The city planning of Medinet Madi, is for a large extent still to be investigated, the living quarters excavated are those around the mission house and those along the dromos. The hypotheses advanced in this article are based on the archaeological excavations carried out by the archaeological missions, on the reliefs and satellite photos images (1935-1939, 1962-1968, 1978-1990, 1990-205, 2005-2011); moreover, were used the photo interpretation of the RAF aerial photo (1934) and the Fayum satellite photos images (acquired during the ISSEMM project) as well as field observations during the archaeological missions. The article assumed that the village had two urban planning axes, the first north – south bisector of the temple “A” and the dromos and the second east – west that runs along the temple “C”. The village therefore confirms the Hippodameic scheme of many Fayoum villages.
Since K. Sethe’s works, the Egyptian writing system and its subsystems have always been considered as consonantal. However, this theory has been questioned by I. Gelb in 1960s: according to him, even though the Hieroglyphic system is not vowel-sensitive, it works as a syllabic system with regard to the word parsing. That the classical Egyptian writing is strongly logographic, it seems to be clear, but the situation seems to be more fluid in the preceding stages. In fact, in many passages of PT, several roots show co-textual variations in their writing: to these variations, parallel variations in morphology correspond. My proposal is that a syllabic interpretation could shed some light on these phenomena. From this preliminary study, three main strategies of rendering the syllabic structure of a word emerge: complex logograms, analytic writing, and mobile logograms.
As part of the Ancient Egyptian religion studies, demonology is still a fairly unexplored field. The issue has so far been limited to brief articles and essays, which do not allow to establish a methodology and solid criterions to deal with the subject. This is particularly evident in the absence of a chronological and diachronic perspective in the demonological analysis. Egyptian ideas about supernatural beings have been considered as an immutable whole, without any inner development or evolution: entities far apart in time and belonging to different cultural contexts have been placed on the same level. This article aims to analyze the ambiguity caused by considering as identical two different categories of demons, the ḫ3.tyw and the “seven arrows”. Through a contextualized analysis of the sources, the article will show that these two types have different chronological, cultic and iconographic features. The proposed elements will make clear that the assumption ḫ3.tyw = “seven arrows” is valid only in specific circumstances.
The Mesopotamian and Egyptian artists, in order to represent a proportionated human and royal figure on different kind of surfaces, employed compositional grids, which were realized on the basis of rules dictated by a precise proportional canon. This paper intends therefore to remember, retracing some of the studies about this topic, the main characteristics of these artistic expedients, thanks to which it is possible to try an hypothetical reconstruction of a fragment of a statue depicting pharaoh Userkaf.
A group of Middle Kingdom objects discovered at the beginning of the twentieth century, and stated as coming from a tomb near el-Matariya (Heliopolis), was acquired by a French collector, Maurice Nahman, and later widely dispersed across public institutions and private collections worldwide. The group included a large quantity of faience figurines (over 34 pieces identified so far). The aim of this article is to reassemble the group (also visually) and address three critical points about its ‘discovery’: a) the authenticity of each single artefact; b) the reliability of the place of provenance (el-Matariya) and its archaeological setting (a funerary context); c) the validity of the association of the objects as a group, i.e. the likelihood that they were all effectively connected with each other in the same original context (itself a unique archaeological occurrence). While el-Matariya and a single funerary context for them are still plausible hypotheses, next to the possibilities that these objects may have come from either a temple deposit or a multiple burial assemblage, the author aims to demonstrate that in no way can they be considered to have come from a ‘provenanced context’.
While analysing some cartonnage fragments found in tomb KV 40, my attention was caught by a peculiar decorative pattern, consisting of a band of yellow mandrake fruits painted onto the broad collar of the remains of an 18th-dynasty mummy mask. The presence of this decorative pattern on an object intended for the tomb does not have a self-evident explanation. During the New Kingdom, there is a profusion of mandrake plants and fruits within Egyptian art: these occur in the representations of gardens on palace, tomb, and temple walls, they also decorate several types of objects, such as cosmetic spoons, mummy masks, coffins, and pottery. In the framework of Egyptian love poetry, mandrake has a specific meaning, its fruits evoking an erotic nuance and being associated with female breasts. Conversely, with regard to the funerary context, mandrake fruits have a different value and meaning, which will be investigated in the present paper.
In this contribution, a new study of the Egyptian “Book of Heaven´s Cow, 45” is presented. The word “HAw” will be of special interest. The previous proposals did not fully convince. This article assumes a connection with the word “HAii” “to bring in trouble”, which can be found in pBerlin 3050, V, 3. The well known phonetic shift from “i” to “w” will play an important role.
The first section of this paper focuses on two unpublished objects: a faience plaque constituted by seven pieces (E 32591) and one shabti (E 32787), both currently preserved at the Louvre Museum, Paris, and belonging to the same owner, the renep-priest Horemheb, son of Ankhpakhered. The objects are dated back to the beginning of the Late Period (c. 664-600 BC). The priest Horemheb, son of Ankhpakhered, is already known from several other shabtis: six of them belong to a private collection and have been recently published; another several shabtis have been offered for sale at auctions and they are scattered across private collections. The second section of the paper attempts to gather and update all the available documentation related to the specific sacerdotal renep-title in the Third province of Lower Egypt. Finally, from the analyses of the sources, the paper aims to shed new light on the specific sacerdotal renep-title and its relationship with other sacerdotal titles, administrative and religious offices, often connected to the Western Delta region.
