ANCIENT EGYPT

The History, People and Culture of the Nile Valley

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Latest research outlined at BM Colloquium

 Reconstructing Egyptian Life: New knowledge from Ancient Sources was the title of the British Museum, Department of Ancient Egypt and Sudan, Annual International Egyptological Colloquium, held at the British Museum in July. Bob Partridge gives an overview of how new research is producing insights into the lives of ancient Egyptians, from artisans to priests.

The evening before the Colloquium, Alain Zivie gave an account of his recent work at Saqqara, chiefly on the discovery of a New Kingdom tomb with painted scenes on the walls. These are similar to scenes in Theban tombs but found for the first time at Saqqara.

Three generations of a family of artists were shown in the tomb decoration. It is clear that there was a community of artists living in the area who worked in the tombs (a northern equivalent of the village of Deir el Medina). Painted by the artists for their own use, the scenes are of the highest quality. One scene is particularly unusual as it shows a double coffin, with two faces. Was this and attempt to show the coffins of the tomb owner and his wife side by side, or was it one coffin for both bodies?

Josef Wegner, working at Wah-sut, a Middle Kingdom town south of Abydos has uncovered a town built to house those who supported a tomb of Senwosret III and mortuary temple. The tomb of Senwosret has no superstructure and is built against a natural outcrop, almost a natural pyramid (so the kings of the New Kingdom may not have been the first with this idea). On the edge of the arable area is a large but ruined mortuary temple. The town site is similar to Kahun and appears to have been occupied for around 150 years. One of the houses seems to be that of the mayor and we were told how the house evolved with successive occupants.

Stephen Harvey told of his work at Abydos excavating the remains of the funerary monument of Ahmose. It is not clear if the king was actually buried there, but the remains are extensive, if fragmentary, including a pyramid shrine of Queen Tetisheri. Most exciting has been the discovery of fragments of relief showing chariots (the earliest representations found so far) and other scenes of warfare, including archers and a walled town. It was Ahmose who led the attacks on the Hyksos, and these scenes probably show some of the stages of the major campaign to drive them out of Egypt and lay the foundations of the New Kingdom.

Alain Zivie then gave another lecture on his finds at Saqqara, this time a decorated tomb which contained the unusual statue of a Hathor cow, with a king (possibly Ramesses II) in front. The owner of the tomb, Netjerwymes, was probably the ambassador who signed the peace treaty between Ramesses and the Hittites.

Martin Raven also spoke about new excavations at Saqqara, and his discovery of the tomb of a priest of the Aten,Meryneith, a contemporary of Akhenaten and Tutankhamun. It would appear that Meryneith changed his name to Meryra, possibly moving to Akhetaten before finally returning to Memphis when he reverted to his old name, remaining, however, a priest of the Aten. The tomb contains some splendid reliefs, showing show the changes in the artistic styles of the period and also a double statue of Meryneith and his wife.

Marcel Maree looked at various works of art and was able to identify the idiosyncrasies of specific artists and show from this that both the artists and the pieces they produced did a great deal of travelling to other parts of the country where their products or their skills were needed.

Richard Parkinson spoke about ancient literature and the problems of displaying literary texts in museums. A manuscript might be an attractive display object, but it is much more than that and Richard demonstrated how literary pieces have been ‘performed’ in translation and that how knowing how the texts were used, possibly by professional story tellers, adds a new dimension to their understanding.

Kristin Thomson, who has been working at Amarna, has been piecing together a number of statue fragments discarded as not worth studying by earlier excavators at the site. Whilst the statues are far from complete, enough remains to identify the scale and types of statues at the site, many of granite and quartzite.

Reliefs of the city show statues in the temples, and these are the actual remains, showing their poses, materials and their context.

John Taylor looked at bronze votive figures of deities, which survive in enormous quantities in museum collections. Surprisingly perhaps, there has been no real serious study of these objects and their origins and evolution. Even their dating is difficult. John explained the beginnings of a task to study the inscriptions, iconography and their composition and to understand them in association with the sacred animal cults of the Late Period.

Terry Wilfong spoke about musicians in Graeco Roman Egypt, using the evidence collected from the town of Karanis. A huge amount of material was found at this site including many musical instruments, some possibly for religious use, but others found in a clearly domestic context.

All the papers presented will be published (including several speakers not included in this brief report). The tremendous amount of work being done by Egyptologists in the field and in various research is enormous, and some of the findings revealed were surprising (even to fellow Egyptologists). The dissemination of information this way is important, for many of the speakers had only just returned from their field work.

The annual BM colloquium offers an opportunity for the public to participate in this knowledge.

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