Fishing for more details of 18th Dynasty contexts

Posted on November 8, 2015 by Julia Budka

We are already well into week 3 here at Elephantine. Reinforcement from Munich reached us – Giulia D’Ercole and Mona Elazab joined us yesterday. Giulia is concentrating on the petrographic assessment of the Nubian fabrics in comparison to Sai Island. Mona is assisting Meg Gundlach in the object registration while Eva Hemauer and Oliver Frank Stephan are still busy drawing ceramic vessels.

Two groups of vessels are of special interest besides the Nubian wares. First, the intriguing fire dogs – with a recent find from today, we are now up to 4 pieces directly associated with house 55. Compared to Sai Island, this is of course an almost ridiculous small amount. However, the total number of fire dogs from all early-mid 18^th dynasty levels at Elephantine only comes up to 9! So actually the amount of fire dogs found in our building is quite significant within the local context. And since excavation of house 55 continues, there might even be more fire dogs waiting for us!

The second group of vessels are the so called “fish dishes” which kept us busy both at Sai and here at Elephantine in the past years. One of my first ideas was that the preference for Nile silt “fish dishes” on Sai Island compared to Marl clay version indicate that the “real” Egyptian Marl B/E trays were frequently reproduced in Nubia – and for this local material (Nile silt) was used. However, already last year things got more complicated: from site SAV1 West, a large number of Marl “fish dishes” were unearthed falling into exactly the same types as known at Elephantine, currently being studied for house 55.

Today, I just a very nice fragment of a Nile “fish dish” on my desk – coming from house 55 and closely resembling the Sai pieces – in ware, technique, shape and decorative pattern. Checking the pottery database, it surprised me a bit that from 19 “fish dishes” documented so far in house 55, 6 are made in Nile clay. For all 18th Dynasty layers and a total of 33 “fish dishes” only 9 were made in Nile clay. Thus, if one checks the proportions between Nile and Marl “fish dishes” not just on Elephantine, but takes the specific example of house 55 it becomes clear that the Nile versions were also quite frequent (31 %). The general preference for Marl clay is of course persistent for “fish dishes” at Egyptian sites (see e.g. https://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/museums/2014/03/21/pottery-project-guest-blog-the-enigmatic-fish-dishes-of-the-petrie-museum/).

All in all, the current study of the material from house 55 nicely illustrates the rich potential of a focused analysis of finds from one specific context, especially if these data are at a later stage compared to other contexts on the site-level and, if possible, even on a more regional scale like we are aiming for with our study.

Linking and differentiating Sai and Elephantine further

Posted on October 29, 2015 by Julia Budka

The first week of our season on Elephantine just flew by! There are also many things and tasks keeping us busy, besides the glorious surroundings and wonderful setting.

As announced earlier on this blog, the 2015 season on Elephantine, concentrates on the material excavated by the Swiss Institute from House 55. The presence of Nubian ceramics is highly relevant, especially for establishing links between the region of the First Cataract and Sai Island.

While my assistants are busy with drawing Egyptian type vessels, I was mainly focusing on Nubian pottery this week. A set of 35 Nubian sherds was studied in detail and drawn. There are striking similarities between the Nubian pottery corpus from Elephantine and Sai – especially regarding the fabrics, both the black topped fine ware and cooking pots with basketry impressions. But there are also certain differences, suggesting maybe a more “local” Lower Nubian tradition here on Elephantine like a preference for incised decoration.

The percentage of Nubian ceramics within House 55 very nicely compares to both SAV1 North and SAV1 West – from 4119 sherds studied in this first week, 140 were Nubian pieces. 3.4 % equals our findings in Sai Island where the average was 3-5 % during the early to mid-18^th Dynasty.

Among others, Egyptian water jars, so-called zir vessels, are common features here on Elephantine. A considerable number of them are present in House 55.

Typical early to mid-18th Dynasty Marl zir vessels from Elephantine (after Budka 2005).

Although the typical Nile clay versions of this vessel group are also known, most of these large jars are made in a very typical Marl clay variant. And here another difference to Sai can be observed – at Sai, the Nile clay vessels dominate, the Marl clay vessels are present, but only in small numbers.

Typical Nile clay zir-like vessel from Sai (after Budka 2011).

