Back to SAC 5, the New Kingdom pyramid cemetery on Sai Island

Posted on February 16, 2015 by Julia Budka

Recent fieldwork in the New Kingdom town, both at SAV1 East and SAV1 West, has added new data to our assessment that a very complex community of Egyptians and Nubians have been living on Sai Island during the 18^th Dynasty. However, it remains too early providing conclusive answers to the crucial questions who were the inhabitants of Sai in the New Kingdom era.

In the forthcoming years, a detailed comparison between the material found in the town and in the cemeteries will be undertaken – see already an earlier post.

For this purpose we just resumed work in the large New Kingdom cemetery SAC 5. This pyramid cemetery is probably the most important Egyptian cemetery of the island and was discovered in the season 1972-73. It lies approx. 800 m south of the Pharaonic town and was party excavated by the French mission, recently published as a substantial monograph in two volumes (Minault-Gout/Thill 2012). Similar to other Nubian sites like Aniba, Amara West and Tombos, Pharaonic-style tombs have been built at SAC5. This cemetery is of major importance because it was in use for a long period of time, covering the New Kingdom as well as the Pre-Napatan period (the so called Third Intermediate Period in Egypt). Its rock-cut tombs with mud-brick chapels and mostly pyramidal superstructures find close parallels at Aniba, Soleb and Amara West but also in Egypt, e.g. in the Theban necropolis.

Surface cleaning at SAC5, southern part.

I am very happy that we finally resumed work at this important site – we have chosen the southern part of the cemetery for our new investigation. We are currently cleaning the surface – of course hoping that we’ll soon have information whether this part of SAC5 still holds tombs to be excavated or not… As yet, the finds are still limited and range in date from the Neolithic period to the Ottoman and sub-recent era! However, some of the sherds are clearly mid-late 18^th Dynasty in date – very promising.

I am especially grateful that our work is undertaken in close cooperation with our French colleagues – Florence Thill, the former excavator of SAC5, will join us next week. Hopefully just in time for some exiting new discoveries!

Reference:

Minault-Gout, A./Thill, F. 2012: Saï II. Le cimetière des tombes hypogées du Nouvel Empire (SAC5), FIFAO 69, Cairo.

Vaults, pavements, pots and sealings: closing the New Kingdom town season

Posted on February 12, 2015 by Julia Budka

6 weeks have passed since we started work in SAV1 East and SAV1 West – today, we managed to finish the final tasks in the field and with the coming week we will move to the New Kingdom cemetery SAC5; work in the cemetery will keep us busy until the end of the 2015 season. Of course processing of finds and pottery from the town season will continue – the amount of finds was very impressive this season!

Martin Fera and Stefanie Juch finished documentation at SAV1 West – the cellar discovered in the last days of fieldwork in week 5 was successfully cleaned – its vault was still partly preserved.

Very nice small finds and a good collection of pottery were found in it – all datable to the 18^th Dynasty. At the moment, a mid (to possibly late) 18^th Dynasty date is most likely. All in all, SAV1 West yielded in 2015 both new features and more parallels to sector SAV1 North. Loads of useful data to deepen our understanding of domestic architecture and daily activities in 18^thDynasty Sai!

At SAV1 East, Feature 15 almost seemed like a never-ending story – but we managed to finish its excavation today! A very nice red brick pavement was reached in a depth of 1.20 m, still partly covered with a mud floor.

Dozens of intact vessels were found on this pavement and in the deposit above it, together with a substantial amount of clay sealings, small finds like figurines, gaming pieces, stone tools and faience beads. A large number of charcoal and numerous bones (often burnt) imply an association with food preparation respectively consumption. Besides work in the cemetery, processing of finds and ceramics from feature 15 will be one of the main goals of the upcoming 4 weeks. This structure is definitely of key importance for many aspects of living in a “temple town” like Sai Island.

More complete pots from Feature 15

Posted on February 10, 2015 by Julia Budka

Back in 2013, I was extremely happy to find two in situ vessels in the small storage bin in SAV1 East. Given the poor state of preservation of standing architecture and undisturbed deposits in this area, this really was – and still is – important, especially for the early New Kingdom use of our site.

