ANCIENT
EGYPT
The History, People and Culture of the Nile Valley
The History, People and Culture of the Nile Valley |
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Walking with the Egyptologists
Left to right: Christopher Coleman, Zahi Hawass, Salima Ikram, Kent Weeks, Mark Lehner and Janice Branson. The audience at the London weekend conference presented by Seven Wonders
Tours in association with the Bloomsbury Theatre from 20 -21 October 2001 heard
of the latest developments in Egyptology from some of the world’s most eminent
Egyptologists – Dr Zahi Hawass, Dr Salima Ikram, Dr Mark Lehner and Dr Kent
Weeks. The programme, ‘Walk with the Egyptologists’, set a theme which
developed via a journey from past to present with lead speaker Kent Weeks, into
a search for ‘footprints’ of the past with Mark Lehner, and then to the
future of Egyptology with Salima Ikram and Zahi Hawass. It seems that, partly
through necessity, and partly through choice, future studies will focus as much
or more on the people of Egypt themselves than on their rulers, and more on
lesser-known aspects of the civilisation and locations in Egypt. Dr Weeks’ opening lecture was both a salute to the pioneers of the past
and a summary of problems faced presently by excavators. Modern day Egyptology
is a challenge that must take into account the requirements of Egyptian
agriculture and work with them. Changes in agricultural techniques and the
water-intensive requirements of the crops grown have potentially devastating
effects on ancient sites and monuments. Positively, Kent Weeks examined ways in
which this situation might be remedied, including the promotion of commercially
successful crops which might not need such vast amounts of water. Developments on the Giza Plateau, particularly in order to improve
visitor facilities, have resulted in some new discoveries that have greatly
extended our knowledge of burial practises for both royal and non-royal
Egyptians. This was the theme of the first lecture of Zahi Hawass. Firstly, he
introduced the audience to Ka, a chief physician, within whose early vaulted
tomb an alabaster offering table and surgical tools had been found. As with so
many burials, Ka’s tomb had been re-used and contained late period bronze
images of deities. Work on the plateau will include a new visitor centre and two underground
museums to house the famous boat burials. Security is to be upgraded, a
‘picnic’ area designated and, along with the closure of one of the three
pyramids each year, visitor numbers to the open pyramids are to be limited. Work
is concentrating on the preservation and restoration of tombs, which are to be
identified, numbered and if appropriate, opened to the public. Dr Hawass detailed how this work has, for example, resulted in the
discovery of a storage magazine, part of a workshop for making the smaller
artefacts to be used as kingly burial equipment. Within it was found a small
statue of a king, tentatively identified as Snofru. Areas designated for the
workmen on the plateau are likely to prove the most fruitful area of
investigation and research in years to come. Unusual discoveries included a cemetery area with inscriptions to
funerary deity Sokar-Osiris on a number of wooden sarcophagi and vessels. Within
30 of these tombs were extraordinary ‘mummified’ statues of ithyphallic
figures. One of the most popular discoveries as far as the day’s audience
went, however, was the revelation of a tomb with four appealing statues showing
the tomb owner at different ages and stages of life, opening up new
possibilities in our interpretations of how the ancient Egyptians viewed
themselves in life and death. With regard to further investigations within the Great Pyramid, and the
use of robot cameras, Dr Hawass dealt with them philosophically and made it
clear that his own point of view was that there was nothing particularly new to
be discovered by their use; understandable, in terms of the genuinely remarkable
and fascinating, though not perhaps not so dramatic, discoveries he had outlined
on the plateau. Dr Salima Ikram’s presentation of one of her research interests, animal
mummies, was extremely well received although perhaps not for the squeamish. As
she described in detail the results of practical mummification experimentation
on rabbits originally destined for the butcher’s knife and the table, one
could not help but think that somewhere a ghostly Mr McGregor (owner of the
cabbage patch) was grimly contemplating his ultimate revenge in a satisfied
manner. However, the rabbits in question may have had the last laugh: preserved
for eternity with safeguarding spells by Dr Ikram’s students. Dr Ikram outlined the difficulties in interpreting some mummified
remains; while some were evidently companion animals, while others were
offerings, and yet more were food parcels for the deceased, some mummified
creatures defied interpretation as to their function. The techniques were
applied to some of the smallest of Egypt’s creatures, right down to the shrew,
sacred to the sun god, and the cosmically significant dung beetle. Dr Mark Lehner’s lectures on the functional areas of the Giza Plateau
brought to the forefront an issue which the student of ancient Egypt has long
been aware of instinctively; that the sites of ancient monuments such as the
pyramids must also have been vast industrial complexes, functioning over periods
of time as supply sources for the workers and mortuary temple foundations. A
supporting population of 20,000 to 30,000 was speculated upon, therefore, said
Dr Lehner, de facto, they had cities. Dr Lehner described the discoveries of huge quantities of tiny fish bones
in a large building of otherwise undetermined function, with the suggestion that
this looked like processing - perhaps drying - on a vast scale. Similarly with a
number of buildings filled with ash, some of which were indubitably bakeries. He
suggested intriguingly that ancient yeast might still exist with the potential
to be re-activated. The economic model, recounted Dr Lehner, was based on the
single household, but represented many times over; additional economic areas
seemed to be devoted to butchery. Dr Lehner described the discoveries as ‘the footprint of the Egyptian
state’ and highlighted the difficulties of researching such areas which will
become vital to our knowledge of how the ancient economy worked. The greatest
problem is, of course, increasing tourist numbers; he described how the single
riding stable in the area of 30 years ago has now been replaced by over 70
stables, due to tourist demand. The horses are bedded on sand removed from
excavation areas, but the material is returned—plus additions - to produce the
‘HSS’ layer that might produce some scratched heads amongst future
excavators. Dr Salima Ikram’s second leeture took the audience into relatively p
uncharted territory, with an investigation of Egypt’s southernmost oasis, the
100 sq km Kharga Oasis. Amun was its major god and trade in dates and, earlier, wine, has
provided over the centuries its economy. This area, until recently relatively
unknown, is beginning to be subject to the looting and damage which has occurred
in other areas. Some of the lonely constructions, dating from the Persian, Roman
and Greek periods of Egypt’s history, conjured up a haunted image of isolation
and remoteness. Field walking and aerial photography by balloon are methods used in the
surveying of this area done by Dr Ikram and colleagues. This will certainly
provide some invaluable and future investigations into unusual buildings such as
a pigeon tower. The audience received two valuable updates on Bahareya and KV5
from Zahi Hawass and Kent Weeks respectively. Bahareya’s tourist trade has
increased from 2000 to a phenomenal 10,000 in the wake of the discovery of the
cemetery there. The tombs of Bahareya show a desire on the part of the occupants
to be buried in the shadow of Alexander the Great’s temple foundation there
and much new information has been gained about Bahareya’s rulers including
Nasa, the wife of one notable, who was buried with a range of gold artefacts. Dr
Hawass described the horrors of dealing with one burial completely covered in
haematite. Meanwhile, in the Valley of the Kings, work continues on KV5 with
reconstructions of images within the tomb produced by Susan Weeks with reference
to painted images from tombs elsewhere in the Valley and the Valley of the
Queens, proving that the decoration was probably carried out by the artist who
worked on Nefertari’s tomb. While space is limited to describe this, AE
suggests that interested readers avail themselves of the opportunity to hear
Kent Weeks lecture in Britain this year. The search for Ancient footprints continues; and Egyptology steps forward
into the future.
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