February 2014 Volume XII Issue 1

Wirral Ancient Egypt Society

Newsletter

The October lecture ‘The landscape history of Luxor (Waset, Thebes, al-Uqsor)’ by Peter Robinson, independent scholar, cartographic editor of Ancient Egypt magazine and a regular lecturer to NW societies

It is impossible to do jus-tice to Peter’s talk to our socie-ty because it was illustrated by

a wealth of photo images, most of which were taken by Peter, showing aspects of the devel-opment of Waset/Thebes/Luxor over many centuries.

Peter reminded us that Waset was a southern city many hundreds of miles south of the Delta, and often viewed by ancient Egyptians as the place where the world was cre-ated.

It was built on the east bank of the river Nile, with mountains immediately to the west and more mountains be-tween the Nile and the Red Sea. The mountains to the west were originally volcanic

but were subsequently covered with a layer of limestone, laid down when the area was under the seabed millions of years ago.

The Nile itself is about 120,000 years old and for many years it meandered, not just west and east, but also north as well, as it dissipated its energy, especially at the times of inundation. The most obvious contemporary example is Banana Island, an island for many years but now part of the mainland. Karnak has also been subjected to the river’s movement.

Peter showed us a presentation created by the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) about the de-velopment of Karnak which fascinated us by its detail. The construction of Karnak, includ-ing much alteration and even destruction, took place over 1500 years. Now about half a kilometre from the Nile, Kar-nak was originally sited much closer to the bank of the river.

Senusret I built a lime-stone temple at Karnak dedi-cated to Amun Ra and the ‘white chapel’ outside the tem-ple. Successive kings either modified or added to these be-ginnings, partly to demonstrate their power and wealth, but, increasingly, to show their re-lationship to the gods. A pro-cessional route from Karnak to

Luxor Temple was probably built quite early on, but can on-ly be definitely proved during Hatshepsut’s reign. Hatshep-sut’s reign saw a great deal of building and modification take place, especially the Red Chapel and the temple to Mut. A canal and basin were dug more than once, the first filled in to facilitate more westward expansion.

Karnak’s shape as we know it today is mostly due to the effort of King Nectanebo I of the 30th Dynasty who built the huge mud brick enclosure walls and lined the route to Luxor Temple with about 700 sphinxes. Karnak continued to enjoy the favour of kings through most of the Graeco-Roman period, but by the end of the Roman period it was fi-nally closed.

One particularly impres-

sive example of Peter’s land-scapes was a photo of the Mer-

Meretseger Hathor mountain, pho-to Peter Robinson

Roman Gateway, Luxor, photo Pe-ter Robinson

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etseger Hathor mountain, which is mirrored so accurately in the well-known picture of Hathor as a cow emerging from a mountain. Hathor, or Meretseger who, as an aspect of Hathor and envisaged as a cobra was revered by the

workmen of Deir el Medina, was often known as the ‘The peak of the west’ or ‘The lady of the peak’.

The Greeks established trading posts in Egypt and there were extensive contacts between the two countries for some time before Alexander the Great defeated the Per-sians and arrived in Egypt in 332 BC. He was widely re-garded by Egyptians as a lib-erator and the country became part of the wide-spread Greek empire until the fall of Cleopat-ra VII. It was during this period that Waset was re-named Thebes. Peter told us about the Greek-speaking writer Lu-cian of Samosata who wrote a book called ‘Philopseudes’ (‘Lover of lies’) in which is found the original version of Disney’s Sorcerer’s Apprentice. In the original ver-sion it is a tourist who hears the magic spell but does not

know how to stop it. The stick that is used to begin the spell (not a broom) might, Peter thinks, be a shabti, ie a stick that does jobs for you.

Thebes was always a wealthy city and considered for many years as the breadbasket

of Egypt. In many of the tombs there are images of vari-ous aspects of the grain indus-try, especially harvesting and threshing. Peter reminded us that Roman citi-zens living in Rome were en-titled to free bread. This

meant that the Ro-man army had to ensure that a regu-lar supply of wheat was sent from con-quered countries such as Egypt. Ro-man influence can be seen in many aspects of Egyptian life including the colonnade, the building of forts, bathhouses and, of course, roadbuild-ing. The road be-tween Karnak and Luxor is a Roman road with the usual Ro-man layers of large and small stones. The Romans went as far south as Aswan, so there would probably have been Roman roads, perhaps either side of the river.

When the Roman Empire in the west collapsed Egypt came under the rule of Byzanti-um, later called Constantinople.