However, things have now changed: never would I have imagined to find dozens and dozens and dozens of intact 18th Dynasty vessels in feature 15… we are currently progressing in cleaning the very ashy deposit within this large cellar – and cleaning more and more pots and other finds!

Especially along the northern and southern wall intact vessels were left there, stacked together and often piled one above the other. The variety of the corpus is large and comprises different types of dishes and plates, large storage vessels and zirs, amphorae, pot stands and bread moulds and bread plates.

Two almost complete vessels set agains the southern wall of feature 15.

Two almost complete vessels set against the southern wall of feature 15.

Imported amphora, set with other vessels close to the northern wall of feature 15.

Imported amphora, found together with other vessels close to the northern wall of feature 15.

One of the nicest pieces so far is an almost complete Canaanite amphora! We took it out today and Ken Griffin kindly helped sieving its contents. Being just half way through, he already found some nice clay sealings! More tomorrow insha’allah…

First clay sealings from SAV1 East!

Posted on February 8, 2015 by Julia Budka

After a short mid-season break, we continued today with some of our workmen at SAV1 East and SAV1 West – our cellars are keeping us busy.

Making good progress with feature 15…

The results from feature 15 are especially interesting: yesterday, I had the chance to sort the material sieved on Thursday – and, as I was very much hoping for, a quite considerable number of clay sealings came up! At least on 25 pieces a part of the seal impression is still preserved – including royal names, exciting and highly relevant!

Sieving of important contexts continues, promising more finds and especially seal impressions!

Today, thanks to the help of our washing man, I was now able to check the dating of the pottery from the context the clay sealings were found. Of course, this is for now just a preliminary assessment!

Hundreds of sherds from feature 15 have been washed already and are waiting to be processed.

Both ceramics and sealings cover a quite large time frame – ranging from the late Second Intermediate Period to Thutmoside times. At least two seals give the name of Thutmose III (Men-kheper-Ra) – this fits perfectly to the previously assumed building date of Building A and feature 15 based on the ceramics – both on the sherds from the last season and the newly excavated material. However, just in the last bag of the sieved material I checked today another seal impression came up: unfortunately broken in its upper part, the lower part of the scarab clearly reads “…-Maat-nb” – so probably this refers to no one else than Amenhotep III, Neb-Maat-Re! As of yet, the pottery does not support such a late date… Amenhotep III is however well attested on Sai Island and plenty of pottery excavated this season from SAV1 West is datable to his reign.

New finds and new questions – hopefully we’ll soon be able to say more!

End of fieldwork and more tasks at SAV1 West and East

Posted on February 5, 2015 by Julia Budka

Every archaeologist has experienced it: unexpected finds and new structures appearing of course on the very last days of fieldwork, changing the well-set schedule and planning – tearing one apart between joy, excitement and frustration because of challenging new tasks… Officially, fieldwork ended today in the New Kingdom town of Sai – five very successful weeks came to an end at both SAV1 East and SAV1 West. However, two cellars will keep us busy in the upcoming days… And both of them hold much potential – so we’re very happy despite the change of plan! Luckily, we still have one week left before we move on to the New Kingdom cemetery which will be the focus of the second part of AcrossBorders’ fieldseason.

Not a real surprise is that work at feature 15 will continue – its state of preservation is even better than I was hoping for: already five complete 18^th Dynasty vessels were unearthed, together with a large number of pot sherds – and more are still waiting for us in a seemingly undisturbed backfilling. Because sealed contexts are very rare at SAV1 East, we started to sieve all the material from this ashy deposit filling the eastern part of the feature – slowing down the working progress as were the nimiti and the heat today. The importance of feature 15 lies in its potential for fine-dating the early phases of use at SAV1 East.

Feature 15 will keep us busy…

A real surprise was on the contrary the discovery of a collapsed cellar in Square 1 at SAV1 West – causing us to extend this trench from 2014 once again, now towards the East. This structure still needs to be fully excavated and promises interesting material, probably of mid-18^th Dynasty date.

