Back in Vienna again …

Posted on August 26, 2013 by Julia Budka

Running is risky…

The rainy weather here in Vienna strengthens the impression that the summer is almost over – at least the holidays are gone. Back at my desk in Vienna, not exactly in best shape (running is risky, obviously especially in Berlin…), but very happy about the progress Giulia is making in the lab with her petrographic studies and about the advancement in digitalizing our files and data thanks to Daniela and Elke! The selected samples for Neutron Activation Analysis were successfully submitted to the Institute of Atomic and Subatomic Physics last week, so we’re eagerly waiting for first results in September.

Meeting so many of my team members in Berlin was just great – many thanks to Jördis, Nicole and Sebastian for taking some time to talk about SAV1 East, firedogs and more! I am furthermore keeping my fingers crossed that Julia Preisigke, like Nicole one of my indispensable pottery assistants at Abydos, will join us as planned in 2014 on Sai Island. There is quite a number of similarities between the 18^th Dynasty pottery deposited at Umm el-Qaab and the ceramics we are finding at Sai – parallels which have to be investigated further!

These nice prospects of both upcoming scientific analysis and future fieldwork make it much easier to deal with the paperwork here at my desk!

The gold of Kush

Posted on July 18, 2013 by Julia Budka

Nubia is famous for its rich supply of gold and it is well known that Nubian gold was among the main Egyptian economic interests during a long time span (cf. Vercoutter 1959). During the London colloquium last week, the role of gold for the Egyptian presence in Nubia was discussed again.

There is increasing evidence that the location of the Egyptian New Kingdom sites in the Abri-Delgo-reach as rich gold ore region was important for their function (see Klemm & Klemm 2013, also Darnell 2013, 828). For example, recent work at Sesebi has stressed the importance of gold exploitation for the function of the site (Spence/Rose 2009; Spence et al. 2011). Evidence from Tombos (Stuart T. Smith) and Amara West (Neal Spencer) show a similar picture. Also Sai Island had direct access to gold ores and probably played a role in gold mining of the New Kingdom.

The German geologists Rosmarie and Dieter Klemm gave a very interesting paper in London – and more information can be found in their recent publication “Gold and Gold Mining in Ancient Egypt and Nubia.” According to the Klemms, gold mining expanded during the 18^th dynasty to large scale in Nubia. They could trace a significant change in processing and prospecting methods, most importantly “the introduction of the grinding mill to the mining industry in the New Kingdom” (Klemm & Klemm 2013, 9) which allowed the increased exploitation of auriferous quartz vein systems. From their point of view, there is a connection between Ancient Egypt’s gold mining industry in the Abri-Delgo-reach and the New Kingdom temples of the region (Klemm & Klemm 2013, 568-570). And indeed – at all of the sites mentioned, mills and grinding stones suitable for producing quartz powder have been found.

Kushites bringing gold to Egypt, tomb of Viceroy Huy (Thebes)

Back in 1959, Vercoutter reconstructed the amount of gold coming from Kush in contrast to Wawat according to Egyptian texts (Vercoutter 1959, 135): there is a clear difference, especially during the reign of Thutmose III (also the starting date of the Royal building activity in the region) when much more gold of Wawat was registered. From the time of Amenhotep III onwards, Kush seems to have gained in importance as gold mining area – scenes like the famous representations in the tomb of Viceroy Huy illustrate that gold was an important item sent to Egypt at the end of the 18^th Dynasty. Textual evidence implies a decline in gold production in Ramesside time – something we might be able to confirm or modify by future archaeological fieldwork!

References

Darnell 2013 = John C. Darnell, A Bureaucratic Challenge? Archaeology and Administration in a Desert Environment (Second Millennium B.C.E.), in J.C. Moreno García (ed.), The Administration of Egypt, HdO 104, Leiden 2013, 785-830.

Klemm & Klemm 2013 = Rosemarie Klemm, Dietrich Klemm, Gold and Gold Mining in Ancient Egypt and Nubia. Geoarchaeology of the Ancient Gold Mining Sites in the Egyptian and Sudanese Eastern Deserts, Natural Science in Archaeology, Heidelberg, New York, Dordrecht, London: Springer, 2013

Spence/Rose 2009 = Kate Spence, Pam Rose, Fieldwork at Sesebi, 2009, Sudan & Nubia 13, 2009, 38–46.

