 FOREWORD FROM THE ORGANIZERS
Some 5,000 years ago, the eternal Nile River wound its way through Egypt and fostered the first great civilization of mankind. The Egyptian pantheon of gods included deified forms of the sun, water and animals; there was widespread belief in the pharaoh as the intermediary for those gods; and the overriding philosophy spoke of rebirth in the next world. Today we can catch a hint of ancient Egyptian aspirations in the ruins of Egypt’s temples and in the many funerary goods that filled their tombs.
It was Napoleon’s expeditionary force in 1798 that brought knowledge about ancient Egypt to Europe. An `Egyptian boom` erupted not long after. The Egyptian collections of Eton College and Durham University, two famous English schools, consist of works collected in the 19th century by the Englishmen Major William Joseph Myers and Lord Prudhoe. Myer’s collection, later donated to Eton College, includes works in vividly colored media such as jasper and faience, while the Prudhoe collection, donated to Durham University, centers on examples of hieroglyphic script. The decorative arts in both of these collections are of extremely high quality, characterized by splendid workmanship and imagery.
This exhibition represents the first showing in Japan of more than 280 works from these two important English collections. In ancient Egyptian there was apparently no word for `artist` or `art`, there was simply the concept of `hemut` or skill. It is our greatest hope that this exhibition will allow visitors to enjoy the excellent skill employed in these works that were created for the attainment of eternal life and supreme beauty.
Finally, we would like to take this opportunity to express our deepest gratitude to the Myers Museum at Eton College and to Durham University Oriental Museum for their generous loan of these precious works, in particular to the supervisors for this exhibition, Dr Nicholas Reeves and Dr Craig Barclay. We hereby express our appreciation to all those individuals and organizations that have lent their efforts to the realization of this exhibition.
The Organizers
FOREWORD FROM ETON COLLEGE
It is unusual for a school – even one as ancient and well-known as Eton – to own an important collection of Egyptian antiquities. Eton is lucky enough to do so thanks to William Joseph Myers, a remarkable soldier-collector who had been a boy here between 1871 and 1875 and returned to live and work at the school in 1898.
For the past hundred years the Myers collection has been available for teaching and inspiring generations of boys. Eton is anxious, however, to share what it has with others, by exhibiting around the world to those who are interested treasures acquired over the five and a half centuries since its original foundation.
This will be the first occasion an exhibition of Eton’s treasures has been shown in Japan. It is truly a great pleasure for us to have this opportunity of forging such agreeable links.
Eric Anderson
Provost
Eton College
FOREWORD FROM DURHAM UNIVERSITY
The Oriental Museum is one of Durham University, and indeed the region’s, real treasures.
I recall that I was left somewhat dumbstruck upon arriving at the museum for the first time to discover such a fascinating collection of exotic marvels tucked away in the leafy woodland on Elvet Hill
On that day I only had twenty minutes but it was the best twenty minutes I’ve spent in a long time. I have now made it my duty as Durham University’s Chancellor to urge everyone who has yet to visit the Oriental Museum to drop everything and go at once. It’s that good.
This catalogue provides a fitting showcase to an intriguing and alluring collection of art and artefacts. I hope you enjoy the exhibition and seize the first opportunity to visit the museum.
Bill Bryson
Chancellor
Durham University
CHRONOLOGY
Prehistoric Period
Paleolithic, after ca. 700,000 BP
Neolithic, after ca. 5200 BC
Predynastic Period
Badarian – Naqada I-III – 0 Dynasty, before 3000 B.C.
Early Dynastic Period
1st-2nd Dynasties, 3007-2682 B.C.
Old Kingdom
3rd-6th Dynasties, 2682-2191 B.C.
First Intermediate Period
8th-9/10th Dynasties, 2191-2025/2020 B.C.
Middle Kingdom
11th-13th Dynasties, 2119-1648/1645 B.C.
Second Intermediate Period
14th-17th Dynasties, 1648/1645-1550 B.C.
New Kingdom
18th-20th Dynasties, 1550-1070/1069 B.C.
