. this volume), as well as rings, beads, mace head fragments, and a small axe of black silicified shale. A calcite (or alabaster?) ‘nail’ and a Nile bivalve shell fragment were recorded. Analysis of 300+ of the 550 sherds collected from MD-022 (McDonald et al. 2004; Warfe n.d.) confirms the close relationship between the mid-Holocene cultural units of Kharga and Dakhleh oases, suggesting that the clusters on MD-022 are not necessarily strictly contemporaneous. The ceramics also help to correlate the Khargan site with the developing sequence in Middle/Upper Egypt. Sherds from Cl. 1 and Cl. 4, on the basis of the largely fine sand-andshale fabrics, as well as vessel surface treatment and shape, compare well with Bashendi B pottery from Dakhleh. The collection from Cl. 5, in addition to the sand-and-shale fabrics, includes vessels in a coarse shale fabric typical of the Dakhleh Sheikh Muftah Unit, suggesting that Cl. 5 might correspond with Dakhleh late Bashendi B/Early Sheikh Muftah times. In addition to pottery in the usual desert fabrics, two sherds from MD-022 have silty fabrics, indicating that they are imports from the Nile Valley. A rimsherd from Cl. 1 is a ripple ware that fits clearly in the Badarian pottery tradition of Middle Egypt. A sherd

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Figure 2. a) Outline map of Kharga Oasis showing location of Wadi Midauwara (shaded area) and other places mentioned in text; b) Wadi Midauwara (MD) showing location of Baris B sites.

a

b

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Figure 3. MD-022 artefacts: a) side blow flake; b) Armant axe; c) ground stone axe; d) stone bead; e) ground stone ring.

from Cl. 5 with a silty, organic-tempered fabric, resembles Predynastic material from Upper Egypt. Few organic remains were recovered to shed light on the economy of MD-022. Soil samples for archaeobotanical analysis were taken from several hearth mounds, but, as with soil samples from Bashendi B in Dakhleh Oasis, no analysable charcoal or plant macro-remains were preserved (cf. Thanheiser 2011, 86). As for fauna, fragments of what may have been goat or hartebeest

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were recovered from one hearth mound, and the lower molar of a hartebeest from another (C.S. Churcher, pers. comm., January 2006). There are two radiocarbon dates for MD-022: 4404–4260 cal. BCE (5490±40 bp) on charcoal from a Cl. 1 hearth, and 5039–4729 cal. BCE (6000±60 bp) on ostrich eggshell from the surface of Cl. 3 (Kleindienst et al. this volume, Table 1). About a dozen other Baris B sites have been recorded at Midauwara, most of them, like MD-022, in deep basins within a belt running across the centre of the embayment (Fig. 2b). They range from Loc. MD-055, consisting of dozens of hearth mounds in several clusters, to the much smaller MD-050, consisting of just two hearth mounds and a possible slab structure. Several sites feature the smoothed stone balls, one site, a possible palette fragment, and all have a selection of knives, side blow flakes, tranchets etc. A few sherds were found on some sites. Baris B sites elsewhere on the Kharga escarpment The Wadi el-Midauwara, with its rich early to mid-Holocene sites, lies towards the south end of the Kharga escarpment. KOPP has not made detailed surveys further south. Earlier projects (Caton-Thompson 1952; Simmons and Mandel 1985) and KOPP have surveyed several areas to the north with routes descending the escarpment, including Mata’na, Bulaq, Abu Sighawal, Refuf and Gebel Yebsa. Our results suggest that Baris B groups made little use of these passes or adjacent parts of the plateau, with one exception. A well-marked trail on the plateau top between Refuf and Abu Sighawal skirts Caton-Thompson’s (1952, 187 ff.) ‘chert workings’, the extensive outcrops of tabular chert which were quarried in late prehistoric times. Here we recorded several hearth mound sites where Baris B lithics were fashioned on the local tabular chert. However, evidence of post-Baris B activity is found in some of these passes: a slab structure site in the Refuf Pass of late Predynastic or Old Kingdom date; and to the north, two sites at Gebel Yebsa yielded Dakhleh Late Sheikh Muftah and Nile Valley Early Dynastic and later pottery. Darnell (2002, 165–6) also reports sites on the plateau near Yebsa with similar material. Dating and environmental background Only two radiocarbon dates are available for Baris B, both from MD-022 (see above). Both fall well within the range of c. 5700 to 3900 cal. BCE on 25 dates from Bashendi B sites in Dakhleh Oasis (Fig. 4; McDonald 2001). As mentioned, Baris B and Bashendi B are close cognates (McDonald 2002). They share the same lithic toolkits with a strong bifacial component, similar small ground stone items, imports such as exotic stone and Nile bivalve shells, and the same pottery (see above). The hearth mounds in both areas are similar. In

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Farafra Oasis, 250 km to the northwest, the Wadi el Obeiyid Phase B (c. 5600– 5200 cal. BCE) is another closely related cultural entity (Hamdan and Lucarini 2013; Barich et al. 2014, 477, passim). All areas surveyed within the northwestern portion of the Farafra depression feature steinplätze or hearth mounds, and sometimes a few slab structures, with chipped and ground stone assemblages similar to those of Bashendi B, although pottery was rare to absent in Wadi el Obeiyid Phase B. These mid-Holocene developments in the oases of the central Western Desert can be considered within a wider context based in part on the cultural and environmental evidence amassed within the desert beyond the oases by the B.O.S. and ACACIA projects of the University of Cologne (Kuper and Kröpelin 2006; Riemer and Kindermann 2008; Riemer et al. 2013). Briefly, the Bashendi B/Baris B entities emerged at the end of the African Humid Period (c. 9000– 5000 cal. BCE) when a new phase of aridification gripped the Eastern Sahara. Previously, in the latter part of the African Humid Period (Phase 1, c. 6000– 5300 cal. BCE, in the ACACIA sequence), favourable climatic conditions fostered some degree of sedentism in the oases, evident in the slab structure sites of Late Bashendi A and Baris A, and in the Hidden Valley Village in Farafra (Barich et al. 2014). The desert itself, away from permanent water sources, was occupied seasonally by hunter-foragers, as on the Limestone or Libyan Plateau at Djara and Abu Gerara, and even at such remote locations as Regenfeld in the Great Sand Sea. The entire Western Desert was culturally interconnected, with the major lithic and ceramic traditions that dominated the north and south overlapping considerably in the desert centre (Riemer et al. 2013, fig. 3). The onset of the drying trend c. 5300 cal. BCE brought dramatic cultural changes to the Western Desert. In Phase 2 of the ACACIA sequence, c. 5300– 4500 cal. BCE (Riemer and Kindermann 2008), the desert was gradually depopulated. Initially only the remotest areas such as Regenfeld were affected, but after c. 4700 cal. BCE (Riemer et al. 2013, fig. 2), even the sites on the Limestone Plateau, and campsites in the vicinity of Dakhleh such as Chufu and

Figure 4. Distribution of 25 Bashendi B and two Baris B radiocarbon determinations. Each dot represents the mid-point of the calibrated range BCE of the date at 95.4% probability, given on OxCal 4.2 (McDonald 2001; Bronk Ramsey 2009).

