Amarna Palace Paintings, by Fran J. WeatherheadAmarna Palace Paintings by Fran J. WeatherheadReview by: William H. PeckJournal of Near Eastern Studies, Vol. 71, No. 1 (April 2012), pp. 146-147Published by: The University of Chicago PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/664518 .Accessed: 11/10/2012 15:27

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146 F Journal of Near Eastern Studies

sind.55 Entsprechend hoch ist die Bedeutung dieses Textes für unser Verständnis sowohl der ägyptischen Literatur als auch der Geschichte und vor allem der Geschichtsdiskurse.

F. Adroms Edition ist solide gearbeitet und de-shalb für die Verwendung in Forschung und Lehre

55 Mit der Problematik der Tabus in der Sprache beschäftigt sich L. Hjelmslev, Die Sprache. Eine Einführung (Darmstadt, 1968), 80–82. Dabei arbeitete er heraus, daß es oft das Zeichen ist und nicht das Ding, welches unter Tabu steht.

gut geeignet. Dabei ist die ausführliche Wiedergabe von Faksimiles hervorzuheben, die dem Benutzer ein eigenes kritisches Urteil an problematischen Stellen ermöglichen. Wie Adrom selbst im Vorwort schrieb, werden auch in Zukunft weitere Ostraka-Belege für diesen Text hinzukommen, aber durch die massive Materialvermehrung war es ein gut gewählter Zeit-punkt, diese Edition jetzt vorzulegen.

Amarna Palace Paintings. By Fran J. Weatherhead. Seventy-Eighth Excavation Memoir. London: Egypt Ex-ploration Society, 2007. Pp. xxiv + 386 + 182 figs. + 67 pls. + 21 color pls. + 9 tables (cloth).reviewed by william H. peck, Detroit, Michigan.

This work, in which the author was involved for almost two decades, is a major contribution to the study of the painted decoration of the palaces of Tell el-Amarna. It deals with the evidence obtained by over forty years of excavation by Flinders Petrie and others in the continued work of the Egypt Explora-tion Society and is an attempt to study and reassess the thousands of painted fragments, now scattered in collections and museums throughout the world. This was a daunting task that has been long in coming to fruition. It will remain a key source for the study of decorative painting of the later New Kingdom and the Amarna style and it is unlikely that this analysis of the material will ever be greatly improved or surpassed.

The introduction briefly describes the site, with a useful map to locate the major structures. Comment is made on the place of decorative painting in Egyptian life and the apparent scarcity of preserved examples. The importance of the genre in the appreciation of the art of the period is emphasized as well as the fact that it has been neglected in favor of more dramatic sculpture and relief carving. A short section summa-rizes the history of the excavations at Amarna with an emphasis on the difficulties encountered and the choices made by the early excavators who had to at-tempt the conservation of fragile plaster without the assistance of trained conservators. In the index under the heading “Conservation, at the site,” the work of Miss Chubb, Miss Woolley, Mrs. Frankfort, as well as John Pendelbury and Petrie is itemized, none of whom presumably had formal training in preserving fragile painted plaster. In this regard, particular refer-ence is made to an earlier discussion by the author

on the recording and conservation of the painting in V. Davies’ (ed.) Color and Painting in Ancient Egypt (London, 2001), an important reference that should be used as introductory material to this book.1

The body of the work is a catalog divided into six chapters on the following major areas: The Great Palace, Bridge, King’s House, North Palace, North Riverside Palace, and the Maru-Aten, each of which is subdivided into its component parts. These are followed by a chapter of conclusions, two appendixes, a bibliography, and an index.

The problems facing the author in assembling this mass of material, considering the time span of the various excavations and the changing methods of ex-cavators (from Petrie to Kemp), and the dispersal of the evidence, were enormous and, needless to say, daunting. One quote from chapter 3, “The King’s House” (p. 75), will illustrate some of the difficul-ties: “The descriptions of the wall paintings by Petrie and Pendlebury are brief and imprecise, and almost entirely unlocated.”

