Tag Archives: Ankh-Hor

Short summary of week 1, 2024 season

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One week has already passed since we opened our season for the LMU Ankh-Hor project.

Our beautiful large tent is the centre of our conservation programme, which will focus on Ptolemaic wooden coffins and cartonnages, but will also include other painted objects from the tomb of Ankh-Hor, TT 414. One of our conservators, Mohamed Mahmoud , has already successfully cleaned and stabilised the very fragile foot part of Ankh-Hor’s outer coffin.

This piece has already been published in the Anch-Hor II Volume, but is nevertheless one of the historically very important pieces, as it is direct evidence for the tomb owner of TT 414 and thus one of the well-dated wooden coffins of the 26th Dynasty in Thebes. I am very pleased that this very delicate and important piece has finally been consolidated.

In addition to conservation, we are mainly working on finding joining pieces for objects, which I have already done very well this week with cartonnages. We produce full-format photos, infrared photos and 3D scans for documentation purposes. Ladina Soubeyrand and Hassan Aglan also make publishable drawings of important pieces. This week they have been working mainly on Ptah-Sokar-Osiris statuettes and qrsw coffins. And they do a really good job!

All in all, it was a very successful start to the 2024 season – we still have a lot to do in the next four weeks, but some of the really nice objects with high information content about the Late Egyptian funerary culture in Thebes make the whole thing a great pleasure.

Capturing objects from TT 414 in 3D – first stunning results

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On the last day of week 2 of the 2023 season of the Ankh-Hor Project, there was much excitement! Inspired by my colleagues from the South Asasif Conservation Project, I played a bit with my newly installed app Scaniverse – a wonderful tool to capture objects in 3D. With all my experience using photogrammetry in the past years in Sudan (and some earlier trials for material from TT 414), this was a stunning exercise – Scaniverse is ultrafast, highly accurate and very easy to use. It offers new perspectives of how we document our objects from TT 414 – in addition to ordinary 2D images, now capturing the objects with metrically accurate 3D models becomes feasible with little time expenditure. Simply fantastic!

My trial piece is also a scientifically important object. This week, Mohammed and Karima cleaned and consolidated two parts of the fragmentarily preserved tomb group of an important family member of Ankh-Hor, the lady Her-Aset. We do not know the name of her husband, but his title – based on the known facts, it is very likely that she married one of Ankh-Hor brothers and was thus closely related to the original owner of TT 414. This of course explains why she was buried in TT 414 as well.

Her-Aset had a nice wooden stela as part of her funerary equipment. The larger part of this stela is now in the British Museum – see my earlier post on the conservation of this piece back in 2018.

Now in 2023, we are back working on Her-Aset’s tomb group. The first piece our conservators consolidated from this group is a fragment of the inner anthropoid coffin of Her-Aset, Reg. 536.

Unfortunately, little is left of the once beautiful inner coffin of Her-Aset. Reg. 536 is the only fragment found in TT 414.

The other object is the nicely coloured and inscribed pedestal of a Ptah-Sokar-Osiris statue of Her-Aset. Reg. 539 gives her name and title within the framework of an offering formula. Karima and Mohammed finished its consolidation (it was in a very fragile state) just today and after I took the standard 2D photos, I thought that this would be the perfect trial piece for the app mentioned above.

Screenshot of my app with the 3D model of Reg. 539.

The result is great (see also the video of Reg. 539 captured with Scaniverse on an iPhone 11 and processed with Detail Mode) – and please keep in mind that it was the first time ever I used the app and that it only took a few seconds to take the photos for this model. In addition to the ordinary photos, the shape and especially the cavities on the top side of the pedestal are now captured in a detail way and in 3D. One cavity is of course the tenon hole for the now lost funerary figure of the god Ptah-Sokar-Osiris – should we ever be able to relocate this statue in one of the museums around the world, we could join it with our 3D model 😉. The larger cavity is mummy-shaped and nicely shows that Ptah-Sokar-Osiris statuettes in the Late Period sometimes contained a package of viscera/mummification material and are closely related to corn mummies.