Whether this indicates a different system of water storage or the Nile clay variants simply replaced the Marl clay jars in Sai (produced locally “on demand” once the imported ones were no longer functionable/out of stock), will be considered further, taking related pottery types like drinking cups and beakers into account.

References

Budka, J. 2005 XII. Zur Keramik des Neuen Reiches – erste Beobachtungen anhand des Materials aus der Oststraße B II, in G. Dreyer et al., Stadt und Tempel von Elephantine, 31./32. Grabungsbericht, Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts, Abteilung Kairo 61, 90–116.

Budka, J. 2011 The early New Kingdom at Sai Island: Preliminary results based on the pottery analysis (4^th Season 2010), Sudan & Nubia 15, 23–33.

Making progress – post and pre-excavation working steps

Posted on October 14, 2015 by Julia Budka

Another jour fixe brought most of AcrossBorders’ team members together yesterday – after a very intense summer full of excavations in Egypt (Asasif, Abydos…), lab work (geoarchaeological samples, strontium isotope analysis, mollusks…), data base updates (pottery) & conferences (Florence, Vienna, Athens)!

Currently travelling back and forth between Vienna and Munich, I am very happy that the planned publications by Ingrid Adenstedt (reconstruction of SAV1; architectural report) and Florence Doyen (SAV1 North) are well in time and almost completed. Furthermore, nice first results came up from the strontium isotope analysis!

Within the framework of my FWF START-project, a first set of samples from Sai Island (soil, water, recent and ancient animal bones) were processed, thanks to a cooperation with Thomas Prohaska, at the Department of Chemistry – VIRIS Laboratory of the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences. Anika Retzmann presented these data at the 3rd Doc Day 2015 in Tulln, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences on Oct. 13. The poster was entitled “Human mobility along the Nile: Preliminary strontium isotope analyses for migration studies in ancient Nubia” and illustrated the Sr isotope ratio of the environmental samples from Sai Island. Very exciting already and I am looking much forward to the next field season and further sampling!

Besides lab work and databases, we are currently also getting ready for the upcoming season on Elephantine! Work will again focus on the pottery and small finds from House 55 and is scheduled for late October until early December. With the new discovery of feature 15 and its contents at SAV1 East, I am excited to conduct a fresh comparison of aspects of the material culture from Sai and Elephantine during the early to mid-18^th Dynasty. Now off to Vienna, we’ll keep you posted!

The 5th International Congress for Young Egyptologists in Vienna

Posted on September 22, 2015 by Jördis Vieth

Every third year, the International Congress for Young Egyptologists takes place and this time it was hosted by the University of Vienna in corporation with the Austrian Academy of Sciences from September 15-19 in Vienna, Austria. The key theme of the conference was “Tradition and Transformation in Ancient Egypt”, so I took the chance to apply with an abstract for a paper entitled “New Kingdom temple towns in Nubia: Transformation of an (urban) landscape”. Thanks to the scientific committee, I got accepted and was one of 33 speakers! 33 people coming really from all over the world: Australia, United States of America, Japan, United Kingdom, Spain, Italy, France, Poland, Hungary, Serbia, Czech Republic, Belgium, Germany and of course Austria. Talks with an overwhelming wide range of topics in archaeology, cultural and social studies, religion and ancient beliefs, art, material culture and philology were presented. Additionally Manfred Bietak, E. Cristiana Köhler and Ian Shaw gave very interesting keynote lectures.

Impressions from the International Congress for Young Egyptologists in Vienna, 2015.

I presented my own talk on the very first day within the morning session, so I could relax and enjoy the remaining days with all the talks to come! My presentation dealt with the preliminary results of my ongoing PhD-dissertation on the New Kingdom temple towns in Nubia and was focussed on the display of a supposed development of these settlement structures over almost 500 years and considerations about the typology resulting from this compilation. Furthermore, I tried to show the impact that the construction of temple towns had in Nubia on urban and cultural transformation processes.

