Current Research in Egyptology 2006: Proceedings of the Seventh Annual Symposium

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Contents

Symposium Papers Not Included in This Volume

Introduction (Maria Cannata)

Shades of Meaning: The Significance of Manifestations of the Dead as Evidenced in Texts from the Old Kingdom to the Coptic Period

(Christina Adams)

Of Bodies and Soles: The Meaning of the Root ḳs in the Ptolemaic Period

(Maria Cannata)

The Radiocarbon Dating of Ancient Egyptian Mummies and their Associated Artefacts: Implications for Egyptology

(Jenefer Anne Cockitt and Ann Rosalie David)

The Archival History of Coptic Documents from Jeme Held in the British Library

(Jennifer Cromwell)

A Reinterpretation of the Use and Function of the Rekhyt Rebus in New Kingdom Temples

(Kenneth Griffin)

The Teaching of Ptahhotep: The London Versions

(Alice Heyne)

The Final Phase of Per-Ramesses: The History of the City in the Light of its Natural Environment

(Anna Kathrin Hodgkinson)

Migratory Spirits: Remarks on the akh sign

(Jiří Janák)

Cattle Petroglyphs in the Eastern Desert of Egypt

(Tony Judd)

Meroitic Pottery from the Fourth Cataract, Sudan (c. AD 100–300): New Findings from the SARS Winter 2005 Field Season

(Eric McCann)

The Locational Significance of Scatological References in the Coffin Texts

(Peter Robinson)

The localization of the Shasu-land of Ramses II’s Rhetorical Texts

(Alexandre Vassiliev)

Libraries and Archives: The Organization of Collective Wisdom in Ancient Egypt

(Katharina Zinn)

Symposium Papers Not Included in This Volume (alphabetical by author)

Amen Behaving Badly: Morals in Ancient Egypt

Beth Asbury

Institute of Field Archaeologists, Reading

The Egyptianising Architecture of Dubai

Cathie Bryan

Independent Scholar

From Legitimation to Datation: Ramesses IV’s titularies

Benoit Claus

Université Libre de Bruxelles

The iconography of prisoners and enemies in the Naqada Culture

Xavier Droux

University of Geneva

Votive stelae as text, image and artefact

Karen Exell

University of Durham

A Reassessment of the Left Forearm of Durham Mummy DUROM 1999.32.1

Jacky Finch

University of Manchester

Late nineteenth-century debates in religion and science as formative influences on British Egyptology

David Gange

University of Cambridge

The transfiguration of the king

András Gulyás

Heidelberg University

Kerma and Egypt in the Second Intermediate Period: artistic exchange

Tom Hardwick

University of Oxford

Materiality and colonial relations at Beth Shan

Linda Hulin

University of Reading

Modernity and the Mummy Portraits: A Curious Chapter in the History of Egyptomania

Ashley Jones

Yale University

Thoughts on materiality, decision making and structuration: A study of New Kingdom Private Temple Statues

Annette Kjølby

University of Copenhagen

The Art of Magic in Ancient Egypt

Joanna Kyffin

University of Liverpool

I Love You, I Hate You, I Want a Divorce: Social Relationships of the Great Overlords of the Nome

Steven James Larkman

Mount Royal College, Canada

The sanctuary Netjerymenu of Thutmose III

Piotr Laskowski

University of Warsaw

Looking outside the box: using Egyptian data to demonstrate how the analytical concept of the chaîne opératoire can be applied to artefacts made from plant material

Sally McAleely

Institute of Archaeology, University College London

The revetted mound at Hierakonpolis and early kingship: a re-interpretation

Liam McNamara

University of Oxford

Thirsting for Power: The conceptualization of magic in the Coffin Texts

Rune Nyord

University of Copenhagen

Unguent Cones: real or representative?