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Meri, had to be abandoned (Riemer 2006). On a broader scale, the three oases in the desert centre were increasingly isolated from the archaeological tradition to the north in the Fayum, and that in the south around Nabta Playa (Riemer et al. 2013, fig. 4). The Western Desert oases themselves continued to be occupied. While the Bashendi B began c. 5600 cal. BCE, Bashendi B dates (plus the two from Baris B) also span the entire fifth millennium2 (Fig. 3). Settlement patterns within the oases changed dramatically with aridification. The Late Bashendi A slab-built settlement sites were abandoned. Bashendi B/Baris B groups were mobile forager-pastoralists with sites consisting largely of clusters of hearth mounds. Ties to the Nile Valley If travel within the desert beyond the oases had largely ceased by 4500 cal. BCE, contacts between the oases and the Nile Valley clearly had not. As noted, campers on some of the MD-022 clusters were importing Badarian vessels, or something in those vessels, from Middle Egypt. Similar imported sherds with Badarian surface rippling were recorded on nearby site MD-036. Likewise, the group settled at the spring site of KS043 on the Kharga Oasis floor were importing fish and wheat from the Nile Valley (Briois et al. 2012). The Badarian culture of Middle Egypt is now firmly dated c. 4400–3800 cal. BCE (Dee et al. 2013; Wengrow et al. 2014), which overlaps with the MD-022 Cl. 1 date, and the dates from KS043 (c. 4800–4200 cal. BCE). A case can be made that many elements of Badarian culture originated in the desert to the west and were carried to the Nile Valley, possibly by refugees fleeing aridification. The MD-022 and MD-036 sherds with surface rippling have silty fabrics that show they are imported from the Nile Valley and are Badarian in age. However, rippled pottery, plus two other pottery traditions found on Badarian sites, black-topped pottery and the Tasian beaker, all seem to have emerged in the desert considerably before the start of the Badarian (Riemer and Schönfeld 2006; Wuttmann et al. 2012, 306; Riemer et al. 2013, 172; Ehrenfeld 2014). Ripple ware is found on the Abu Tartur Plateau, just above northwestern Kharga Oasis, dated late in the sixth millennium cal. BCE (Riemer and Schönfeld 2006, fig. 7). Black-topped pottery and Tasian beaker fragments made in local fabrics are also reported. ‘Desert black-topped’3 sherds appear as early as 6100 cal. BCE at Loc. 307 in Dakhleh Oasis (Hope 2002, pl. 47).

2 The number of dates for Farafra Oasis drops dramatically with the start of the Wadi el Obeiyid C, c. 5200 cal. BCE (Barich et al. 2014, 480). 3 Both Hope (2002) and Warfe (2008, 269) warn against automatically equating ‘Desert blacktopped’ with the Badarian black-topped pottery.

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The Badarian chipped stone industry also is derived in part from the lithic traditions of the Western Desert. Kindermann (2010; Riemer et al. 2013, 172) argues that the bifacial knapping technique, that was brought to such perfection with the ripple-flaked knives of the Predynastic, originated in the fine bifacial technology developed on the flint-rich Limestone or Libyan Plateau at such localities as Djara and Dakhleh Oasis. Badarian tool types such as knives, planes, axes and various scrapers also originated in the desert to the west (Holmes 1989; Kindermann 2010, table 27). Badarians may also have borrowed from the desert such basic cultural traits as the pattern of hearth construction (Vermeersch et al. 1992, 170). Finally, Badarian subsistence and settlement patterns may also reflect their desert origins. Unlike the settled farmers of the succeeding Predynastic, the Badarians remained herder-foragers-fishers, with perhaps a low level of cereal cultivation, while their sites were just seasonal encampments (Hendrickx et al. 2001; Wengrow et al. 2014, 102). Given the close correspondence in time between the final depopulation of the desert and the emergence of the Badarian in Middle Egypt, Riemer et al. (2013, 170) suggest that it would have been the second drying spell of c. 4700–4500 cal. BCE that forced migration into the Nile Valley and initiated the Badarian. Wengrow et al. (2014, 96) tend to downplay the role of climate change and the influx from the desert in the rise of the Badarian, stressing instead the importance of the north-south axis, and ties with Nubia and Central Sudan. While the argument for the role of climate change remains compelling, there is, in fact, emerging evidence for cultural ties southward along the Nile Valley in the fifth millennium and perhaps earlier, ties that may also extend deep into the central Western Desert. Ehrenfeld (2014) reviewed the evidence for the Tasian ‘phenomenon’ including from recently published cemetery sites at Gebel Ramlah near Nabta in southern Egypt, and in the Kerma region in Nubia. She lists a number of artefacts that tend to accompany Tasian beakers, many of which are also associated with Bashendi B/Baris B. They include various chipped stone tools, polished axes, and several items associated with body ornamentation such as palettes and rubbing stones, beads in various coloured stones, marine and riverine shells, labrets, toggles, and shell or ivory bracelets. Several sites dated to the first half of the fifth millennium share Tasian sherds and various of these decorative items, including the R12 and Kadruka cemeteries near Kerma at the Third Cataract, and three Egyptian desert burial sites, Gebel Ramlah, Wadi el-Hol and Wadi Atulla (Darnell 2002; Friedman and Hobbs 2002; Kobusiewicz et al. 2010). In the next half-millennium, similar material would be found on Badarian sites in Middle Egypt, and far upstream at Kadero and other sites near Khartoum (Ehrenfeld 2014). The shared list of artefact types on sites ranging from the Western Desert oases to the Third Cataract and beyond, if independent invention is ruled out, suggests some sort of contact or interaction amongst these far-flung areas. In

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fact, the newly published material from the Third Cataract and northward suggests just such contacts along the Nile and with the nearby deserts, after aridification had set in, and before the Badarian (Gatto 2011). Gatto attributes the cultural transmission to Nubian forager-pastoralists expanding northward along the river, but a case can be made for influences travelling in the opposite direction, starting in the oases of the Western Desert. As mentioned, the earliest Tasian material recorded so far was made locally at Abu Tartur near Kharga Oasis (Riemer and Schönfeld 2006), while the Bashendi B Unit, with its distinctive tools and range of decorative items, appears in the first half of the sixth millennium (Fig. 4). In fact, there are similar early dates (c. 5750 cal. BCE) from the ‘Neolithic’ cemetery at El-Barga at the Third Cataract (Honegger 2005). Although lacking Tasian pottery, it yielded such items as labrets, bracelets, ‘pendentifs’ or toggles, palettes and polished axes. Thus on current evidence, the decorative items in question seem to appear roughly contemporaneously at sites hundreds of kilometres apart. Priority might be assigned to the northern oases in that Bashendi B/Baris B seems to have evolved in situ out of the Late Bashendi A/Baris A, and some of the traits in question, such as side blow flakes and labrets, first appear in Late Bashendi A (McDonald 2013). Clearly more evidence, including many more radiocarbon dates, is required before the issue can be resolved. As for the routes followed for this cultural transmission, whether northward, southward or both, the river valley itself is one option, as are routes in the Western Desert parallel to the river. Briefly, the scant evidence might suggest the use of desert routes. The Egyptian Nile Valley appears to have been largely uninhabited through the Holocene until the Badarian. In Kharga Oasis, Baris B, with its concentration at the Wadi el-Midauwara, seems to show a southerly focus. Even late in the fifth millennium, when it was clearly in touch with the Badarian, there is little trace of Baris B material at Gebel Yebsa, on the direct route to Middle Egypt. Meanwhile, there does seem to be a connection from Nubia northward through the desert adjacent to the Nile, and south of the plateau. The cemeteries at Gebel Ramlah yielded, besides Tasian and related wares, pottery very similar in shape and decoration to that of the R12 cemetery near Kerma (Gatto 2010, 154). The Final Neolithic at Nabta Playa, and even the ‘Tasian’ material from KS043 in southern Kharga near Dush, are considered to fall within the ‘Nubian Tradition’ (Gatto 2010; Briois et al. 2012, 187). Gatto (2011) suggests routes running from the Second Cataract northward through Dungul and/or Kurkur oases, and the Darnells (2009, fig. 2) show a route running from Kurkur northwestward towards Kharga (possibly running along the base of the escarpment?). Ball (1900), in his map of Kharga, shows a route running from Dush across the plateau towards Esna. He also shows the east end of an old route running from Baris in southern Kharga westward to Dakhleh Oasis, a route that is noted in some of the old reports (M.R. Kleindienst, pers.

