Study shows how ecology transformed through 6,000 years of Egyptian history

Ancient Egyptian artworks help scientists reconstruct how animal communities changed as climate became drier and human populations grew.

Depictions of animals in ancient Egyptian artifacts have helped scientists assemble a detailed record of the large mammals that lived in the Nile Valley over the past 6,000 years. A new analysis of this record shows that species extinctions, probably caused by a drying climate and growing human population in the region, have made the ecosystem progressively less stable.

The study, published September 8 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), found that local extinctions of mammal species led to a steady decline in the stability of the animal communities in the Nile Valley. When there were many species in the community, the loss of any one species had relatively little impact on the functioning of the ecosystem, whereas it is now much more sensitive to perturbations, according to first author Justin Yeakel, who worked on the study as a graduate student at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and is now a postdoctoral fellow at the Santa Fe Institute.

Around six millennia ago, there were 37 species of large-bodied mammals in Egypt, but only eight species remain today. Among the species recorded in artwork from the late Predynastic Period (before 3100 BC) but no longer found in Egypt are lions, wild dogs, elephants, oryx, hartebeest, and giraffe.

Examining the Lives of Ancient Egyptian Women

The case of an ancient Egyptian woman named Tjat

By Melinda Nelson-Hurst   •  09/02/2014 for the Biblical Archaeology Society

In the heart of Egypt, about 150 miles (ca. 240 km) south of modern Cairo near the city of Minya, lies a large and ancient necropolis at a site named Beni Hasan. This location has been popular among tourists and academics because several of its massive, rock-cut tombs have beautifully decorated tomb chapels that have survived for millennia. These tombs provide troves of information for scholars to analyze and debate, but today I’d like to focus on one minor person in one tomb: an ancient Egyptian woman by the name of Tjat.

Tjat appears in the tomb of Khnumhotep II (tomb 3), a local ruler from around the middle of the Twelfth Dynasty (ca. 1900 B.C.). You may have heard about this tomb before because of its so-called scene of Asiatics (people depicted in the typical way that the ancient Egyptians used to distinguish people to the northeast of Egypt)—figures who have been variously interpreted as everything from local nomads to immigrants from the Near East to Biblical figures. However, much less attention has been paid to the woman named Tjat who appears in prominent positions in four different scenes throughout this tomb and is labeled there as a “sealer” (sometimes translated “treasurer”).

Who was Tjat and why does she appear within this tomb? Because of her prominent place (and that of her children) within these scenes, as well as other factors, scholars have assumed for over a hundred years that Tjat was the mistress and/or second wife of Khnumhotep II, who in turn is assumed to be the father of Tjat’s children. However, having studied Khnumhotep II’s family in some depth, I began to feel compelled to reassess this interpretation of Tjat. Might we, as scholars, have been too quick to categorize this woman as a sexual partner of Khnumhotep II because she did not easily fit other familiar categories? I would certainly say, “yes.” While we will never be able to answer all of our questions about ancient Egypt with any certainty, it is only through close study of both the details and the wider social and historical contexts that we might come a bit closer to the ancient realities of life.

Museum Pieces - Block statue of Nes-Amun

Photocredit: BA Antiquities Museum/C. Gerigk

Block statue of Nes-Amun

Category: Sculpture in the round, statues, human / gods and goddesses statues, block (cube) statues
Date: Late Period (664-332 BCE)
Provenance: Upper Egypt, Luxor (Thebes), East Bank, Karnak temple
Material(s): Rock, granite, black granite
Height: 46 cm; Width: 20.5 cm; Depth: 29.5 cm
Inventory#: BAAM Serial 0598

Description

Block statue of a priest serving the god Montu in Thebes by the name of "Nes Amun" which was found in a cache in Karnak.  The priest is represented in a squatting position and a relief sculpture of the god of the dead, Osiris in mummified form and wearing the white crown of Upper Egypt, occupies the centre of the statue.  The god Osiris holds the crook and flail, emblems of power and government.  Hieroglyphs in two vertical lines on the sides glorify him.  The back of the statue also contains hieroglyphs divided into two horizontal lines which read from right to left representing a dedication from the priest and prayers for his soul.

The Priesthood

The priest in ancient Egypt was considered a servant of the god and he was therefore referred to as Hem-Neter, Hem literally meaning servant, Neter meaning god.  He was attached to a temple to look after the needs of the god in terms of food and clothing.  During the Old and Middle Kingdoms, some priests worked only part-time at the temple and returned to their ordinary everyday family life and occupation after a stint lasting three months in the temple compound (one month in every four per year).