Joan Padgham

University of Swansea

The power of Egyptology to affect audiences: Sir Henry Rider Haggard, the Champollion project and museum Simulacra

Denise Parkinson

Independent Scholar

Practice Theory and the Materiality of Early Egyptian Imagery

Kathryn Piquette

Institute of Archaeology, University College London

The side effects of cosmetic use in Ancient Egypt

Vanda Cristina da Cruz Raimundo

University of Lisbon

Giza Before the Pyramids

Colin Reader

Independent Scholar

Conception of sin and guilt in Ancient Egypt: a new approach

Tadas Rutkauskas

Heidelberg University

A Potential Diagnosis for Ebbell’s ‘Rose’?

Melanie Sapsford

University of Cranfield (Defence Academy)

An Analytical Study of an ancient Egyptian Fabric Pillow

Judith Seath

The University of Manchester

The Political Role of the King in the 18th Dynasty: The Promotion Process

Garry Shaw

University of Liverpool

The Social Significance of Predynastic Beads

Alice Stevenson

University of Cambridge

Heka: the art of the magical word in ancient Egyptian society

Paula Alexandra Veiga

University of Lisbon

Resource Procurement and Management of Settlements in Old Kingdom Egypt

Cordula Werschkun

University of Liverpool

Brussels Stela E 4860: a reject from an Abydos workshop?

Paul Whelan

Independent Scholar

Introduction

The annual Current Research in Egyptology Symposium was launched in 2000 by graduate students at the University of Oxford with the aim of providing a forum for the discussion of Egyptological research conducted by current students at the graduate level. Over the years the event has gained increasing recognition among the students’ community in the field of Egyptology, as well as an international status. The Seventh edition of the symposium was again held at the University of Oxford, in April 2006, and brought together graduate and postgraduate students of Egyptology from institutions world-wide. A total of 44 students presented their new and on-going research on a variety of topics including archaeology, art and architecture, history and society, literature and language, religion, museum studies, scientific analysis, history of Egyptology and ‘egyptomania’, spanning the entire period of Egyptian history from Predynastic to Coptic times. The papers included in this volume are representative of this same wide range of research areas, and, in particular, of the multidisciplinary approach to, and contextual analysis of, the evidence that is increasingly being adopted within the field at large.

Three of the papers present a reanalysis of the connotations of specific words and phrases, challenging long-held views on their meaning through a review of the evidence, and offering new interpretations of the data. Thus Griffin challenges the theory that those areas of the temples decorated with the rekhyt rebus were accessible to the rekhyt, or ‘common people’, through a careful examination of the various parts of the temple where these images and inscriptions are found. While the inscriptions in the forecourts and hypostyle halls, which speak of the rekhyt people ‘seeing’ pharaoh or the gods, suggest that these people would, indeed, have access to the temple precinct, the depiction of the rekhyt rebus in the sanctuaries and inner rooms of the temples calls for a different explanation. Griffin suggests that, rather than being mere space fillers, the depiction of the rekhyt people in these inner temple areas symbolises the metaphysical presence of the ‘common people’ within the temple, since, being a representation of the cosmos, it needed to include all classes of society in order to maintain order. Vassiliev deals with another Egyptian word, ṯst with the meaning of hill or ridge, attested in a number of textual sources in connection with the Egyptian military road to Canaan, and said to be located in the land of the Shasu People, a Near Eastern ethnic group. Vassiliev presents the available textual evidence for the term ṯst and argues that in the New Kingdom the plural form with a definite article was not a general topographical designation, but rather a proper geographical name of a specific region in North Sinai. He concludes that these hills or ridges were not mountains, but rather sand dunes, which are a prominent geographical feature of the North Sinai coastal plain. Cannata presents an analysis of the meaning of the root ḳs and its derivatives during the Ptolemaic Period, on the basis of the available documentary evidence from this period, to show that this root and its derivates had a wide range of connotations, depending on the context in which they were used, all of which related to aspects of mummification and burial. In particular, Cannata challenges the rendering, on the basis of Greek evidence, of the title ḳs as shoemaker, traditionally translated as embalmer, arguing that the use of Greek translations of demotic terms cannot be seen as reliable. Through the comparative palaeographical and orthographical analysis of the derivates of the root ḳs, Cannata shows that its spelling, when used to denote the professional title, is entirely germane to the funerary context, and that, therefore, the available evidence does not support conclusively its reinterpretation as shoemaker.