Unexpected find at SAV1 West: a cellar still to be fully excavated.

Although we will see some of them soon again, I want to take this opportunity to thank all of our Sudanese workmen: Like in the last years, the gang directed by Imad Shorbagi did an amazing job – without them our work would not be possible and this is very much appreciated.

The 2015 team working in the Pharaonic town.

SAV1 East, Feature 15 – an Update

Posted on February 3, 2015 by Julia Budka

Exactly 2 years after I first posted something about an intriguing structure at SAV1 East, I am back at work there – aiming to finally finish excavating a feature which gave me already much to think about…

Originally believed to be a Post-New Kingdom, intrusive structure set into the courtyard of Building A, I now think that feature 15 is a large rectangular cellar of the 18^th Dynasty building horizon at SAV1 East. Its inner side is lined with red-bricks and a plaster coating – quite unusual and so far without parallel in our working areas on Sai Island.

Its full excavation was delayed due to several reasons, also because its northern wall runs directly below our baulk between Squares 1 and 2 respectively Squares 3 and 4.

Feature 15, status Feb. 2014 (Martin Fera for AcrossBorders).

In the last days we successfully removed this baulk and the upper backfilling levels which are nicely illustrated here in the SFM model created by Martin Fera of the status in February 2014!

Buried below windblown sand and some debris, we found and cleaned more of the bricks of feature 15 today, but a lot of back filling still remains to be removed… work continues!

Exposing more bricks of the northern wall of feature 15.

Stone Tools at Sai Island

Posted on January 31, 2015 by Kenneth Griffin Meg Gundlach

By far, stone tools make up the majority of the small finds we handle each day. Even for a settlement site, both the East and West trenches are unearthing tools in unusually large quantities. Due to both the long history of use and the frequent employment of naturally shaped pebbles, these tools are extremely difficult to date. While they are common within our Eighteenth Dynasty contexts, we must admit that the area around the local medieval church is also littered with identical examples. The use of the natural rock shape can hamper the recognition and identification of these objects, and we were lucky to receive a crash course from Silvia Prell, an expert on macrolithics, who was here at Sai for the beginning of the season.

This year, the most commonly represented types of tool are pounders; heavy pebbles that can be used to grind and mix material against a slab of stone. These can come in multiple shapes and sizes, as well as a variety of materials.

One of the numerous pounders from SAV1 East (SAV1E 1823).

The example shown here (SAV1E 1823) is made from a quartz pebble, which are extremely abundant on the Island. Despite being broken in half, it is clear that the tool was roughly spherical in shape, with percussions marks present along the entire circumference, thus indicating that it was well used.

Hand mills and grindstones, which are used together, are the next most common stone tools from Sai with 175 and 142 pieces already registered this year. Both are usually made from quartzite, although it is also possible for them to be made out of sandstone. Though some complete examples have been found, many are highly fragmentary, such as this hand mill (SAV1W 1189).

Fragmentary hand mill from SAV1 West (SAV1W 1189).

This season 173 whetstones have been registered into the database. A whetstone, mainly in the form of a piece of sandstone, is a sharpening stone used for knives and other cutting tools. SAV1W 720 is a good example of this in which multiple faces of the stone were utilized, as can be clearly seen by the deep grooves on the surface.

Example of a whetstone from SAV1 West (SAV1W 720).

In our last blog post we asked our readers for comments and suggestions on a curious fragment of wood. We are grateful for all your suggestions on the identity of this object! This week we have an even stranger object for you to ponder.

Another curious object – this time in stone and from SAV1 West (SAV1W 1184).

SAV1W 1184 is a small natural pebble, irregularly shaped, which seems to have been worked. Small grooves appear to be carved at fairly regular intervals on the stone. Is this really a worked stone or is it simply the work of nature? If worked, what might this object represent and how old is it?