This situation persisted for some time until Islam was brought to Egypt by the Arabs in 640 AD. Peter told us that Islam was accepted willingly in many parts of the Byzantine empire because people had been taxed so heavily. It was, of course, the Arabs who re-named Thebes al-Uqsor (the fort).

Those of us who were present at Peter’s lecture were treated to a huge number of excellent photographs that Pe-ter has taken over the years. Many of them were of familiar places, but Peter’s background knowledge has enabled us to see them in a new light.

Report – Pete Ste-phens

The November lecture, ‘Hair in Ancient Egypt: from ritual to styling products’ by Dr Natalie McCreesh, KNH Centre for Biomedical Egyptol-ogy, University of Manchester

Natalie told us about the cones that can be seen worn on the head in some Egyptian pictures. They are mostly seen on the heads of women, but also sometimes on the head of

Asiatic brewer, 13th Dynasty, Abydos, Liverpool University Museum (after Ftetcher, 1995)

Luxor Temple, photo Peter Robinson

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a man. Using light and electron microscopes it has been found that the cones were made from some sort of animal fat, but look solid and are sometimes decorated. One of the first pic-tures we have of someone wearing a cone comes from the 13th Dynasty and is actually of an Asiatic man, not an Egyp-tian. It is possible, therefore, that the practice did not origi-

nate in Egypt, but was copied from another culture. It seems that the cones were scented in some way, which has caused people to speculate that origi-nally they might have been worn to mask the smell for someone doing an unpleasant job. Cones were worn by peo-ple in a variety of situations in-cluding banquets, offerings and even hunting scenes. In a well-known banqueting picture from the 18th Dynasty they are worn by guests, musicians and dancers, so at some stage they must have become a fashion item. Cones were in regular use certainly from the 18th Dyn-asty right through to the 30th Dynasty, including the Amarna period. The early ones were

sometimes quite big but the later ones look different and are a lot smaller.

Natalie has experiment-ed with pig fat to make a repli-ca of an Egyptian cone. She found that the cone stayed in place on the head and that the only part of the cone that melt-ed was the base that was actu-ally in contact with the hair, and, most interestingly, that

there was no smell. For several years now

Natalie has been involved in the Dakleh Oasis Project. So far fifteen mummies have been studied ranging from a boy of about ten to much older peo-ple. Some were natural mum-mies, with no embalming fluid used, but in the case of mature women the hair had been styled before burial.

Another fascinating problem is the question of the colour of Egyptians’ hair. The hair in Egyptian paintings is usually coloured black, but hair found on mummies is often red/orange. This is partly be-cause hair exposed to air changes colour, and partly also because, despite the best ef-

forts of the embalmers, some-times chemicals reached the hair and bleached it. Natalie and her colleagues are fairly sure that henna dye was not normally used to alter the hair’s natural colour.

There are pictures showing women’s hair being styled, and we know that curl-ing and waving were popular with women during their life-time. Natalie showed us a satir-ical picture painted on an ostra-kon showing two cats decorat-ing the hair of a mouse.

When a body was being prepared for the afterlife the hair was often extensively styled using oils and unguents. In some cases fat was used as a fixative, a technique very similar, Natalie thought, to the modern use of hair gel. Some mummies were found to have embalming materials covering the whole head, often when the head had been shaved, but in most cases it seems that the chemicals used in the mummi-fication process were kept off the hair and the hair was pro-tected with a cloth before anointing with oil and styled.

The issue of ‘clay balls’ caused a huge amount of inter-est, resulting in several related questions at the end of Na-talie’s talk. The balls varied in size from golf ball size to tennis ball size. They have often been found among funerary remains and sometimes lodged in tomb walls. Some have been cut open and the contents exam-ined. They vary; some contain papyrus or linen, but many contain a small quantity of hair, some of it infantile. Some are plain on the outside but others are decorated with pictures or markings. Natalie said that us-ing x-ray it has been shown

Banquet scene, 18th Dynasty, tomb of Nebamun, Thebes, British Muse-um (after Robbins 1997)

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that some of the balls still intact have hair inside them and that the next challenge would be to analyse the hair inside one of the balls without opening it.

Natalie introduced some of us to an aspect of everyday life in ancient Egypt that we know very little about. I hope she will be able to continue her research and look forward to hearing about further develop-ments.

