Daemon snakes and green skinned goddesses

Been finding out a bit more about this, W1307.

I thought is showed the ouroboros, a symbol of eternity,  surrounding Isis. It appears I was wrong. A really good PhD thesis by Dana Reemes shows that the idea of the snake biting its tail as a symbol of eternity did not come in until much later. Instead, this snake, which isn't biting its tail is more likely to be a protective symbol surrounding the deceased as the solar-Osirian unity. Snakes like this appear on several coffins of the Priests of Montu at found at Deir el Bahri.

Moreover, this is actually the upper foot part of the coffin, designed so that it could be seen by the deceased. So, if we looked at it on the complete coffin it would appear upside down.

Anyway, if you are interested I have more on the fragment here.

Amarna, looking at flints, playing with dogs!

I know loads of you will disagree but I find the whole business of the royal family at Amarna, who succeeded whom, etc., a bit dull. I'm not really interested in who Smenkhkare was, or Nefertiti. What I do find interesting is the fact that this site is really good to study New Kingdom Egypt more generally. It has a relatively short chronology, so not so much intrusion from earlier or later periods than on many other sites. Also it's a big site with several different social/technological areas so it gives some idea on how ancient Egyptian society and technological changes worked. And, of course, lots of settlement type artefacts as opposed to purely funerary ones.

What's this leading too? I am interested in lithics, so have felt very privileged to be allowed to study the lithics at Amarna. In 2009 I looked at the material from Panehsy's Great Aten Temple House (associated with cattle butchery). There is a brief report here (see page 7). Then, a couple of weeks ago I went to look at material from other areas of Amarna. Many, many thanks to the Middle Egypt inspectorate of the Ministry of Antiquities, especially Inspector Marwa Ahmed Osman, and also to the Amarna Project directed by Barry Kemp

I arrived in Cairo at the end of September. A small team of us traveled from Cairo to the Amarna dig house. For those of you who are used to digging in the UK, the dig house at Amarna is very civilised with showers and proper rooms with beds (no camping in a field). We even had fans to keep us cool. And, it also looks very pretty. Here it is. There is a police HQ right outside to keep us all safe and a couple of lookout towers.

On the 1st of October the magazines were opened under the watchful eye of the Inspector. How this was done was a bit like an ancient Egyptian ritual. The brick blocking to the magazine was knocked down with hammer and chisel, etc. Then the lead seal on the door was checked by the Inspector Marwa Ahmed Osman. Here she is checking the seal to make sure it wasn't broken. Yes, a lady Inspector (well I liked that).

The artefacts we were all working on were taken into the dig house. Chris Stimpson from Oxford was making a study of bird bones. Gretchen Dabbs from the Southern Illionois University was looking at human bones from the North Cemetery. And, William Schaffer, from the same University, was looking at teeth and how very small variations in them could be used to study ancestry. All much more exciting, in my opinion, than the identity of Smenkhkare. 

And here is my work station. The flies were more annoying than the heat! I have yet to write up a proper report so wont tell you about that in detail now. However, it can be said that as one would expect in a late Bronze Age culture, the lithics were largely expedient tools. That is, most weren't deliberately made to a particular shape. Rather, they consisted of flakes and blades which would be selected and used as and when needed. This would be a very efficient way to use the material. A freshly knapped flint flake would be much sharper than a metal knife. There were one or two, what one might call 'formal' tools, mainly sickles and round scrapers. Several different types of flint was used.

And back to life in the dig house. We were fed and the site generally looked after by the Amarna Project's Egyptian team. The cook is excellent! 4 cats help keep the rodent population down. Here is one eating a hoopoe bird (a snake was eaten the day before). Bit sad about the bird as there had previously been two hoopoes.

Outside the dig house, on the way to the toilet block, we would often encounter the dogs. Most of the dogs around Amarna are semi-feral and bark and growl. They have grown used to people throwing stones at them. However, two dogs were really, really friendly. I really wish I could have 'rescued' them and brought them home. They were mother and daughter. The daughter wanted to play and would cling onto your clothes when you went back to the dig house. Here they are. The photograph was taken in the morning. The mother is on the left.

Plaster casts, class and art. CIPEG 2015.