Ancient and modern documentary evidence is brought together by Cromwell in her study of Coptic documentary material from Jeme, an 8th century town located at Medinet Habu, Ramses III’s mortuary temple. The analysis of the published and unpublished archival records in the British Library, where these Coptic documents are held, together with the biographical information on the individuals who acquired them in Egypt, Cromwell argues, indicates that these collections were discovered in the monastery of Apa Phoibammon at Deir el-Bahari, thus suggesting that a central archive may have existed there where the majority of the documents would have been stored. However, in a small number of cases, the acquisition date, the information on where specific individuals were excavating at a given time, as well as the fact that some deeds were found in isolation, indicates that a small number of these deeds were also kept in the town. On the other hand, information on ancient libraries and archives is combined together with modern library- and media-science by Zinn to propose an alternative definition of these institutions, one which emphasises their functional role in the preservation and transmission of collective wisdom. Using both archaeological and textual evidence, Zinn analyses the social and religious context of ancient Egyptian library traditions and addresses the important question of how Egyptian libraries functioned in terms of both storage and circulation of written knowledge, understood as the ‘cultural memory’ of a society, thus extending our understanding of these institutions from merely physical and spatial contexts to a cultural level.

Textual evidence, both literary and religious, forms the basis of four further papers in this volume. Heyne deals with the literary text known as the Teaching of Ptahhotep, different versions of which survive in a number of documents, but which is known almost exclusively from the translation of P. Prisse, dating to the Middle Kingdom, now in the collection of the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris. The text belongs to the genre of wisdom literature and comprises a prologue, which deliberates about the hardship of old age and the necessity to name a successor, followed by 37 maxims that consist of the advice of a father to his son and successor. In particular, Heyne highlights the importance of the versions preserved in two papyri now in the British Museum which, she argues, are probably the closest surviving copies of the original manuscript and represent the standard version of the text during the New Kingdom, and perhaps even the Middle Kingdom, as shown by the fact that later versions parallel the British Museum papyri both in terms of content and verse order. Literary evidence also forms the basis of Adams’ paper, which deals with references to manifestations of the dead from the Old Kingdom to the Coptic period. Although most of them have been subjected to scholarly analysis, such studies have focused primarily on the literary, historical, sociocultural, lexical, syntactical and palaeographical aspects of these texts, whilst they have never been examined together as a group and considered for their commonality. Adams argues that these post-mortem manifestations are no mere phenomenological curiosity, but rather, they are an important element of the interface between the living and the dead, and that they offer an invaluable insight into the Egyptians’ conceptualization of the dead and the afterlife, and of the importance the Egyptians attached to the ability to interact with their dead. In particular, Adams highlights the importance of the remarkable continuity of the Egyptian thought and belief shown by these references to appearances of the dead, spanning the extent of Egyptian history and offering an unbroken seam of evidence of that understanding and belief that underpinned the more formal expression of their religious credo. The akh, the manifested dead, is also the subject of Janák, who brings together Egyptology and Zoology in his analysis of the northern bald ibis, also known as the waldrapp, used in the Egyptian language to write the hieroglyphic sign . Janák explores not only the natural habitat of this family of Ibises, but also their breeding and feeding habits, as well as their physical and behavioural characteristics, and their greeting display. Janák suggests that the fact that these birds probably nested on the rock cliffs along the Nile valley, an area representing both the real and the symbolic horizon, their flocking to the valley in search for food, as well as their departure for the horizon in the evening, may in part explain their identification with visitors and messengers from the other world, and their being viewed as manifestations of the blessed dead. In addition, Janák suggests that further reaserch into both the bird’s behaviour, and its perception within the cultural context of Egyptian society, may throw further light onto the reasons behind the depiction of the akh on several distinctive Old Kingdom diadems and on representations of the ceremony known as the Vogellauf The deceased and their survival in the Afterlife is the subject of the paper by Robinson, who analyses the scatological references to eating faeces and drinking urine within the corpus of the Coffin Texts. Using evidence from coffins originating mainly, though not exclusively, from the necropolises of Asyut and Bersha, Robinson analyses both the physical and conceptual position of specific spells within the decorative schema of individual coffins and within the corpus of the Coffin Texts as a whole, in an attempt to identify the purpose of such spells within the context of the funerary ritual. This analysis suggests that some spells were sequenced while others were non-sequenced, or isolated, and that some were more popular than others. Non-sequenced scatological references, disseminated anywhere within the inner surfaces of the coffins, had perhaps the scope of informing the deceased on the nature of demonic creatures and on how to avoid them. On the other hand, sequenced spells concentrate in the lower area of the coffin, in correspondence of the deceased’s feet and legs, and appear to have had a number of functions, although, primarily, they seem to provide an indication of foulness, particulalry within foodstuffs. Thus Robinson suggests that they may have served the function of providing the deceased with knowledge of these polluted substances, ultimately symbolising forces of chaos, and the means to repel them, hence ensuring his or her survival into the afterlife.