Report - Pete Ste-phens

AGM, 2013

Jacky Finch presided over her first AGM as our Chair. In her report she spoke about the expense of hiring speakers and renting Mayer Hall for our monthly meetings. We are very lucky in that all of our speakers so far have been happy to accept the modest fee of just £50. Some of them trav-el considerable distances to come to us, so perhaps it is a measure, not simply of their generosity, but also of the na-tional standing of WAES within the world of Egyptology, that we continue to attract speakers of such a high calibre.

Jacky thanked the Com-mittee for their hard work, es-pecially Sue Mockeridge, our former Chair, who is now Sec-retary, Fay Samuels, our for-mer Secretary, who is now Membership Secretary and Maureen Lawson, who has been our Treasurer for many years and is now stepping down. Jacky also, once again, asked members to volunteer to serve on the committee, even for a limited period. We would welcome some new ideas and initiative.

Our Bursary Student for the coming year is Nick Nielsen

who was presented with a cheque for £125 by Jacky.

Maureen, in her last Treasurer’s Report, announced that we ended the year with a small loss, which is due entire-ly to the fact that we replaced two important items of equip-ment during the year, neither of which will need to be replaced again for several years. Never-theless, she urged members to agree to increase the annual subscription from £15 to £17 in

order to ensure financial stabil-ity.

Elections were held, and the new committee for 2014 is as follows:

Chair – Jacky Finch Hon Sec – Sue Mocker-

idge Treasurer – Gwen Mor-

ris Membership Secretary –

Fay Samuels Librarian – Di Jones Newsletter – Pete Ste-

phens Maureen Lawson

agreed to continue to serve on the committee and will help Gwen in any way required.

There was a formal mo-tion to increase the annual subscription for 2015 from £15 to £17. This was passed unani-mously. A total of 32 members attended the AGM.

After a break for refresh-

ments and raffle there was a lecture from the year’s Bursary Student, Nick Nielsen.

The December lecture

‘Subsistence and Craft Pro-duction at Zawiyet umm el-Rakham’ by Nick Nielsen, Bur-sary Student, 2014

Nick has chosen to study a place which today is called Zawiyet umm el-Rakham in Arabic (which means ‘rest house of the mother of vul-tures’). It stands about 300 km west of Alexandria and was vir-tually the border between Egypt and Libya. It was built as a fort during the reign of Rame-ses II to prevent nomadic tribes from the west (i.e Libya) from raiding Egyptian settlements in the Delta. Steven Snape has been involved in excavations there for almost twenty years, but there is still a great deal to be learned.

Nick’s research will fo-cus on two areas within the site where he hopes to discover more about the production of

cloth, food and tools. He also intends to re-evaluate relations between the civilian population and the Egyptian garrison.

Although the fort was built by Rameses II we know that Seti I ordered a military campaign in the area, and Nick thinks this was probably a paci-

Kitchens at Zur, photo Steven Snape

Beer jars found at the same site, photo Steven Snape

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fying campaign that showed the need for a more permanent fort.

There was a temple on the site but its remains are now ruins in poor condition. There were small side chapels where stelae have been found with carvings that show soldiers worshipping Rameses II.

The gateway to the fort was flanked impressively by twin towers and the walls were about five metres thick, making attack from nomads virtually impossible.

One of the areas that Nick has chosen to focus on, Area K, consists of six build-ings which seem to have been used for processing grain and butchering animals. Tubs have been found that were used for mixing dough, and there are lots of pottery remains.

Some of the pottery items were plates used in food production. Petrie, many years ago, coined the term ‘meat jar’ but Nick pointed out that this is misleading because jars of this sort were used for storing many kinds of food, not just meat. Pilgrim Flasks have also been found (flattened circular containers for water or oil with hoop handles running from neck to shoulder).

Many bones have been found, mostly of sheep and goats, but also of cows, horses and dog. They all appear to have been very young and to have been mostly male, so the likelihood is that they were traded rather than kept on site.

In answer to one of the questions Nick told us that re-searchers are able to tell where a pottery item originated by ex-amining a sample of the pottery (obtained by snapping off a very small piece using pliers!)

and looking at the clay under a microscope. Clay consists of differing quantities of lime-stone, sand and micah, and the amount of each ingredient helps researchers to decide where the clay came from orig-inally.

We all enjoyed Nick’s lecture and wish him well with his chosen field of research. We look forward to hearing how the research is progress-ing.