We will explore the application of Scaniverse to document our finds from TT 414 further and will keep you of course posted!

Closing of the 2022 season

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We successfully closed our 2022 season yesterday – Patrizia and Hassan are already on their way back to Germany, I will spend some more days here in Luxor, continuing my work for the South Asasif Conservation Project.

I am also busy with writing up the report of this fruitful season of the Ankh-Hor Project – so much work was done, almost 150 drawings of small finds were accomplished, dozens of objects were recorded for the first time, several new matching pieces were found to coffins, a large number of wooden objects was cleaned and hundreds of photographs taken. All this rich documentation will require post-season processing back home and I will also summarise the most important results in an upcoming blog post.

The last few days have proven it again – everything we have achieved here in 2022 has been great teamwork. Everyone thought along and not only did their job well, but also helped others like Patrizia and Hassan here with taking photos of reconstructed coffins (photo by H. Aglan).

I am very grateful to the entire team of the 2022 season and would like to say a special thank you to our inspector Saad and the Egyptian conservator Noura – it was a pleasure and an honour! To be continued, we’ll be back next year.

Summary of week 1 of the 2021 season

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We just finished a first, very successful week of our 2021 season. We started off with cleaning, dusting, and sorting things and are now well underway to document small finds, ceramics, shrines as well as wooden and cartonnage coffins.

The painted coffins from TT 414 belong both to primary burials of the family of Ankh-Hor and to secondary burials of Amun priests, mostly dating to the 4th and 3rd centuries BCE, which appear as relatively wealthy. Most of the material derives from the secondary use of the tomb. I am still busy collecting fragments which can be dated stylistically and because of the technique to the 26th Dynasty – these are usually very small pieces, sometimes just small splitters of the painting.

Example of small fragments of 26th Dynasty coffins including a piece from the outer coffin of Ankh-Hor (bottom right).

These are nevertheless important to reconstruct the original burials in TT 414 – yesterday, I found one loose fragment of the foot pedestal of the outer coffin of Ankh-Hor himself. This foot part is in a very fragile condition and will be consolidated later this season, including fixing the loose fragments back in place. Among the most interesting finds is another 26th Dynasty coffin giving the female name of a Mutirdis – a common name in this era, but I still do not know to which specific person this coffin once belonged. During the Austrian excavations in the 1970s and 1980s, no Mutirdis from the 26th Dynasty was recognised in the material from TT 414 – another example why our current work is so important to understand the complete phases of use in the monumental tomb of Ankh-Hor!

Jessica working on one of the late Ptolemaic coffin fragments.

The Ptolemaic wooden and cartonnage coffins are much better preserved and are currently treated by our conservation team. Since 2018, our conservation programme is conducted in cooperation with the Austrian Archaeological Institute (OeAI) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. This year, our team is comprised of four young conservators, all graduates including one current student of the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. We are kindly supported by one of the experienced Egyptian conservators from the West Bank. The team finished already a considerable number of pieces in week 1 and these objects are now ready for their final photographic documentation with a full-frame camera with high resolution (Nikon D810 with a 35mm objective lens).

In terms of documentation, the Egyptologists of our team concentrate on ceramics and small finds. This week, Hassan and Patrizia were both busy with funerary cones. Patrizia, who is about to finish her PhD about Late Period statuary, wrote some years ago her BA thesis about funerary cones and thus shares my own enthusiasm for these intriguing objects which still pose some questions in the Late Period. Drawing these cones (among others funerary cones of Monthemhat, Padineith and Pabasa), Patrizia does not only focus on the stamped end but also on technical features, remains of colours and other details.

Although very challenging objects to draw, we love Late Period funerary cones! And Patrizia is doing a perfect job here.

Our youngest Egyptologist is Caroline, a MA student from LMU Munich. She is very talented and enthusiastic and started with drawing Late Period and Ptolemaic vessels. Later this season, she will join me working for the South Asasif Conservation Project.

Caroline very quickly adapted to our “drawing office” at the site and made already a good number of pottery drawings in her first week.