Third Intermediate Period
21st-25th Dynasties, 1070/1069-655 B.C.
Late Period
26th-31st Dynasties, 664-332 B.C.
Ptolemaic Period
332-30 B.C.
Roman Period
30 B.C.-A.D. 364
Dates B.C./A.D. are based upon the chronological scheme proposed by J. von Beckerath, Handbuch der ägyptischen Königsnamen (2nd edition, Mainz am Rhein, 1999)
ETON AND DURHAM: TWO COLLECTIONS AND THEIR STORIES
The Durham Collection: Algernon Percy
John Ruffle
The invasion of Egypt by the French under Napoleon Bonaparte in 1789 opened up a whole new world to Western scholars whose sources for the study of ancient Egypt had previously been references in the Bible and Classical authors and accounts by pilgrims, merchants and adventurers. The French scholars who accompanied Bonaparte produced reliable records of many aspects of Egypt including the antiquities and within a few years many Westerners were able to consult the great Description de l’Egypte published by Napoleon’s team. The decipherment of the hieroglyphic script made possible by the discovery of the Rosetta Stone made for even more informed interest and by the end of the first quarter of the nineteenth century many gentlemen of means were inspired to visit the country and see it for themselves. Soon Egypt was awash with artists, draughtsmen, copyists, cast-makers, epigraphers and scholars all busily recording the temples and tombs for the benefit of those who could not undertake the journey to Egypt.
Into this coterie in December 1826 stepped Algernon Percy, Lord Prudhoe, the second son of the second Duke of Northumberland – the man to whom Durham University today owes its extraordinarily fine collection of Egyptian antiquities. Born in 1792, Algernon joined the Royal Navy in 1805 and retired with the rank of Captain in 1815. In the same year he was created a baron and took the title of Lord Prudhoe. As the second son of the 2nd Duke of Northumberland he had the resources to follow his taste for travel and adventure, and to develop his serious and inquiring mind. He had been elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries in 1823, became a Fellow of the Royal Society not long after that, gathering other fellowships in the course of the years and a DCL from Oxford in 1841. He travelled widely in Europe in the years after Waterloo, visiting many of the great cities, and it is easy to see how he may have developed an interest in Egypt.
On two of his journeys, to Italy in 1822 and to Scandinavia in 1824, Lord Prudhoe was accompanied by Captain Orlando Felix, then an officer in the Rifle Brigade, who shared his interest in Egypt. In 1826 Felix was sent to Egypt on official business which seems to have been fairly quickly executed, and when Lord Prudhoe joined him there in December 1826 he had already undertaken a journey up the Nile as far as Abu Simbel.
In February 1827 Lord Prudhoe and Major Felix (recently promoted) set out on a Nile journey which took them as far as Wadi Halfa, returning to Cairo at the beginning of July 1827. After a brief visit to Sinai they set out on 26th August 1827 on a voyage through the Aegean Sea, travelling in HMS Pelican, captained by Charles Irby, whose earlier travels in Egypt must have made him a truly kindred spirit. They returned to Cairo in April 1828 and spent several months there working up material from their first Nile journey before departing in December 1828 to make a second, longer, journey up the Nile. It was their intention to travel to Khartoum and thence to Berber and eventually to Suakin to make their way to India. They reached as far as Sennar on May 3rd 1829 but were then obliged, for some reason at present unknown, to return urgently to Cairo and thence to England.
In the course of his travels Lord Prudhoe noted his observations about the monuments and made careful and intelligent copies of many inscriptions, in hieroglyphs, Greek and Nabatean and other scripts. He was concerned at the destruction of monuments, some of it with government approval, and at the unregulated search for antiquities which led to the wholesale ransacking of tombs. The reason for this mayhem was the scramble by collectors, from private individuals to national museums, for objects from this newly fashionable culture.
