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Death on the Nile: Uncovering the Afterlife of Ancient Egypt (Review)
Death on the Nile: Uncovering the Afterlife of Ancient Egypt. Edited by Helen Strudwick and Julie Dawson. ISBN 978-1-907804-71-7. 256 pp; 200 color illustrations; April 2016. D. Giles Limited, London
The Brooklyn Museum's 2013 Soulful Creatures: Animal Mummies in Ancient Egypt focuses on the Egyptian view of animals in the afterlife and was intended to supplement a traveling exhibition. A similarly luxurious coffee table volume named for a famous Agatha Christie mystery, Death on the Nile: Uncovering the Afterlife of Ancient Egypt covers the burial materials used for human remains, focusing especially on the construction methods for Egyptian mummies that span more than two millennia. The authors, who explain the changes over time, base their heavily illustrated articles on mummies in the Egyptian mummy coffin collections at Cambridge University's Fitzwilliam Museum and other museums. Modern technology such as stereo-microscopes, fiber optic reflectance spectroscopy and CAT scans reveal details not completely understood before.
Death on the Nile is divided into a section of basic information and a catalogue. Four chapters written by scholars give the reader an overview and insight, while the catalogue displays annotated photographs of items in the collections. Reading through the chapters you will quickly realize that the term "Egyptian mummy" means little without more detail, such as the dynasty from which the mummy came. You will also gain an immense appreciation for the skill of the artisans; and you may find yourself marveling at linen's versatility. Should you not care to read it, but prefer to skim photographs and their captions, you should still be impressed.
Coffins at the Fitzwilliam
The first chapter, "Egyptian Coffins at the Fitzwilliam Museum", by Helen Strudwick, Egyptologist at the Fitzwilliam Museum, describes the history of the museum from the start of the discipline of Egyptology. The museum started in 1816, only six years before Champollion published his theories about the Egyptian script, based on the Rosetta Stone. The following year, the museum received the New Kingdom's pharaoh Ramses III's sarcophagus. As travellers to Egypt continued to take mummies out of Egypt, the museum continued to acquire artefacts. The museum did not fund excavations but it did help support Flinders Petrie in his Egyptian excavations, and also the organizations he established. These provided more material for the museum's collection. By 1925, Egypt sought to limit the export of its treasures and so thereafter, the world's museums' collections grew mainly through gifts.
Wolfram Grajetzki, who has excavated in Egypt and taught Egyptology at Humboldt University in Berlin, wrote the second chapter, "Coffins of the Middle Kingdom". He begins with a history of burial customs in Egypt, from prehistoric holes in the ground to mudbrick lined underground chambers by about 3500 B.C. The earlier bodies were simply wrapped in a mat or animal skin, but by the early dynastic period, they were wrapped in linen and placed in wooden boxes. By the fourth and fifth dynasties (Old Kingdom), pyramids were being constructed. The interior rooms housed plain coffins with a few vessels, but the bodies were prepared, with their internal organs removed.
When the god of the underworld Osiris became important in Egyptian society, the burial chambers began to receive concentrated focus. Religious texts were inscribed on the interior walls of the rooms of rulers' pyramids. Officials' tombs bore writings and pictures stressing the importance of proper mummification rituals. Standards for coffins included decorations stressing proper performance of rituals and provisioning for the afterlife. By the First Intermediate Period, burials included mummy masks with wigs and beards made of cartonnage (layers of linen soaked in glue or gum).
Later Style Changes
By the Middle Kingdom, governing non-royals emulated the kings in their burials. Many of these were looted early on or in the heyday of Egyptian mummy mania in the early twentieth century. Identification of the deceased with Osiris filtered down to private individuals. During this period, the use of anthropoid coffins placed within an outer rectangular coffin, emerged. By about 1870 B.C., the local governors lost power, and accordingly, their burials became more modest. By the Second Intermediate Period, officials might simply be buried in the ground; but the highest echelons were buried in anthropoid coffins decorated with a feather design known as rishi (from an Arabic word), and lacking an outer box. The coffins might be carved out from a single log. By the start of the New Kingdom, both rectangular and rishi coffins were used.
Following the chapter on Middle Kingdom coffins comes one on those from the New Kingdom through the period of Roman occupation, written by John H. Taylor, assistant keeper at the Department of Ancient Egypt and Sudan at the British Museum. By the New Kingdom, Egypt was a major world power. Burials of the rulers reflected their success. The king of the gods Amun-Re joined Osiris in burial importance. Instead of pyramids built atop burial chambers, there were passages and rooms carved into the rock of the Valley of the Kings. Kings were buried within multiple layers, as could be seen when the intact tomb of Tutankhamen was found.
New Kingdom and Roman Period Coffins
Early New Kingdom anthropoid coffins were predominantly white with a blue wig, but by the rule of Tuthmosis III, the white background gave way to black, adorned with gold or yellow paint. Bands of text that had been used on rectangular coffins were now fitted to the curved surfaces of the anthropoid ones. Decoration focused on magical protection and resurrection. With the heretic king Akhenaten came changes, most short-lived, but he seems to have permanently affected the colors used on Egyptian coffins: the background was now yellow (for the sun) with multicolored decorations. By the 21st Dynasty, Egypt was suffering financially and kings took gold from the tombs in the Valley of the Kings. Coffins were recycled; decorations painted over. The living could no longer expect to remain in their coffins after death. Bodies once covered with mummy boards were now covered with cartonnage, which couldn't be reused.
The Roman Period brought further innovations, including making mummification available to more people. Masks or headpieces in Greco-Roman style adorn the mummies and wooden panels show Roman encaustic portraits of the deceased. Such mummies might be inside wooden coffins or not. Finally, by the third century A.D., the Christian Church enforced austerity, putting an end to this colorful, changing tradition.
