ARCE-NC/OC Zoom Lecture Oct. 15: The Temple of Edfu - Its Architecture as an Image of the World

The American Research Center in Egypt, Northern California and Orange County chapters, together with the UC Berkeley Department of Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures, and the UCLA Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, invite you to attend a Zoom lecture by Dr. Dieter Kurth, Prof-Dr. Emeritus, Hamburg University: The Upper Egyptian Temple of Edfu - Its Architecture as an Image of the World Sunday, October 15, 2023, 1:30 PM Pacific Daylight Time Register in advance for this meeting: https://ucla.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_PlarekpZQYWPSTj1GdyGYg * After registering, you will receive an email invitation containing a link or button. Save the email, because you will click on that link or button to join the meeting when it starts. ARCE Northern California members should note that this Zoom meeting will be hosted by the Orange County chapter of ARCE, and will start at 1:30 PM instead of the usual 3 PM. * If you haven't already installed Zoom, we recommend that you download and install the Zoom program (app) well before you try to join the meeting. There IS an option to use your web browser to join the meeting instead of the Zoom program, but the browser interface is limited and depends greatly on what browser and what operating system you're using. * For tutorials on how to use Zoom, go to https://learn-zoom.us/show-me. In particular, "Joining a Meeting" should show you what you need to do to join this lecture. If you have any questions before you register, please email me at arcencZoom@gmail.com. Glenn Meyer ARCE-NC ePublicity Director About the Lecture: Since the early days of Egyptology it has been a commonplace that the Egyptian temple was conceived and decorated by the ancient Egyptians as an image of the world. Every visitor of any Egyptian temple would agree at once after a look at the ceiling covered with yellow stars on blue field and after a look at the columns with the floral design of their capitals. This is also true for the temple of Edfu. The impression, however, that the temple was imagined to be an image of the world is not only gained by the outer appearance of the building and its decoration, which strike the eye and cannot be unnoticed. There are several other elements of the temple's architecture and decoration which don't catch the visitor's eye immediately because they need some previous knowledge and some elucidation. This concerns the texts in particular. About the Speaker: Dr. Dieter Kurth, Prof-Dr Emeritus of Hamburg Univ, is the director of the Edfu Project, which he founded in 1985 with the aim of translating all the hieroglyphic inscriptions in the Temple of Edfu. From 1981 to 1982 he was a professor of Egyptology in Heidelberg, acting for Prof Jan Assmann, and from 1982 until his retirement in 2007 he was professor of Egyptology at the University of Hamburg. He studied pedagogics in Bonn from 1962 until 1965. Afterwards, until 1967, he worked as a teacher at a primary school and a secondary school in Cologne, finally teaching technical English at a vocational school. From 1968 until 1975 he studied Egyptology (main subject), Classical Archaeology, Ancient Oriental Languages and Prehistory at the University of Cologne. After the promotion (PhD) he habilitated in the 1980s (venia legendi in Egyptology). In the years 2000 and 2004/5 he taught Egyptology as a visiting professor at the Egyptian Universities of Cairo (Ain Shams) and Qena (New Valley).   About ARCE-NC: For more information, please visit https://www.youtube.com/@NorthernCaliforniaARCE, https://facebook.com/NorthernCaliforniaARCE/, http://www.arce-nc.org,  https://twitter.com/ARCENCPostings, and https://khentiamentiu.org. To join the chapter or renew your membership, please go to https://arce.org/join-arce/ and select "Berkeley, CA" as your chapter when you sign up.

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UNC-W professor leads research at ancient Egyptian pyramids

https://spectrumlocalnews.com/nc/charlotte/news/2023/10/05/uncw-research-egyptian-pyramid-discovery

UNC-W Professor Eman Ghoneim's research looks at the historic path of the Nile River and how that worked with building ancient pyramids in Egypt. (Courtesy Eman Ghoneim and UNC Wilmington)

EDUCATION

UNC-W professor to lead research at ancient Egyptian pyramids

By Charles Duncan North Carolina

PUBLISHED 10:05 AM ET Oct. 05, 2023

A professor from North Carolina plans to lead an international team studying ancient tributaries of the Nile River around the Meidum Pyramid Complex in Egypt. 

Eman Ghoneim is a professor of earth and ocean sciences at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. She won a grant from The Explorers Club and Warner Bros. Discovery to study the Nile River at the pyramid complex.