In both the discussion following my talk and in the more informal ones afterwards, I got stimulating feedback and some interesting remarks, which will help me with my ongoing research. Time for meeting old and new friends and colleagues was guaranteed by the generously made time schedule for breaks and receptions, for instance at the Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien. On the last day of the conference we enjoyed typically Viennese cuisine with, of course – Schnitzel! So, it was in every respect a very successful conference! Hereby I would like to thank Andrea Kahlbacher, Elisa Priglinger and all the others who helped organizing this great conference! See you at the 6th International Congress for Young Egyptologists in 2018, then in Leiden.

Down and up again – impressions from the shaft of tomb 26 on Sai

Posted on September 18, 2015 by Julia Budka

Having just submitted a paper about our new discovery of tomb 26 in cemetery SAC5, Sai Island, for Sokar (focusing on the pyramidion of the deputy of Kush Hornakht), I got to review the entire documentation of the excavation of the shaft in March 2015.

As a reminder: the rectangular shaft (2.6 x 1.8 m) of tomb 26 is a bit more than 5.2 m deep – it has several interesting features and revealed some significant finds. I would like to share some of them in the following photographic time line:

March 3: The outline of the shaft is discovered, hurray!

March 4: First foot holes appear on the lateral sides! Current depth: 1.7 m!

March 5: Down at 2 m! Work gets more difficult!

March 5: A schist slab appears along the southern side.

March 5: Martin Fera documents the situation with the fully exposed schist slab with SFM – down at 2.5 m.

March 5: Getting ready to get the slab out…

March 5: Done – mabrouk to all!

March 5, afternoon: Uuuups… really a challenge to measure this deep shaft…

March 7: Work continues, worked stone blocks appear!

March 7: Space is limited down at the shaft, but the foot holes are perfect for climbing up and down.

March 7: Standing safely in the foot holes, I could shoot photos in both directions.

March 8: The entrance of the burial chamber appears on the northern side!

March 8: Together with other worked stone, sitting on complete pottery vessels, the pyramidion of Hornakht is discovered and cleaned!

March 9: The situation below the pyramidion – lots of nice pots!

March 10: Shaft base reached, entrance of burial chamber cleared!

March 10: Martin using the ancient foot holes during the final SFM documentation.

March 11: Shaft backfilled again – secure to wait for the 2016 season!

Last steps in recording Faience vessels from Sai Island, New Kingdom town

Posted on September 8, 2015 by Julia Budka

Time flies by – only some months ago, we were working in the magazine of Sai Island documenting the different groups of objects. Sabine Tschorn had the special task to focus on faience vessels form the New Kingdom town. Most of the vessels within this group represent Nun- or marsh-bowls, frequently depicting marsh scenes with fishes, lotus plants and other motifs.

Sabine just came for a few days to Munich – in order to discuss things, to finalise small details of the drawings and records. We are in particular focusing on the distribution of the faience vessels – most of them were found in SAV1 North and SAV1 West and seem to be of late 18th Dynasty date. Adding the stratigraphical information and context as well as the data from the associated pottery will hopefully allow Sabine the fine-dating of some of the fragments.

Looking much forward to the outcome of these days of checking and adding post-excavation data!

Fire dogs and food preparation on Sai

Posted on September 7, 2015 by Julia Budka

Among the most interesting functional vessel types found in the New Kingdom town of Sai are so-called fire dogs, currently studied by Nicole Mosiniak.

The common assumption is that these vessels were used to hold a cooking pot over a fire. In 2014, thanks to the cooperation and help of the University of Vienna and the NHM, we conducted one experimental project on fire dogs at the “MAMUZ” open-air Museum in Asparn (Lower Austria).

We had several questions we wanted to investigate, first of all the way of manufacture of the fire dogs and their possible function(s). All in all, our experiments showed that cooking is possible with copies of the Ancient Egyptian devices – but it is still not a very convincing way of preparing food, thus Nicole is still taking into consideration also other possible uses respectively a multi-functional use.

Our modern copies of ancient fire dogs holding a cooking pot above the fire place in Asparn.

This year, an interesting new find came up in SAV1 East. From this sector, until 2014 only five fire dogs were documented – except for one all from surface layers and thus without proper context. This should change during the 2015 season while excavating feature 15.

Feature 15 is a subterranean room located in the central courtyard of Building A. It is of rectangular shape and once had a vaulted roof. Feature 15 is lined with red bricks and red bricks also form the pavement of the structure.