As far as is known, Lord Prudhoe and Major Felix did not follow this trend, with one exception, and a major exception at that. As they reached Gebel Barkal, Lord Prudhoe noted several temples and pyramids and commented on ‘two fine lions’ in front of a temple dating to the reign of Amenophis III. Soon afterwards these lions turned up in London, presented by Lord Prudhoe to the Royal Academy and in 1835 transferred at his behest to the British Museum where, numbered EA 1 and EA2 and known as ‘The Prudhoe Lions’, they still form an impressive entrance to the Egyptian Sculpture galleries. How and when he acquired them, how much he paid for them and how they were transported to England is not recorded but they were the first Egyptian objects that he owned.
During the 1830s Lord Prudhoe resumed his travels, spending long periods in Spain and France with Major Felix and journeying to the Cape of Good Hope with Sir John Herschel in 1834 to observe the southern constellations. Returning to Egypt in 1838 where he met the Pasha, Muhammad Ali, who presented him with an obelisk, recently excavated at Aswan. The obelisk eventually arrived in Alnwick where it was mounted on a fine granite pedestal and joined the other Egyptian antiquities which he had by now begun to collect.
There exists in the castle archive at Alnwick a manuscript catalogue, dated January 1832, by Lord Prudhoe of his collection of some 160 Egyptian items several of which can be identified as the collection is now constituted in Durham. He added to this in 1835 by purchases made at Sotheby’s sale of Henry Salt’s third collection and may have acquired more at the sale of the collection formed by James Burton, also through Sotheby’s, in 1836.
In this catalogue Lord Prudhoe remarks that ‘Egyptian remains are interesting, on account of their remote antiquity and because they coincide with the Bible on almost every point mutual evidence is possible.’ Elsewhere in his notebooks he shows a similar enthusiasm for evidence that would support the Biblical account. He also had a general interest in objects of ‘remote antiquity’ because he also established at Alnwick collections of artifacts from the family estates in the North of England and in Ireland.
Percy’s Egyptian collection is characterized by small items of good workmanship, many of them bearing royal names and inscriptions. As well as showing his general good taste, the collection demonstrates his interest in establishing the order of the ancient kings and in the continuing process of deciphering and reading Egyptian texts. The copies that he made of inscriptions show an understanding of the texts, which must have been garnered, in part, from Sir John Gardner Wilkinson, his advisor, who made many visits to Egypt between 1821 and 1856 and was established as one of the leading Egyptologists of the day. They first met in Egypt and became good friends.
In February 1847 Lord Prudhoe unexpectedly succeeded as fourth Duke. The running of one of the largest estates in England and many other public duties did not prevent his continued interest in Egypt. Wilkinson made a number of visits to Alnwick and used many items in the collection to illustrate his great work, The Manners and Customs of Ancient Egyptians. The Duke also continued his financial support for the Orientalist Edward Lane, begun in 1842 when Lane started work on his great Arabic-English lexicon.
In 1865 Wilkinson recorded in his diary ‘The dear good Duke of Northumberland died at Alnwick Castle – a great grief to me’. The Duke’s interests were continued after his death: a catalogue of his collection was made by Samuel Birch and published in 1880 and his support for Lane was continued by his widow who paid most of the costs of the printing of the Lexicon. Happily for scholarship the collection was not broken up: in 1950 it was purchased by the University of Durham where it formed one of the bases of the present Oriental Museum.
The Eton Collection: William Joseph Myers
Nicholas Reeves and Stephen Spurr
Eton College, or the `King`s College of our Lady of Eton, beside Windsor,` was founded by Royal Charter of Henry VI on October 11, 1440, and it flourishes still. During the five and a half centuries of its existence Eton has produced prime ministers, soldiers, writers, and men of fame in all fields. And over the years former pupils have expressed gratitude to their old school in countless gifts and bequests – including one of the finest collections of Egyptian decorative art anywhere in the world.
This collection was bequeathed by William Joseph Myers, who was at Eton from 1871 to 1875. His scholarly achievements were modest and left little mark, but he was clearly exceedingly happy at the school. On leaving Eton he went to Sandhurst, and in due course he obtained a commission in the King`s Royal Rifle Corps in which he would serve for sixteen years, until 1894.