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What You Need To Know

•  A UNC Wilmington professor won a grant from The Explorers Club and the Discovery Channel for her research at Egyptian pyramids


•  Eman Ghoneim will lead a team studying the ancient Nile River tributaries around the Meidum Pyramid Complex


•  The research aims to learn more about the complex, why the 4,000-year-old pyramid collapsed and why it was abandoned


•  The work could be used in a Discovery Channel documentary about the pyramid complex and what the scientists learned

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"Aside from offering insight into the likely reasons for the abandonment of the pyramid in antiquity, this project will enable us to piece together a complete picture of ancient Egypt's former landscape and enable the full story of early inhabitants near the Meidum Pyramid to be told," Ghoneim said. 

"The Meidum Pyramid, built by Pharaoh Snefru, was the first known attempt in Egyptian history to construct a true, smooth-sided pyramid," according to UNC Wilmington. (Getty)

"Research of this kind could drastically improve our cultural heritage conservation measures and raise awareness of these ancient sites in the context of modern development planning," she said in a news release from the university.

The research is focused on the Meidum Pyramid Complex on the Nile River. The site is about 50 miles south of the iconic Great Pyramid of Giza.

"The Meidum Pyramid, built by Pharaoh Snefru, was the first known attempt in Egyptian history to construct a true, smooth-sided pyramid," according to the university. 

One of the goals of the research is to figure out what caused the 4,000-year-old pyramid to partially collapse and why it was later abandoned. 

Ghoneim, leading a team from the United States, Australia and Egypt, wants to make the first map of ancient branches of the Nile and see if these waterways were still active when the pyramid was built. The team plans to collect new data from deep soil cores, radiocarbon dating and the physical properties of the area.

Ghoneim is also leading a three-year grant from the National Science Foundation to use satellites to map the historic course of the Nile River near ancient Egyptian archaeological sites.

The new grant is part of a partnership between the Discovery Channel and The Explorers Club. The program funds research, which is documented by the Discovery Channel to potentially be used in a television show. 

"The Explorers Club, together with Discovery, is thrilled to have Professor Ghoneim on board as one of our remarkable new grantees," Emerald Nash, director of grants at The Explorers Club, said in a news release from UNCW. 

"This unique collaboration with Warner Bros. Discovery was established in 2020 to support innovative field research that is both scholarly in its contributions to science and educational to the public via multimedia offerings through TV, radio and print," the university said.

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In Photos: Astro-theological secrets of Luxor’s Esna Temple uncovered by Egypt-German mission - Ancient Egypt - Antiquities - Ahram Online

https://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/9/40/509590/Antiquities/Ancient-Egypt/Astrotheological-secrets-of-Luxor%E2%80%99s-Esna-Temple-un.aspx

In Photos: Astro-theological secrets of Luxor's Esna Temple uncovered by Egypt-German mission

Nevine El-Aref , Thursday 5 Oct 2023

The Egyptian-German archaeological mission uncovered more original reliefs and engravings on the walls and the ceilings of Esna Temple in Luxor that depict astro-theological scenes, including gods and goddesses that represent celestial bodies and a zodiac.

The discovery was made during the ongoing restoration of the temple.

The mission uncovered a scene depicting the goddess Sothis at the start of the Nile flooding and another scene showing the sun god Khnum-Re depicted with four ram heads.

Christian Leitz, the head of the mission from the German side, explained that the main subject of this relief is Orion and Sothis.

The stars composing the modern constellation of Orion, whose brightest star is Rigel, are associated with the god Osiris

Sothis is the Greek name of the ancient Egyptian goddess Sepdet which is a representation of the goddess Isis, the sister of Osiris. She is associated with the star Sirius, the brightest star in the sky whose reappearance after 70 days of invisibility anticipates the flooding of the Nile in mid-July.

"This also marks New Year's Day in the ancient Egyptian calendar," Leitz said.

"During the conservation works a lot of new ink inscriptions came to light which were previously unseen due to the thick layer of soot [, dirt, and grime of the past 2,000 years]," Hisham El-Leithy, the head of the mission from the Egyptian side asserted.

Visitors to the temple will now be able to admire the new scenes.