Priests were divided into different ranks and had different duties within the temple, such as attending to offerings and minor parts of temple ritual, or running the economic affairs and administration of the temple, while only the chief priest was allowed to handle the cult image. This high rank of priesthood was not limited to men only, as women from the elite also filled the role of chief priestess. They were called Hemet-Neter and during the Old and Middle Kingdom served the goddess Hathor.

The chief priest exercised great power and influence on Pharaoh and ordinary people alike. During the 18th Dynasty (1550-1295), the god Amun gained supremacy over other gods and as a result, the Amun priesthood dominated the religious landscape and became exceedingly powerful.

The lowest or entry rank among priests was that of Waab, or 'purifier' who was entrusted with the purification and cleanliness of ritual area and items, however, he was not allowed into the inner sanctuary.  Another rank of priesthood was that of astrologer/ astronomer which was in charge of divination and of calculating time and setting the calendar determining religious festivals, as well as lucky and unlucky days.

Other priests attached to the "House of Life" or 'Per-Ankh'  were responsible for teaching religious matters, writing and for copying texts.  The Hery Heb or lector priests recited the words of the god.  They were part of the permanent staff at the temple.

Every temple had its retinue of singers and musicians to perform during festivals and rituals. Women among the nobles had the title of "singer or chantress of Amun" and were shown holding or shaking the musical instrument called sistrum during ceremonial activities.

There were other priests involved with healing, with oracles, those who were able to communicate with the dead (mainly women called Rakhet) and those workers of protective magic.

Priests were not allowed to wear wool or leather products, only clothes made of high-quality linen and sandals made of Papyrus, with the exception of the Sem priests who wore a cheetah skin.  The latter performed the 'Opening of the Mouth' ceremony during the mummification process.

Priests inherited their role from their fathers, and by the Roman period it was common for the office to be bought.  The role of priests in small provincial temples remained less important than in larger ones.


Bibliography
"Priests". In The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt. Edited by Donald B. Redford. Vol. III. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.
"Priests". In Dictionary of Egyptian civilization. By Posener, Georges, Serge Sauneron and Jean Yoyotte. Translated from the French by Alix Macfarlane. London: Methuen, 1962.

Source: http://antiquities.bibalex.org/Collection/Detail.aspx?lang=en&a=598

Tutankhamun in Tokyo

Japan is set to fall under the spell of ancient Egypt through an upcoming exhibition. But some archaeologists have criticised plans to send priceless objects abroad, writes Nevine El-Aref

Visitors to the Japanese capital will soon fall under the spell of ancient Egypt and the boy king Tutankhamun thanks to an exhibition, “Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs”, which opens in Tokyo this September.

Tutankhamun was seen for the first time in Japan in 1965 when objects from the Egyptian Museum’s priceless collection were exhibited in Tokyo. The second time was in 2012 when the magic of the boy king and his royal grandparents captured the heart of Osaka residents on the last leg of a ten-city tour that began in Switzerland and passed through Germany, France, England and several US states.

The new exhibition highlights one of the most interesting eras in ancient Egyptian history, the period before and during Tutankhamun’s reign 3,300 years ago. Each artefact in the show displays the dazzling craftsmanship that characterised earlier Tutankhamun exhibitions.

Of the 124 artefacts carefully selected from the Egyptian Museum, 30 are from the museum’s Tutankhamun collection. Artefacts from earlier royal tombs from the 18th Dynasty, including the tomb of Tutankhamun’s great-grandparents Yuya and Tuya and the KV55 burial tomb, are also included.

According to the terms of the exhibition agreement, revenues from the show could reach $10 million, said Ahmed Sharaf, head of the museums section at the Ministry of Antiquities in Cairo. A fixed amount of $2 added to the price of each ticket will be given to Egypt, as will a percentage of the merchandise sold through the show.

What happened to the missing mummies of Egypt's lost queens?

Joann Fletcher ventures through the temples of Egypt to uncover the 'lost queens' of ancient times

By Joann Fletcher7:00AM BST 04 Sep 2014

On 2nd February 1925, the photographer from the Harvard-Boston archaeological expedition was setting up his camera tripod on the rocky plateau of Giza close to the base of the Great Pyramid. Having some degree of difficulty in his attempt to get the legs on an equal footing, he dislodged what he assumed was a small piece of limestone, but which closer inspection revealed to be a fragment of plaster, the kind of plaster traditionally used in ancient times to seal up the entrance of a tomb.