It is wonderful that the two sites, Ankh-Hor and South Asasif, share so many similarities in terms of re-use – Caroline will thus be perfectly prepared, knowing the most common vessel types already from our mission.

Today, the last team members will arrive, and we are all looking much forward to another exciting week starting on Saturday in the gorgeous setting of the Asasif in front of Deir el-Bahari.

Our conservation tent and a view to the Theban mountains.

Some aspects of the re-use of coffins in Ptolemaic Thebes

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TT 414, the monumental tomb of Ankh-Hor, High Steward of the Divine Adoratrice Nitocris during the 26th Dynasty (6th century BCE), is one of the so-called temple tombs of the Late Period in Asasif with a temple-like superstructure and complex cultic rooms and halls.

Isometric plan TT 414

Within the current Ankh-Hor Project of LMU Munich we are focusing on the complete use-life of the tomb which lasted over centuries well into the Roman and Coptic periods. We also include the various ancient and more recent plundering phases of TT 414 which are well attested. One aspect is particularly noteworthy: TT 414 has the potential to serve as a case study to analyse various attitudes of later generations towards the original owners of Theban burial places. For example, several Late Period coffins had been found in the pillared hall of TT 414, thus not in their primary position within the burial chambers at the bottom of the various shafts, but within one of the cultic rooms or sanctuaries. In the entrance area to the pillared hall, a well preserved lower part of a coffin, Reg. No. 590, was discovered, seemingly out of place for a 26th Dynasty coffin.

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Location of Reg. No. 590 in Room 4 of TT 414 (after Budka 2010).

Already back in the 1970s, the excavators suspected that these coffins had just been re-used in the Ptolemaic period when people started to make use of the pillared hall as a burial place (in addition to the shafts). In 2009, I could confirm this by an exceptional in situ-find that came to light during the cleaning of the coffin Reg. No. 590 (Budka 2010): We discovered in the interior of this 26th Dynasty coffin for a man named Iret-her-rw, called Nes-ba-neb-djedet, an intact mummy label with a demotic docket (see Budka and Mekis 2017). This Ptolemaic mummy label identifies the mummy placed in this coffin as a man with the name Wah-ib-Re. Recently, I could trace together with my colleague Tamás Mekis a fragmentary cartonage in the Louvre (Louvre N 4603) which probably belongs to this person and must derive from TT 414 as well (Budka and Mekis 2017).

This allows tackling two important aspects:

1) The destroyed mummy placed in the coffin Reg. No. 590 illustrates the well-known fact that in the 19th century AD, Egyptian mummies were systematically damaged during the search for gilded parts, cartonages, amulets and other finds. Objects like the cartonage Louvre N 4603 came via antiquity dealers to large European museums. Like for Wah-ib-Re, it is therefore possible to find various objects from people buried in TT 414 in these museums (see, e.g. Budka, Mekis and Bruwier 2013).

2) The Ptolemaic mummy label found in the 26th Dynasty coffin in TT 414 attests to the re-use of wooden coffins from the original phase of use of monumental temple tombs like TT 414 some 300 years later. Whether this re-use had simply practical reasons and a financial motivation, or whether this recycling was also associated with a more complex set of meanings must remain open for now, providing a number of possible lines of further research.

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Final cleaning of Reg. No. 590 is well in progress.

I am personally very delighted that this not only beautifully painted, but also intriguing coffin, Reg. No. 590, which already has had such a multifaceted biography, now entered another aspect of its life history: it is getting a last cleaning and consolidation in order to be transported to the main magazine here on the West Bank as final resting place.

 

References

Budka, Julia 2010.  Varianz im Regelwerk. Bestattungsabläufe im Monumentalgrab von Anch-Hor, Obersthofmeister der Gottesgemahlin Nitokris (TT 414), Ägypten & Levante 20, 49–66.

Budka, Julia, Tamás Mekis and Marie-Cécile Bruwier 2013. Re-use of Saite temple tombs in the Asasif during the early Ptolemaic time – the tomb group of Mw.t-Mnw from TT 414, Ägypten & Levante 22/23, 2012/2013, 209–251.