The New Kingdom town of Sai: end of week 4

Posted on January 29, 2015 by Julia Budka

It has been a very busy and challenging week – very hot and loads of biting nimiti-flies in the first half, now a bit cooler and windy. Giulia D’Ercole, Huda Magzoub and me went to Kerma for our very successful pottery workshop, bringing together a number of colleagues working at other New Kingdom sites. During the two days we were gone from Sai, Martin Fera, Stefanie Juch and Jördis Vieth supervised the cleaning of SAF2, the so-called governor’s residence. Despite the splendid results of the Laser Scanning Campaign in 2014, we were aiming for a better understanding of this key building in the southern part of the town, especially its pavements. Ingrid Adenstedt, presently busy working from back home in Vienna, will include our new SFM model from this season for her general reconstruction of the Pharaonic remains in the town area.

Martin Fera – fighting nimiti and taking SFM photographs of SAF2.

In the magazine, Giulia was busy collecting new samples for our iNAA analysis – the current focus is on what we assume to be Egyptian Nile clay wares, produced in Egypt and imported to Sai. We sampled already a number of cooking pots in 2014 – now various types of dishes, plates and small beakers will be tested.

Ken Griffin and Meg Gundlach continued their fantastic job of organizing the storage of finds after the registration of each object – everything from small faience beads to re-used sherds, figurines, curious wooden objects, abundant stone tools to architectural pieces.

At SAV1 East, work focused on Square 4 and 4a. As reported in an earlier post, we found new sections of walls in this southern part of the area. Today a large area still covered with what seems to be an early 18^th Dynasty pavement was unearthed in the southwestern corner. We are very exciting about this good state of preservation and will continue in this part of SAV1 East in the upcoming week!

New sections of mud brick walls and remains of a nice pavement in the western part of SAV1 East.

At SAV1 West, Martin Fera and Stefanie Juch focused on the eastern half of Square 1S. In the last two days, we managed to join this new trench with Square 1, excavated in 2014 by removing the latters southern baulk according to its stratigraphy. The deposits and findings in both squares closely resemble each other and allow to a much better understanding of the occupation phases within the town.

Present status of eastern halfs of Square 1 and Square 1S in SAV1 West.

Present status of eastern half of Square 1 and Square 1S in SAV1 West.

At present, the dating of the exposed mud brick structures sitting on stratigraphic layers and cut by later pits is still unclear – there are hints for a date much later than the 18^th Dynasty. However, checking today’s pottery from Square 1, there was quite a pleasant surprise: the uppermost filling, still covering what seems to be the early occupation (with several phases), yielded a significant amount of early 19^th Dynasty sherds! This is extremely exciting! We know of course about activities under Seti I on Sai, but until today these were scattered and fragmented finds, archaeological proof of a continuous occupation is still lacking… Much potential and many open questions for our next week of work!

Furthermore, during this week Miranda Semple, the project’s micromorphologist, started sampling with a focus on SAV1 West. Especially promising are samples from the small “wall street” running along the town enclosure wall potentially highlighting daily activities such as waste but also giving information about the maintenance of the street etc.

Simultaneously with the excavation, the first micromorphological samples were taken this week.

Samples from inside the newly exposed buildings will complement these street remains and hopefully help us to understand the very complex formation processes at SAV1 West.

Sayantani Neogi, the project’s geoarchaeologist, was very busy these days with research on the sandstone cliff along the eastern side of the town and the question of a possible landing place during the New Kingdom. Her first observations are already highly interesting and important for reconstructing the past landscape.

All in all, the first four weeks of AcrossBorders’ 2015 field season were extremely productive and have yielded significant new data – confirming results from the last seasons, but also giving room to new thoughts and innovative lines of research.

Discussing New Kingdom ceramics at Kerma

Posted on January 26, 2015 by Julia Budka

Huda Magzoub, Giulia D’Ercole and me just returned to Sai from a very successful ceramic meeting in Kerma. This was actually the third time that colleagues working on New Kingdom sites in Nubia gathered for a 2-day on-site workshop to discuss fabrics, wares, vessel typologies and much more. The first meeting was held on Sai Island in 2012, followed by a meeting in Amara West in 2013 and we are very grateful to the Swiss Mission working at Dukki Gel/Kerma directed by Charles Bonnet that they hosted this year’s meeting. Philippe Ruffieux, the mission’s ceramicist, organized a splendid meeting bringing together colleague from Tombos (Stuart Tyson Smith and Bruce Williams), Amara West (Anna Garnett and Alice Salvador) and Sai Island (the three of us).
We had the great chance to look at samples and sherds from all the sites under investigation – this time the very close parallels between newly excavated material from Dukki Gel and Sai were among the prime interests.