Making an Egyptian Coffin
The fourth chapter, "Egyptian Coffins: Materials, Construction and Decoration", written by Julie Dawson, Jennifer Marchant, Eleanor von Aderkas, and others, makes one appreciate the skill of the Egyptian craftsmen. Most of the coffins were made of wood, including the local Sycamore fig, an easily carved medium susceptible to insect infestation and a pest partially thwarted by the use of paint or placement in the interior. Acacia was another coffin wood, but is more twisted and knotty. For high status coffins, the cedar of Lebanon was available in much-prized large planks. Its odor is said to deter insects. Tomb paintings, a wooden model from the tomb of Khety (2010-1910 B.C.), and miniature tools suggest how the woodworkers crafted the coffins. Although some coffins were made of full length planks of cedar or fig, many were patched and pieced together from irregularly-shaped, damaged, and re-used pieces. Dowels were common connectors, supplementing mortise and tenon joints. Linen could be used to patch holes and knots in the wood; so could paste.
Artists made visible guidelines to know where to paint the texts and decorations. They also painted freehand with brushes made of reed, frayed wood, or other fibers. Egyptian blue and Egyptian green, both made from copper and other materials, were the earliest manufactured pigments, beginning about 2640 B.C. Paint came from many different minerals and, in time, came from the Greeks and Romans. The paints were covered with varnish from resins which were also used as adhesives. These resins were not only aromatic but had antibacterial properties. There were different types that varied in color.
The Catalogue, and a Bottom Line
The Catalogue gives the reader another look at various topics covered perhaps too quickly by the four chapters and many more examples of the marvelous skill of the Egyptian craftsmen. As in the earlier sections, the Catalogue illustrates how mummies changed from one period to the next.
Death on the Nile is clearly for serious students of ancient Egypt, but it also grabs the attention of modern woodworkers, and with reason, since their ancient Egyptian predecessors' work is so impressive.
Disclosure: A review copy was provided by the publisher. For more information, please see our Ethics Policy.
The Predynastic period in Egypt is the name archaeologists have given to the three thousand years before the emergence of the first unified Egyptian state society.
Scholars mark the beginning of the predynastic period somewhere between 6500 and 5000 BC when farmers first moved into the Nile valley from Western Asia, and the ending at approximately 3050 BC, when the dynastic rule of Egypt began. Already present in northeastern Africa were cattle pastoralists; the emigrant farmers brought sheep, goats, pigs, wheat and barley. Together they domesticated the donkey and developed simple farming communities.
Chronology of the Predynastic
- Early Predynastic (Badarian) (ca 5000-3900 BC)
- Middle Predynastic (Nagada I or Amratian) (ca 3900-3650 BC)
- Late Predynastic (Nagada II or Gerzean) (ca 3650-3300 BC)
- Terminal Predynastic (Nagada III or Proto-Dynastic) (ca 3300-3050 BC)
Scholars typically divide the predynastic period, as with most of Egyptian history, into upper (southern) and lower (northern) Egypt.
Lower Egypt (Maadi culture) appears to have developed farming communities first, with the spread of farming from the Lower Egypt (north) to the Upper Egypt (south). Thus, the Badarian communities predate the Nagada in Upper Egypt. Current evidence as to the origin of the rise of the Egyptian state is under debate, but some evidence points to Upper Egypt, specifically Nagada, as the focus of the original complexity. Some of the evidence for the complexity of the Maadi may be hidden beneath the Nile delta's alluvium.
The Rise of the Egyptian State
That development of complexity within the predynastic period led to the emergence of the Egyptian state is inarguable. But, the impetus for that development has been the focus of much debate among scholars. There appears to have been active trade relationships with Mesopotamia, Syro-Palestine (Canaan), and Nubia, and evidence in the form of shared architectural forms, artistic motifs and imported pottery attests to these connections. Whatever specifics were in play, Stephen Savage summarizes it as a "gradual, indigenous process, stimulated by intraregional and interregional conflict, shifting political and economic strategies, political alliances and competition over trade routes." (2001:134).
The end of the predynastic (ca 3050 BC) is marked by the first unification of Upper and Lower Egypt, called "Dynasty 1". Although the precise way in which a centralized state emerged in Egypt is still under debate; some historical evidence is recorded in glowing political terms on the Narmer Palette.
Archaeology and the Predynastic
Investigations into the Predynastic had their start in the 19th century by William Flinders-Petrie. The most recent studies have revealed the extensive regional diversity, not just between Upper and Lower Egypt, but within Upper Egypt. Three principal regions are identified in Upper Egypt, centered on Hierakonpolis, Nagada (also spelled Naqada) and Abydos.
Predynastic Sites: Adaïma, Hierakonpolis, Abydos, Gebel Manzal el-Seyl.
Herbal Wines of Ancient Egypt illustrates trade connections between predynastic Egypt and the Levant region of the near east.
Sources
On Michael Brass's The Antiquity of Man site, you'll find the complete text of Kathryn Bard's 1994 paper in the JFA cited below.
Bard, Kathryn A. 1994 The Egyptian Predynastic: A Review of the Evidence. Journal of Field Archaeology 21(3):265-288.
Hassan, Fekri 1988 The Predynastic of Egypt. Journal of World Prehistory 2(2):135-185.
Savage, Stephen H. 2001 Some Recent Trends in the Archaeology of Predynastic Egypt. Journal of Archaeological Research 9(2):101-155.
Tutundzic, Sava P. 1993 A Consideration of Differences between the Pottery Showing Palestinian Characteristics in the Maadian and Gerzean Cultures. The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 79:33-55.
Wenke, Robert J. 1989 Egypt: Origins of Complex Societies. Annual Review of Anthropology 18:129-155.
This glossary entry is part of the Dictionary of Archaeology.
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