Spence et al. 2011 = Kate Spence et al., Sesebi 2011, Sudan & Nubia 15, 2011, 34–39.

Vercoutter 1959 = Jean Vercoutter, The Gold of Kush, Kush 7, 1959, 120-153.

Hybrid pottery types at Egyptian sites in Nubia

Posted on July 15, 2013 by Julia Budka

An interesting phenomenon was addressed during several papers at the colloquium last week in London: The appearance of “hybrid” pottery types – locally produced vessels modelled on Egyptian types, but with a “Nubian” influence as far as the surface treatment, production technique or decoration is concerned. Well attested at Sai, Amara West and Sesebi, such types raise a number of questions. Egyptian style vessels made of local fabrics, shaped by hand or (clumsily) wheel-made with a Nubian surface treatment like ripple burnishing or incised decoration might be products of a temporary or local fashion. It remains to be investigated whether they also refer to the cultural identity of their users or whether they are the results of more complicated processes. All in all, hybrid pottery types from New Kingdom levels seem to attest a complex mixture of life styles in Upper Nubia.

At Sai, examples have been found both at SAV1 North and SAV1 East in 18^th Dynasty levels, especially in contexts datable to the Thutmoside period.

Annual Egyptological Colloquium at the British Museum: Nubia in the New Kingdom

Posted on July 9, 2013 by Julia Budka

On our way to London: Giulia, Florence and me will be attending scientific events at the British Museum, organized by our British colleagues headed by Neal Spencer. In addition, Veronica Hinterhuber, much waited-for future collaborator of AcrossBorders, will also join us on this occasion from Berlin! And I am especially happy that Huda Magzoub, our inspector from NCAM, kindly accepted an invitation as well and is already waiting for us in London!

Tomorrow we will be busy with two informal workshops, bringing together scholars currently working on New Kingdom sites in Nubia as well as some other colleagues with specific expertise. Giulia will present our pottery samples and I will mainly focus on questions of the early development of Sai at the very beginning of the 18^th Dynasty. Huda has prepared a presentation on some nice New Kingdom pot sherds from the Sudan National Museum’s collection, among them an amphora from Sai with an hieratic docket.

Thursday and Friday will be completely occupied by the two-day colloquium “Nubia in the New Kingdom: Lived experience, pharaonic control and local traditions” – a very rich programme focusing on new insights from the latest fieldwork at major settlements and cemeteries in Nubia. Elephantine, Aniba, Amara West, Sai, Sesebi, Dukki Gel, Tombos and other sites will be in the spotlight – temple architecture, settlements, tombs, statues, ceramics and other finds will illustrate the complex picture of the material culture and social identities at Egyptian sites in Nubia during the New Kingdom. Abstracts of the colloquium are available via the British Museum website!

Paper in current issue of “Sokar”

Posted on July 5, 2013 by Julia Budka

The table of content of the current issue of the German journal “Sokar” is online, it will appear in print by mid July. Sokar 26 features my paper in German with the title “Die 18. Dynastie auf Sai Island (Nordsudan) – neue Puzzlesteine als Ergebnisse der Feldkampagne 2013“ (The 18th Dynasty on Sai Island – new bits and pieces as results of the 2013 field season). This well-illustrated paper (13 colour figures!) summarizes the most important outcomes of our recent work at SAV1East. I explain the discovery of Building A and its significance for our understanding of the general layout of the town – highlighting also the prominent position held by Sai Island during the mid 18^th Dynasty in Upper Nubia. Besides further confirmation that the New Kingdom town at the island was founded at the very beginning of the 18th Dynasty, the 2013 excavations at SAV1East revealed a marked development and heyday of the site during the time of Thutmose III/Amenhotep II.

I can’t wait to hold the current Sokar in hands – especially because of a number of other very interesting articles, including another paper on Ancient Sudan – Angelika Lohwasser presents her recent assessment of Sanam.

Making progress: Towards petrographic studies of our pottery samples

Posted on July 3, 2013 by Julia Budka

Today, Giulia is invited to watch first steps of works with our samples in the thin section laboratory of the Center for Earth Sciences, University of Vienna, Department of Lithospheric Research. We brought the first 12 samples for thin sections there yesterday – a group of Marl clay amphorae and another group of Oasis ware.