Ashy deposits, large amounts of charcoal, hundreds of dome-palm fruits and abundant animal bones with traces of burning, suggest that feature 15 might have been used as a room for food preparation. Among more than 80 almost intact vessels, mostly plates and dishes, beakers, storage jars and pot stands, there was also a fragment of a fire dog.

Drawing of fire dog fragment from feature 15 (Oliver Frank Stephan).

SAV1W P163 has a rim diameter of c. 16 cm and shows traces of burning on several spots. It is the first fire dog found on Sai from a sealed context dating to the early-mid 18^th Dynasty. Although its function is not explicit, the associated finds from feature 15 might point towards a use within food preparation and here as support for cooking pots. However, it should be noted that only one cooking pot was found in feature 15.

All in all, the fresh finds from feature 15 stress that the large number of fire dogs from Sai might result from a quite complex use of these devices which is still not completely understood.

Nubian household pottery on Elephantine and its potential

Posted on August 18, 2015 by Julia Budka

Having just returned from – despite the heat wave – a very pleasant stay in Luxor, I am currently working on the ceramic database of the material from Elephantine. As mentioned in earlier posts, the striking similarities between the early 18^th Dynasty levels on Sai Island and Elephantine are currently of key priority for our research.

The upcoming season on Elephantine, scheduled for October-December 2015, will concentrate on freshly excavated material as well as on Nubian pottery from House 55. The latter are of high interest, especially for establishing links between Sai and the region of the First Cataract.

At present, 28 Nubian sherds from House 55 were documented in the database and by drawings and photos. Most of them are cooking pots of various types, but also storage vessel, drinking cups and fine ware are present. Black topped Kerma beakers appear in different qualities. The rim sherd 27606G/c-01 was made in a very fine Nubian fabric and compares well to fragments from the New Kingdom town of Sai and also Kerma itself.

Nubian storage vessel and Black Topped Kerma Beaker from House 55.

Very interesting is a large storage vessel of a type well attested both in the Kerma cemeteries and in the Pharanic town on Sai. 27605N/b-03 illustrates the use of a heavily chaff-tempered, coarse Nubian fabric – a fabric attested for large Nubian cooking pots but most often for thick-walled storage vessels.

It will be of particular value to establish, once the excavation of House 55 is completed, the percentage of Nubian pottery within the whole ceramic corpus and the total number and distribution of the various household vessel types – comparing these data with building units on Sai might allow further thoughts about the coexistence of Nubians and Egyptians at the beginning of the New Kingdom.

Some thoughts on the Legitimization of Pharaonic Power in Nubia

Posted on August 6, 2015 by Julia Budka

Back in 2013, I was fortunate to participate in the highly interesting 7. Tagung zur Königsideologie (June 26-28 2013), hosted by the Charles University in Prague and dedicated to “Royal versus Divine Authority. Acquisition, Legitimization and Renewal of Power”. The proceedings are now published and I would like to summarise some of my ideas given in this paper (Budka 2015).

Taking Sai Island and the evolution of its fortified town of the New Kingdom with a small sandstone temple as a case study, I tried to re-examine the evidence for Egyptian authority in Upper Nubia during the Eighteenth Dynasty. Focal points are the viceregal administration, the most important deities, the temples and the royal cult in Nubia. Considerable limits in assessing real dynamics in Upper Nubia during the early New Kingdom are highlighted and the potential of an approach which includes both archaeological and textual sources is stressed.

AcrossBorders’ work on the evolution of the Pharaonic settlement at Sai Island is still in progress – our 2015 field season resulted in many interesting new finds highly relevant for administrative aspects. In 2013, the purpose of my Prague paper was presenting preliminary results and highlighting the potential contribution of settlement archaeology to understand power structures during the New Kingdom.

The basic outline of the Egyptian Administration in Nubia is well understood and has been discussed by several scholars, most recently by Müller (2013) and Morkot (2013). Tracing the local administration on a regional level becomes more difficult, and here it is especially challenging to speak about the persons involved. I tried to address in the paper some of the individuals behind the “re-conquest” of Kush and speak about personal dynamics, taking the viceroys of Kush and mayors as examples. Two individuals with the title “H3tj-c” have been buried on Sai (Minault-Gout/Thill 2012), but as yet no in situ evidence for the mayor of Sai was found within the walled town.