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comm., June 2016; H. Riemer, pers. comm., June 2016). Ball (1900, 28) also noted that even in modern times, the southern Baris area was considered a separate oasis from Kharga itself. While it is interesting to note a possible convergence of important old travel routes in southern Kharga, none of these routes has yet been surveyed for late prehistoric sites. Conclusions The Egyptian Western Desert was gradually depopulated in the course of the fifth millennium BCE, due to aridification following the end of the African Humid Period. During a particularly dry pulse c. 4700–4500 cal. BCE, some of the remaining forager-pastoralists fled to Middle Egypt, contributing to the development of the Badarian culture. The large central oases, particularly Dakhleh and Kharga, also served as refuges throughout the millennium. In Kharga, the focus of settlement, both on the escarpment and the oasis floor, seems to have been towards the southern end of the oasis. This might reflect, in part, cultural ties with groups far to the south in Nubia, ties suggested by a cluster of shared ‘Tasian’ artefact types. Raising the possibility of such ties prompts other questions. A major problem concerns the very different kinds of sites, or at least the kinds of evidence available for Nile Valley vs. desert sites. In the river valley, and at sites near the river such as Gebel Ramlah, funerary practices were clearly an important part of the culture, and Tasian pottery and the items for body ornamentation are usually recovered from burials. In the oases of the Western Desert, no burials have been recorded for Bashendi B/ Baris B, or for the Wadi el Obeiyid Phase B in Farafra. Any ‘Tasian’ material is part of the surface scatter on hearth mound sites. Acknowledgements Sincere thanks to the editors for the invitation to contribute to the Festschrift for Colin Hope, a long-time colleague and dear friend. The work reported here was supported in part by the Social Science and Humanities Council of Canada, the National Geographic Society, the Dakhleh Trust, the University of Calgary Department of Archaeology and the University Research Grants Committee of the University of Calgary. I am very grateful for this support. My thanks also for the help and support of my colleagues in the Dakhleh Oasis Project and the Kharga Oasis Prehistoric Project, and particularly of A.J. Mills, Director of the Dakhleh Oasis Project.

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Bibliography BALL, J. 1900. Kharga Oasis: Its Topography and Geology, National Printing Department, Cairo. BARICH, B.E., G. LUCARINI, M.A. HAMDAN and F.A. HASSAN. 2014. From Lake to Sand – the Archaeology of Farafra Oasis, Western Desert, Egypt, All’Insegna del Giglio, Firenze. BRIOIS, F., B. MIDANT-REYNES, S. MARCHAND, Y. TRISTANT, M. WUTTMANN, M. DE DAPPER, J. LESUR and C. NEWTON. 2012. ‘Neolithic occupation of an artesian spring: KS043 in the Kharga Oasis, Egypt’, JFA 37, 178–90. BRONK RAMSEY, C. 2009. ‘Bayesan analysis of radiocarbon dates’, Radiocarbon 51, 337–60. CATON-THOMPSON, G. 1952. Kharga Oasis in Prehistory, Athlone Press, London. DARNELL, D. 2002. ‘Gravel of the deserts and broken pots in the road: ceramic evidence from the routes between the Nile and Kharga Oasis’, in R. FRIEDMAN (ed.), Egypt and Nubia. Gifts of the Desert, British Museum Press, London, 156–77. DARNELL, J.C. and D. DARNELL. 2009. ‘The archaeology of Kurkur Oasis, Nuq‘ Maneih, and the Sinn el-Kiddab’, https://egyptology.yale.edu/expeditions/pastand-joint-projects/theban-desert-road-survey-yale-toshka-desert-survey/kurkur. DEE, M., D. WENGROW, A. SHORTLAND, A. STEVENSON, F. BROCK, L. GIRDLAND FLINK and C. BRONK RAMSEY. 2013. ‘An absolute chronology for early Egypt using radiocarbon dating and Bayesian statistical modelling’, PRSA 469, (20130395), http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspa.2013.0395 EHRENFELD, M. 2014. ‘Le phénomène tasien: un état de la question’, Archéo-Nil 24, 47–58. FRIEDMAN, R. and J. HOBBS. 2002. ‘A ‘Tasian’ tomb in Egypt’s Eastern Desert’, in R. FRIEDMAN (ed.), Egypt and Nubia. Gifts of the Desert, British Museum Press, London, 178–91. GATTO, M.C. 2010. ‘Pottery from Gebel Ramlah’, in M. .2%86,(:,&=-.$%$&,ē6., R. SCHILD, J.D. IRISH, M.C. GATTO and F. WENDORF, Gebel Ramlah. Final Neolithic Cemeteries from the Western Desert of Egypt, Polish Academy of Sciences, 3R]QDĔ± GATTO, M.C. 2011. ‘The Nubian pastoral culture as link between Egypt and Africa: a view from the archaeological record’, in K. EXELL (ed.), Egypt in its African context: Proceedings of the Conference held at the Manchester Museum, University of Manchester, 2-4 October 2009, Archaeopress, Oxford, 21–9. HAMDAN, M.A. and G. LUCARINI. 2013. ‘Holocene paleoenvironmental, paleoclimatic and geoarchaeological significance of the Sheikh El-Obeiyid area (Farafra Oasis, Egypt)’, QI 302, 154–68. HAWKINS, A.L., J.R. SMITH, R. GIEGENGACK, H.P. SCHWARCZ, M.R. KLEINDIENST and M.F. WISEMAN. 2002. ‘Middle Stone Age adaptations and environments in Kharga Oasis, Western Desert Egypt’, Nyame Akuma 57, 54–5. HENDRICKX, S., B. MIDANT-REYNES and W. VAN NEER. 2001. Mahgar Dendera 2 (Haute Égypte), un site d’occupation Badarien, Leuven University Press, Leuven. HOLMES, D.L. 1989. The Predynastic Lithic Industries of Upper Egypt: A Comparative Study of the Lithic Traditions of Badari, Nagada and Hierakonpolis, Archaeopress, Oxford. HONEGGER, M. 2005. ‘Kerma et les débuts du Néolithique Africain’, Genava 53, 239–49.