He pointed out that among them is a zodiac relief found on the ceiling of the temple's columned hall. It contains all the twelve Zodiac signs, the outer planets of Jupiter, Saturn, and Mars, as well as depictions of the so-called seven arrows and constellations used by the ancient Egyptians to measure time.

On top of the entrance to the temple is a relief showing 46 eagles standing in two rows, with some bearing the heads of the Upper Egypt goddess Nekhbet, and others bearing the head of the Lower Egypt goddess Wadget.

"It is the first time to find these reliefs," said Mostafa Waziri, secretary general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities. 

He added that they were not seen or mentioned in the works published by the French Egyptologist Serge Soniron, who documented the temple's reliefs in 1963 and 1975.

"This discovery made it important for Egyptologists to begin a restoration project, funded by the American Research Centre in Cairo and the Ancient Egypt Foundation, to protect the temple and uncover its decorations," El-Leithy pointed out.

The engravings will be examined further to reveal more details.

Construction on the Temple of Esna, which is dedicated to the ram god Khnum-Re and his divine consorts, began in the Roman era during the reign of Emperor Claudius (41-54 AD) and was completed during the reign of Emperor Decius (249-251 AD).

During the 19th and 20th centuries, the Temple of Esna suffered from urban encroachment, which limited access to the site through one of the houses built around it.

During the reign of Mohamed Ali Pasha (1805-1840 AD), the temple is reported to have been used as a storage facility for the cotton crop.

 

 

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What Ancient Egyptians Knew About Meteorites – SAPIENS

https://www.sapiens.org/archaeology/ancient-egyptians-meteorites-astronomy/

Essay / Decoded

What Ancient Egyptians Knew About Meteorites—Long Before Modern Astronomers

An Egyptologist's study of hieroglyphic texts has revealed that ancient Egyptians likely understood the celestial origins of iron-rich meteorites.

By Victoria Almansa-Villatoro

3 Oct 2023

The Pyramid Texts cover walls within the pyramids of King Unis (shown here) and other royals at the site of Saqqara.

Victoria Almansa-Villatoro

✽

"(The king) Unis seizes the sky and splits its iron."

Inscribed in hieroglyphs in a 4,400-year-old pyramid, this sentence evidences that ancient Egyptians understood the extraterrestrial origin of iron-rich meteorites—thousands of years before European scientists reached the same conclusion.

Outside of folklore, this knowledge died with the ancient world, along with the associated myths, languages, writing systems, and rituals. Not until the late 18th century, in the intellectual circles of Europe, was the idea that meteorites arrived from the sky timidly proposed again.

When it comes to the history of science, particularly astronomy, ancient Egyptians have not received the credit they deserve. Unlike Babylonians and Greeks, Egyptians did not use mathematical models to predict astronomical phenomena for much of their history. Their knowledge of meteoritic iron was not recorded in the descriptive, linear manner of scientific books. Rather, it was embedded in metaphors and rituals.

As an Egyptologist, I have spent years trying to harness the power of ancient symbols—especially those used in hieroglyphic writing—to uncover the knowledge and beliefs of past people of the Nile. Through this work, I have abandoned my modern-day preconceptions about science to understand, recover, and appreciate Egyptian scientific achievements.

Recently, by analyzing hieroglyphs in an ancient collection of rituals known as the Pyramid Texts, I learned that Egyptians had discovered long ago a crucial fact about iron: It can come from meteorites.

UNDERSTANDING IRON

Many scholars would say the Iron Age began about 3,300 years ago in Anatolia, where the Hittites invented a method for extracting metallic iron from earthly ore minerals such as hematite. This smelting process requires creating and controlling temperatures above 2,300 degrees Fahrenheit. Though iron ores were common in the Egyptian deserts, ancient Egyptian people probably did not master iron smelting until 2,600 years ago—about 700 years after the Hittites and other societies to the north.

Yet iron objects appear much earlier than that in Egypt. In fact, the world's oldest-identified iron objects are small beads that come from a burial in Gerzeh, a roughly 5,300-year-old village in northern Egypt. Other pre–Iron Age iron objects have been found in Egypt, including an amulet in the 4,000-year-old tomb of Queen Aashyet in Deir el-Bahari and a dagger blade in King Tutankhamun's tomb.

A 3D model depicts a dagger found in King Tutankhamun's tomb that was made from meteoritic iron.

