SARS colloquium 2015, British Museum London

Posted on May 10, 2015 by Julia Budka

Time flies by: the annual one-day international colloquium of the Sudan Archaeological Research Society (SARS) at the British Museum London is approaching! Like in the last years, some team members of AcrossBorders will of course participate.

As usual the programme is very promising; several talks will focus this year on the New Kingdom in Nubia. I am happy and grateful to the organisers for the opportunity to present AcrossBorders’ latest fieldwork. The title of my talk is “New excavations in the Pharaonic town on Sai Island and its role in the urban landscape of New Kingdom Kush”.

Among others, feature 15 and it’s amazing number of complete pots and clay sealings will be addressed. And of course the discovery of tomb 26 has to be pointed out. I am especially looking forward to share the news about the inscribed, worked stones from the shaft. One piece belonging to the deputy of Kush Hornakht under Ramesses II is particularly exciting!

One of the inscribed blocks from the shaft of tomb 26 is of particular importance…

Looking much forward to tomorrow’s trip to London, the colloquium, the chance to meet many colleagues working in Sudan and discussing recent findings in a stimulating environment!

AcrossBorders’ first public appearance in Munich

Posted on April 24, 2015 by Julia Budka

With our move from Vienna to Munich and all the logistic and administrative things of the last weeks, Sai Island seems like ages ago, but in reality only 5 weeks have passed since we left Sudan! Especially because of this sensed long distance, I am very happy that Sudan and archaeological work there is the focus of an upcoming event here in Munich. Tomorrow’s lecture event dedicated to Sudan in the Egyptian Museum Munich is also the perfect opportunity to present AcrossBorders’ most recent results to an audience in our new German home. I am very grateful for this chance to introduce my project and to talk about latest findings, new questions and planned tasks. Fieldwork within the New Kingdom town of Sai in 2014 and 2015 will be the focus, but I will also mention our newly discovered tomb in cemetery SAC5.

To illustrate the potential of tomb 26, I will show some of the nice complete pottery vessels from the shaft bottom. Together with the marl clay pilgrim flasks and amphorae, one almost complete stone vessel, SAC5 212, was found in the southeastern corner.

Stone vessel SAC5 212 found at the bottom of the shaft of tomb 26.

This clustering opposite of the entrance to the burial chamber already suggested that the finds are remains of a burial which was removed from the chamber and left in the shaft during one of the phases of reuse (or possibly plundering?). One finding from the burial chamber supports the assumption that the remains on the shaft bottom were originally deposited in the chamber: A small rim fragment of the almost complete stone vessel SAC5 212 was discovered in the debris just inside the burial chamber.

Post-excavation processing was unfortunately slowed down because of the transfer of the project, but I am positive that we will soon have results from the ongoing studies of the ceramics, small finds, landscape and micromorphology!

End of excavation in the cemetery SAC5

Posted on March 11, 2015 by Julia Budka

AcrossBorders’ excavations on Sai Island have come to an end for 2015. It feels strange at the moment, especially that almost 3 weeks of work in area 2 in SAC5 disappeared under sand again – today we backfilled tomb 26 in order to continue excavating its chamber in the next year.

Backfilling of the shaft of tomb 26.

The shaft of our new tomb yielded a number of interesting finds – inscribed pieces of Hornakht, a complete stone vessel, two scarabs and a number of complete vessels, among them nicely decorated Ramesside Marl clay pilgrim flasks. The rock-cut chamber off to the north was obviously looted and we only cleaned its uppermost debris.

While the next two days will be busy with final recording, packing, storing materials and traveling to Khartoum, I wish to thank already today all of the local fieldwork staff – as in the last years, they coped with sand, wind, nimiti-flies and especially in the last days with a quite remarkable heat wave.

Without their skills and partly painstaking efforts, the results of this very successful 2015 season would not have been possible – the last days in the shaft and chamber were especially hard and a big “thank you” goes here to Mohammed, Hassan, Samir, Farah and Osman! Looking much forward to continue working with all of them next year insha’allah!

Tracing Ramesside burials in SAC 5

Posted on March 9, 2015 by Julia Budka

Since a few days we have the confirmation that the burial chamber of tomb 26 opens to the north. Today, the excavation of the shaft was completed, reaching a depth of more than 5.20 m.

Cleaning remains on top of the shaft base of tomb 26.

The filling material of the shaft was highly interesting – especially in the lowest level just above the shaft base, two scarabs, a number of complete vessels as well as some stones (pieces of architecture) were found. Three nicely decorated, complete Marl clay pilgrim flasks are especially noteworthy, found together with other pottery vessels (especially storage vessels) and one complete stone vessel.