Budka, Julia and Mekis, Tamás 2017. The Family of Wah-ib-Re I (TT 414) from Thebes, Ägypten & Levante 27, 219‒240.

End of 2018 season: summary and outlook

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Our first, quite short season just ended yesterday – the magazine in the Asasif is sealed and closed again, some of the team members are already back in Vienna and Munich, three of us arrived this afternoon in Cairo and will leave in the next days.

Altogether, the first season was very successful and all goals were achieved. The focus was on documenting coffins and other objects from the long use-life of TT 414. More than 80 drawings were produced by Patrizia and Mona, comprising small finds (mostly Ptolemaic faience shabtis with texts bearing the names of their owners), wooden objects including a beautiful Ptolemaic Ptah-Sokar-Osiris statue and pottery (complete pottery vessels and fragments, mostly Ptolemaic from the re-use of TT414, but also some Saite vessels from the original phase of use).

In addition to these drawing, 360 objects were photographed in very high resolution with a full-frame camera by Cajetan. These objects were primarily coffin fragments, fragments of wooden shrines and boxes and again shabtis. With these new photos suitable for publication, most of the objects are now fully documented.

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The conservation work was successfully started thanks to cooperation with the Austrian Archaeological Institute.  Daniel Oberndorfer joined the project in the field and managed to get a first general overview of the material, its needs and specifications to develop a program for cleaning and consolidation. Conservation work focused during the 2018 season on wooden objects, especially on coffins and fragments of shrines and wooden statuettes (Ptah-Sokar-Osiris figures). It mainly comprised of consolidation and mechanical cleaning.

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A total of 23 wooden and painted objects were successfully cleaned, consolidated and photographed. Drawings of some selected pieces are planned for the next season. With the data and experience from the 2018, a larger-scale conservation programme can be designed for the next years, considering the individual properties of the material from TT 414. Conservation work will be the main focus of the upcoming seasons.

Related to this, I managed to reorganize the magazine according to priorities. The majority of the material still to be studied is the large amount of coffins – more than 180 coffins within the magazine are currently entered in our database, several dozen are still missing.

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Besides sorting the material regarding their state of preservation and thus the need of consolidation as well as of scientific importance (datable pieces, pieces of well-known persons buried in TT 414 etc.), the focus of this working tasks of the 2018 season was to find matches between the fragments preliminary registered under “K-numbers”. This proved very time consuming, but also quite successful – 16 new matches to registered coffins from the “K-numbers” were achieved. Furthermore, four newly identified registered coffin fragments can be noted and five additional parts to fragmented coffins were documented.

The importance of this search for joints, which will continue in the next season, can be illustrated by the examples of a new fragment of coffin of the daughter of Ankh-Hor and a newly identified black-and-yellow style Ptolemaic coffin as the outer coffin of a singer with the name Ta-net-Geb. More new names were noted on various fragments and still have to be added to our genealogical data and processed in detail.

The rich prospective of the detailed work on the complete set of finds from TT 414 became very clear during the 2018 season. But, in order to achieve major results and to support preliminary ideas with further evidence, work must continue in the near future and is planned for a next season in spring 2019. Large amounts of coffins, fragments of coffins and cartonage from the Late Period to Ptolemaic and Roman times still remain to be cleaned, consolidated and restored – and will for sure bring to light more new information about the use of the tomb of Ankh-Hor throughout the ages.

Group picture 2018

My deep thanks go to all team members for their enthusiasm for the project and making 2018 a great season! The photo gallery gives some impressions of all the various tasks achieved and also of how much fun we had working on this really interesting set of diverse objects. Of course, work would not have been possible without the support of the Egyptian authorities and especially of the local inspectorate on the West Bank; I am very grateful to a number of people, first of all to our inspector Zeinab Mohammed Elsayed for enabling us to work according to the working programme.

Looking already much forward to come back to Asasif next year! Updates about our processing of the data collected in 2018 will of course follow.