Tom_Bentkowski on Sketchfab, CC BY 4.0

Where did this metal come from, centuries before iron smelting?

Meteorites.

Modern science teaches us that iron exists in metallic form within the core of asteroids. Small fragments of these rocky objects sometimes reach Earth as intact, iron-rich meteorites.

Compared with smelted iron, meteoritic iron generally has larger mineral crystals and elevated levels of other elements, such as nickel and cobalt. Studies in the past decade analyzing these features have confirmed that ancient Egyptians likely used this iron from the sky to fashion the Gerzeh beads, Tutankhamun's dagger, and other funerary items.

But did the ancients know that the iron objects they were using in funerary rituals came from outer space?

THE UNIVERSE IN HIEROGLYPHS

I first became interested in ancient Egyptians' knowledge of iron while studying the texts of another past society. As part of my doctorate, I also studied Sumerian, a language first spoken some 5,000 years ago in Mesopotamia. Three lexemes, or combinations of signs, have been proposed for how the Sumerians wrote "iron." All three options contain the sign for sky.

Learning this made me think of the second millennium B.C. Egyptian word for "iron": bjA n pt ("the iron of the sky"). I wondered whether both Sumerians and Egyptians knew iron can be found in meteorites.

Moreover, the Sumerian words predated the Egyptian one by several centuries. Did that mean the knowledge originated in Mesopotamia and spread to Egypt?

Investigating further, I learned that ancient Egyptians must have discovered celestial iron independently, more than 1,000 years before the earliest attestation of bjA n pt. Around the same time as Sumerians, Egyptians had been composing ritual recitations about the sky and the iron (bjA) in it.

The author examines a passage of the Pyramid Texts in the tomb of King Teti.

Jay Bennet

The earliest-known Egyptian references to iron in connection with stars, meteoroids, and the sky come from the Pyramid Texts, a collection of inscriptions carved on the inner walls of pyramids that once housed the bodies of Fifth to Eighth Dynasty Egyptian kings and queens who ruled about 4,400–4,100 years ago. Encompassing different oral and written styles, the Pyramid Texts likely were funerary liturgies that priests would have uttered to help the royal deceased reach an afterlife in the sky.

The Pyramid Texts provide insights into the Egyptian understanding of the universe. The inscriptions present the sky as an iron bowl containing water, pieces of which can fall to Earth as meteorites or rain. But this scene is not easy to grasp from a superficial reading of the texts, especially in translation. It is encapsulated in metaphors and spread across several unconnected passages.

To solve this puzzle, I had to decipher the metaphors and link the passages.

The writing system provided some keys. Egyptian hieroglyphs represent sounds (like an alphabetic system), ideas (for example, the floorplan of a house can mean "house"), and classificatory fields (the same house plan at the end of a word can denote that the word refers to a type of building). Hieroglyphs provide a nuance of iconicity that is lost in modern translations.

In the Pyramid Texts, the word for iron is written with a hieroglyph that represents a hemispherical container of water—how the Egyptians perceived the sky. Iron and sky are interchangeable in the texts, which is why passages describe the dead sailing the iron and the king needing to break an iron barrier to reach the sky.

Broader knowledge of Egyptian religion also helped me make sense of the texts. For example, the goddess Nut personified the sky. Ancient Egyptians believed a deceased king would be resurrected by returning to the primordial, amniotic waters of Nut's womb. Thus, the same sign used for iron was used as a classifier for the words "uterus" and "well."

Depicted on a temple ceiling, the goddess Nut represented the sky in ancient Egyptian beliefs.

DeAgostini/Getty Images

What could at first be dismissed as random, irrelevant associations of "unscientific" minds describing metals, women, and water turns out to be a byproduct of a scientifically correct interpretation of the provenance of meteoritic iron. In Egypt, 4,400 years ago, the word for iron could simply mean sky because the Egyptians knew iron was part of the sky.

IRON FROM THE SKY

Some scholars have reasonably pushed back against the possibility of this ancient knowledge because a meteorite hitting Earth remains a rare phenomenon to witness. How likely is it that someone saw a meteorite fall to Earth, found the resulting crater, and sourced metal from it? How would the meteoritic origin of iron be ascertained without physical or chemical analyses?