We are very grateful to all the colleagues who made this cooperation possible – the infrastructure at the Center is fabulous and promises high quality results, important steps forward for our petrographic studies on New Kingdom ceramics from Sai Island! The thin sections will allow Giulia to investigate under various types of microscopes the properties of the individual wares in detail and to assess the microstructure of the sherds. This will help us tremendously to understand the differences we have made between the wares from the macroscopic point of view and might already challenge some of our classification. For example, one “Marl D” sherd is a bit peculiar and different from the others – I suspect it might be a Mix clay after all, but hopefully the thin sections and the comparison between the samples will shed light on these questions.

We wish to thank in particular Prof. Christian Köberl, Deputy Head of the Department of Lithospheric Research (and Director General of the Natural History Museum Vienna) for his kind support, Dieter Mader for welcoming us at the department and Sigrid Hrabe and Claudia Beybel for the work in the lab, for realising the thin sections of our samples and especially for giving Giulia the great opportunity to learn a little bit about the technical steps of work.

New thoughts on Building A

Posted on April 11, 2013 by Julia Budka

Back in Vienna, processing the data from the field season is keeping us busy. The most important discovery of 2013, Building A is of course still one of the focal points. In general, the new work in area SAV1 East has produced further evidence that the New Kingdom town on Sai experienced its heyday during the reign of Thutmose III and added important knowledge concerning the general layout of the town.

Despite of its fragmentary state, a tentative reconstruction of Building A is possible. Please note that this is a first assessment, any comments are very welcome!

Our “North”, “East” and “South” walls clearly frame a central part of the complex, but are not the outer enclosures or outer walls. This became clear as we unearthed an area covered by a floor north of wall 21 in Square 1a. This floor (marked as hatched area on the sketch above) was partly cut by later pits filled with dump material, but it is clearly contemporaneous to Building A. So we have a paved area towards our northern limits of excavations. The “Northern” wall running East-West has an obvious corner in the Northwest part of Square 1 – we might interpret this as an entrance situation, a possible doorway into a large courtyard, occupying most of Square 1 and extending into Square 2. Within this courtyard there were several pits, of which feature 6 was the most substantial circular storage installation. Towards the east, this courtyard is flanked by wall 3. This wall allows calculating the North-South extension of this part of Building A as 16.3 m; the East-West extension of the courtyard is still not fully exposed, but was traced as up to 10 m until the baulk of Square 2.

As was posted earlier, Building A finds a very close parallel in the so-called governor’s residence SAF2 in the Southern part of the New Kingdom town. The central part of this building is not a courtyard but a large columned hall with a mud brick pavement. The eastern extension of SAF2 can be compared to our traces of a mud brick wall in the Northeastern corner of SAV1 E – broken off towards the East due to the sloping ground, it is very likely that there was once a kind of annex alongside the courtyard.

Furthermore, and in analogy with SAF2, one might expect a series of small entrance rooms in the western part of Building A which is still not yet excavated. This will be investigated by means of excavations in 2014!

The functional interpretation of Building A must stay open for the moment, but we might have unearthed another administrative building within the Pharaonic town of Sai, with possible links to Temple A and/or SAF2. It is striking that we could date Building A as contemporaneous to these major buildings in the Southern part of the town which all share a common East-West-alignment along a North-South axis, thus following the typical grid pattern of fortified New Kingdom town in Nubia.

All in all, our newly discovered complex at SAV1E seems to support the important role of Sai within the Egyptian administration in Upper Nubia during the 18^th Dynasty.

A Brief Summary of the 2013 field season

Posted on March 14, 2013 by Julia Budka

After 10 weeks in Sudan, it feels very strange to get ready for leaving in a few days! Today I had to pack everything up at the Museum and to say goodbye to all of the kind and helpful colleagues of NCAM and the French Unit.

Having spent the last days with preparing the lecture and writing the report, many new ideas and thoughts have crossed my mind and I am very eager to continue the post-excavation processing of SAV1 East! We really made some significant discoveries this season – for now, I will just give a brief overview focusing on the most important results.

