Beni Sweif tombs to open

Two tombs and the remains of a Ptolemaic temple will soon be open to visitors near the Upper Egyptian town of Beni Sweif, reports Nevine El-Aref

To the west of Beni Sweif lies the Deshasha Cemetery with its rock-hewn tombs of Ancient Egyptian Old Kingdom officials cut into a cliff above the desert plain. The site was investigated in 1897 by British Egyptologist Flinders Petrie, who discovered several tombs from the Fifth Dynasty as well as others from the 18th Dynasty.

Egyptologist Naguib Qanawati later worked at the site for 15 years early in the 20th century. Among the best-preserved tombs at the site today are those belonging to the bartender Inty and the supervisor of the royal palace garden Shedu.

Omar Zaki, director of Beni Sweif antiquities, told Al-Ahram Weekly that Inty’s Tomb included two main halls, the first having three pillars and painted walls depicting the deceased in different positions with his family and deities as well as in hunting, cultivation and artisanal scenes including woodworking.

The second hall is perpendicular to the first and does not have any paintings or engravings. The burial shaft is eight metres below ground level. “There is a rare relief depicting a group of Egyptian military lancers invading a fortified town in Asia on one of the Inty tomb’s walls,” Zaki said, adding that according to the hieroglyphic text on the wall the town was in southern Palestine. Further studies might reveal its name, he said. 

The tomb of Shedu is similar to that of Inty but contains an important relief of two bulls fighting one another. The Ministry of Antiquities in collaboration with the Beni Sweif governorate is now developing the Deshasha site in order to make it more tourist friendly and to open it to visitors.

Museum Pieces - Sunk Relief Representation of Ptolemy II

Sunk Relief Representation of Ptolemy II

Although the Ptolemaic Period ushered in a long period of foreign rule, the Macedonian kings of that dynasty did not interfere with the Egyptian artistic traditions of the preceding three milennia. Ptolemy II Philadelphos, like his father Ptolemy I Soter, the founder of the dynasty, continued the practice of building and decorating temples in traditional Egyptian fashion.

While this is not to say that the Macedonian rulers did not have Greek artists portray them according to Greek artistic conventions, here the Greek ruler is shown in a purely Egyptian guise, wearing the traditional nemes-headdress of the pharaoh. The style of the relief, including the deeply cut navel, the horizontal treatment of the torso muscles, the "golf ball" chin, and the upturned smile, is common in representations from Dynasties XXIX and XXX (circa 399–342 B.C.) and was readily adopted by the Ptolemies into their iconographic program. Visible behind the king is the figure of a goddess in another scene.

Medium: Granite

Place Made: Behbeit el Higra, Egypt

Dates: 285 or 282-246 B.C.E.

Period: Ptolemaic Period

Dimensions: 27 3/16 x 23 5/8 x 2 3/8 in. (69 x 60 x 6 cm) (show scale)

Accession Number: 72.127

Credit Line: Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund

Rights Statement: Creative Commons-BY

Ptolemy in Beni Sweif

The recently discovered temple of Ptolemy II in Beni Sweif is set to rewrite the ancient history of the area, writes Nevine El-Aref

Late last week, Egyptian excavators working at the Gabal Al-Nour archaeological site in Beni Sweif stumbled upon what is believed to be the first ever temple to be found dating from the reign of the Pharaoh Ptolemy II (282-246 BC).

The temple is a two-storey building made of sandstone 25 metres in height and 16.5 metres wide. The excavators have unearthed the temple’s first floor and part of the ground floor, the rest being still buried in sand.

Mansour Breik, head of the Central Administration of Middle Egypt Antiquities, told Al-Ahram Weekly that only two metres of the temple had been unearthed but that it was in a very good state of preservation. The temple’s ground floor consisted of several rooms that had not yet been excavated, he said.

The eastern wall of the temple had been revealed, showing it to be decorated with engravings featuring Ptolemy II wearing a white crown and presenting offerings to the goddess Isis who was worshipped in the temple with the Nile god Hapy.

A collection of sandstone blocks engraved with Ptolemy II’s cartouche has also been found, along with clay pots and a large limestone head of a cobra. Breik said that he expected the excavations would soon lead to the western wall of the temple, which may be engraved with the provinces of Lower and Upper Egypt.

“It is a very important discovery that could rewrite the ancient history of Beni Sweif and that of Ptolemy II’s reign. We know little about this although he ruled Egypt for 32 years,” Breik told the Weekly.

He said that the newly discovered temple was the first ever monument from the reign of Ptolemy II to be found in Beni Sweif. The 20 architectural monuments from his reign that have been found are spread across different provinces, such as Fayoum, Dendara and Kom Ombo, but never Beni Sweif. Most of these monuments consist of rooms and a portico but never a complete temple.

Elizabeth Donnelly Carney, Arsinoë of Egypt and Macedon: A Royal Life - A Bryn Mawr Classical Review

Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2013.09.54

Elizabeth Donnelly Carney, Arsinoë of Egypt and Macedon: A Royal Life. Women in antiquity.   Oxford; New York:  Oxford University Press, 2013.  Pp. xvii, 215.  ISBN 9780195365511.

Reviewed by Jens Bartels, Universität Zürich

Writing a biography is a difficult task, all the more when the object of study is a person of antiquity. Evidence is usually scarce, fragmentary and distorted. Thus, reconstructing an ancient life from birth to death, even tracing the protagonist’s character or at least his / her motives, seems quite impossible. More often than not, the situation is additionally exacerbated by the lack of an ancient biography or the absence of a dense historiographical tradition. As this is exactly the case with Arsinoë II, one wonders, how one could try and write a biography about her. The (very aesthetic) design of the cover of the book by Olivia Russin could be a hint at the difficulties: the upper half shows a wonderful early Hellenistic bronze head of a woman. It may depict Arsinoë II, but also Arsinoë I or any other Hellenistic queen of that time, or simply a goddess.1 In order to be able to relate the life of Arsinoë II one has to squeeze every bit of evidence to the last drop and is still far from any continuous narration on her life let alone any hints on her motivation or her character. Of course, Elizabeth Carney is well aware of these problems. In the appendix (137-145) she thus presents a concise and critical survey of the relevant sources and the related scholarly discussion, showing the rather desperate situation. In her own words (10): “Looking at Arsinoë’s life is a bit like trying to meet someone at a big party, but somehow always missing them though, perhaps, getting a whiff of their perfume and hearing a lot of stories about them. In a sense, Arsinoë is always in the other room.”