We have a handling tray of real ancient artefacts (not masterpieces) for all visitors to enjoy at the Egypt Centre because we believe in the importance of handling the real thing (see the picture)

But have still been thinking about some of the things I learnt from CIPEG 2015. Something that came out time and time again was how in the early days of museums (what one might consider early varied from museum to museum), copies of masterpieces could be held to be more important than ‘second rate’ actual objects. Interesting and completely opposite to what I had hitherto believed. I always like the idea of the real object, even if grotty because of its magical contagion value. That’s why I got interested in ‘old things’ and ended up working in museums, because ‘old things’ are somehow linked directly to the past and can somehow transport you there. And of course, I have grown up in the modern western tradition with its emphasis on ‘authenticity’ (whatever that means). So, my take on plaster casts was that they may be beautiful but they are only real in so far as there post manufacture history is concerned. If they had value it was more to do with the recent past, perhaps as evidence for changes in what was considered important in Egyptology. Additionally, to be honest, I don’t know what masterpieces are. I believe others claim they have to be aesthetically beautiful and fairly rare? So a beautiful black-topped redware pot wouldn’t count as a masterpiece. What if it was an unusual shape?

But to return to the point, it seems that generally the real artefacts, even if common and ugly have gained more importance, particularly in the 20^th century. So how and why did things change? Well, I have read some interesting stuff by Alice Stevenson. It can be accessed here. She shows how the partage system and Petrie’s distribution of finds to museums meant that the ‘grotty’ items, typical of most archaeological excavations, became increasingly valued. At CIPEG 2015 we learnt from Alice Williams (an ex- Egypt Centre volunteer now doing her PhD at Oxford :-) ) about how Petrie’s exhibitions of items in London were so well attended. Maybe these exhibitions too helped show ‘the general public’ what real excavated remains were like, that they were rarely masterpieces of ‘art’, but nevertheless of value.  Additionally too, one may expect that the increase in the belief in the importance of ‘science’ and technology, also meant that everyday artefacts were more valued.

But, I am wondering if there could be a class element to all this?  Could it be that the masterpieces were more inclined to be valued by those well-educated, elite individuals with the necessary training, those brought up learning the classics and appreciating art?

One might argue that archaeology is associated with the non-elite, technology and archaeology; and classics with the elite and written text. Chris Stray has written on this. The growth in the importance of the everyday object, as opposed to the masterpiece, could also be bound up with increasing influence by the non-elite, less interested in aesthetics and more interested in technology? Perhaps it’s still so. There are different tribes in Egyptology. I wonder if the backgrounds to those interested in ‘art’ differ markedly from those interested in say, technology?

I am also thinking, should we make more use of our plaster casts? We only have a couple, but they are copies of famous things elsewhere. Should we use them in teaching? As CIPEG taught me, other museums do. Nika Lavrentyeva gave an excellent talk on the use of plaster casts in the Pushkin Museum. I’m not sure I feel so excited about copies as the real thing, but maybe that is a result of my background. 

Stray, C., 1998. Classics Transformed. Schools, Universities and Society in England, 1830-1960. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Useful enquiries

Sometimes museum enquiries seem time consuming and not at all useful to the museum. In fact, for this reason some museums have considered charging. We don't at the Egypt Centre, which is just as well as often our enquiries are interesting and lead to additional information about the collection.

We recently had a very useful enquiry which led me to look in a bit more depth at one of our objects and showed that we had catalogued it incorrectly.

W1371, picture above, had been incorrectly catalogued as coming from Deir el Bahri, of course it doesn't! This was pointed out to me by an academic researcher doing some work on Deir el Bahri, who was asking if we had artefacts from her site. It actually comes from Kurna, on the west bank at Luxor and is from the mortuary temple (the temple where offerings were given to the dead king) of Thutmose III. As it says in the square top left it comes from the Heneket-ankh (which means 'Offering Life'.

So, I looked into this a little more. I don't really know much about it. And, in doing so, learnt all about how temples on the west bank were altered to accommodate the increasing numbers of priests carrying the sacred barques (model's of boats in which statues of gods were carried) in procession. Well, obviously, if you have more people carrying the barque you have to widen the doorways. I also learnt about the excavations at the Heneket-ankh.

Then I revised the online information we have here on the actual piece.

So, thank you very much to our enquirer.

Professor George Kerferd

Today a visitor came to the Egypt Centre asking about Professor George Kerford (January 15th 1915 to August 15th 1998). We unfortunately don't have much on him here in the Egypt Centre, but a quick bit of googling showed he was born 100 years ago, so it is fitting to blog about him. His obituary in the Independent newspaper can be read here. 

