scholarly journals Gebelein Archaeological Project 2019: Pathyris and the cemeteries in East Gebelein and the Chert Survey in West Gebelein

Author(s):  
Wojciech Ejsmond ◽  
Julia M. Chyła ◽  
Piotr Witkowski ◽  
Dawid F. Wieczorek ◽  
Dániel Takács ◽  
...  

Fieldwork in early 2019 by the Gebelein Archaeological Project encompassed surveys of two cemeteries situated south of the ancient town of Per-Hathor/Pathyris in the area of the Eastern Mountain of Gebelein. One of these is dated to the Old Kingdom and the First Intermediate Period, the other tentatively to Fatimid times. The third survey searched for local chert sources on the Western Mountain, investigating a local tradition of lithic tool production.

Author(s):  
Josep Cervelló Autuori ◽  

The inscriptions recovered from the looted necropolis of Kom el-Khamaseen, located in southwest Saqqara and dated between the end of the Old Kingdom and the beginning of the First Intermediate Period, document a hitherto unknown high priest of Memphis: Imephor Impy Nikauptah. This character must be incorporated into our prosopographical repertoires and placed in his historical and cultural context. This provides a good opportunity to return to the issue of the Memphite pontificate during the third millennium B.C. as a whole. The aim of this article is therefore to offer, on the one hand, a systematic and updated overview of the subject by integrating the new data from Kom el-Khamaseen, drawing upon the complete sources, and critically reviewing the literature on the matter. On the other hand, it is also about providing a new reasoned chronological list and a prosopography of the Memphite high priests of the Old Kingdom and the First Intermediate Period.


2020 ◽  
pp. 13-61
Author(s):  
Natalia Małecka-Drozd

The 3rd millennium BC appears to be a key period of development of the historical settlement landscape in ancient Egypt. After the unification of the country, the process of disappearance of the predynastic socio-political structures and settlement patterns associated with them significantly accelerated. Old chiefdoms, along with their centres and elites, declined and vanished. On the other hand, new settlements emerging in various parts of the country were often strictly related to the central authorities and formation of the new territorial administration. Not negligible were climatic changes, which influenced the shifting of the ecumene. Although these changes were evolutionary in their nature, some important stages may be recognized. According to data obtained during surveys and excavations, there are a number of sites that were considerably impoverished and/or abandoned before and at the beginning of the Old Kingdom. On the other hand, during the Third and Fourth Dynasties some important Egyptian settlements have emerged in the sources and begun their prosperity. Architectural remains as well as written sources indicate the growing interest of the state in the hierarchy of landscape elements and territorial structure of the country.


2021 ◽  
Vol 148 (1) ◽  
pp. 92-100
Author(s):  
Nicole Kloth

Summary There exists a group of texts among the autobiographical inscriptions of the Old Kingdom that, due to their close phraseological relationship, must go back to a common source, and which can be described as “Saqqara group” according to their place of origin. It dates back to the turn from the 5th to the 6th dynasty. This group can now be extended by additional autobiographies and furthermore differentiated. The classical creation of a stemma cannot be used, but instead different significant text sequences, which are called “clusters” here, are examined. The texts of this autobiographical cluster, starting from Saqqara, find their prolongation at the beginning of the 6th dynasty in El-Hawawish and it can be observed that they are transferred from higher-ranking officials at the end of the Old Kingdom to lower-ranking officials in the First Intermediate Period.


Author(s):  
Zsolt Kiss ◽  

Two fragments of painted Roman funerary portraits on wooden panels of the Fayum type, discovered in 2001 during a revisiting of the Third Intermediate Period shaft tombs inside the Chapel of Hatshepsut in the Royal Mortuary Cult Complex at the Temple of Hatshepsut in Deir el-Bahari, come from 19th century excavations, hence are without anything but a general context. The pieces are very small—fragment of a robe, sliver of a face with one eye—but in a brilliant analysis of iconography and style Kiss identifies one as a depiction of a female, possibly a priestess of Isis, from the second half of the 2nd century AD, and the other as a male portrait from the 2nd century. The portraits may belong to what some scholars have called “Theban” painted funerary portraits and they must have come from a Roman necropolis in West Thebes, possibly Deir el-Medineh. On any case, they are proof that mummies with painted portraits of the deceased on wooden panels fitted into the cartonnages were not unknown in ancient Thebes.


Author(s):  
Nigel Strudwick

The Old Kingdom is usually characterized as the first great epoch of Egyptian history, when the phenomenal cultural, iconographical and political developments of the late Predynastic Period and the Early Dynastic Period coalesced to give an eminently visible culture that says ‘ancient Egypt’ to the modern audience. This development may best be symbolized by the pyramid, the most persistent image of the era. For its part, the First Intermediate Period is the first clear manifestation in Egyptian history of the periods of disunity and systemic weakness that have affected every long-lasting ancient and modern culture in one form or the other. The time-period covered in this section illustrates for the first time both the highs and lows of ancient Egypt. The Old Kingdom is usually defined as consisting of the Third to Eighth Dynasties of Manetho (c.2686–2125 bc), and the First Intermediate Period of the Ninth and Tenth and roughly two-thirds of the Eleventh Dynasty (c.2160–2016 bc).


2018 ◽  
Vol 145 (2) ◽  
pp. 187-204
Author(s):  
Harco Willems

Summary Egyptologists have paid much attention to inscribed administrative seals and their impressions. By contrast, the so-called figure seals, which render no or hardly any text, but instead use icons and signs inspired on hieroglyphs which however yield no coherent sense, have received far less attention. Usually this material is related to the lower strata of society. According to current interpretations, it is rooted in the Egyptian culture of the later Old Kingdom and First Intermediate Period. The phenomenon would be a corollary of the decreasing prominence of central state authority in this era. Proceeding from a number of recent early Old Kingdom finds from al-Shaykh Saʽīd/Wādī Zabaydā, the present article argues that a) figure seals were continually in use from the late Predynastic until the late Old Kingdom and b) different from what is commonly assumed, stamp seals were in existence long before the late Old Kingdom. The article challenges the relationship between these object categories and developments specifically in late Old Kingdom Egypt.


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