The tradition represented in Book LI of John’s Chronicle was created in different periods, locations, and cultural and ethnic environments. The core of the story itself speaks of Cambyses’ invasion of Egypt. Cambyses was beginning to be presented as an archetypal Egyptian enemy, and stories of the destruction of the country during his invasion remained preserved in various parts of Egypt for centuries. In various areas, local tradition linked Cambyses with destructions that he had clearly not caused. In fact, his name had been attached to events and linked to the memory of his invasion that had happened in other periods of Egyptian history. The present study discusses how this archetype of evil became part of the tradition known from John’s Chronicle. Specifically, it deals with one element of this tradition: the merging of the Cambyses and Nebuchadnezzar characters.
This paper deals with the identity of the third temple mentioned in the so-called Decree of Cambyses, copied on the verso of the demotic P. Bibl. Nat. 215 (Paris). Three temples, in the copy preserved on the early Ptolemaic document, were privileged by the Persian king and were exempted from his austerity measures. In his edition of P. Bibl. Nat. 215, Spiegelberg read the name of the third temple as Pr-¡apj-(n)-iwnw, identifying it with Babylon in the Heliopolitan area. So far this has been accepted by most scholars, with a few exceptions. This article reviews the question on the basis of the available data and proposes to read the name of the temple as “Serapeum” (Pr-¡p), interpreting the following signs as “Hnk (n) AH(.w)”, “the donated lands”. Such a reading goes beyond the simple philological restitution of the name of the third temple and casts new light on the well-known and long-standing debate over Cambyses’ policy towards Egyptian temples and the sacred bull Apis, since the Serapeum was indeed one of the major Memphite sanctuaries he chose to privilege.
The glass finds were uncovered during the excavations carried out by the Istituto Papirologico “G. Vitelli” (University of Florence) inside the Kollouthos’s church, in the Northern necropolis of Antinoupolis (Egypt). In October 2007 the fragments from blown vessels were discovered in a basin, originally sunk into the ground in the northern pastophorium, probably used to keep holy water to be distributed among the believers. Several oracular tickets testified the extensive use of the holy water made by the small church, home to the oracle of Colluthus. The fragments, coming from flasks, bottles and goblets, well attested in Egypt, are dated to 6th-7th centuries.
Excavations at Salut in the Al Dakhiliyah region of Oman, near Bahla, targeted a number of funerary structures disseminated over the plain which hosts the remains of the prehistoric occupation of the oasis, and on the slopes of nearby hills. The majority of these tombs fits the widely known models of prehistoric burials in South East Arabia, although some structural features deserve mention, as does the discovery of a sealed, small Wadi Suq grave, an exceptional happenstance for the region. Moreover, two excavated tombs represent what appears to be an unprecedented type for the region. In fact, they are built with large squared boulders, arranged in order to form a rectangular stone chamber, partially emerging from the ground. Despite ancient robbing, the scarce materials discovered inside one of these ‘stonecist’ graves can be safely dated to the local Early Bronze Age. The peculiar layout of these tombs deserves description as it can also provide helpful reference during surveys, when similar orthogonal walls can easily be misunderstood as a portion of non-funerary structures.
In April 2016 the Office of the Adviser to His Majesty the Sultan for Cultural Affairs started a new project on southern Oman, at the site of Al Baleed, ancient Zafar. The works, still in progress, have been focused on the excavation of the fortified castle, Husn Al Baleed (10th-18th century), the study of the materials and the consolidation of the building in order to ensure the preservation of the complex and its proper visualization. This report will present some of the results achieved during the ongoing excavations and it will include the preliminary contributions of some experts which have been working on different materials discovered in the Husn and at the site: the pottery, the ceramics from the Far East, the ship timbers and the coins.
À une trentaine de kilomètres à l’est de Midyat, à équidistance de cette ville et de Azekh (İdil, en turc) se trouve le village de Basebrin, «Bsorino» en turoyo, le dialecte araméen local, et officiellement connu comme «Haberli» en turc. Les chrétiens qui y habitent encore, membres de l’Église Syriaque Orthodoxe, sont fiers de désigner leur village comme «le village aux 25 églises» aux visiteurs de passage. Cette appellation qui peut de prime abord sembler folklorique, métaphorique ou tout du moins exagérée, recèle cependant un certain nombre d’éléments historiques et artistiques que l’on se propose d’analyser ici. En effet, si comme nous le verrons, le nombre d’églises est plus difficile à déterminer qu’il n’y paraît, il n’en demeure pas moins que Basebrin représentait au Moyen-Âge et même au-delà, un centre syriaque d’importance culturelle et politique majeure. Dans le présent travail, nous nous limiterons à étudier quatre des églises secondaires qui sont celles qui comportent un décor peint et des inscriptions: Mor Daniel, qui ne présente aujourd’hui que des inscriptions, sans décor mural autre que quelques graffiti modernes; Mor Toma, avec les restes de décor peint les plus effacés, et enfin, deux églises qui outres des inscriptions, sont ornées d’un décor peint en rouge et noir d’un style local et inédit jusqu’à ce jour.