An Egyptian archaeological mission in Luxor has announced the discovery of a major tomb in the city's west bank area dating back to the 18th Dynasty and containing priceless artefacts.
Mostafa Waziry, Director General of Luxor Antiquities, told reporters on Tuesday that the tomb, which was unearthed in the Deraa Abu El-Nagaa necropolis, most likely belonged to the city's counsullor Usrhat.
The New Kingdom funerary collection includes dozens of statues, coffins and mummies.
Minister of Antiquities Khaled El-Enany told Ahram Online that, despite the tomb's small size, it represents an important discovery due to the funery collection being largely intact.
Waziry, who heads the Luxor achaeological mission, told Ahram Online that the tomb was first mentioned in the early 20th century but it had never been excavated before because its entrance was only located in March.
He said that, despite having been reused in the Late Period, the tomb still contains most of its original funery collection.
The contents include well-preserved wooden coffins decorated with coloured scenes, as well as wooden funerary masks and almost 1,000 ushabti figurines carved in faience, terra-cotta and wood. Also found was a collection of clay pots of different shapes and sizes.
The tomb is a typical example of a nobleman's resting place, Waziry said, with a t-shaped structure consisting of an open court leading into a rectangular hall, a corridor and an inner chamber.
Excavations continue to reveal the tomb's secrets, with an inner chamber containing a cachette of sarcophagi from the 21st Dynasty with mummies wrapped in linen. Experts are examining the mummies to discover the identities of the dead and the reasons for their deaths.
A nine-metre-deep shaft was also uncovered, connected to two rooms.
Archaeologists have discovered a 4,300-year-old tomb belonging to a palace official and his wife at the Dahshūr archaeological site south of the Saqqara Necropolis in Egypt.
Knewz.com has learned that the tomb is intricately decorated with inscriptions and scenes from daily life in ancient Egypt.
The tomb was discovered at the Dahshūr archaeological site south of the Saqqara Necropolis in Egypt. By: Facebook/Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities
Built with mud bricks, the ancient tomb dates back to the Old Kingdom era, more specifically, to the end of the Fifth Dynasty and the beginning of the Sixth Dynasty around 2300 B.C.
According to the inscriptions on the walls of the tomb, it belongs to a man named Seneb-Neb-Af and his wife, Idet.
The findings from the latest excavation were announced on the official Facebook page of the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities of Egypt.
According to Dr. Stefan Seidlmayer, former director of the German Archaeological Institute and head of the excavation mission, the inscriptions on the tomb also mention that Seneb-Neb-Af held several positions in the royal palace in the administration of tenants (Khentiu-She), and his wife held the titles of Priestess of Hathor and Lady of the Sycamore.
One of the inscriptions on the tomb shows men herding a group of donkeys, while another shows several people in a procession carrying a bird and other objects. By: Facebook/Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities
Some of the colorful inscriptions on the tomb depict scenes from everyday life in ancient Egypt, such as ships sailing in the Nile, people threshing grain, markets, and offerings being presented, among other pictures.
One of the inscriptions shows men herding a group of donkeys, while another shows several people in a procession carrying a bird and other objects.
The Egyptian-German archaeological mission at the Dahshūr archaeological site has been carrying out excavation projects at the site since 1976.
While recent excavation projects at the site focus on the tombs of great statesmen, priests, and administrators from the period, the previous ones focused on the pyramids of King Sneferu from the Old Kingdom and King Amenemhat III from the Middle Kingdom.
According to the inscriptions on the walls of the tomb, it belongs to a man named Seneb-Neb-Af and his wife, Idet. By: Facebook/Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities
"[Dr. Seidlmayer] stressed that the mission will continue its excavations at the site in an attempt to search for more secrets of this area, adding that cleaning and documentation work will be carried out on the tomb and its inscriptions during the coming period," read an official press release from the State Information Service of Egypt.
Dr. Hisham El-Leithy, Acting Secretary-General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities and Head of the Antiquities Preservation and Recording Sector at the Supreme Council of Antiquities, stressed the significance of the discovery of the tomb of Seneb-Neb-Af and Idet.
Dr. El-Leithy explained that the tomb is part of the "large cemetery of Dahshur residents during the Old Kingdom, which was discovered in 2002 in cooperation with the Free University of Berlin," according to the press release from the State Information Service of Egypt.
Seneb-Neb-Af held several positions in the royal palace in the administration of tenants (Khentiu-She), and his wife held the titles of Priestess of Hathor and Lady of the Sycamore. By: MEGA
Archaeologists uncovered another tomb dating back to around the same time as this one back in January 2024 in the Gisr Al-Mudir area of Saqqara.