1 It may be useful to review other publications by the author on the paintings at Amarna: “Painted Pavements in the Great Pal-ace at Amarna,” Journal of Egyptian Archaeology (JEA) 78 (1992): 179–94; “Wall-Paintings from the North Harim in the Great Palace at Amarna,” JEA 80 (1994): 198–201; “Wall-Paintings from the King’s House at Amarna,” JEA 81 (1995): 95–113; “Wall Paintings from the Bridge in the Central City,” in Amarna Reports VI, ed. B. J. Kemp, Occasional Publications 10 (London, 1995), 399–410; “Recording and Conservation of Painted Plaster from the Early Ex-cavations at Amarna,” in Colour and Painting in Ancient Egypt, ed. W. V. Davies (London, 2001), 53–59; Fran J. Weatherhead and B. J. Kemp, The Main Chapel at the Amarna Workmen’s Village and Its Wall Paintings, Eighty-Fifth Excavation Memoir (London, 2007).

Book Reviews F 147

“Brief,” “imprecise,” and “unlocated” are the types of qualifiers that appear throughout this work. Not only are many of the sources of the myriad fragments imprecise, unlocated, or of “no exact provenience,” but the present museum or collection location may also be unknown and their existence established only by excavation photograph or drawing. In this respect, an appendix with a list of museums with painting frag-ments might have been useful. Many of the present locations are mentioned in the acknowledgements and in the text, but I was unable to find a collected list. I mention this because I searched for a reference to a large piece of painting preserved in the Spurlock Museum, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (museum number 1923.02.0001) and was unable to

find it in the text. This example, in a somewhat out of the way collection, may not have been known to the author or it may be that I simply could not find her reference to it.

At the end of the preface, the author states that the text of the book was completed in 1997 and during the publication delay she has attempted to keep up with current research and literature on the subject of Amarna painted plaster but, she adds, she has “all but left the field of archaeology.” Whatever the reason for this, it must be restated that her collection, organiza-tion, and reinterpretation of the decorative paintings from Akhenaton’s short-lived capital and royal build-ings is a major work that will hardly be bettered.

Le Mastaba d’Akhethetep. Edited by Christiane Ziegler et al. Fouilles du Louvre à Saqqara, vol. 1. Louvain: Peeters; Paris: Musée du Louvre Éditions, 2007. Pp. 249 + 191 figs. €80.reviewed by nigel strudwick, University of Memphis.

One of the many glories of the wonderful Egyptian collection of the Louvre is the chapel from the Old Kingdom Mastaba of Akhethotep (E. 10958). The chapel arrived in Paris in 1903, one of a number of decorated chapels of Saqqara mastabas sold to for-eign museums by the Egyptian government of the day. The chapel is a remarkable testament to the ability of the craftsmen of the Old Kingdom, but for many years no systematic publication was available for it (see, for example, the range of sources given in B. Porter and R. B. Moss, Memphis. Saqqâra to Dah-shûr, Topographical Bibliography of Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphic Texts, Statues, Reliefs and Paintings III 2 [Oxford, 2003], 634–37). At the beginning of the 1990s, the decision was made in the Louvre to pro-ceed with the publication, which work was to take two forms, publication of the chapel in the museum and a search at Saqqara to ascertain the original location, which was less than clear. The first results of this work were a book devoted to the chapel (C. Ziegler, Le Mas-taba d’Akhethotep: Une Chapelle funéraire de l’ancien empire [Paris 1993]), aimed at both the grand pub-lique and the scholar, which served admirably while the fieldwork took place and the present publication was being prepared.

This book is divided into five sections: an intro-duction to the Mastaba, its history, its owner, and a summary of the field seasons; an architectural descrip-tion; a description of the decoration and inscriptions;

a catalog of objects found; and an account of the con-servation work undertaken.

Much of the information in the introduction is also in the 1993 book. Chapter 2 describes the form of the monument when its actual emplacement was located at Saqqara in 1996. The precise location of the Mas-taba was always thought to have been near the Unas causeway due to its immediate proximity to Mariette’s Mastaba E 17 (also of an Akhethotep), although its actual location was never properly recorded. The Mas-taba is now shown to be just north of the mid-point of the Unas causeway, roughly opposite the monastery of Apa Jeremias. The excavations revealed that the Louvre chapel was placed, as usual, in the southeastern part of the Mastaba core; a long corridor to the east with an entrance at the north separated the tomb of Akhethotep from an adjacent mastaba, not yet exca-vated. A west-facing offering chapel was built into the latter core, and a small court at the southern end of the corridor linked both chapels. Mastaba E17 was built against the south side of the Akhethotep complex. The latter chapel will be published in a later volume in this series.

Various other elements of Akhethotep’s chapel were uncovered. An external false door was placed at the northern end of the east side of the chapel, inscribed only on the panel and lintel with the usual scene of the deceased plus some of his titles (although there is an element of doubt as to whether it is actually the same