All in all, I hope to have illustrated in the article the changing character of Sai from the reign of Ahmose Nebpehtyra to Thutmose III, very well traceable in both the architecture and the material culture. The “re-conquest” of Kush was a long process with changing Pharaonic authority and differing areas of influence. The new administrative system and the divine kingship established under Thutmose III reflect political changes and altered power structures in Upper Nubia (cf. Török 2009), and within this system Sai developed to become a very important centre.

Our still limited understanding of the real dynamics in Upper Nubia during the early New Kingdom will hopefully be improved by the ongoing fieldwork on key sites like Sai, Sesebi and others. Quoting from my paper: “At present, it is essential to consider the lack of evidence for Egyptian authority in Kush at the beginning of the New Kingdom, but to carefully distinguish it from confirmed lack of presence.” (Budka 2015, 81).

References:

Budka 2015 = J. Budka, The Egyptian “Re-conquest of Nubia” in the New Kingdom – Some Thoughts on the Legitimization of Pharaonic Power in the South, in: Royal versus Divine Authrority. Acquisiation, Legitimization and Renewal of Power, 7^th Symposium on Egyptian Royal Ideology, Prague, June 26-28, 2013, ed. by F. Coppens, J. Janák & H. Vymazalová, Königtum, Staat und Gesellschaft früher Hochkulturen 4,4, Wiesbaden 2015, 63-82.

Minault-Gout/Thill 2012 = A. Minault-Gout, F. Thill, Saï II. Le cimetière des tombes hypogées du Nouvel Empire (SAC5), Fouilles de l’Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale 69, Cairo 2012.

Morkot 2013 = R. Morkot, From conquered to conqueror: the organization of Nubia in the New Kingdom and the Kushite administration of Egypt, in J. C. Moreno García (ed.), The Administration of Egypt, Handbuch der Orientalistik 104, Leiden 2013, 911-963.

Müller 2013 = I. Müller, Die Verwaltung Nubiens im Neuen Reich, Meroitica 18, Wiesbaden 2013.

Török 2009 = L. Török, Between Two Worlds: The Frontier Region between Ancient Nubia and Egypt 3700 BC – 500 AD, Probleme der Ägyptologie 29, Leiden 2009.

A Lab-orious Summer

Posted on July 26, 2015 by Sayantani Neogi

Our readers must be thinking why ‘lab-orious’? Well, our geoarchaeological samples are grabbing all my attention during this time of the summer. As a result, quite willingly, a lot of laborious time is being spent in the ‘lab’. Obviously, the reason behind this is an underlying eagerness towards analysing the end products, i.e., the thin sections as soon as possible!

After having travelled quite a few thousand kilometers from Sai Island, all the samples had arrived at the McBurney Laboratory of Geoarchaeology, University of Cambridge in perfect condition in June 2015. Thereafter, laboratory procedures had begun which include thin section manufacturing followed by microscopic analysis, geochemical analyses of loose soil/sediments and finally integration of these several strands of data for interpretation.

The process of manufacturing the thin sections is being undertaken following the method described by Murphy (Murphy 1986; Goldberg and Macphail 2006). The soil/sediment blocks were first removed from the cling film, air dried on a shelf for one to two weeks, before being dried in an oven for two days (48 hours) at 40°C. This was followed by impregnation with a mixture of crystallitic polymer resin (1700ml), acetone (200ml) and catalyst (methyl ethyl ketone peroxide or MEKP) (0.5ml). The samples were then left under a vacuum-pumping machine for 24 hours so as to allow infiltration of the resin into the soil pore space.

These impregnated blocks have now been left for curing in a fume cupboard (at least for two-three months) for complete hardening. When fully consolidated, they will be converted into thin sections.

Stay tuned for more updates on last stage of thin section manufacturing and obviously for the updates on analysis.

References:

Goldberg, P. and Macphail, R. (2006). Practical and Theoretical Geoarchaeology. Blackwell Science Ltd, Oxford.

Murphy, C. (1986). Thin Section Preparation of Soils and Sediments. AB Academic Publishers, Berhamsted.

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Category Archives: Upper Nubia