News about Merit-Neith, daughter of Ankh-Hor

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So-called qrsw coffins – rectangular outer coffins resembling a shrine for a god – were probably introduced in the 25th Dynasty and were still common for elite burials in the 26th Dynasty. Several wooden, painted fragments were also found in TT 414 – although not of high quality, the qrsw coffin of Merit-Neith is of particular importance. Merit-Neith was the daughter of Ankh-Hor and is for now the only child we know for our Chief Steward of the Divine Adoratrice Nitocris who built TT 414 as a family tomb.

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Fragment of qrsw coffin of Merit-Neith (Anch-Hor vol. II, fig. 75)

The tomb group of Merit-Neith was, as all 26th Dynasty burials in TT414, heavily looted. The side board of the qrsw coffin which is already published (Anch-Hor vol. II, 176, fig. 75) was found in the debris of room 1, thus very close to the entrance (or exit, from the perspective of a looter…). A fragmented Ptah-Sokar-Osiris-statue of Merit-Neith was unearthed in room 2, associated with Ptolemaic pottery, so definitely dumped there at a late stage of re-use of the tomb.

Plan TT 414 Budka 2010

Plan of TT 414 (after Bietak/Reiser Haslauer; from Budka 2010)

In general, we know that the original burial compartments of the late Twenty-sixth Dynasty were reachable via the rooms 7, 8 and 9 – the rooms located at the western end of the subterranean cultic rooms of TT 414 (Budka 2010, 57). Ankh-Hor as the tomb owner was buried in the main chamber accessible from room 7 – but where was his daughter once put to rest?

A possible indication for the location of Merit-Neith’s burial chamber might have come to light today in the magazine. While re-sorting some coffin fragments, I noted a small fragment from the vaulted lid of a qrsw coffin showing an ordinary kheker-frieze. The style of painting and the colours immediately reminded me of Reg. No. 377b, the fragment with the name of Merit-Neith already published in 1982.

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New fragment of a qrsw coffin from TT 414 – possibly belonging to Merit-Neith’s coffin?

Fortunately, we know the find position for this new piece: it was found together with other fragments of 26th Dynasty qrsw coffins in the shaft filling from room 8. Of course, one has to be very careful in using find positions of objects in heavy-looted tombs like TT 414 as clear indication of its original location – several objects were scattered and distributed throughout the tomb (Budka 2010, 53-57). But in this case it is just very tempting to suggest the original burial place of Merit-Neith, daughter of Ankh-Hor, at the base of the shaft from room 8, thus directly opposite of her father’s burial chamber. For now, the possible new joint to Merit-Neith’s qrsw coffin will be cleaned by Daniel Oberndorfer and the search for more fragments of the same piece will of course continue.

References

Anch-Hor vol. II = M. Bietak/E. Reiser-Haslauer, Das Grab des Anch-Hor, Obersthofmeister der Gottesgemahlin Nitokris, vol. II, Denkschriften der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften 7, Untersuchungen der Zweigstelle Kairo 5, Vienna 1982.

Budka 2010 = J. Budka, Varianz im Regelwerk. Bestattungsabläufe im Monumentalgrab von Anch-Hor, Obersthof­meister der Gottes­gemahlin Nitokris (TT 414), Egypt & the Levant 20, 2010, 49–66.

More shabtis & more coffin matches

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Week 3 started not at all perfect – yesterday was a very sandy & windy day, work outside was almost impossible, so we had to concentrate on tasks within the magazine, especially the cleaning and consolidation of coffins and other wooden objects.

Today was much better regarding the weather and all were back at their tasks: drawing, photographing and studying objects from TT 414. There are still more faience shabtis which need drawings – and strangely they are now met with just a little less enthusiasm than last week ;).

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Matching coffin fragments was again very successful – the jigsaw puzzle is getting more and more advanced. My personal highlight of today was the identification of a black-and-yellow style Ptolemaic coffin as the outer coffin of a singer with the name Ta-net-Geb. Until today, she was only known from the inner coffin of her son from TT 414 – now we can confirm that she was also buried in the tomb of Ankh-Hor, presumably with her husband Hor-Khonsu!