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HOPE, C.A. 2002. ‘Early and mid-Holocene ceramics from the Dakhleh Oasis: traditions and influences’, in R. FRIEDMAN (ed.), Egypt and Nubia. Gifts of the Desert, British Museum Press, London, 39–61. KINDERMANN, K. 2010. Djara: Zur mittelholozänen Besiedlungsgeschichte zwischen Niltal und Oasen (Abu-Muharik-Plateau, Ägypten), Heinrich-Barth-Institut, Cologne. KLEINDIENST, M.R., C.S. CHURCHER, M.M.A. MCDONALD and A.R. WARFE. this volume. ‘Holocene evidence and a copper axe head from prehistoric Locality MD-022, Kharga Oasis’. KLEINDIENST, M.R., J.R. SMITH and K.A. ADELSBERGER. 2009. ‘The Kharga Oasis Prehistory Project (KOPP), 2008 field season: part I. Geoarchaeology and Pleistocene prehistory’, Nyame Akuma 71, 18–30. .2%86,(:,&=0-.$%$&,ē6.,56&+,/'-',5,6+0&*$772 and F. WENDORF. 2010. Gebel Ramlah. Final Neolithic Cemeteries from the Western Desert of Egypt3ROLVK$FDGHP\RI6FLHQFHV3R]QDĔ KUPER, R. and S. KRÖPELIN. 2006. ‘Climate-controlled Holocene occupation in the Sahara: motor of Africa’s evolution’, Science 313, 803–7. MCDONALD, M.M.A. 2001. ‘The late prehistoric radiocarbon chronology for Dakhleh Oasis within the wider environmental setting of the Egyptian Western Desert’, in C.A. MARLOW and A.J. MILLS (eds), The Oasis Papers 1, The Proceedings of the First International Symposium of the Dakhleh Oasis Project, Oxbow Books, Oxford, 26–42. MCDONALD, M.M.A. 2002. ‘Dakhleh Oasis in Predynastic and Early Dynastic times: Bashendi B and the Sheikh Muftah cultural units’, Archéo-Nil 12, 109–20. MCDONALD, M.M.A. 2006. ‘Holocene prehistory of the Wady el Midauwara above Kharga Oasis, Egypt’, in K. .52(3(50&+à2'1,&.,and M. KOBUSIEWICZ (eds), Archaeology of Early Northeastern Africa: in Memory of Lech KrzyĪaniak, 3R]QDĔ$UFKDHRORJLFDO0XVHXP3R]QDĔ± MCDONALD, M.M.A. 2009. ‘Increased sedentism in the central oases of the Egyptian Western Desert in the early to mid-Holocene: evidence from the peripheries’, AAR 26, 3–43. MCDONALD, M.M.A. 2013. ‘Whence the Neolithic of Northeastern Africa? Evidence from the central Western Desert of Egypt’, in N. SHIRAI (ed.), Neolithisation of Northeastern Africa, Ex Oriente, Berlin, 175–92. MCDONALD, M.M.A., C.S. CHURCHER, J.R. SMITH and A.R. WARFE. 2004. ‘Report on the 2003 field activities of the Kharga Oasis Prehistoric Project (KOPP)’, Nyame Akuma 61, 4–9. RIEMER, H. 2006. ‘Out of Dakhla: cultural diversity and mobility between the Egyptian oases and the Great Sand Sea during the Holocene humid phase’, in K. KROEPER, 0 &+à2'1,&., and M. KOBUSIEWICZ (eds), Archaeology of Early Northeastern Africa: in Memory of Lech KrzyĪaniak3R]QDĔ$UFKDHRORJLFDO0XVHXP3R]QDĔ 493–525. RIEMER, H. and K. KINDERMANN. 2008. ‘Contacts between the oasis and the Nile: a résumé of the Abu Muhariq Plateau Survey 1995-2002’, in B. MIDANT-REYNES and Y. TRISTANT (eds), Egypt at its Origins 2: Proceedings of the International Conference “Origin of the State. Predynastic and Early Dynastic Egypt”, Toulouse (France), 5th-8th September 2005, Peeters, Leuven, 609–33. RIEMER, H., M. LANGE and K. KINDERMANN. 2013. ‘When the desert dried up: late prehistoric cultures and contacts in Egypt and northern Sudan’, in D. RAUE, S.J. SEIDLMAYER and P. SPEISER (eds), The First Cataract of the Nile. One Region – Diverse Perspectives, de Gruyter, Berlin, 157–83, plates 130–1.

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RIEMER, H. and P. SCHÖNFELD. 2006. ‘The prehistoric pottery of Abu Tartur, Western Desert of Egypt’, in . .52(3(5 0 &+à2'1,&., and M. KOBUSIEWICZ (eds), Archaeology of Early Northeastern Africa: in Memory of Lech KrzyĪaniak, 3R]QDĔ$UFKDHRORJLFDO0XVHXP3R]QDĔ± SIMMONS, A.H. and R.D. MANDEL. (eds) 1985. Prehistoric Occupation of a Marginal Environment: An Archaeological Survey Near Kharga Oasis in the Western Desert of Egypt, Archaeopress, Oxford. THANHEISER, U. 2011. ‘Island of the blessed: 8000 years of plant exploitation in the Dakhleh Oasis, Egypt’, in A.G. FAHMY, S. KAHLHEBER and C. D’ANDREA (eds), Windows on the African Past: Current Approaches to African Archaeobotany, Africa Magna Verlag, Frankfurt, 79–90. VERMEERSCH, P.M., E. PAULISSEN, D. HUYGE, K. NEUMANN, W. VAN NEER and P. VAN PEER. 1992. ‘Predynastic hearths in Upper Egypt’, in R. FRIEDMAN and B. ADAMS (eds), The Followers of Horus: Studies Dedicated to Michael Allen Hoffman 1944-1990, Oxbow Books, Oxford, 163–72. WARFE, A.R. 2008. A Study of the Pottery Remains from Early and Mid-Holocene Sites in Dakhleh Oasis, Egypt, unpublished PhD thesis, Monash University, Melbourne. WARFE, A.R. n.d. Kharga Holocene: preliminary report on the pottery, unpublished report on file with Kharga Oasis Prehistory Project. WENGROW, D., M. DEE, S. FOSTER, A. STEVENSON and C. BRONK RAMSEY. 2014. ‘Cultural convergence in the Neolithic of the Nile Valley: a prehistoric perspective on Egypt’s place in Africa’, Antiquity 88, 95–111. WUTTMANN, M., F. BRIOIS, B. MIDANT-REYNES and T. DACHY. 2012. ‘Dating the end of the Neolithic in an Eastern Sahara oasis: modeling absolute chronology’, Radiocarbon 54, 305–18.

AN UNWONTED EXCHANGE: EGYPTIAN ANTIQUITIES FROM BENI HASAN AND ESNA (?) IN THE CYPRUS MUSEUM, NICOSIA

Robert S. MERRILLEES Independent scholar, Mailly le Château

My association with Colin Hope began in the 1980s when he initiated the long and lonely task of establishing Egyptology as an academic discipline in the state of Victoria, which had not seen the services of a qualified specialist since the days of Alan Rowe more than 50 years before (Hope 1983a, 45; R. Merrillees 1990, 34–8; 2007; Bierbrier 2012, 477). Colin’s success and standing in Melbourne, Australia and internationally attest to his dedication and perseverance and have materially assisted with the realisation of my own and Helen’s goals in researching Old World antiquities in Australia. In particular, he collaborated fruitfully with me in the production of the pioneering work on Living with Egypt’s Past in Australia (R. Merrillees 1990) and gave Helen valuable help and advice with her study and publication of the ancient Near Eastern seals in Australian collections (P. Merrillees 1990; 2001).1 I was therefore very sorry not to have been able to visit the special exhibition devoted to Australian Egyptologists held in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo in February– March 2008 (Smythe 2008). On that occasion our elder daughter, Antoinette, and her husband, James Larsen, attended the opening of the event as representatives of the Merrillees family and made Colin’s acquaintance. His contributions to our knowledge of ancient Egypt have been multifarious and include surveys of Egyptian antiquities in Australian museums (e.g. Hope 1983a; 1986). I have therefore chosen to salute his achievements with an essay on the donation to the Cyprus Museum in Nicosia of vases from Professor John Garstang’s excavations at Beni Hasan in Upper Egypt between 1902 and 1904 and evidently also from Esna in 1905–1906, in exchange for some ancient Cypriote pottery for the Institute of Archaeology of the University of Liverpool, England, which happens to be Colin’s alma mater. Donations from the same Egyptian sources to Australian museums will also be canvassed. Helen joins me in paying this tribute. Exchanges, transfers and purchases between museums were much more common in the past than they are today. A hundred years ago and up to the mid-twentieth century at least, archaeologists and institutions, whether muse1

Her first volume has since been revised and republished (P. Merrillees 2015).

