Volume 10 No.6Issue 60

June/July 2010

www.ancientegyptmagazine.com

£4.40

Temples, Tombs and Tourists

Minoans and Mycenaeans in Ancient Egypt

An Ancient Egyptian Fleet of Model Boats

Win Family Tickets to the Tutankhamun Exhibition Dorchester

ANCIENT EGYPT June/July 2010 3

18

28

ffeeaattuurreess

The Tomb of KarakhamunBirgit Schoer reports on work at the long-lost tombof Karakhamun at Luxor, that is revealing new information about the tomb and its owner.

An Italian Mummy MysterySabina Malgora and Anna Pieri examine amummy in an Italian museum collection and discover all is not what it would seem to be.

32An Fleet of Ancient Model BoatsCraig S. Milner describes the remarkable discovery of a large number of tomb models at Deirel-Bersha, including a fleet of boats that have been conserved and are now on display in Boston.

From our Egypt CorrespondentAyman Wahby Taher brings you the latest news,from Cairo, Saqqara, Aswan and Luxor.

9

rreegguullaarrssMaps of Egypt and Timeline 4News from the Editor 5Competitions and winners 8, 27, 67 Readers’ Letters 27Netfishing 55

Back Issues 56How to Subscribe 57Book Reviews 58Egyptology Society Details 62Events Diary 64

41The Department of Ancient Egyptand Sudan at the British MuseumIn the second of a series of articles, Dr. NealSpencer reports on how the Museum is helping totrain Egyptian and Sudanese archaeologists.

Campaniform to CompositePeter Phillips discusses the evolution of the composite form of ancient Egyptian columns.

38

AANNCCIIEENNTT EEGGYYPPTTwww.ancientegyptmagazine.com

June/July 22010VOLUME 10, NNO 6: IISSUE NO. 660

EDITOR:Robert B. Partridge, 6 Branden Drive,Knutsford, Cheshire, WA16 8EJ, UK

Tel. 01565 633106Email: ancientegyptmag@aol.com

DEPUTY EDITOR/PRODUCTION EDITOR:Peter Phillips

CONSULTANT EDITOR:Professor Rosalie David, OBE

STAFF CONTRIBUTORS:Victor Blunden, Peter Robinson,

Hilary WilsonEGYPT CORRESPONDENT:

Dr. Ayman Wahby Taher

PUBLISHED BY:Ancient Egypt Magazine Ltd.

1 Newton Street,Manchester, M1 1HW, UK

Tel: 0161 872 3319 Fax: 0161 872 4721

Email:info@ancientegyptmagazine.com

ADVERTISEMENT MANAGER:Michael Massey

Tel. 0161 928 2997

SUBSCRIPTIONS:Mike Hubbard

0161 872 3319

PRINTED BY:Warners (Midlands) plc, The Maltings,

Manor Lane, Bourne, Lincolnshire,PE10 9PH, UK

DESIGN AND SETTING:Peartree Publishing and Design,

56 Albert St, Manchester, M11 3SU, UK

FRONT COVER DESIGNED BY: David Soper

Main Image: The Colossi of Memnon.Photo: RP (image horizontally flipped for artistic reasons!)

TRADE DISTRIBUTION THROUGH:Diamond Magazine Distribution Ltd.

Rye Wharf Road, Harbour Road,Rye, East Sussex, TN31 7TE, UK

Tel: 01797 225229 Fax: 01797 225657

ISSN: 11470 99990

CCOONNTTEENNTTSS

Tutankhamun Exhibition Competition – see enclosed leaflet and Page 67.

Minoans and Mycenaeans inAncient EgyptMarta Farrugia and Anton Mifsud show thatthe depictions on the walls of early New Kingdomtombs prove that Minoans and Mycenaeans were incontact with ancient Egypt.

50

Per Mesut: for younger readersIn this issue Hilary Wilson discusses Snakes.

46

48 Temples, Tombs and TouristsTony Holmes looks at ancient and modern tourism.

AEPrelim60.qxd 06/05/2010 21:35 Page 3

ANCIENT EGYPT June/July 201060

The story of the moving and re-erec-tion of the obelisks is well known butalways worth re-telling. Introductorychapters cover the symbolism of theobelisk and how they were cut; furtherchapters look at twenty-eight standingobelisks.