During the excavation project in January, the team of archaeologists, led by Egyptologist Zahi Hawass, discovered 12 beautifully carved statues along with two deep burial shafts, one of which includes what Hawass described as possibly the "most complete mummy found in Egypt to date."
"The most important tomb belongs to Khnumdjedef, an inspector of the officials, a supervisor of the nobles, and a priest in the pyramid complex of Unas, the last king of the fifth dynasty. The tomb is decorated with scenes of daily life," Hawass said in a statement, according to ABC News.
"The second largest tomb belonged to Meri, who held many important titles, such as keeper of the secrets and assistant of the great leader of the palace," he added.
Samyarup Chowdhury is a writer and reporter for Knewz.com, covering breaking news.
Presented by Tom Hardwick Consulting Curator of Egyptology, Houston Museum of Natural Science
Admission:
Lecture is free and open to the public. It is also a hybrid program.
IN PERSON: Gunn Theater, 100 - 34th Avenue, Lincoln Park, San Francisco, CA 94121. Seating is limited and unassigned. Doors open at 1:30 pm.
LIVE STREAM: Please register hereto receive a webinar link.
Egyptian statues epitomize solidity and permanence for the modern viewers who admire them securely guarded in museums or tourist sites. To their pharaonic makers and owners, however, they were functional objects with specific duties to fulfil. Rather than being blindly revered as artworks, they were often re-used for new purposes when their old functions lapsed. These re-uses could include physical transformation. This lecture covers over three thousand years to show how subsequent generations have used and abused Egyptian artworks.
Cosponsored by the Ancient Art Council of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and the American Research Center in Egypt-Northern California.
Dr. Julia Troche's "Imhotep: The Man, the Myth, the Monster," the latest lecture sponsored by the Northern California chapter of the American Research Center in Egypt, is now available on our YouTube channel. To view it, please go to https://youtu.be/_8hdMJfH0rY .
Understanding Trade and Power in Early Egypt: A Geopolitical Approach
By Juan Carlos Moreno García
In recent years, several studies have revealed the complex networks of exchanges and circulation of peoples, goods, ideas, and techniques that traversed ancient Eurasia. Far from being a phenomenon inaugurated by the first empires that integrated parts of this vast area (Assyria, Achaemenid Persia, Alexander the Great, Rome), its earlier manifestations can be traced back originally to prehistoric times and, mainly, during the Early Bronze Age. Obsidian, for instance, arrived in Egypt from the southern Red Sea. At the same time, some pottery found in the tomb of U-j, a Predynastic king buried at Abydos, originally contained wine imported from southern Palestine. Finally, Hierakonpolis, the earliest royal center, also situated in Upper Egypt, shows that exotic animals coming from regions situated far away were buried in ceremonial areas (Fig. 1).
Fig. 1: Reproduction of the Palette of King Narmer, the first pharaoh of a unified Egypt. Original dated to ca. 3100 BCE. Royal Ontario Museum. Photo: Daderot, via Wikimedia Commons. CC0 1.0 Public Domain.
This evidence represents an excellent basis for understanding the particularities and limits of Egypt's integration within the Afro-Eurasian sphere of contacts. On the one hand, much of the preserved vestiges correspond to rare luxury goods conveying notions such as prestige, long-range contacts, and exoticism that enhanced the status of their owners. On the other hand, such evidence suggests a particular specialization, as if Egypt's primary role in international trade consisted of providing exotic coveted goods of African origin (gold, ivory, ebony, aromatic plants) to other parts of the Near East. The much later Amarna letters epitomize this situation when Near Eastern kings and Egyptian pharaohs claimed and bargained for a supply of such products. But is this picture accurate?
Fig. 2: Rhyolite stone weight marked seventy deben, ca. 1850 – 1640 BCE. Metropolitan Museum of Art 15.3.233. Photo: Metropolitan Museum of Art, Public Domain.
Indeed, official sources produced by kings and high dignitaries emphasize official missions dispatched abroad, exchanges of gifts between royal courts, and the circulation of prestige items. However, this is only part of the story. Other evidence, often scattered in administrative records, private letters, and epigraphic references, indicates that exchanges were also promoted by private initiatives.