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ums, organisations or universities, used their own finds and collections to obtain on an exchange basis the artefacts that they lacked and needed for comparative, pedagogical or historical purposes. These institutions also passed ancient and ethnographic material between themselves to consolidate their holdings in specialised areas, and even sold antiquities to other places and people, by auction, counter sales or private transactions, through the practice, made notorious by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, of ‘deaccessioning’ (cf. Counts 2001, 134–5 n.20). Little of this activity was ever publicly acknowledged, and records tend to be decidedly scant. The Cyprus Museum, for example, donated to the Palestine Archaeological Museum in Jerusalem in 1938 around 50 Bronze Age and Iron Age vases, some from excavated sites, such as Arpera, Katydhata and Lapithos (cf. Markides 1915, 4–10; 1916, 5–6; Åström 1989), about which nothing has ever been written, and received in 1948 a gift from the University Museum, Philadelphia, of three Minoan pots from the University of Pennsylvania’s excavations in Crete (acc. nos 1948/VII-9/2–4). Well before these acquisitions an unusual exchange took place in 1904–5 involving John Garstang (1876–1956) (Canpolat 2001, 67; Bierbrier 2012, 208; Freeman 2015), then Reader in Egyptian Archaeology, University of Liverpool, who had been excavating Dynasty XI–XII and XXII– XXV tombs at Beni Hasan in the Nile Valley. A copy of the catalogue accompanying an exhibition of the finds from Beni Hasan in the Society of Antiquaries, Burlington House, London in July 19042 is held in a file recounting this and a subsequent transaction, evidently involving antiquities from Garstang’s excavations at Esna, in the State Archives in Nicosia, Cyprus (SAI/1255/1904). The substantive contents of this file, without the catalogue, have already been published by Despina Pilides (2009; see below) in her indispensable edition of George Jeffery’s diaries. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, European and especially British Egyptologists who dug in the Nile Valley and received a share of their finds, like Garstang, were accustomed to distributing them to all interested parties, whether institutions or private individuals, generally but not always contributors to the fieldwork (Orel 1997, 62–3; Criscenzo-Laycock et al. 2011; Garnett 2015; cf. Stevenson 2015). As a result, scientifically recorded material, which should for research purposes never have been separated but kept as far as possible together, became scattered all over the world, including Australia, New 2 Excavations at Beni Hassan in Upper Egypt 1902-3-4. Catalogue of Exhibition Inaugurated by HRH Princess Henry of Battenberg, Held by Permission of the Council in the Rooms of the Society of Antiquaries July 7th to 23rd 1904, see Thornton (2015, 5, 8–10). Garstang had been elected a Fellow of the Society in 1903, sponsored by some of the biggest names in British archaeology at the time, including F.G. Hilton Price, Arthur J. Evans, John L. Myres, F.Ll. Griffith, G. Somers Clarke, Charles H. Read and E.A. Wallis Budge. A comparable exhibition of antiquities from Esna took place in July 1906 in the Liverpool City Museums.

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Zealand and South Africa, and the loss of basic data was made all the greater through the subsequent transfers of material between museums and the sales of personal collections of Egyptian antiquities (cf. Downes 1974, xi–xii).3 The situation confronting researchers today was nicely summed up in 1974 by Dorothy Downes (1974, v; cf. Kemp 1978) in her heroic study of Garstang’s fieldwork at Esna from March to early May 1905 and January to February 1906, where she writes: This study was undertaken with the aim of presenting the material discovered nearly seventy years ago during two seasons of excavation at the cemetery of Esna in Upper Egypt. The only published record was a brief report by Professor John Garstang in 1907, which contained a number of errors, but it was hoped that a reasonable account of the excavation at Esna would emerge by working from the surviving field records and from the material that could be traced. The field records were incomplete and inadequate, and the objects were found to have been widely dispersed soon after they were brought back from Egypt. Many have since disappeared or have been destroyed, and only a small proportion of the finds can be studied in detail. The site had yielded few objects of great historical or artistic importance, but it was felt that an important gap in the overall record of Upper Egyptian sites would be filled by an account of this excavation of the Esna cemetery. This story could be replicated in any number of other cases of fieldwork in the Nile Valley. Appendix 1 contains a partial list of museum collections with Esna material.4 One such episode involves Garstang’s earlier excavations in the Middle Kingdom cemetery at Beni Hasan, where Garstang and his offsider, E. Harold Jones, described as ‘Artist to the Expedition’, cleared some 900 tombs in two seasons, between December 1902 and May 1903, and from late 1903 to March 1904, on behalf of a Committee of Patrons, set up in England (Orel 1997; cf. Freeman 2015). While at least Garstang (1907) brought out a site report on the fieldwork, it also contained a number of errors (Orel 1997, 57, 61 n.7) and, apart from the photographs, the original written records, such as they were, have since gone missing (Orel 1997, 61–3). No less serious was the scattering 3

For example, part of at least the Egyptian collections formed by H.M. Kennard, W. MacGregor and F.G. Hilton Price, which included antiquities from Garstang’s excavations at Beni Hasan and Esna, were subsequently sold at auction (Bierbrier 2012, 294, 347, 444). 4 Appendix 1 was originally drawn up by Downes (1974, x) but not included in her published report on the site. It has been partially edited, revised and brought up to date. The Cyprus Museum does not figure in it.

