The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology

Excavation continued on Kôm Rabî'a with further investigation of the Thirteenth Dynasty terraced building; by the end of the season ceramically earlier contexts, probably of the Twelfth Dynasty, had been reached. A sounding was made in the SW corner of the excavation to clarify the early New Kingdom sequence. Drilling continued in the southern part of the ruin field, concentrating on the SE quadrant (Kôm Qal'a) and the Hellenistic waterfront.

In 1983 and 1988 the Egypt Exploration Society's Abydos Mission recorded the paintings and reliefs in the Hall of Barques of the temple of Sethos I at Abydos. The paintings of Sethos I were executed in 9 main stages, from initial design to the final painting of details. Many corrections can be identified, both small ones in paint in the drafts and larger changes where the surface was recovered in plaster. Before the figures were painted, the figure area was covered with a fine plaster wash, to which black outlines were applied while it was still damp. There was a chemical reaction between black paint and plaster and little black is preserved. The black pigment contains an iron-rich pigment which is poorly crystalline (Appendix 2). Sunk relief carving within the outlines of the paintings was partly carried out under Ramesses II. Different levels of skill and divisions of labour in carving can be identified; problematic hieroglyphs were left to a later hand. Both relief and painting are characterized by speed of execution. The painting in the south-east corner of the hall was cleaned and recopied in 1988; the techniques used are described in Appendix 1.

An archaeological investigation of the Old Kingdom town of Buhen in 1962 revealed an ancient copper ‘factory’, some copper ore fragments from which have been examined by modern analytical methods. The results show that the main copper-bearing mineral in the ore is malachite but this has been extensively altered (in situ) to the green copper chloride, atacamite. The ore also contains a very high proportion of gold. The mineralogy of the ‘Buhen’ ore has been compared with known copper ores from Egypt and Northern Sudan. These other ores either do not match the Buhen specimens or they occur very long distances from the town. The only mining activity close to Buhen was at the gold mines of Kush, some of which were on the Nile immediately up-stream of the town and were worked in Middle Kingdom times. No mineralogical details of the Kush ores are known but it is possible in view of their location, and also because of the high proportion of gold found in the Buhen specimens, that it was the Kush ores which were used, in the Old Kingdom, for the extraction of copper.

A new edition of stela Cairo JE 35256, discovered at Abydos at the turn of the century, which records a royal edict usurped by Neferhotep I protecting a sacred area dedicated to Wepwawet. The original promulgator of the decree is identified as Khutawyre Ugaf, and it is argued that the area in question is the depression which runs from the Osiris temple to the Umm el-Qa'ab. This served as a processional route between the temple and the tomb of Djer, already identified as that of Osiris, and was threatened by tombs encroaching from the North Cemetery. The development of the cult of Osiris at Abydos is briefly traced, and the importance of the Thirteenth Dynasty in the process emphasised.

The monument discussed here may have been the pedestal of a stela, but is only recorded in copies made by Hay and Wilkinson early in the last century (a small fragment which used to be in Berlin is now lost). Sipair was an ‘Overseer of the treasury’, probably under Amosis. His presumed tomb at Saqqâra would be the earliest New-Kingdom tomb known in the area. One of Sipair's epithets refers to chariotry, and the hieroglyph used in it is the earliest representation of a horse from ancient Egypt. Memphite examples of titles connected with chariotry are listed, and Second Intermediate Period and early Eighteenth Dynasty evidence from the Memphite area reviewed.

In 1935, the architect Walter Segal studied the ancient Egyptian chairs and stools in the collection of the Egyptian Museum, Cairo. Segal's record of CG 51113, including scale drawings, is here published with a brief commentary by the editor of his Egyptological papers.

A discussion of the garden shrines found in the enclosures of the houses of Tell el-'Amarna leads to the conclution that they were dedicated to the royal family as intermediaries between the citizen and Aten.

This inscription recounts the history of a lawsuit about the ownership of some fields inherited by various members of the family to which Mose belonged. At a certain point there appears a man called Khay who is apparently not related. According to Gardiner's interpretation, this Khay produced forged documents before the highest law-court, presided over by the Vizier, so that the Vizier pronounced in favour of Khay on the basis of forgeries. These forgeries came from the capital Piramesses, where the official registers of landed property were kept. Khay must then have succeeded in tampering with these registers through the complicity of officials. Upon close analysis of the inscription, however, the passages in question turn out to have been wholly misunderstood: Khay had in fact a legitimate title-deed favourable to his claim.

In a recent publication (Ventura, Living in a City of the Dead), it has been argued that the so-called five walls of the Turin Strike Papyrus be located to the south of Deir el-Medina. This paper reexamines the evidence and discusses alternative possibilities.

In 1857, a tomb was discovered by A. H. Rhind on the Sheikh ‘Abd el-Qurna hill, containing rifled mummies, coffins and fourteen labels inscribed in hieratic. The latter, now in Edinburgh, together with two further examples bought on the antiquities market, but now lost, named a series of Eighteenth Dynasty princesses. The labels are to be dated to the Twenty-first Dynasty, the deposit being assessed as a communal reburial made in Year 27 of Psusennes I.

