The Letter to Nebetitef on her First Intermediate Period Stela in the Michael C. Carlos Museum

This paper offers a publication of the stela of Nebetitef with a letter to the deceased owner of the stela on the back. The letter was first published by Edward Wente more than four decades ago after he had seen it briefly in the Cairo Museum, and this publication has formed the basis for all subsequent discussions of the letter, in which the writer notably refers to wishing to see the deceased in a dream. A study of the front of the stela along with a re-examination of the hieratic letter, under more favourable circumstances than those available to Wente, yields new insights into the letter, its writers and its recipient. In particular, the re-examination calls into question Wente’s original identification, followed almost unanimously in the subsequent literature, of the main writer of the letter as the husband of the deceased, altering the social backdrop for the interpretation of the letter.

Autobiographische Textüberlieferung im Alten Reich anhand phraseologischer „Cluster“

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.

ASSESSMENT OF DETERIORATION PROCESS IN EXPOSED CARVED LIMESTONE FALSE DOOR OF ABUSIR ARCHAEOLOGICAL AREA

Carved limestone false door dating back to the late Sixth Dynasty or the First Intermediate Period in Abusir archaeological area suffers from many physiochemical and mechanical deterioration factors, which lead to various deterioration phenomena, such as distort the carvings, decorations, the disappearance of paint, cracks in different depths, and salt calcification. It was found in the fill of Shaft 5 in the tomb AS 79 at Abusir South, Excav. No. 9/AS79/2015 and located in the storeroom of Czech Excavation in Abusir area. The current work aims to study the type of limestone which the false door is made of, and to know if there were colors on the false door or not, also to know if there were deterioration mechanisms that affect the carved limestone false doors of Abusir to evaluate the deterioration ratio in stone structure and the effects of surrounding environmental factors on stone. The investigation and characterization processes of archaeological limestone samples were carried out by polarizing microscopy (PLM), optical microscopy (OM), scanning electron microscopy (SEM-EDX) micro-analysis system, X-ray diffraction (XRD), X-ray fluorescence (XRF), and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR). The results revealed that the limestone material of the false door belongs to micrite limestone with very fine grains and needs to be conserved.

Significant depositional changes offshore the Nile Delta in late third millennium BCE: relevance for Egyptology

No environmental factor has been as critically important for Egypt's ancient society through time as sufficiently high annual flood levels of the Nile River, the country's major source of fresh water. However, interpretation of core analysis shows reduced depositional accumulation rates and altered compositional attributes of the sediment facies deposited seaward of the Nile Delta during a relatively brief period in the late third millennium BCE. These changes record the effects of displaced climatic belts, decreased rainfall, lower Nile flows, and modified oceanographic conditions offshore in the Levantine Basin, primarily from 2300 to 2000 BCE, taking place at the same time as important geological changes identified by study of cores collected in the Nile Delta. It turns out that integrated multi-disciplinary Earth science and archaeological approaches at dated sites serve to further determine when and how such significant changing environmental events had negative effects in both offshore and landward areas. This study indicates these major climatically induced effects prevailed concurrently offshore and in Nile Delta sites and at about the time Egypt abandoned the Old Kingdom's former political system and also experienced fragmentation of its centralized state. In response, the country's population would have experienced diminished agricultural production leading to altered societal, political, and economic pressures during the late Old Kingdom to First Intermediate Period at ca. 2200 to 2050 BCE.

Characteristics of Hydro-Oceanography in the Coastal Waters of Kura-Kura Beach, Bengkayang Regency

The waters of Kura-Kura Beach have quite a lot of human activities, one of which is tourism. The study aims to observe Hydro-Oceanographic parameters such as tidal conditions, ocean currents, and waves. The study uses field observation data and simulation results. The data is calculated to find Formzhal number based on the amplitude of tidal harmonic constants. The Flow analysis to determine the pattern and velocity of the current. The height and period of the wave to analyze characteristics of the wave. The results show that the tide in Kura-Kura Beach waters is a daily mix of a double with the highest tide at MSL and a minimum tide of 0.43 below MSL. While the current velocity obtained from the yield model has a range of (0.003 - 0.11) m/s, and the measurement results are between (0.005 - 0.14) m/s. The simulation results show that the current moves from land to sea at low tide, and it moves from sea to land at toward the tide. For the height of the ocean waves that are formed in a period of 10 years (2009 - 2019) ranges from (0.09 - 154) m and the wave period (1.86 - 5.73) seconds. Based on the calculation results, the largest wave energy occurs in the second intermediate period, namely 184.21 Joules/m with height and wave periods of 1.21 m and 4.39 seconds. In contrast, the smallest wave energy occurs in the first intermediate period with minimum wave height and period 0.18 m and 3.08 seconds. In general, based on the simulation of the current velocity model, the forecasting of wave height and wave energy in Kura-Kura Beach waters is still relatively small. So, it can be concluded that the location is still categorized as safe for coastal tourism and other activities.

The Old Kingdom and First Intermediate Period

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).