Three almost complete Pilgrim flasks were found together against the east wall of the shaft.

Since these finds were clustering along the eastern wall of the shaft and in particular in the southeastern corner, the most likely explanation is that remains of a burial were removed from the chamber in the north and left in the shaft during one of the phases of reuse (or possibly plundering?).

Probably the most important finds so far are two sandstone fragments with the name and title of the jdnw of Kush Hornakht. This official of the Egyptian administration in Upper Nubia is already well attested from Sai Island and was active during the reign of Ramesses II. Several of the vessels from the shaft of tomb 26 are datable to the 19^th Dynasty, suggesting that the inscribed pieces actually belonged to one of the burial phases. Of course everything has to wait until we checked also the burial chamber and understand the complete picture of tomb 26 and its complex use life, but for now it is possible to say that we found traces of early Ramesside burials in SAC 5. This is extremely exciting and opens much room for new thoughts about the importance of Sai during the Nineteenth Dynasty and its relation to the now flourishing site of Amara West.

First finds in the shaft of tomb 26 at the end of week 9

Posted on March 5, 2015 by Julia Budka

After the discovery of the shaft of tomb 26 on Tuesday, the cleaning of the shaft kept us busy in the last days and is still ongoing.

It is a roughly rectangular shaft, orientated north-south – we have currently reached a depth of 3.2 m. The filling was in the upper 2.5 m a sequence of windblown and very fine sand with several traces of flood levels between. Obviously the upper part of the shaft was refilled over a long time. It contained a good number of pottery sherds – ranging in date from the mid-late 18^th Dynasty, Late New Kingdom to Napatan times – , small fragments of bones and several types of beads.

Mohammed carefully cleaning remains of a flood deposit in the upper filling of the shaft.

Today we reached a level with a number of stone fragments in 2.5 m depth, large fragments of pottery vessels and a large quantity of scattered bone. The most dominant feature was a large schist slab set against the Northwestern corner, extending along the west wall of the shaft. Obviously it was one of the original closing stones of the shaft during the 18^th Dynasty, but fell into the shaft at a later stage. The ceramics from this debris layer suggest a date after the 25^th Dynasty – so possibly during the last phase of plundering before the shaft was left open for some time.

One of the original closing stones of the shaft mouth was found collapsed in 2.5 m depth.

All in all, this collapsed schist seems important for understanding the use life of tomb 26 – Martin Fera documented its position with SFM.

SFM documentation of today’s situation in the shaft.

Another very interesting feature is an incised rectangular shape on the north wall, starting just a little bit above the slab – it resembles an opening to a chamber! Whether it was a trial and remained unfinished/was abandoned, or whether there is still a chamber below will become clear after this weekend! I am personally convinced that the chamber will open towards the north.

Thanks to the organizational skills of our rais Imad Shorbagi and the generous support of the local ferryboat crew we were able to get the equipment to remove the slab from the shaft – hopefully this was also a good training for dealing with more finds to come!

Ready for a well deserved weekend: successfully removed the slab from the shaft!

A new tomb in SAC 5

Posted on March 3, 2015 by Julia Budka

This year’s goal for the resumed work in the large New Kingdom cemetery SAC 5 was of course the identification of more tomb monuments – yesterday the first outlines of a shaft in our area 2 came to light, today we managed to clean the surroundings and to verify that we have found a previously unknown tomb!

Location of new tomb 26 (looking from pyramid tomb 6 towards the west).

The new structure, christened as tomb 26 of SAC 5, of which we found very faint traces of mud bricks and the shaft, is located between tombs 8 and 7 in the area dug by the French Mission (see Minault-Gout/Thill 2012). In this southeastern part of the cemetery, already 13 New Kingdom tombs have been excavated – and more are probably still to be discovered!

For now, it is still unclear whether we will be able to reconstruct the superstructure of the new tomb – similar to the neighbouring tombs 2, 3, 4 and 5, the shaft is the main feature preserved. With reference to the named tombs, I do expect a rather short shaft of maybe 4-5 meters depth and only one burial chamber.

Upper part of the shaft of newly discovered tomb 26.

The material we found so far in the sandy filling covers the mid to late 18^th Dynasty, the Late New Kingdom and the 25^th Dynasty/Napatan Period. It will be exciting to explore the different phases of use of tomb 26 further – and of course we do hope for some glue about the original owner of this burial place in ancient Sai.

Reference:

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

AcrossBorders

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

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