The key discovery at the new excavation site SAV1E and the highlight of the 2013 season on Sai Island was of course the confirmation of the geophysical survey picture: we were able to trace the eastern part of a very large rectangular mud brick structure (North-South extension of 16.3 + x m; East-West 10 + x m) which we labelled Building A.

Most of the bricks from its walls have been taken out and are now just “phantom walls” represented by a sandy pit, but we found large sections of the foundation trench and also an area with a floor coating towards the North. Associated finds and especially potteryallowed us to date Building A to the mid 18^th Dynasty (see below). Its western part still remains to be excavated – the prime task for next season!

All in all, the new fieldwork conducted in 2013 at SAV1E adds important aspects to the understanding of the development and history of the Pharaonic Town of Sai Island:

(1) The earliest remains at SAV1E are dating to the early 18^th Dynasty; there is nothing of the Kerma period prior to the New Kingdom. The area can therefore be safely interpreted as part of the newly founded Egyptian town. The Kerma ceramics we found are clearly originating from early New Kingdom contexts as in SAV1 North.

(2) The southern part of SAV1E with remains like the storage bin (feature 14) can be linked with the domestic zone excavated around Temple A by M. Azim – this area is characterized by small structures with single-brick walls and storage facilities. It is an early occupation phase comparable to Level 4 at SAV1N and clearly of pre-Thutmose III date. The in situ vessels of storage bin 14 give a more precise dating as early 18^th Dynasty, possibly Ahmose-Thutmose I.

(3) The northern part of SAV1E yielded so-called Building A – a not yet fully exposed mud brick structure with an orthogonal layout and most importantly with striking parallels to the so-called residence SAF2 in the Southern part of the Pharaonic Town. We really cannot wait to excavate the western part of Building A in order to confirm this hypothesis! As we have been fortunate to discover pottery in the foundation trench, we have a good dating indication of the building date of Building A: the pot sherds give us a terminus ante quem non for the setting of the foundations and this is the time of Thutmose III! This all suggests that Building A belongs to the major remodelling of the New Kingdom Town of Sai during the reign of this king. The newly discovered structure does also fit nicely into the grid-pattern of the Southern part of the town with roughly north-south and east-west aligned streets and it is most likely contemporaneous with Temple A and the mud brick enclosure wall.

View above Temple A to SAV1E at the end of fieldwork in 2013

Summing up, the first field season of AcrossBorders in 2013 was very successful and will allow us making very specific plans for the upcoming seasons!

Lecture in Khartoum, March 12 2013

Posted on March 11, 2013 by Julia Budka

Its a great honor and pleasure that I have been invited by the Sudan Archaeological Society to give a lecture at the Greek Athletic Club here in Khartoum. Tomorrow, at 7.30 pm I will present our latest findings of this season: “New Archaeological Fieldwork on Sai Island, New Kingdom Town”.

I intend to give an overview of our excavations at SAV1 East, focusing of course on Building A and the new evidence we have for substantial Thutmoside building activity within the Pharaonic Town of Sai.

Overview of SAV1 East at the end of our 2013-season.

Special thanks at the end of the field season

Posted on March 7, 2013 by Julia Budka

Having just finished packing, we are ready to leave to Khartoum tomorrow morning after nine busy and successful weeks on Sai. Although it’s time to say goodbye to our beloved island for this season, we take a lot of memories, pictures and of course tons of documentation material with us! SAV1E will continue to keep us busy at home! I will write a post wraping-up things once I am in Khartoum.

I don’t want to finish this 2013 field season without expressing my warmest thanks to a very special person: Huda Magzoub did a fantastic job as our inspector, was always extremely helpful, working both in the field and in the lab, taking an interest in all of the team members with their different tasks and being a real support to me in many respects! Neither wind, nor heat, nor the worst nimiti-days could stop her from endless efforts and enthusiastic participation!

I also appreciate her support in our good relations with the local communities and her energies trying to communicate the importance of archaeology in present times! Together we set up new signs marking the areas of some of the most important archaeological sites on Sai Island like the Kerma cemetery and the Pharaonic town. It was a real pleasure working with Huda and I am deeply grateful for all.

AcrossBorders

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

Tag Archives: Sai Island