In recent years, several archives from Near Eastern localities like Ebla or Ugarit have produced invaluable evidence about the activities and contacts led by Egyptians living there who carried out their business partly at the service of institutions and partly as purely private initiatives. Archaeology contributes to this picture too. It shows that most of the exchanges between Egypt and its neighbors consisted of modest goods, like fish, grain, and textiles. Archaeology also provides indirect evidence about such contacts and Egypt's integration into broader spheres of exchange. For example, the diffusion of weight systems compatible with those in use in the Near East, the Aegean, and beyond suggests contacts on a large scale developed not by royal courts but by merchants (Fig. 2). Evidence of shared weight systems, cult practices (like protective figurines), and units of value based on silver corroborates the extent and intensity of such contacts and their autonomy concerning institutions.
This situation helps us understand a counter-intuitive fact: trade and commercial facilities sometimes flourished when monarchies collapsed. The diffusion of pottery or the occasional discovery of shipwrecks confirms that the bulk of trade was oriented toward the satisfaction of increasing demand. Thus, cheap imitations of prestige goods, the circulation of scrap metal, or the diffusion of former elite tastes and fashions among larger social sectors may underlie robust yet poorly documented changes in the circulation of goods, the organization of trade, and the modalities of craft production across vast distances. Hence, commercial integration was indissolubly linked to diversification. Definitively, "diplomatic" archives only tell part of the story.
Consequently, the recurrent episodes of crisis, when states and palatial systems collapsed, induced considerable changes to cope with such demand. One can think, for instance, of tomb plundering episodes in search for precious metals, copper, and bronze at the end of the second millennium BCE in many areas of the Eastern Mediterranean, when the circuits operated by the states were no longer practical. Despite the decline in state-driven exchange of goods, the appetite for metals had hardly declined at all. The famous tomb robbery papyri provide detailed evidence about an activity that put in the hands of traders and political authorities vast quantities of gold, copper, and bronze. During this period, several hoards discovered in the Levant show that silver was debased, and only the restoration of flows of this metal from the Aegean and other regions reintroduced good quality silver into the economic circuits (Fig. 3). Not by chance, temples in Egypt and the Near East guaranteed then the quality of the silver into circulation.
Fig. 3: Silver hoard, Ekron (Israel), 7th century BC, Israel Museum. Photo: Gary Todd via Wikimedia Commons. CC0 1.0 Public Domain.
So, if trade and commercial initiatives were partly in the hands of institutions and partly controlled by private individuals, a crucial question emerges: what was the impact of trade and wealth accumulation on the organization of power in Egypt?
A subtle interplay of interests and initiatives brought kings, provincial magnates, and individuals together. It resulted in different political landscapes, from a unified monarchy to the coexistence of regional kingdoms or the foundation of empires that tried to "capture" and monitor flows of wealth crossing vast areas.
Thus, Thutmose III claimed in his stela at Gebel Barkal that not only foreign tribute but also "everything that comes before My Majesty through trade is his (=Amun)" (Fig. 4). His predecessor, Queen Hatshepsut, said in the inscriptions that described the mission she sent to the land of Punt:
The God's Land has not been entered, and the Myrrh-terraces were unknown to Egyptians. It was learned of by hearsay, from the stories of the ancestors. Exotic goods were brought, and these were brought from there to your fathers, the kings of Lower Egypt, from one to the other since the era of the ancestors, to the kings who were before, in return for many payments.
So, what Hatshepsut's ancestors obtained painfully, through many mediators ("from one to the other… in return for many payments"), she received now directly, thanks to a mission that linked producers and consumers directly, without such costly mediation. Bypassing rivals and capturing lucrative trade networks inspired the strategies of kings and provincial lords alike.
Perhaps Egypt's unification around 3100 BCE can be understood in these terms as the outcome of the initiatives led by some Upper Egyptian kings to eliminate rivals in Lower Nubia and Lower Egypt, control the Egyptian section of the Nile Valley, and create some short-lived trading outposts in the southern Levant. Later on, Egypt was involved in commercial operations in the southern Red Sea, Nubia, and the Levant, be it royal missions or caravans organized by local authorities, mainly at Elephantine. A complex logistic network aimed to facilitate the transport of goods and supply the expeditions, as exemplified by the settlements founded in the oasis of Dakhla or by the chain of royal centers — called ḥwt — created in Upper and Lower Egypt. However, the recent publication of a set of documents from Ebla in Syria (Fig. 5) shows that private traders operated partly at the service of these missions, partly following their own commercial interests. As for the leaders of Elephantine, they continued their commercial operations after the collapse of the monarchy at the end of the Old Kingdom, which occurred around 2160 BCE.