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of the numerous finds, which not only conformed to the usual pattern of distribution to contributors and donors, but had an extra twist which made it even more exceptional and regrettable. Orel (1997, 63; cf. R. Merrillees 1990, 16, 23) has graphically recounted the process in the following terms: Museums around the world include in their collections Egyptian objects from Garstang’s excavations (usually from Beni Hasan and Esna), and many tomb-models on display in American and particularly British Museums can trace their origins to Garstang’s work at Beni Hasan. The material from this site was so extensive that pottery and tomb models were left over when material had been sorted for the Excavation Committee’s share. Instead of reburying or simply abandoning the material, Garstang published a letter in The Times (London) of 18 February, 1904, in which he offered sets of Egyptian pottery – described as being ‘typical work of the XIth Dynasty’ to ‘a number of museums in the United Kingdom and the Colonies’, although he adds that ‘Applications from the continent of Europe or from America….would be considered equally’.5 ‘This letter was reprinted extensively in newspapers across Great Britain and the Commonwealth, and it attracted applications from all over the world. Garstang himself was absent from Beni Hasan as the letters in reply to this advertisement arrived; and his assistant that second season, the artist E. Harold Jones [(1877–1911) (Bierbrier 2012, 283; Thornton 2015, 6)], on his first visit to Egypt, seems to have taken charge of the distribution of the objects [(Criscenzo-Laycock et al. 2011, 35; cf. Freeman 2015, 55)]. Letters from Jones to Garstang, dated 30 March and 22 June, 1904, show that the former was conducting the majority of correspondence with the applying museums and schools. Thus material from Beni Hasan found its way into museum collections in several ways. The first division of the materials was taken by the Egyptian Museum, then the remaining objects were divided into roughly equal portions for each of the patrons of the expedition (seven the first season, eight the second). Then the remaining material – which consisted largely of unspectacular pottery and wooden fragments – was packed into wooden crates and shipped to any institution that would pay the shipping costs. It is quite likely that still more vessels remained after this distribution of objects, and several caches of 5 The pottery from Esna in the Museo Municipal de Belles Artes de Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Spain, came through an exchange (Martín del Río Álvarez and Almenara Rosales 2002).

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pottery may well remain to be discovered at Beni Hasan, as they may have been at Esna. Ceramic material was widely scattered in much the same process employed for the earlier excavation’. It was as part of this deal that some time in the spring of 1904 the Cyprus Museum received a consignment of antiquities from Beni Hasan, packed in two full cases. They consisted entirely of Egyptian pottery which was dismissively described by George Jeffery, Curator of Ancient Monuments, as ‘a number of very rough earthenware jars with no artistic character’ (Pilides 2009, 656),6 said by Garstang to belong to Dynasties XI–XII and XXII–XXV (Pilides 2009, 655). They were not, as far as we know, registered, drawn or photographed, and no list or catalogue has come down to us. Even the exact number of vases is unrecorded. They have never been seen or heard of again and unless sold off with the Cypriote ‘duplicates’ before the Second World War (cf. Pilides 2009, 652), they may well have suffered the same fate as the second Egyptian mummy case donated by Marius Tano to the Cyprus Museum in 1884 (Merrillees 2003, 5–6, 22). The relevant file in the State Archives, Nicosia, SAI/1255/1904 does not document the precise circumstances in which this donation came to be made, but a note, undated, though evidently written in May 1904 by E. Harold Jones, indicated that the grant was made according to an ‘application A/M 147’. It clearly originated with an agreement between Sir W.F. Haynes Smith (1839– 1928), High Commissioner of Cyprus, and Garstang, who wrote a letter to the former on 1 May 1904 from Cairo, concerning arrangements for the exchange (Pilides 2009, 654–5). What the correspondence published by Pilides unexpectedly reveals, however, is the administrative hitch encountered on the British Colonial side in giving effect to their part of the bargain. It was found, on some research in the files, that no action could be taken because the committee in charge of the Cyprus Museum (which had no director or curator) had inadvertently ceased to exist (Pilides 2009, 625–6). The High Commissioner promptly, in July 1904, appointed an interim committee of three, comprising (later Sir) Wilfred Collet, District Commissioner of Nicosia and at the time acting Receiver General, George Smith, Registrar General, Land Registry and Survey Department (Pilides 2009, 67), and George Jeffery, Curator of Ancient Monuments (Merrillees 2005a, 22; 2005b, 200–1; Pilides 2009, 90–1). Neither Collet nor Smith is known to have had any antiquarian credentials or interests, leaving Jeffery the The 54th Annual Report of the Committee of the Free Public Museums of the City of Liverpool for the Year Ending 31st December, 1906 (Liverpool 1907, 40) was scarcely more complimentary about their share of the finds from Garstang’s excavations in Upper Egypt ‘consisting of a large collection of objects – most of them, unfortunately, duplicates, and all in a very fragmentary condition, of specimens already in the Museum collection – from Esna, Abydos, Hierakonpolis, &c….’. 6

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only one remotely qualified to cope with the archaeological material. It was he who then proceeded to identify the so-called ‘duplicates’ in the Cyprus Museum which would be suitable for sending to the University of Liverpool (Pilides 2009, 655–6). Whether they were ever sent is not clear from the file or any other archival source. Not long afterwards, in October 1904, the High Commissioner, Haynes Smith, left the island at the end of his assignment. According to the relevant file in the State Archives, Nicosia, nothing further happened until by letter on 25 March 1905 Garstang reminded the new High Commissioner, Sir C.A. King-Harman (1851–1939) (Merrillees 2005b, 200), of the understanding he had with Haynes Smith, and the following month Jeffery unpacked one of the two cases from the Beni Hasan Excavation Committee which had presumably remained unopened up till then! The vases it contained were then ‘carefully arranged … by themselves in a glass case in the Museum in Victoria Road’ inside the Old City of Nicosia (Pilides 2009, 656; cf. Merrillees 2005a). On 15 May 1905 Garstang informed King-Harman that he was sending two further cases of pottery, this time from Esna, presumably containing material from his excavations at Esna itself, and requesting that the Cypriote pottery to be given in return be sent to the Institute of Archaeology in Liverpool University. It would appear from the correspondence that on this occasion Jeffery proposed sending the two cases, once emptied of their Beni Hasan pottery contents, ‘to Mr Cobham [District Commissioner in Larnaca (Merrillees 2005a, 192–3)] to be filled with the duplicates which I have recently inspected at Larnaca, and which are certainly a fitting equivalent for the Egyptian pottery received’ (Pilides 2009, 656). The sarcastic innuendo in this quotation was presumably lost on the Chief Secretary to whom Jeffery addressed his minute on 10 April 1905 (cf. Pilides 2009, 111). In June 1905 two cases of Cypriote antiquities were duly despatched to the Institute of Archaeology in Liverpoool University, and the following month the two cases of antiquites from Esna were due to arrive in Cyprus. The fate of this second consignment from Egypt is completely unknown. Nothing more is recorded in State Archives, Nicosia, file SA1/1255/1904, but Jeffery notes in his diary for 21 November 1905 that he ‘visited Museum for purpose of inspecting pottery to be sent to Liverpool’ (Pilides 2009, 114). Whether or not another consignment of Cypriote artefacts was sent to the Institute of Archaeology in Liverpool University is equally unknown. It is also obvious from the documentation, or rather lack of it, at the Liverpool end that record keeping was as deficient in the Institute of Archaeology as it was in the Cyprus Museum and Garstang’s expeditions, since the Cypriote pottery received in exchange was only accessed in Liverpool in 1908 and listed in a Catalogue of Cypriot Vases, of which no trace has ever been found (Mee and Steel 1998, 1). Presumably most of those Cypriote vases without provenance and/or source in the present Garstang Museum of Archaeology came from the Cyprus Museum’s donation(s).