The marriages of his offspring, his use of the epithet ntr-ḥqȝ-wȝst, and the absence of monuments attributable to him north of Thebes all imply that Takeloth II belongs to the ‘Theban Twenty-third Dynasty’ and not to the Twenty-second as usually assumed. Delta monuments with the prenomen ḥd-Ḫpr-r' stp-n-r' should now be assigned to Takeloth I. Genealogical evidence suggests that Takeloth II flourished c.825–800 rather than c.850–825, which makes him partly contemporary with Sheshonq III. The ‘gap’ thus created in the chronology of the Twenty-second Dynasty can be filled by allotting a longer reign, of 40–45 years, to Osorkon II. This seems required by the fact that several generations of official families, and five High Priests of Amun, are datable to his reign. The implications for the Theban civil war described in the Chronicle of Prince Osorkon are considered, and the identity of the latter with Osorkon III is asserted: if Takeloth II and Sheshonq III overlap, the lifespan required by the identification is significantly reduced.

During Roman times the Leukos Limen–Nile road served as a principal overland thoroughfare across the Eastern Desert of Egypt. Merchants plied this route with commodities imported from and exported to the ‘East’. Products of the mines and quarries of the region also passed along this road.

Eight fortified stations (hydreumata), other population centres and about 65 towers delineate the route. Many of the stations contain wells or cisterns as potable water supplies were a primary requirement. The stations, constructed for security reasons, cover areas of c. 1000–3000 m² and are built almost exclusively of stacked stones.

The towers are also built of stacked stones. However, comparison of architectural details shows that they differ from other towers in the Eastern Desert. Examination of the towers' locations, construction, size, shape and intervisibility indicates that they were signal platforms.

The material presented here constitutes the only record of a discovery made at the end of the last century by Bernard Grenfell and Arthur Hunt in the Fayûm, where they unearthed a building containing Christian paintings. The building itself almost certainly formed part of a monastic complex. The paintings, which in toto make a significant contribution to the corpus of Christian art from Egypt, gain considerably in their importance by the originality of some of their subject-matter. Evidence is put forward to support a mid-tenth century date for the majority of the paintings.

The traces of copper on either side of the head of Cairo CG 35 are explained as a bar to which the inlaid eyes were anchored. A similar procedure was applied to CG 34, the ‘Sheikh el Beled’, but here the eyes are anchored by a wooden dowel, or pair of dowels.

The reading pjpj, favoured by Ranke and Edel, might be applied to some writings of the name as readily as ppy, but other writings definitely confirm the second reading.

The previously misunderstood titles of the man Pepy on stele CG 20683 = ANOC 1:5 provide the earliest attestation for the word 'mr (Wb. 1, 187, 2), ‘bakery’ (cf. demotic 'mre and Coptic αMPε, ‘baker’). The titles also yield a Middle Kingdom example of the feminine form of šn' (Wb. iv, 507, 12–508, 25), ‘Workhouse’; a second Middle Kingdom survival of the Old Kingdom title imy-r 'bw-rȝ nsw.t, ‘Overseer of the Royal Repast’, is found among the titles of Iykhernofret on the stele.

In JEA 72 (1986), J. Baines offered a new translation and interpretation of the autobiographical inscription of Emhab (Cairo JE 49566), which is among the most problematic and controversial of ancient Egyptian texts. Against earlier interpretations, it is here suggested that Emhab describes his victorious life and death struggle against a man called Tmjrhtbt, a follower of the Hyksos king Apophis. The crucial word ȝw is to be translated–especially on the basis of a direct parallel in the Kahun papyri—as ‘death’ or ‘dead man’. The inscription thus records military undertakings against vassals of Apophis, in which Emhab played a prominent part for three years.

Publication of an unprovenanced alabaster shell in Liverpool, which bears an inscription commemorating a work by Hatshepsut for Mentuhotpe II.

The Griffith Institute in Oxford has 143 squeezes made in TT 57 in 1854-5 and later, before the tomb's decoration was damaged. Discussion of a funeral scene which shows babies carried in a sling.

In this investigation of the war reliefs on the northern exterior wall of the Hypostyle Hall at Karnak the artistic data are used as primary sources, with consideration given to the composition of the scenes and the layout of the registers. It is concluded that the reliefs on the eastern side of the doorway record three separate campaigns and that the registers read in ascending order. On the opposite side, where again three distinct campaigns are shown, the order is also upward.

The black granite head British Museum EA 956 is identified as a sculpture exhibited by Belzoni at the Egyptian Hall, Piccadilly, in 1821. The possibility of a Libyan rather than Tuthmosid date is proposed for the piece.

The stela of Shoshenq I at Gebel es-Silsila contains a verb mtj that has been considered as an early example of mtj/mtr, ‘to be pleased’ (attested mainly in demotic). This paper tries to show that it belongs to the stem mtn/mtn, ‘to reward’. A writing of the infinitive of jrj on this same stela as jr.nn is attested several times at the beginning of the Twenty-second Dynasty.

The British Museum relief fragments BM 537-46, bearing Book of the Dead passages with appropriate vignettes, are discussed in the light of their past history and possible original context. Any link with ‘Campbell's Tomb’ (LG 84) at Giza is refuted; this probably dates to late Dynasty Twenty-six, while the British Museum blocks seem to come from the reign of Psammetichus I.

Additional textual comments on the stela published by the author in JEA 73 (1987), 169-80, in the light of discussion at the Third International Conference of Demotic Studies (1987) and further study of the original.

It is suggested that the hieroglyph represents a scribal kit-bag.

A series of ancient Egyptian skulls from Qau and Badari was examined to determine their sex and to compare this with the sex as recorded in the excavation reports. Considerable discrepancies were found.

Discussion of evidence for the occurrence, transmission and treatment of Dracunculiasis (guinea worm disease) in ancient Egypt. The word dqr (P. Ebers 875) is identified as describing the gradual extraction of the worm from the body by winding on a stick.