Fig. 5: Cuneiform tablets found in the royal palace at Ebla, ca. 2500 – 2360 BCE. Photo: Marlin Levin. Meitar Collection, The Pritzker Family National Photography Collection, The National Library of Israel. Public Domain.
An unexpected consequence was that the authorities appointed to manage the logistic centers that the monarchy created in the provinces began accumulating wealth. Later on, some became more independent, sought to control these economic circuits directly, and prescinded from the monarchy when their interests no longer aligned with those of the kings. Political fragmentation followed when Thebes and Coptos seceded from the monarchy, and Thebes emerged as an independent regional kingdom. This circumstance also means that negotiation between kings and local potentates produced a delicate balance of power, constantly renewed but obscured by narratives that proclaimed unilateral royal agency instead. Nubian leaders intervened in Egyptian affairs at the end of the third millennium BCE. A complex political web of alliances, military confrontation, and shifting loyalties finally concluded with Egypt's reunification around 2050 BCE. However, this issue was only possible because the new pharaohs co-opted part of the elites that had supported their rival Heracleopolitan kingdom — provided their interests were respected under the new monarchy.
To conclude, geopolitics marked the organization of power in Egypt durably, and trade was indissociable from this process, not only in the late third millennium BCE but also in other periods of Egypt's long history.
Juan Carlos Moreno García is a Research Director at CNRS (French National Centre for Scientific Research).
Warburton, D. A. 2018. "Prices and values: Origins and early history in the Near East." In K. Kristiansen, Th. Lindkvist & J. Myrdal (eds.), Trade and Civilisation. Economic Networks and Cultural Ties, from Prehistory to the Early Modern Era. Cambridge University Press, pp. 56‒86.
The following are among the lectures to be presented by ARCE's Northern California Chapter and by the UC Berkeley Department of Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures. Unless otherwise indicated, lectures will be Sundays at 3 pm Pacific Time.
Dr. Tom Hardwick, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston/Houston Museum of Natural Science Uses, Re-uses, and Abuses of Egyptian Statuary. Saturday, April 13, 2024 (2 pm Pacific Time, live at the Legion of Honor, San Francisco) Cosponsored by the Ancient Art Council of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco LIVE STREAM: Please register hereto receive a webinar link, or go to this web page https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_lJ1-plmLQVi5pqRy16oceA .
ARCE In-Person Annual Meeting Friday April 19 - Sunday April 21 ARCE Virtual Annual Meeting Friday May 17 - Sunday May 19 For more information, please go to https://arce.org/annual-meeting/ .
Dr. Aidan Dodson, University of Bristol The Nubian Pharaohs of Egypt April 28, 2024 Room 20, Social Sciences Building, UC Berkeley
Dr. Peter der Manuelian, Harvard University How Egyptologist George Reisner Went Walking among Pharaohs May 5, 2024 (2 pm Pacific Time, live at the Legion of Honor, San Francisco) Cosponsored by the Ancient Art Council of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
Emily Smith-Sangster, Princeton University In the Shadow of Egypt's Last Pyramid: Uncovering the Ahmose Cemetery and Its Historical Implications Sept. 15, 2024
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Parking is available in UC lots all day on weekends, for a fee. Ticket dispensing machines accept debit or credit cards. Parking is available in lots around the Social Sciences Building, and in lots along Bancroft. A map of the campus is available online at http://www.berkeley.edu/map/
Senior Lecturer in Microbiology, Western Sydney University
The mention of ancient Egypt usually conjures images of colossal pyramids and precious, golden tombs.
But as with most civilisations, the invisible world of infectious disease underpinned life and death along the Nile. In fact, fear of disease was so pervasive it influenced social and religious customs. It even featured in the statues, monuments and graves of the Kingdom of the Pharaohs.
By studying ancient specimens and artefacts, scientists are uncovering how disease rocked this ancient culture.
Tutankhamun's malaria, and other examples
The most direct evidence of epidemics in ancient Egypt comes from skeletal and DNA evidence obtained from the mummies themselves.
For instance, DNA recovered from the mummy of the boy pharaoh Tutankhamun (1332–1323 BC) led to the discovery he suffered from malaria, along with several other New Kingdom mummies (circa 1800 BC).
In other examples:
skeletal and DNA evidence found in the city of Abydos suggests one in four people may have had tuberculosis
the mummy of Ramesses V (circa 1149–1145 BC) has scars indicating smallpox
the wives of Mentuhotep II (circa 2000 BC) were buried hastily in a "mass grave", suggesting a pandemic had occurred
and the mummies of two pharaohs, Siptah (1197–1191 BC) and Khnum-Nekht (circa 1800 BC), were found with the deformed equinus foot which is characteristic of the viral disease polio.