With the same archaeological team having already made a series of spectacular discoveries at Giza over the previous 20 years, most notably a large group of superb statues of King Menkaure, builder of Giza’s third pyramid, this new discovery was so unexpected the excavation’s director George Reisner was still in the US. So the task of opening the tomb fell to his British assistant Alan Rowe and his Egyptian head foreman Said Ahmed Said, whose removal of the plaster covering revealed a 100 foot vertical shaft cut down into the limestone bedrock, filled solid with limestone masonry and yet more plaster. Only after a month when this had all been removed was it then possible for the archaeologists to descend to the very bottom of the shaft to reach the doorway, marked with the official seal of King Khufu, builder of the Great Pyramid.

Although the rock-cut rectangular chamber which lay beyond was only 15 by 8 feet, the archaeologists could see ‘the dazzle of gold’ through a small gap at the top of the doorway. They could also see the chamber was crammed full with all manner of wonderful things whose inscriptions, initially read with the aid of binoculars and later at close quarters, revealed the contents had belonged to Khufu’s mother, Queen Hetepheres (c.2600 BC). With her status as queen mother making her ‘first lady’, at that time of greater importance than the king’s wife, she was certainly the most important woman to her son Khufu since the first tomb he built at Giza was for her, located “in the most important point in his own royal cemetery” noted Reisner’s colleague Noel Wheeler.

Ancient Last Supper charm found in John Rylands Library

A 1,500-year-old papyrus charm thought to be "the first ever found to refer to the Last Supper and use magic in the Christian context" has been discovered in the vaults of a Manchester library.

The fragment was found at the University of Manchester's John Rylands Library by researcher Dr Roberta Mazza.

Dr Mazza said it was an "incredibly rare example of the Bible becoming meaningful to ordinary people".

She said it would have been put in a locket to protect wearers from danger.

The document, written in Greek, has been held by the library since 1901, but was largely ignored until Dr Mazza came across it.

'Doubly fascinating'

On one side, it has a combination of biblical passages from the books of Psalms and Matthew, while on the other is part of a receipt for payment of grain tax.

Dr Mazza said the amulet maker "would have cut a piece of the receipt, written the charm on the other side and then folded the papyrus to be kept in a locket".

She said the use of written charms was an ancient Egyptian practice, which was adopted by early Christians, who replaced prayers to Egyptian and Greco-Roman gods with passages from the Bible.

The papyrus may have been originally owned by a villager living near Hermopolis - now called Al Ashmunin - in east Egypt and "we now think knowledge of the Bible was more embedded in sixth century AD Egypt than we realised," she said.

"This is an incredibly rare example of Christianity and the Bible becoming meaningful to ordinary people - not just priests and the elite.

"It's one of the first recorded documents to use magic in the Christian context and the first charm ever found to refer to the Eucharist - the Last Supper - as the manna of the Old Testament."

She said it was "doubly fascinating because the amulet maker clearly knew the Bible, but made lots of mistakes".

"Some words are misspelled and others are in the wrong order - this suggests that he was writing by heart rather than copying it."

Source: http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-manchester-29028009

New discoveries at Berenice by Polish archaeologists

Archaeologists studied 2 thousand years old port infrastructure and a large animal cemetery in Berenice on the Red Sea in Egypt.

"This time during excavations we got lucky. Undoubtedly, this year's most interesting find is a frame - wooden part of a ship hull from the early Roman period" - told PAP Iwona Zych from the Centre of Mediterranean Archaeology, University of Warsaw, who leads the research project in cooperation with Prof. Steven E. Sidebotham of the University of Delaware in the United States.

This is the first fully preserved and documented frame from the hull of the ship from this period in Egypt. The find and the place of its discovery leads researchers to believe that the ship was dismantled and its parts stored in the warehouse in the port bay. Archaeologists will examine the object. Detailed measurements will allow for an approximate reconstruction of the size of the ship.

"This will be the first time that we know the actual size and construction of a Red Sea vessel, because no ancient vessels, or even wrecks have survived to this day" - said Zych.

North-east of the port, archaeologists discovered a large cemetery of small animals. Only this year they studied 60 burials, mostly of cats, but also a small number of dogs, two small vervets and a baboon. Most of the animals were buried either inside damaged clay vessels or covered with shards of clay pots and amphorae. An interesting fact is that one of the vervets had a metal collar.

Scientists are not sure why animals had been buried in this place. Archaeozoologist of the mission, Dr. Marta Osypińska, believes that such an accumulation of burials may be a result of a plague brought to the port from a remote destination. Another possibility is exploitation of young animals in magical rituals, during which the oracle was consulted before a long sea journey. Pet cemeteries are also known from the areas of the Roman Empire, and this beloved animals also can not be ruled out in the case of Berenice. Further research may help solve this puzzle.