However, we know that he collected a few items for the Classics Department at Swansea University in the 1950s and 60s. We also have an account of his setting up a small museum at Swansea University, long before the Egypt Centre. The account was written by Gwyn Griffiths who knew him. And here is the account (see page 6).

We have been able to identify some of the items from that 'proto-museum' which are now in the Egypt Centre. These include:



W1011, the replica bust of Nefertiti which welcome visitors to our Centre. There is a lot more about this on a previous Egypt Centre blog, here. It seems probable that it was made from the Berlin original by the sculptor Tina Wentcher (also known as Ernestine Haim). She produced a number of replicas in the years following World War I and there are now many examples scattered throughout the world. 



Other items that we can connect to Kerford, include:

GR31.
This is a black red figured drinking cup. It shows a seated satyr facing right with drinking horn on his right side and wine skin over his left shoulder. It dates to around c500 B.C. Satyrs were daimones of the countryside, depicted depicted as having the tail of a horse, assinine ears and upturned pug noses. They are usually shown drinking, dancing or playing musical instruments. The name kylix was used in antiquity to refer to this shape of vessel.

GR29 (left) is a black-figure lekythos. Lekthoi were used for storing oil. It shows dancing tailed satyrs and women. There are bulls painted around the shoulder of the vessel. Like the kylix above, this dates to around 500BC. 

GR28 (right) is a black polished red-figured jar with handle(NOICUS). This is an oinochoe (wine jug). This piece was made in southern Italy, c. 400 B.C. The mouth is trefoil (in the shape of a clover leaf) and the figure represents a seated Dionysaic figure with tail holding an offering plate and a plant. A wave pattern runs around the foot of the vase and egg-moulding occurs above the figure. 

Finally we have GR25, a Corinthian Aryballos (oil flask). Painted on it are a siren (bird with human head) and a swan. This dates to the late seventh century BC. The term 'aryballos' is now given to vessels with a round or ovoid body, narrow neck and broad flat lip. Arabolloi are common in Corinthian ware. 


I never met Professor Kerferd, but he seems to have been an interesting and entertaining person. The Independent obituary says this : He enjoyed his life. At a conference when some of his colleagues were bemoaning their inadequate pay, he burst out that he himself would gladly pay for the privilege of a life spent in studying Classics; remuneration was a bonus.

And, I am grateful for his collecting of items, now housed in our Museum. He should certainly be remembered.

A happy looking Bes

Just been trying to find out more about this rather happy looking Bes. Bes was a good, protective daemon daemon (well usually). Associated with children and women in childbirth, marsh scenes, music and dance. Sometimes though he does look a bit fierce (perhaps intentionally to scar away anything bad).

Here though he looks really happy, with a chubby face and flaring nostrils.

This object is made out of faience and is probably part of a vessel shaped in the form of Bes. It probably dates to around 600BC. If you want to know more about it click here.

You can also find out about other blog posts I have written which are about this daemon by clicking on 'Bes' on the right here.

Now here's another weird thing!

What is he holding?

This is a black granite or granodiorite sculpture of male holding two long objects. We do not know what the items are and assume them to be vases. We know of no comparable examples.

The object is probably Middle Kingdom (c.2030-1640 BC).

From the side it appears that the figure is kneeling, which is compatible with figures shown holding vessels (though not usually ones quite like this).

That this is made from hard stone suggests that this item belonged to a noble and indeed the inscription on back states that the man is the Steward Iwf.

This was formerly part of the Rustafjaell collection purchased by Sir Henry Wellcome at auction in December 19^th-20^th 1906, lot 219. Published in Malek (1999, 382). For more information on Middle Kingdom art see Bourriau (1988).

Further reading

Bourriau, J. 1988. Pharaohs and Mortals. Egyptian Art in the Middle Kingdom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Malek, J.,  Magee, D. and Miles, E. 1999. Topographical Bibliography of Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphic Texts, Statues, Reliefs and Paintings, VIII, Objects of Provenance Not Known, Part 1. Royal Statues. Private Statues (Predynastic to Dynasty XVII). Oxford: Griffith Institute.

Russmann, E.R. 2001. Eternal Egypt. Masterworks of Ancient Egyptian Art from the British Museum. London: British Museum Press.