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This only serves to illustrate the fact that antiquities are far safer below ground than above. The acquisition of these ancient Egyptian vases by the Cyprus Museum seems to have escaped the attention of subsequent generations of museum committee members. While there were obviously no objections or opposition to the acceptance of two Egyptian mummies in 1884 (Merrillees 2003, 5–6) and the material from Beni Hasan and apparently Esna in 1904–1905, the committee took a contrary view in 1913 when the museum was offered by a Mr D. Sams7 of Cairo several Egyptian antiquities. According to the minutes of the meeting on 23 January that year, ‘it was decided to thank the donor and inform him, that as the Cyprus Museum is appropriated only for Cypriote Antiquities, the Museum Committee regrets that the cannot accept his kind donation’. Just what happened next is unrecorded but it cannot have been a positive development – offence may be inferred – as it led the committee, rather quickly, to re-open the debate and revise their freshly agreed stance in a more flexible manner. On 11 February 1913, according to the minutes, ‘The question of forming a collection in the Museum of objects of Antiquity other than those found in Cyprus was discussed at length and it was finally decided that such collections should be made subject generally to the objects being desirable for comparison with objects of like character found in the Island’. Whether anyone remembered this Delphic guideline or specifically applied it to subsequent offers of antiquities not found in the island is unknown but the policy was re-enunciated in 2003 by Dr Pavlos Flourentzos, Curator of Antiquities, Department of Antiquities Cyprus, when he wrote that ‘the Cyprus Museum does not base its reputation on collections of other than Cypriot origin’ (Flourentzos 2003). In the same breath, however, he indicated one notable exception to this rule, the bequest by Captain Timins in 1952 of his collection of Egyptian and Greek antiquities, which included more than 40 pieces from the Nile Valley, to the Cyprus Museum.8 Charles Sumner Timins (not in Bierbrier 2012) was a retired British army officer who is said to have lived in Cyprus from 1910. However in a letter dated 5 December 1919 from Cairo, James Henry Breasted recounts his acquisition of some Egyptian objects from the collection of Captain Timins whom he met on a number of occasions (Larson 2010, 111). According to Breasted, Timins had lived for years in Egypt and gradually collected many valuable Egyptian ‘things’ but was going to live in Cyprus ‘as he is tired of Egypt’. Timins’ large collection of scarabs and other seals were published by Newberry (1907). Described by Breasted as a ‘curious’ individual, about whom he made some derogatory remarks, Timins was still 7

Not in Bierbrier (2012). See Cyprus. Report of the Director of Antiquities for the Year 1952 (Nicosia 1953, 6; cf. Dikaios 1937–1939, 200, 202; 1961, 72, 75; Beazley 1948, 38–9). 8

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residing in Nicosia in the 1930s (Mitford 1980, 3) and died there on 2 September 1952. He is buried in the British Cemetery in Nicosia. That Cyprus had contacts with ancient Egypt, directly and indirectly, from prehistoric times onwards is well attested in the archaeological record, notwithstanding the unsubstantiated claim that Cyprus or part of it was the Alashiya mentioned in Egyptian and Near Eastern texts of the second millennium BCE (cf. Karageorghis and Merrillees 2007, 145). Identifying the nature of these relations, which clearly changed over time, is complicated by several factors, notably the difficulty of distinguishing imports made in the Nile Valley from Eyptianising artefacts produced in the Levant or Cyprus itself (Jacobsson 1994, 1; cf. Merrillees 2009b). Furthermore the circumstances, including dates, in which imports, copies of Egyptian manufactures and influences were transmitted to Cyprus during the second and first millennia BC are not always easy to determine due to the disturbed or unknown contexts in which the remains occurred, and the length of time they stayed in circulation before being finally deposited (e.g. Clerc 1990). Nor can we know, let alone anticipate the full range of Egyptian or Egyptianising artefacts to be yielded by Cypriote soil, though Jacobsson (1994) gives us some idea of what has turned up and might be expected from the Bronze Age. No Egyptologist has ever systematically surveyed all the evidence from Cyprus for exchanges with the Pharaonic civilisation in the Nile Valley, and the closest we have come to an overview of the connection are the proceedings of the conference held in Nicosia in 2003 on ‘Egypt and Cyprus in Antiquity’ (Michaelides et al. 2009). It was usefully accompanied by a temporary exhibition on The Egyptian Art in Cyprus in the Cyprus Museum between 2–23 April 2003 and commemorated with an attractive brochure published by the Department of Antiquities Cyprus with notices by Dr Flourentzos and the author. Even then, the meeting failed to attract any contribution on one large and problematic category of object, the scarab, which has turned up in considerable numbers in Cyprus from the Late Bronze Age down to the end of the Iron Age (cf. Boschloos 2015, 146–8). In particular the specimens in the D series of the Old Collection in the Cyprus Museum remain to be professionally catalogued (cf. Myres and Ohnefalsch-Richter 1899, 135–6). Just how the personnel responsible for the Cyprus Museum were expected to make a judgement on the suitability of Egyptian antiquities not found in Cyprus for entry to the museum’s collections is not immediately obvious. If history is any guide, diplomacy trumped principle, which is just as it should be. Though Garstang’s excavations at Beni Hasan, not surprisingly, given the age of the Middle Kingdom cemetery, produced no known imported Cypriote vases – the Base-ring I jug attributed to Beni Hasan is without context (Merrillees 1968, 78) – Esna did. Those that I was able to trace are catalogued in my thesis (Merrillees 1968, 125–7). Downes makes no reference to this work and

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includes no detailed description of the foreign pottery other than a summary account of the types and single photograph, which is a truncated version of Liverpool University’s Institute of Archaeology neg. no. E 98 (Downes 1974, 26, fig. 29; cf. Kemp 1978, 166). According to Downes (1974, inventory), Tomb E 62, which she dates to the early Eighteenth Dynasty, contained ‘2 pottery vases – Syrian type. Probably those illustrated by photograph’. They are the Base-ring I juglets ESNA nos 1 and 2 (Merrillees 1968, 125–6). Downes has, however, attributed ESNA no. 1 to Tomb E 137.9 Tomb E 137 produced ‘2 fine pottery vessels, Syrian type. Intact’,10 which are ESNA nos 3 and 4, a Base-ring I flask and juglet respectively (Merrillees 1968, 126). This deposit is said to belong to Dynasties XII and XVIII. There is no reference to the Red Lustrous Wheel-made Ware spindle bottle, ESNA no. 5,11 in the inventory for Tomb E 263, which Downes has assigned to the Middle Kingdom though it produced at least one object, a scarab, dated to the Eighteenth Dynasty (Merrillees 1968, 126; Downes 1974, 8, inventory).12 The Black Lustrous Wheel-made Ware juglet from Tomb E 17813 was not included in my thesis. Downes has placed the accompanying grave goods in the early XVIIIth Dynasty (cf. Op de Beeck 2006, 103). Recent research suggests that this Ware is of diverse origins in the Levant (Åström 2007; Hörburger 2007; Yannai and Gorzalczany 2007). Unfortunately Downes did not reproduce all the sketches of the ‘foreign types’ which appeared not in the corpus of pottery shapes but the small finds list drawn up in the field by Garstang’s expedition, as a result of which we cannot try to assign the remaining imports and imitations, ESNA nos 6–9 (Merrillees 1968, 126–7), to specific tomb groups and establish how many more Cypriote vases and copies may have been found as well as their dates. Clearly there is much scope for further studies on the material from Beni Hasan as well. Even if no-one has the courage to revisit and republish Garstang’s finds from the site, a proper recording of the extant material would be desirable and should now be increasingly possible. For instance, thanks to Alan Millard, Rankin Professor of Hebrew & Ancient Semitic Languages, University of Liverpool, we have an archival record of the donations and exchanges of archaeological and ethnographic material between the Institute of Archaeology of Liverpool University and institutions in Australia and New Zealand (Appendix 2) (cf. Hope 1986, 87; R. Merrillees 1990, 16), and can establish from a search of the internet that the Queensland Museum in Brisbane and the Western Austral9