Our joint application of petrography (OM) and iNAA shows some significant differences between “Egyptian style” and “Egyptian” vessels from Sai – work in progress!

Giulia gave a brief update of our ongoing petrographical and chemical analyses of New Kingdom fabrics and clays from Sai. We tried to explain why we do think that some of the Nile clay vessels are real imports from Egypt (especially painted wares, cooking pots and small dishes), whereas the majority was of course produced locally in “Egyptian style” on the wheel. Unfortunately we are still missing any evidence for pottery kilns datable to the 18th Dynasty on Sai.
The highlight of our 2 days at Kerma was of course the tour led by Charles Bonnet through the excavations at Dukki Gel and the visit to the site museum!

Amazing tour with Charles Bonnet through his recent findings at Dukki Gel.

Looking much forward to future meetings and a continuous fruitful exchange! I would like to express once more my gratitude to the Swiss mission hosting us during a very busy (and hot) week of their own fieldwork – very much appreciated!

A Curious Wooden Object from SAV1 East

Posted on January 23, 2015 by Kenneth Griffin Meg Gundlach

This past week a curious wooden object (SAV1E 1913) was unearthed at SAV1 East, currently being excavated by Julia Budka, Jördis Vieth and Huda Magzoub, which has generated much discussion between the team and the house staff. At first there was disappointment as it was thought that, based on the shape of the object, we had stumbled across a modern tool (screwdriver), which had been discarded by earlier excavators of the site. However, once the object had been removed from the trench it was clear that this was not the case.

The wooden object SAV1E 1913.

The object, which is approximately 10cm in length, appears to be broken roughly in half lengthwise. The top of the piece is bulbous in shape, ending in a slight point. It is nicely embellished with three lightly incised bands, each consisting of three strands, which encircle the piece. This leads to a platform, just less than 1cm thick, which contains a slight decorative lip at the top. Finally, the object contains a fairly long and slender rod, which tapers at the point. Looking at it from the broken side, the piece resembles the shape of the familiar Egyptian ankh-sign.

What exactly is this object and what era does it date to? It was excavated in a substantial debris layer along the southern edge of Square 4, comprised of mixed material ranging in date from the early 18^th Dynasty to the Ottoman period.

One suggestion is that the object is part of a decorative piece of furniture, perhaps the knob from a chest of drawers or something similar.

The main problem with this is that the rod would extend too far into the furniture, which seems impractical. Could the object be a wooden spindle, a device to spin fibres into thread? While it is an attractive proposal, this time it seems that the rod would have been too short!

Wooden spindle.

Another suggestion is that it could be a top or spinning top, a toy which is designed to be spun rapidly on the ground. Despite the fact this type of toy is known from as early as the Pharaonic period, the overall shape makes this also unlikely.

Spinning top.

Perhaps the most practical use for the object, as proposed by our Sudanese housekeeper Sidahmed, is that it is part of a kohl pot. In this case, the bulbous part would form the handle, the platform would act as the lid, and the rod would be used as an applicator for the kohl. While kohl is a well-known cosmetic to be used by the Egyptians, it can still be found in many African countries today, such as these elaborate examples from Morocco. Therefore, the date of the object could range from the Pharaonic Period to modern times, with the latter bring the most likely scenario.

Moroccan Kohl pots.

We welcome any suggestions and comments from our readers both on the function of this object and its dating!

Image credits

Spinning top – http://museumvictoria.com.au/collections/items/254178/spinning-top-wood-tonala-mexico-1962-1963

Spindle – https://awalimofstormhold.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/5thcentwoodenspindle.jpeg

AcrossBorders

This is the blog of the ERC starting grant project AcrossBorders (ERC grant agreement n° 313668)

Category Archives: 18th Dynasty