Museum Pieces - Belt buckle inscribed for Nefertari

Belt buckle inscribed for Nefertari

Egyptian
1295–1186 B.C.

Findspot, Thebes, Egypt

DIMENSIONS
Height x width: 4.7 x 11.5 cm (1 7/8 x 4 1/2 in.)

ACCESSION NUMBER
04.1955

MEDIUM OR TECHNIQUE
Silver, gold, feldspar, carnelian, blue frit, glass

Inscribed for “the Osiris, great royal wife, his beloved, mistress of Lower Egypt.”

Provenance
Said to be from the Valley of the Queens (Thebes), Tomb of Queen Nefertari (QV 66). 1904: purchased for the MFA from Mohamed Mohassib, Luxor, Egypt by Albert M. Lythgoe as part of a group (04.1953-04.1956, 04.1766-04.1769) for £40. (Accession Date: January 1, 1904)

Credit Line
Emily Esther Sears Fund

Luxor celebrates 110th anniversary of Queen Nefertari Tomb discovery

By Rany Mostafa

CAIRO: In commemoration of the 110th anniversary of the discovery of Queen Nefertari’s Tomb, the Tourism Ministry has organized a 10-day celebration starting Oct. 15 at the Valley of the Queens west of Luxor, Ahmed Shoukry, the International Tourism Sector Chairman at the General Authority for Tourism, told The Cairo Post Saturday.

Photocredit: Wikimedia Commons

Queen Nefertari (1295 B.C.-1255 B.C.) was the wife of Pharaoh Ramses II (1279 B.C.-1223 B.C.), and one of the most famous Egyptian queens. Her tomb was discovered in 1904 by Italian archaeologist Ernesto Schiaparelli (1856-1928), who was the director of the Egyptian Museum in Turin, Sheref el-Sabban, dean of the Tourism and Hotels Faculty at Minya University, told The Cairo Post Saturday.

The celebrations are organized by the Tourism Ministry in collaboration with the Italian Embassy in Egypt, Civil Aviation Ministry and the Tourism Promotion Authority, according to Shoukry.

“Media figures from both Egypt and Italy, Italian archaeologists and tour operators will be attending the celebrations, which are expected to pull in more tourists to Luxor and Upper Egypt,” said Shoukry.

For two decades, the tomb has been under restoration and access was restricted to VIPs, archaeological missions and private visits, Sabban said.

“In 1998, an international team of archaeologists and restoration workers undertook the restoration of the tomb, which has been suffering from rainwater that has leaked into the tomb over thousands of years. Salt deposits also ruined most of the plaster layers on its walls,” Sabban added.

In July, the Supreme Council of Antiquities announced it would launch a project to build an exact, full-size replica of Queen Nefertari’s tomb to divert tourists away from the badly damaged original tomb while still providing them the chance to experience what the original looks like.

“The facsimile production of the tomb will record every tiny detail and dozens of square yards of inscriptions and depictions of scenes found in the original tomb,” Shoukry previously told The Cairo Post.

However, Magdy Mohsen, a local tour guide working in Luxor, also previously told The Cairo Post that the tomb is the best preserved and the most spectacular in Egypt.

“During my few visits to the tomb, I was always just like my guests—excited! At the end of the 10- minute-visit, my guests, fascinated with its bright colors, all say it must have been finished and painted yesterday,” Mohsen said.

Sources:

http://thecairopost.com/news/126818/travel-antiquities/luxor-celebrates-110th-anniversary-of-queen-nefertari-tomb-discovery

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Maler_der_Grabkammer_der_Nefertari_002.jpg?uselang=nl

Restored tombs reopen

The tombs of the wife of Ramses III and one of his top officials have been officially inaugurated after their restoration, writes Nevine El-Aref

In a bid to promote tourism to Egypt, which has declined since the 25 January Revolution, Minister of Antiquities Mohamed Ibrahim this week inaugurated two tombs in the Valley of the Queens and Deir Al-Medina on Luxor’s west bank.

The first tomb belongs to queen Tyti, wife of the Pharaoh Ramses III, and the second is that of Inerkhaou, a senior official during the New Kingdom reigns of Ramses III and IV.

The tomb of queen Tyti is located in the Valley of the Queens and is smaller than its counterparts from the later 20th Dynasty.

When found, it was in a poor state of conservation, having been reused in antiquity.

The tomb consists of a corridor that ends with a burial chamber surrounded by side chambers. It is decorated with colourful paintings that follow the same decorative programme used in the tombs of the queen’s son Amenherkhepshef and Ramses II’s son Khaemwaset of painted scenes on white, grey or yellow backgrounds.

The walls of the corridor, burial chamber and side chambers are decorated with scenes depicting the queen worshipping deities protecting her or the canopic chests in the tomb. The most distinguished paintings are those on the front wall of one of the rear chambers featuring Tyti as a young girl with the braided hair of a teenager. On the left wall she is depicted as a middle-aged woman wearing more conservative dress and make-up.

“These kinds of representations are not common in ancient Egyptian art, and the contrast between the young girl and the older woman is striking,” Ibrahim said.

The ceiling of the burial chamber is painted with delicate white stars on a golden background, with the god Anubis depicted on the chamber’s front wall to protect the tomb. On the left side a lion-headed image of the god Nebnery stands in front of the queen, where there is also an image of the squatting youth Herimaat.

Luxor: Ancient Egyptian Capital

by Owen Jarus, LiveScience ContributorDate: 25 June 2013

Luxor is a modern-day Egyptian city that lies atop an ancient city that the Greeks named “Thebes” and the ancient Egyptians called “Waset.”

Located in the Nile River about 312 miles (500 kilometers) south of Cairo the World Gazetteer website reports that, as of the 2006 census, Luxor and its environs had a population of more than 450,000 people. The name Luxor “derives from the Arabic al-uksur, ‘the fortifications,’ which in turn was adapted from the Latin castrum,” which refers to a Roman fort built in the area, writes William Murnane in the "Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt" (Oxford University Press, 2001).

The ancient city of Luxor served at times as Egypt’s capital and became one of its largest urban centers. “On the East Bank, beneath the modern city of Luxor, lie the remains of an ancient town that from about 1500 to 1000 B.C. was one of the most spectacular in Egypt, with a population of perhaps 50,000,” write archaeologists Kent Weeks and Nigel Hetherington in their book "The Valley of the Kings Site Management Masterplan" (Theban Mapping Project, 2006).

In ancient times, the city was known as home to the god Amun, a deity who became associated with Egyptian royalty. In turn, during Egypt’s “New Kingdom” period between roughly 1550-1050 B.C., most of Egypt’s rulers chose to be buried close to the city in the nearby Valley of the Kings. Other famous sites near the city, which were built or greatly expanded during the New Kingdom period, include Karnak Temple, Luxor Temple, the Valley of the Queens and Queen Hatshepsut’s mortuary temple at Deir al-Bahari.

“Of all the ancient cities, no other city reached the glory of Thebes in supremacy,” writes Egyptologist Rasha Soliman in her book "Old and Middle Kingdom Theban Tombs" (Golden House Publications, 2009). “Thebes is the largest and wealthiest heritage site in the world.”