Two of the papers in this volume are concerned with the analysis of archaeological remains and artifacts. Hodgkinson combines the archaeological evidence from Per-Ramesses, in the eastern Delta, with the geological information for the area to investigate the possible reasons for the abandonment of this city as a capital of Egypt around the beginning of the 21st dynasty. This, she suggests, was due to the combined effects of the natural tendency of the lower stretches of the Pelusian branch of the Nile to silt up, and the intense military activity that characterised part of the Ramesside period. In particular, Hodgkinson argues that the manpower employed at times of peace in the upkeep of the canals and basins surrounding the city would have been conscripted into the army at times of war, resulting in the neglect of the waterways’ upkeep. This would have meant the loss for the city of both the natural protection afforded by the canals and basins surrounding it, and of its routes of communication and trade. McCann reports on the surveys and excavation projects in Sudan undertaken by the Sudan Archaeological Research Society and the British Museum in the area of the Fourth Cataract, where the construction of a hydroelectric dam and reservoir will flood the archaeological remains of this region. In particular, the analysis of ceramic assemblages discovered in this area provides a clear indication of changes in the potting tradition. On the one hand the ceramic workshops of the Meroitic period disappear, while on the other there is an increased emulation of south Sudan wares. Interestingly, the evidence indicates that alterations in potting tradition parallel other changes that took place in the region of Meroe during the Post-Meroitic period.

At the other end of the timescale and focusing on artistic evidence, Judd analyses the large number of cattle petroglyphs found in the Eastern Desert, and suggests that they were drawn at a time when the climate was wet enough to support vegetation for grazing, and thus cattle were present in what is now a desert area. This would indicate a date around the early third millennium BC, that is, around the Predynastic and Early Dynastic Period, a suggestion supported by Stable Isotope analysis of cattle remains. Interestingly, these images appear to belong to the same artistic tradition in the Nile Valley during the same period, as indicated by similarities between the two.

Scientific methodology is the focus of Cockitt, who describes the application of accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS), a more accurate dating method than the conventional ¹⁴C technique, to material from Egyptian mummified remains and associated artefacts. Cockitt argues that AMS can generate results that are comparable in their precision to those of the historical chronology. In addition, the application of this technique has the potential to produce information on the genetics and the epidemiology of diseases.

The papers in this volume offer but an example of the range of research currently conducted world-wide by graduate and postgraduate students, as well as of the ever-increasing interest that the later periods of Egyptian history, from the Ptolemaic to the Coptic Period, are receiving within the field of Egyptology.