These include the well known Romanobelisks, in Istanbul, Paris, New Yorkand London. It is especially good to seethat the obelisk at Kingston Lacy inDorset in the UK is included, and I wasintrigued to see a recently-discoveredobelisk now re-erected in Caesarea inIsrael.

The standing obelisks in Egypt arealso included: at Luxor, Karnak,Heliopolis and the one in Cairo, thoughthe obelisk that can be seen at CairoAirport is, for some reason, not included.

This is a good general guide on thesubject, but it is a great shame and a dis-appointment to me that the illustrationsare somewhat sparse. In a book such isthis I would expect to see photos of allthe obelisks mentioned, especially theone at Caesarea.

This book, now available in English forthe first time, is a comprehensive look atthe geology of Egypt and an in-depthstudy of ancient Egyptian stone quarries.

The ancient Egyptians made themost of their natural resources andevery type of stone was used, from thevery hardest of rocks to the softest.

This volume begins with an intro-duction to the geology of Egypt andcontinues with a chapter on the identi-

fication of rock types, often a problemfor Egyptologists.

Succeeding chapters look at eachtype of rock in turn and at all the quar-ries known, so, for example under‘Limestone’, after a description of thelimestones used in Pharaonic times andhow and where they were formed, theways of determining if a rock is lime-stone are described, along with manyillustrations of microscopic examina-tion of the various limestones found.Then a total of forty-four limestonequarries are identified and described insome detail. Maps of the quarries areincluded and many black-and-whitephotos of the quarry workings too.

Blocks of stone left in situ at many ofthe sites and/or only partly cut revealmuch about the ancient quarryingtechniques and how the stonemasonsplanned their work.

I was especially intrigued by a largeblock, partly cut out of the rock atZawiet Sultan in Middle Egypt, wherethere is an unfinished monumentalstatue, and only the outline of thestanding figure has been inscribed inthe prepared rock surface. This workprobably dates to the reign ofAmenhotep III. Had it been complet-ed, the statue would have been one ofthe largest monolithic sculptures inEgypt at around twenty metres tall.

The same format is then used for sec-tions on Calcite Alabaster; Sandstone;Granite, Granodiorite and Tonalitefrom south of Aswan; Rocks of theEastern Desert; Basalt and Dolerite;Gneiss, Gneissic Anorthosite andGneissic Gabbro, Gneissic Diorite; andStones of the Western Oases.

Unfinished work can be seen atmany of the quarries and adds to ourknowledge of quarrying techniquesand how the blocks were moved onland. Shrines and inscriptions at thesites help to date when quarries were inuse. Some quarries were used rightthrough the Pharaonic period andindeed some are still in use today.

This book is written with the geolo-gist in mind, but I have found it to be areally fascinating read and not tootechnical for a non-geologist likemyself. The information on how vari-ous stones weather is most interestingand this will be of huge interest tothose involved in the conservation ofstone buildings and objects.

It is a great shame that the majorityof the illustrations in this book are in

black-and-white, which means thecolours of the rock at the quarries can-not be appreciated. However, there is asection of colour plates, firstly showinga range of objects from ancient Egyptmade from the rocks described in thebook and then an important series ofcolour illustrations of the many rocktypes, where the rock samples areshown at their actual size. These aregood enough to enable types of rock tobe easily identified.

The ancient Egyptians quarriedhuge blocks of stone and moved themthe length and breadth of the country,often in very difficult conditions. A fewof the quarries, such as those at Giza,Gebel el-Silsila and Aswan will beknown to visitors to Egypt, but thereare quarries literally everywhere andall are fascinating from the geologicaland archaeological point of view.

This book will undoubtedly be awell-used publication for anyone whowants to understand the use of stone inancient Egypt. In fact, for anyoneinterested in ancient Egyptian build-ings, then this should be an essentialread too.

The area at Giza covered in this publi-cation was excavated in the early yearsof the last century by Harvard/BostonMFA, and in particular by GeorgeResiner in 1905-06. Resiner had a rep-utation for being slow with his publica-tions, so this new volume is long over-due; but this is, as it turns out, all forthe best, for this new oversized publica-tion is a superb example of what an

new bbooks

SSttoonneess aanndd QQuuaarrrriieess iinn AAnncciieenntt EEggyyppttby Rosmarie and DeitrichKlemm.Published by The British MuseumPress, 2009.ISBN 978 0 7141 2326 4Hardback, price £85.