Signs of a disease-ravaged people
Amenhotep III was the ninth pharaoh of the 18th dynasty, and ruled from about 1388–1351 BC.
There are several reasons experts think his reign was marked by a devastating disease outbreak. For instance, two separate carvings from this time depict a priest and a royal couple with the polio dropped-foot.
This 18th dynasty panel depicts a polio sufferer.Wikimedia
Statues of the lion-headed goddess of disease and health, Sekhmet, also increased significantly, suggesting a reliance on divine protection.
Another sign of a potential major disease outbreak comes in the form of what may be an early case of quarantine, wherein Amenhotep III moved his palace to the more isolated site of Malqata. This is further supported by the burning of a workers' cemetery near Thebes.
Grave goods also became less extravagant and tombs less complex during this period, which suggests more burials were needed in a shorter time frame. These burials can't be explained by war since this was an unusually peaceful period.
Did disease trigger early monotheism?
Amenohotep's son – "the heretic King" Akhenaten (who was also Tutankhamun's father) – abandoned the old gods of Egypt. In one of the earliest cases of monotheism, Akhenaten made worship of the Sun the official state religion.
This panel (circa 1372-1355 BC) shows Akhenaten, Nefertiti and their daughters adoring the Sun god Aten.Wikimedia
Some researchers think Akhenaten's dramatic loss of faith may have been due to the devastating disease he witnessed during his childhood and into his reign, with several of his children and wives having died from disease. But we've yet to find clear evidence for the role of disease in shaping his theology.
There's also no direct DNA evidence of an outbreak under his father, Amenhotep III. There are only descriptions of one in letters Amenhotep III and Akhenaten exchanged with the Babylonians.
These clay tablets (circa 14th century BC), inscribed in Babylonian cuneiform, were sent to Amenhotep III or Akhenaten from the ruler Abdi-tirshi of Hazor (modern-day Israel).British Museum, CC BY-NC-SA
To confirm an outbreak under Amenhotep III, we'd need to first recover pathogen DNA in human remains from this time, has been found in other Egyptian burial sites and for other pandemics.
Also, while many ancient epidemics are referred to as "plagues", we can't confirm whether any outbreaks in ancient Egypt were indeed caused by Yersinia pestis, the bacteria responsible for bubonic plague pandemics such as the Black Death in Europe (1347-1351).
That said, researchers have confirmed the Nile rat, which was widespread during the time of the Pharaohs, would have been able to carry the Yersinia infection.
This 1811 etching depicts the ancient Plague of Athens (circa 430 BC), which may have been caused by Yersinia or a disease with similar symptoms such as smallpox, typhus or measles.The British Museum, CC BY-NC-SA
How were outbreaks managed?
Much like modern pandemics, factors such as population growth, sanitation, population density and mobilisation for war would have influenced the spread of disease in ancient Egypt.
In the case of war, it's thought the Hittite army was weakened by disease spread when it was famously defeated by Egyptian Pharaoh Ramses the Great in the battle of Kadesh (1274 BC).
In some ways, Egyptian medicine was advanced for its time. While these outbreaks occurred long before the development of antibiotics or vaccines, there is some evidence of public health measures such as the burning of towns and quarantining people. This suggests a basic understanding of how disease spreads.
Diseases caused by microorganisms would have been viewed as supernatural, or as a corruption of the air. This is similar to other explanations held in different parts of the world, before germ theory was popularised in the 19th century.
New world, old problems
The funerary mask of Tutankhamun, who died as a teenager.Wikimedia, CC BY-SA
Many of the most widespread diseases that afflicted the ancient world are still with us.
Along with Tutankhamun, it's thought up to 70% of the Egyptian population was infected with malaria caused by the Plasmodium falciparum parasite – spread by swarms of mosquitoes occupying the stagnant pools of the Nile delta.
Today, malaria affects about 250 million people, mostly in developing nations. Tuberculosis kills more than a million people each year. And smallpox and polio have only recently been eradicated or controlled through vaccination programs.
More work is yet to be done to detect individual pathogens in Egyptian mummies. This knowledge could shed light on how, throughout history, people much like us have grappled with these unseen organisms.
The American Research Center in Egypt, Northern California chapter, and the UC Berkeley Department of Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures invite you to attend a lecture by Dr. Julia Troche, Missouri State University, Springfield:
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