Liverpool Institute neg. no. E 98 second from left (Downes 1974, 26, fig. 29 left). See Downes (1974, ix, 10 [‘Cypriot’ type 26], inventory). 11 Eriksson (1993, 214 no. 460) made no attempt to re-examine the context or date of this piece. Kozal (2015) has recently proposed that this Ware was manufactured in Anatolia. 12 Op de Beeck (2006, 104) attributes the scarab to Thutmose III. 13 See Downes (1974, 11, 26, fig. 29 right, inventory). Hörburger (2007, 109, 110) did not deal with the dating of this or any other example from Egypt. 10

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ian Museum in Perth have antiquities from Garstang’s excavations.14 That is not to say, however, that the original destinations of the objects still have them. For example, there is no known record of what happened to the Australian ethnographic items sent to what is now the Garstang Museum of Archaeology in the University of Liverpool (Appendix 2). They are certainly no longer there, and if transferred at some stage to the World Museum, formerly the City of Liverpool Public Museum, before the Second World War, they could have perished, along with most of the Australasian material, in the so-called ‘Pacific Basement’, when the adjoining public libraries were fire bombed by the Luftwaffe on 3 May 1941 and the museum gutted (Bienkowski and Southworth 1986, ix, xi; Millard 2010, 58–60). And the University of Liverpool transferred many items from Garstang’s excavations at Beni Hasan to the Liverpool Museum in 1955 (Bienkowski and Southworth 1986, xi–xii). Breasted even reported that Garstang wanted to see him in Jerusalem in June 1920 about his collection in the museum of the University of Liverpool ‘which he tells me they would like to sell!’ (Larson 2010, 268). On the Australian side too, following the Second World War, the Australian Museum in Sydney, which had in 1904–1905 received 104 objects, chiefly pottery, from Garstang’s excavations at Beni Hasan and Esna, divested itself of a sizeable part of its substantial Egyptian holdings, keeping one mummy case for old time’s sake and putting it on show because of its irresistable and everlasting popular appeal (R. Merrillees 1990, 20–1). Those that had survived decades of loss and neglect went on permanent loan to other museums in New South Wales, notably the Museum of Ancient Cultures, Macquarie University, Sydney, which received material from Beni Hasan and Esna (Hope 1986, 91–2), and the Nicholson Museum in the University of Sydney (Nicholson Museum n.d.; Webb 2001, 3). The latter claims that its collection of Egyptian artefacts is the largest and most important of its kind within Australia.15 However the Australian Museum still boasts that its collection includes over one thousand Egyptian artefacts and is probably the largest in Australia, but does not say what has happened to them all and where they are now.16 None of this material has ever been fully catalogued or published, and little of it can be viewed online. The sumptuous volume produced in 2006 on Egyptian Art in the Nicholson Museum, Sydney does not even contain a survey of the Egyptian antiquities currently held in its collection, with the numbers involved (Sowada and Ockinga 2006). Sydney University has some way to go before it treats ancient Egypt as seriously as South Italian Greek pottery.

14 15 16

http:www.qm.qld.gov.au/; http://museum.wa.gov.au/, accessed 16 December 2015. http://.sydney.edu.au/museums/collections/nicholson_Egypt, accessed 15 December 2015. http://www.australianmuseum.net.au, accessed 15 December 2015.

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To the list of museums in Australia which obtained antiquities from Beni Hasan should be added the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne (Hope 1983a, 46; 1983b, 174–5, cat. nos 119 and 120; Legge 1983, 119). The source of the acquisition in 1904 is given as ‘Patrons of John Garstang’ (Hope 1983a, 46; Potts et al. 1997, 37). The gallery still has the pottery and coffin fragments from this site, though the long promised publication of all their Egyptian material has never eventuated (Hope 1983a, 45). History does not, however, record what happened to the Egyptian antiquities sent in 1905 to the National Museum of Victoria, Melbourne, now Melbourne Museum (Appendix 2). Finally the whereabouts of the finds from Beni Hasan and Esna acquired by the Free Public Library in Wangaratta, Victoria, also in 1905 (cf. Downes 1974, xi) are as mysterious as the fate of the pottery consigned to the Cyprus Museum. It seems safe to assume that the intiative to acquire them came from William Edward Barnes (1841–1916) (Coates 2014), who was Curator of the Library from 1902 to 1914, in response to the offer published in the Australian press. At that time the Library, then housed in buildings on Murphy Street, the second of which is now occupied by the Wangaratta Visitor Information Centre, provided various community services and facilities in addition to books. Barnes’ obituary mentions in this context ‘a case of valuable specimens’ intended for the Wangaratta High School (The Wangaratta Chronicle 1916, 3). Enquiries have so far failed to yield any up-to-date information about the Library’s former collections, but I am sure the town would welcome a visit from Colin Hope for this purpose. Acknowledgements I am very grateful to Ashley Cooke, Alan Millard, Despina Pilides and Steven Snape for having read through earlier drafts of this contribution and found no glaring mistakes or omissions. To David Aston, Morris Bierbrier, Hazel Gray and Irmgard Hein I owe sincere thanks for their assistance with my research. I alone am responsible for the views expressed in this paper. Appendix 1. Museum collections with Esna material (see page 531 n.4) 1. Material was sent to the following museums in 1905 (from the rough packing list, see p. 19 Vol. I [cf. Downes 1974, xi]. An asterisk indicates material which cannot be traced): Blackburn; *Breton (?); Burnley; Cairo; *Christchurch, New Zealand; Grahamstown; Jamaica; Liverpool; British Museum, London; Pietermaritzburg, Natal; Penzance; *Western Australian Museum, Perth; *Queensland Museum, Brisbane; Rugby; Sheffield; *Smyrna; Swansea; *Free Public Library, Wangaratta, Victoria.

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2. Material from Esna is also in the following museums and collections: Birmingham; Carmarthen; Kendal; Reading; Otago, New Zealand (exchanged material with Liverpool in 1913); Australian Museum, Sydney; Nicholson Museum, Sydney; MacGill University Museum; Department of Archaeology, Liverpool University; Manchester University Museum. Where the objects can be identified they have been included in the inventory. Appendix 2. Exchanges between the Institute of Archaeology, Liverpool University, and museums in Australia and New Zealand (see page 537) 27 January 1905: in exchange for Egyptian pottery, the Australian Museum, Sydney, sent a boomerang, New Hebridean bow with flattened ends, nose flute, head rest (of Garstang’s numbered list all corresponding to Sydney nos), plus three bows and 13 selected arrows, each one different in type. 7 April 1905: in exchange for Egyptian antiquities, G.L. Armstrong of the National Museum of Victoria sent one bow, eight arrows and one boomerang. 1904–1905: pottery from Beni Hasan was sent to Wangaratta Free Public Library, Victoria. March 1904–October 1906: Western Australian Museum, Perth, received two cases of pottery from Beni Hasan. 1904–1906: Canterbury Museum, Christchurch, New Zealand, received Egyptian pottery from the Beni Hasan Excavation Committee. 1904–1905: Public Library and Museum of South Australia, Adelaide, sent three boomerangs in exchange for a case of pottery from the Beni Hasan Committee. Requests for Egyptian pottery were received from The Museum, Auckland, New Zealand; the Nelson Institute, Nelson, New Zealand; and the Queensland Museum, Brisbane, but no further information is available.

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