Giza MMastabas VVolume 88: MMaassttaabbaass ooff NNuucclleeuussCCeemmeetteerryy GG 22110000by Peter Der Manuelian.Published by the Museum of FineArts, Boston, 2009.ISBN 978 0 87846 754 9.Hardback, price £110.

AEreviews 60.qxd 06/05/2010 21:03 Page 60

archaeological publication should beand how the delay has actually beenadvantageous.

Based firmly on the original excava-tors’ accounts and illustrations, this isthe publication that Reisner himselfshould have produced … but with theadvent of new technology, the authorhas taken the opportunity to includemany colour images of items andreliefs from the tombs, now scattered inmuseum collections around the world,including some excellent photomon-tages with the museum pieces frommany collections re-connected to theremains still in situ at Giza.

With new computer reconstructionsof the appearance of the tombs andmany line drawings and plans thisstate-of-the-art Egyptological publica-tion presents all the available informa-tion. Whilst it is clearly an academicwork aimed at specialists, there is muchhere also to interest and inform themore casual reader, especially anyoneinterested in the architecture, decora-tion and contents of Old Kingdomélite tombs.

This is a superbly produced book,printed on fine paper and lavishly illus-trated and it will undoubtedly give pro-ducers of archaeological reports a newstandard to strive to equal.

In 1915, a tomb was discovered at el-Bersha that yielded the largest assem-blage of material from a MiddleKingdom Tomb ever found. Althoughthe tomb had been robbed, the con-tents included decorated coffins and a

huge number of tomb models depict-ing scenes of daily life (see the articleon pages 32-37 in this issue of AE)

The majority of the material from thetomb was sent to Boston, and whilst anumber of the key pieces were placedon immediate display in the Museum ofFine Arts, most could not be shown, asthey had suffered badly from the rav-ages of tomb robbers and the passage oftime.

Almost a hundred years later, after ahuge amount of conservation work, allthe objects from the tomb were placedon display in a special exhibition at theMuseum.

This splendid publication is the cata-logue of that exhibition. The objectsare beautifully illustrated anddescribed and the introductory chap-ters give their historical, funerary andartistic context.

This book is ideal reading as a sou-venir for those lucky enough to havevisited the exhibition, but even betterfor those who could not.

RP

The majority of the readers of thismagazine will have visited Egypt, andhave travelled in one of the ubiquitoustaxis, in Cairo or Luxor. At the veryleast, they must have been aware of theconstant background refrain to anystreet-scene in the tourist areas ofEgypt: “Taxi?”, “Calèche?”,“Felucca?”. Yet how many of those vis-itors have paused to reflect on why it isthat there are so many taxis vying forbusiness, what it is like to try to scratcha living as a poor working man in aMiddle Eastern country surrounded by‘fabulously wealthy’ tourists and Arabvisitors from the Gulf States, and whatthe ordinary Egyptian really thinks ofthose European, American and Saudivisitors?

This slim volume is neither novel nortext-book on political science, and yet it isboth. It comprises a set of individual dia-logues between the author, a middle-classEgyptian, and the taxi drivers he meetsevery day as he travels around the streetsof Cairo.

The conversations convey an unmis-takable ring of truth, and make amusingbut disturbing reading. Apparently thebook quickly became a best-seller inEgypt. It will certainly make the Westernreader question some of his comfortableprejudices and give him pause when nexthe tries to haggle over the price of a taxijourney or a souvenir.

One is left with a sense of admirationfor the resilience, irrepressible spirit andgood humour of these hardworking anddowntrodden people and with a clearerpicture of the harsh realities of Egyptiansociety. Perhaps most worrying of all arethe glimpses that the author unwittinglygives us of his own opinions about theWest.

This book should be essential readingfor all regular visitors to Egypt.

Peter Phillips

Peter is Deputy Editor of AE

ANCIENT EGYPT June/July 2010 61

TThhee SSeeccrreettss ooff TToommbb1100AA:: EEggyypptt 22000000 BBCCby Rita E. Freed, LawrenceM. Berman, Denise M. Doxeyand Nicholas S. Picardo.Published by the Museum of FineArts, Boston, 2009.ISBN 978 0 87846 748 8.Paperback, price £42.95.

new bbooks

TTaaxxiiby Khaled Al Khamissi,translated by JonathanWright.Published by Aflame Books(aflamebooks.com), 2006.ISBN 978 1 906300 02 9.Paperback, price £7.99.

AEreviews 60.qxd 06/05/2010 21:07 Page 61