Report – Pete Ste-phens

The January lecture, ‘Archaeology of the Old Kingdom: the function of pri-vate tombs in the Fifth and Sixth Dynasties’ by Ashley Cooke

Ashley reminded us that the period of the Old Kingdom ran roughly from 27th to 22nd centuries BC. During that time a number of Egypt’s nobles, officials at the royal court, be-came extremely rich - the nouveau riche of that time. When designing their tombs they tried to aspire to the same standards as their king, com-

plete with extravagant tastes. They even tried to build their tombs as close as possible to that of the king. As a result tomb architecture became in-creasingly complex with elabo-rate decoration and monu-ments. These have often been studied and written about, but Ashley wanted to focus our at-tention on the actual architec-ture of the tombs.

Several of these tombs consist of multi-roomed masta-ba chapels, with a great deal of variation in the arrangement of the rooms, including their size

and number. The largest and one of the most important is that of Mereruka, who became Teti’s son-in-law by marrying his eldest daughter. His tomb, which is very close to Teti’s pyramid, consists of thirty three rooms and hallways.

Another interesting tomb is that of Nebkauhor who lived near the end of the Sixth Dyn-asty. He was not the first owner of the tomb. Ashley explained that this kind of re-cycling of tombs was relatively common; the older coffin might be emp-tied and reused but the original

Nebkauhor Tomb, Liverpool Museums, coutesy of Ashley Cooke

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mummy kept on site. Neb-kauhor’s tomb is interesting be-cause, as well as consisting of many rooms, it also has an open courtyard which seems to have been used for the ritual slaughter of cattle.

There is evidence from several of these tombs that the ritual slaughter of animals took place on site. In the mastaba of Idut a butcher’s knife was found, and in Mereruka’s there is a tethering stone.

Ptahshepses was vizier and son-in-law to Niuserre, a fifth dynasty king. His mastaba complex is also both extensive and architecturally grand. A carved limestone lintel is now in Liverpool Museum. Ashley described how originally to both left and right of the lintel there would have been carv-ings of people welcoming visi-tors to the tomb. The lintel lists a number of important festivals in the Egyptian calendar, in-cluding the Thoth Festival, the Wag Festival and the Burning Festival. These would have been occasions when visitors would have been most likely to visit the tomb.

Kagemni was also vizier to a king, Teti in the sixth Dyn-asty. Like Ptahshepses he also married the king’s daughter. He had a number of titles in-cluding inspector of funerary priests and high priest of Re,

and was obviously both suc-cessful and wealthy because his mastaba is the largest and one of the most ornate in the Teti cemetery. One of the most interesting things about Ka-gemni is the list in his tomb of seven different kinds of oils. Ashley told us that these oils would have had religious rather than culinary uses.

Towards the end of the sixth Dynasty Herimeru was a priest of the pyramid of Unas. The text on the lintel of the tomb is interesting for a num-ber of reasons. It specifically tries to lure visitors to the tomb in order for them to make offer-ings. It also contains a threat to any potential thieves that they will be ‘seized by the neck like a bird’. A little later there is the promise that ‘I shall protect him in the necropolis’.

Some of the mastaba contain a room where the walls

have not been decorated. It seems likely that this room would have been for a door-keeper, one of whose tasks would have been to ensure the ritual purity of visitors. He would have done this by providing water for visitors to use before entering the tomb.

Many of the tombs in-clude a room or rooms for the rest of the owner’s family. These would always be smaller than the burial chamber of the tomb’s owner.

Ashley is always a wel-come visitor to our society and his talk this time was fascinat-ing for its detail and the focus on non-royal (albeit extremely rich) officials at this crucial stage of Egypt’s development.

Report – Pete Ste-phens

Mayer Hall Attic Sale The last sale made a

profit for WAES of almost £80. There is no date yet for the next one, but if you have items to donate please phone Jacky Finch on 334 6327.

Day Conference Glen Godenho has ar-

ranged a conference entitled ‘Archaeology and the Bible’ on Saturday 26 April. You can contact him at SACE or by email:ancworld@liverpool.ac.uk

‘Egyptianizing Liver-pool and Wirral’

The next two pages were written by our Member-ship Secretary, Fay Samuels, and based on her article pub-lished in the magazine ‘Ancient Egypt’ last year.

Ptahshepses Tomb , lintel with details of festivals, Liverpool Museums, courtesy of Ashley cooke

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Theses three photos do not appear in the printed version of the news-letter, but are extras. They all re-late to articles in the newsletter.

Hatchepsut’s Red Chapel, photo Peter Robinson

Liverpool Museums’ collection, photo courtesy of Ashley Cooke

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