Tag Archives: Ankh-Hor

Too many Pa-di-Amun-neb-nesut-tawys…

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Yesterday and today, the focus of our current big jigsaw puzzle from TT 414 was not only on coffins, but also on shabtis. A small amount of shabtis from Ankh-Hor himself were found by Bietak and his team and is already published (Bietak and Reiser Haslauer 1982, pl. 97). Elfriede Reiser-Haslauer managed to locate many more Ankh-Hor shabtis throughout various collections and museums (Bietak and Reiser Haslauer 1982, pls. 98-116), attesting to the early phase of collecting objects from the tomb in the 19th century prior to its scientific excavation.

Equally well-known are the shabtis from the undisturbed burial of Wah-ib-Ra, datable to the 30th Dynasty and also already published (Bietak and Reiser Haslauer 1982, pl. 128).

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But still unpublished until today is a very large number – several dozens – of faience shabtis with the name of Pa-di-Amun-neb-nesut-tawy. There are various sizes and different types of these blue- or green-glazed shabtis, but most are fragmented and only give part of the name. These shabtis were primarily found in the debris within the burial chamber of Ankh-Hor – which was reused by the Amun priest Pa-di-Amun-neb-nesut-tawy I in the 30th Dynasty. Followed by several generations of his family, and a good number of individuals with the same name (and titles)!

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Eleven Pa-di-Amun-neb-nesut-tawys were listed by Elfriede Reiser-Haslauer in her genealogical register of people buried in TT 414. Two types of shabtis fortunately have a specific addition to the common title “divine father and prophet of Amun” – they mention the temple of Khonsw and can therefore be attributed to Pa-di-Amun-neb-nesut-tawy II.  For the other shabtis, though, it is almost impossible to reconstruct to which specific individual they once belonged. But work is still in progress: although there are far too many same-named persons who were all buried in TT 414, there is some hope that we will also attribute some of these numerous Ptolemaic faience shabtis in the near future by means of a typology and stylistic and palaeographic attributes.

Reference

Bietak and Reiser Haslauer 1982 = M. Bietak and E. Reiser-Haslauer, Das Grab des ‘Anch-Hor, Obersthofmeister der Gottesgemahlin Nitokris II, UZK 5, Vienna 1982.

End of week 1

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Time flies by – the first week of our 2018 season just ended! It was very successful and comprised the opening of the magazine, cleaning, reorganizing and prioritizing objects to be studied. I’ve gone through all the pottery which still needs drawings; Mona has already completed a good number of these vessels from TT 414. Patrizia focused on shabtis and wooden objects, mostly from the Ptolemaic period.

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For photographing, Cajetan finished coffin fragments, stelae and several small finds as well as some papyrus fragments. Photographing was in general quite a challenge – adapting not only to the outer circumstances like one very windy day, two quite hot days and the different light conditions according to day time etc., but of course first of all to the different properties and sizes of the objects. Cajetan was, as always, very creative and used a number of equipment I would never have dreamed of being useful for photographing ;-)!

 

I am still busy sorting through the large number of coffins, trying to find joints on one hand and setting a task list for consolidation, drawing and photographing on the other. Just perfect timing for the weekend was that I relocated today a small fragment of the beautiful Ptolemaic coffin of Ta-remetj-Bastet – giving much hope that we will be able to identify most of the pieces still missing on our lists.

The next week will see the arrival of new team members and will thus enlarge our scope a bit further. Of prime importance will be the start of the conservation work thanks to the cooperation with the Austrian Archaeological Institute.

A complex jigsaw puzzle

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We’re making very good progress with documenting the objects from TT 414. After the general cleaning at the beginning, we are now focusing on wooden objects and here in particular on coffin fragments. More than 200 coffins/coffin fragments were registered during work in TT 414. Some of them are in very good state of preservation, but the majority urgently needs consolidation.

Seminal work on the coffins from TT 414 was conducted in the 1970s by Elfriede Reiser-Haslauer who registered all the coffins and documented the texts and decorative programmes (see Reiser-Haslauer 1982). However, it goes without saying how much effort this meant during excavation, with new pieces coming in and various tasks at one time. The Austrian team did a great job back then, but at that moment detailed studies and especially the cleaning and consolidation of the coffins were not possible.

This is where our project steps in – aiming for a reconstruction of the phases of use of TT 414 and its burials, we now focus on details and a revised prosopographical study (cf. Budka/Mekis/Bruwier 2013; Budka/Mekis 2017). At this stage, quite a number of registered coffins are still scattered within the magazine, without indication of find location or find number – the big challenge is therefore reconstructing all joining pieces for one object and identifiying small fragments. Some joints were also not noted back in the 1970s, simply because of the large amounts of finds.

Identification

Today, we can built upon the original documentation and photos by the Austrian mission – also small fragments can be identified, although it is quite a time-consuming task requiring sometimes luck and of course always patience. With two new joints of important pieces today, I am really satisfied!

Our work resembles a big and quite complex jigsaw puzzle – but all efforts are definitely worth it, not only because of the high quality of the pieces and their significance for contextualising funerary customs in Late Period and Ptolemaic Thebes, but also because previous work in the magazine has shown that unexpected finds might show up during consolidation work – Book of the Dead papyri and mummy labels were found in the study seasons 2007-2009 (see Budka 2010). The material from TT 414 definitely still holds much potential for surprises!

References

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

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, Egypt & the Levant 22/23, 2012/2013, 209–251.

Budka, Julia 2010. Ankh-Hor Revisited: Study, Documentation and Publication of Forgotten Finds from the Asasif/Thebes, in: Fifth Central European Conference of Egyptologists. Egypt 2009: Perspectives of Research, Pułtusk 2009, ed. by J. Popielska and J. Iwaszczuk, Acta Archaeologica Pułtuskiensia, Pułtusk, 23–31.

Reiser-Haslauer, Elfriede 1982. IX. Genealogisches Register, in: Manfred Bietak und Elfriede Reiser-Haslauer, Das Grab des ‘Anch-Hor, Obersthofmeister der Gottesgemahlin Nitokris II, UZK 5, Vienna, 267–284.

Start of 2018 Season

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Today we reopened the Middle Kingdom saff tomb which serves as magazine for the finds from TT 414, the tomb of Ankh-Hor and started our 2018 season!

The tasks for today were mainly cleaning and dust removal – nine years have passed since the last opening and this clearly left some marks – also on us, I really really needed a shower afterwards…

Thanks to the support of the local authorities and our workmen, we started very well into the new season – the first objects from TT 414 were already drawn by Mona and Patrizia and also photographed by Cajetan!

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The goal for the first week will be re-organizing the magazine into categories of priority – with hundreds of objects waiting for us, we will not be able to study and document all of them. The focus will be on coffins and cartonnage fragments, dating from the Saite Period to Roman times.