European Enlightenment scholars denied the folktales of extraterrestrial meteorites and argued that the mysterious "thunderstones" came from volcanoes or lightning strikes. However, reports of fallen meteorites and their hammering by locals are known since the Middle Ages. Like ancient Egyptians, these nonscientists probably gleaned meteorites' origin.

Knowledge survives centuries, or even millennia, without scientific texts. In ancient Egypt, it was embedded in metaphors, stories, and rituals that could be easily remembered.

Victoria Almansa-Villatoro

Victoria Almansa-Villatoro is an Egyptologist who focuses on ancient texts and the use of language to encapsulate and express power dynamics and implied knowledge. She received her Ph.D. from Brown University in 2022 and in the same year was elected as a Junior Research Fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows (2022–2025). Some of the topics she has published on include uncovering how ancient Egyptians used persuasion without leveraging authority and unraveling the iconic metaphors in hieroglyphs. Almansa-Villatoro works with the Ancient Egypt Research Associates' archaeological project in Giza (Egypt) as a sealings expert and with the Nuri Archaeological Expedition to the royal necropolis and pyramids of Nuri (Sudan) as an assistant director. She is also an assistant editor at the Journal of Ancient Egyptian Interconnections.

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Egypt Recovers Over 29,000 Archaeological Pieces from 14 Countries | Sada Elbalad

https://see.news/egypt-recovers-over-29000-archaeological-pieces-from-14-countries

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Photos: Archaeologists uncover 5,000-year-old wine in Sohag - Egypt Independent

https://www.egyptindependent.com/archaeologists-uncover-5000-year-old-wine-in-sohag/

https://www.zawya.com/en/life/5000-year-old-wine-unearthed-in-egypts-sohag-ry4vzzgi

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AWOL - The Ancient World Online: New Open Access Journal: IWNW

http://ancientworldonline.blogspot.com/2023/09/new-open-access-journal-iwnw.html

Friday, September 29, 2023

New Open Access Journal: IWNW

IWNW

Online ISSN: 2812-5169 

IWNW is an annual peer-reviewed and open-access journal that is issued by the faculty of Archaeology at Ain-Shams University in Egypt. Owned and funded by the Faculty of Archeology- Ain Shams University, and Ain Shams (University, Egypt.( At present, there are no publishing fees. The journal publishes original papers in Archaeology, Excavations, Papyri, Inscriptions, Ostraca, Manuscripts, Antiquities, Ancient Coins, Ancient Languages (Ancient Greek, Latin, Ancient Egyptian, and Semitic Languages), Ancient Greek and Latin literature, Ancient Egyptian literature, Semitic Literature, Greek and Roman History, Ancient Egyptian History, Near Eastern History, Greek and Roman Antiquities, Egyptian Antiquities, Near Eastern Civilizations, Arabic and Islamic Antiquities, Arabic Papyri and Arabic Inscriptions, Restoration, Heritage, Site Management, Museology, Conservation, philosophy and religion in ancient civilizations. The language of the contributions is English, French, German, and Italian.

The journal will be electronically available on the official website of the University of the Faculty of Archeology, Ain Shams University, and the Egyptian Knowledge Bank, and in case it stops issuing, its issues will be available on the website of the Faculty of Archeology, Ain Shams University, Egypt.

The advisory board of Iwnw journal includes prominent professors from different countries such as Egypt, Germany, France, the USA, Portugal, Malta, India, and the Netherlands.

 Volume 2 (2023)

Issue 1

The Books of Netherworld on the Inner Coffin of Hori from Bab El-Gasus (21st Dynasty)

Pages 1-20

Hala Mostafa

• View Article
• PDF 1.48 MB

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L'Habitation civile de la ville de Memphis

Pages 21-50

Yasmine Achraf Mohamed

• View Article
• PDF 2.29 MB

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Nutrition Preventors in the Coffin Texts

Pages 51-66

Inji Adham

• View Article
• PDF 554.79 K

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Unpublished Demotic NHb and Poll Tax Receipts from Medinet Habu

Pages 67-90

Sara Nabil

• View Article
• PDF 945.59 K

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The Draughtsman Hatneferu

Pages 91-101

Laila M. Azzam

• View Article
• PDF 1.09 MB

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The Initial Vignette in the Book of the Dead Papyri in the Late and Ptolemaic Periods

Pages 103-112

Naglaa Sayed Ezzeldeen

• View Article
• PDF 1.44 MB

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Volume 1 (2022)

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