K07_219 Ta-nt-Geb

This enlarges not only our prosopographical data of people buried in TT 414, but is also relevant for questions of typologies and dating of Ptolemaic coffins. The next goal is now trying to find more matches to Ta-net-Geb’s coffin – the piece identified today is just a very small fragment from the lid of a once substantial anthropoid coffin. So much more to do with this simply amazing material from the tomb of Ankh-Hor!

Short summary of week 2

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Week 2 of work on the finds from TT 414, the tomb of Ankh-Hor in Asasif, was just completed – it has been a very successful week with quite a number of tasks accomplished.

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Drawing of pottery and small finds continued – besides faience vessels, shabtis and amulets from bead nets, Patrizia also made beautiful drawings of some peculiar wooden fragments (of which we are still discussing the precise function). Right now, she is busy with the numerous faience shabtis from the family of Pa-di-Amun-neb-nesut-tawy.

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Mona worked primarily on Ptolemaic pottery from the “Lichthof” of Ankh-Hor – these pieces nicely illustrate the function of this part of TT 414 as offering place. Besides small offering cups and plates, fragments of so-called Hadra ware are notable.

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Photographing various groups of objects was continued by Cajetan – with today, we started focusing on larger coffin fragments. Besides, all pieces already consolidated by Daniel are also documented with photos of our full frame camera. Cleaning and consolidation is progressing were well, focusing both on 26th Dynasty objects like the stela of Her-Aset and qrsw-coffins and on Ptolemaic objects like Ptah-Sokar-Osiris figures and of course various coffin fragments.

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Furthermore, I am very happy that Philippe Martinez studied and photographed during this week the re-used New Kingdom blocks from the foundations of the Ramesses IV temple excavated by Manfred Bietak. Philippe kindly also documented small relief fragments from TT 414 stored in the magazine.

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Re-organising the magazine is also making much progress – I’ve just ordered more wooden boxes for a new storage system according to priorities which will be developed further next week.

We’re now off to a well-deserved weekend, many thanks to all team members and looking much forward to Saturday!

Conservation work started on objects from TT 414

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Thanks to the support of the Austrian Archaeological Institute, the institute’s conservator Daniel Oberndorfer joined us and started his work on the wooden objects from TT 414 today.

Large amounts of coffin fragments and other wooden objects are in urgent need of cleaning and also consolidation – for now, I have made a list of priorities for Daniel according to both significance of the object and its state of preservation. In focus are some 26th Dynasty coffin remains which have not yet been studied in detail, but foremost several Ptolemaic fragments because of their significance for reconstructing genealogies and family trees.

Some pieces are also highly significant of the history of exploration of TT 414: Daniel started working on the small fragment of the stela of Her-Aset (Reg. 508). Bietak and Reiser-Haslauer noted already that it belongs to the larger part of stela BM EA 8457 which came via Henry Salt to London (Bietak/Reiser-Haslauer 1982, pl. 155; Budka 2010, 56).

Stele heraset

Like for so many other objects from TT 414, this example illustrates how much information can be gained from a joint puzzle of data deriving from both, material excavated by the Austrian Mission in TT 414 and objects currently kept in European museums originating from non-scientific work in the tomb during the 19th century (see Budka/Mekis 2017). For the identification of further objects in museums and collections as coming originally from TT 414, conservation work of the still unpublished material stored here in the Asasif is of prime importance in order to document all relevant pieces in full detail for future comparison.

References

Bietak/Reiser-Haslauer 1982 = M. Bietak/E. Reiser-Haslauer, Das Grab des Anch-Hor, vol. II, Vienna 1982.

Budka 2010 = J. Budka, Varianz im Regelwerk. Bestattungsabläufe im Monumentalgrab von Anch-Hor, Obersthofmeister der Gottesgemahlin Nitokris (TT 414), Egypt & the Levant 20, 2010, 49-66.

Budka/Mekis 2017 = J. Budka and T. Mekis, The Family of Wah-ib-Re I (TT 414) from Thebes, Egypt & the Levant 27, 219‒240.