A large number of people have been involved in the various stages of the organisation of the CRE VII Symposium and of the publication of these proceedings, although space constraints prevent us from naming them all. On behalf of the Oxford CRE organising committee, Christina Adams, Tom Hardwick and myself, I would like to thank Lady Margaret Hall, and in particular Carol Fowler, Conference Manager, and Bart Ashton, Domestic Bursar, for their help and expertise with the organisation of the Symposium, as well as all the staff who helped with the catering and accommodation of the symposium participants. Our thanks are also due to The Queen’s College, and especially to Dr. Linda Irving-Bell, Domestic Bursar, and the Governing Body who allowed us host the CRE Formal Dinner in College, and to Dawn Grimshaw, Catering Manager, as well as all the staff who helped make the evening such a success. We are also indebted to Dr. Helen Whitehouse and Dr. Susan Walker of the Department of Antiquities of the Ashmolean Museum, and Paula Falck, Events Officer, for allowing us use of their facilities for the CRE Evening Reception, while my personal thanks go to Tom Hardwick for his mediation in the organisation of this event. We would also like to express our gratitude to Dr. Jaromir Málek, Elizabeth Fleming and Alison Hobby for kindly allowing the symposium participants to visit the archives of the Griffith Institute. We are also indebted to the Griffith Institute Fund for the financial support awarded towards the organisational costs of the symposium. Our special thanks also go to Prof. John Baines and Dr. Helen Whitehouse for chairing the various sessions and for their helpful comments to the speakers at the symposium; and to the academics that kindly read and commented upon the papers submitted. We would also like to thank everyone who attended the conference and all the students who shared their research with the other participants, and in particular to the authors of the papers included here for their assistance and patience throughout the editorial process. Our thanks are also due to Val Lamb and Clare Litt for their help with the formatting, typesetting and publication of this volume.

Finally, my personal thanks go to my colleagues, Christina Adams and Tom Hardwick, and to everyone else who, in many different ways, helped both with the Symposium and the publication of these Proceedings.

Maria Cannata

April 2007

Illustration credits

Front cover illustration: Vignette from the Book of the Dead Spell 92 depicted in the tomb of Irinefer at Deir-el Medina (Theban Tomb 290), 19th Dynasty (After Kampp-Seyfried, F. (1998) Overcoming Death – The Private Tombs of Thebes. In R. Schultz and M. Seidel (eds.) Egypt. The World of the Pharaohs, Figure 225. Köln, Könemann Verlagsgesellschaft). The editors and the individual authors would like to express their gratitude to all the institutions and scholars who granted permission to use the images published in this volume. The individual authors are alone liable for the use of specific images, the editors and Oxbow Books are not responsible for the obtainment of copyright permission.

Shades of Meaning: The Significance of Manifestations of the Dead as Evidenced in Texts from the Old Kingdom to the Coptic Period

Christina Adams

Introduction

Manifestations of the dead constitute one aspect of the wider spectrum that is the perceived interaction between the living and the dead; a dialogue which has been the central focus of my research to date. This paper is a distillation of the relevant sections of my 2004 BA Dissertation: Appeals to the Living and Letters to the Dead: the interface between the living and the dead in ancient Egypt, my 2005 M.St. Paper: The Living and the Dead: contact and communication as exemplified in Coptic texts of the 4th to 11th centuries AD, and my current D.Phil. Thesis: Between Two Worlds: the interface between the living and the dead as evidenced in texts of the Late, Ptolemaic and Roman Periods. References to manifestations of the dead occur in texts from all periods of Egyptian history. Such texts have been studied by scholars from various perspectives, though primarily for their literary, historical, socio-cultural, lexical, syntactical and palaeographic interest, only infrequently as phenomena in their own right. Their deeper import and significance has thus often been largely overlooked. Furthermore, they have not previously been collected, collated, and considered for their commonality. I would like to suggest, and to show, that instances where the dead appear to the living are no mere phenomenological curiosity. To the contrary, they are a valid, instructive and important element of the interface between the Egyptians and their dead. They are, additionally, a valuable resource for our understanding of the Egyptians’ conceptualization of the dead and their post-mortem existence.

In researching my whole subject area, it seemed that greater insight would be gained from employing what might be termed an ‘endocentric’ methodology. By this I mean working from within, attempting, as far as possible, to look at the material from the