Myers first arrived in Egypt at dawn on November 3, 1882, aged 24 and having already seen action in the Zulu War. He had come as aide-de-camp to General Sir Frederick Stephenson, the newly appointed commander in chief at Cairo. British troops had begun their occupation of Egypt, which was to last until 1954. He landed at Alexandria, which was still in turmoil following the British naval bombardment of the city
four months earlier and the ensuing land battle. Myers` first impressions were, not surprisingly, unenthusiastic. With his soldier`s eye he observed `guns knocked allover the place ... immense pieces of our shells, many unburst, lying about, and in the magazines great quantities of Egyptian ammunition.`
Myers reached Cairo that same evening, where he booked in to the famous Shepheard`s Hotel. He joined his regiment the next morning in barracks commandeered from the disbanded Egyptian army - `a bit rough at present but when the crockery and plate come up will be alright. Actually no kitchen either for officers or men but about to make one.` That very same first afternoon, Myers `rode across the Nile to look at the polo ground. Then to opera to take a ticket.`
The words are from his diaries - so far unpublished - which reveal a fascinating picture of military, social, and archaeological life in Egypt at this time. Myers quickly settled in to the pleasant civilized round of English society parties; attendance at the theater, concerts, and opera; frequent polo matches at the Gezira Sports Club; and duck and quail shoots along the Nile. But the diaries are soon filled with descriptions that convey local color: visits to mosques and Coptic churches; purchases of rugs, mosque lamps, velvets, and decorated tiles in the bazaars; and performances of whirling dervishes.
It was not until 1 February 1885, more than two years after his arrival in Egypt, that Myers embarked on a luxury yacht put at his party`s disposal by the khedive. Only a few days before, Myers had met Emile Brugsch, assistant curator of the Bulaq Museum - the nucleus of
today`s Egyptian Museum: `Went in the morning to the Boulac museum and Brugsch Bey showed us round .... He is a charming man.` Myers`s interest in ancient Egypt had been fired. Brugsch, believed to be a natural son of Kaiser Wilhelm I, knew the best sources for Egyptian antiquities and was to guide Myers in his collecting for the rest of his life.
Myers’ first trip up the Nile lasted less than three weeks. On February 8 1885, at Korosko south of Aswan, Myers heard the terrible news of the fall of Khartoum. `Wilson had found Khartoum in the hands of the Mahdi, and Gordon either a prisoner or killed. Wilson was returning with his two steamers having been shelled from Khartoum when they ran on a rock and one boat sank, so he is in a critical position too.` Myers was summoned by telegram back to Cairo.
The diaries are full of the sights encountered and hastily explored during this first short trip. At Abu Simbel he `was sorry to see that many of the men going up had written their names over the carvings, which is a reprehensible practice.` At Aswan Myers wandered alone around Elephantine Island with Amelia Edwards`s book, A Thousand Miles Up the Nile, which, published in 1877, had already become a classic. `I
searched among the ruins of the old town for some of the pieces of pot described in Miss Edwards`s book. Didn`t find any but got some from the natives at the village close by.` At Philae he found that the columns of the inner portico `with beautifully coloured capitals pleased me
more than most anything I ever saw .... All different and supposed to represent different flowers. The colours are most delicate and as bright as the day they were put up.` On his last trip up the Nile in 1896, with an incalculably greater knowledge of Egypt than he had had eleven years before, Myers was no less enthusiastic about the beauty of Philae: `It is a very interesting and beautiful place and perhaps strikes one more than any other place in Egypt outside Cairo.` However, now it was `infested with tourists.`
Soon collecting would be proceeding on every front. At Luxor, returning from another trip up the Nile with General Stephenson, which had been devoted mainly to inspecting the troop positions as far as the new border with the Sudan at Wadi Haifa, Myers wrote: `I employed the rest of our time there in visiting the antique dealers, bought a few things from Mustapha [the old Mustapha Agha`s son] and Mohammed but
they hadn`t got much. Idris, who has the most things, is back in Cairo.` When Myers was back in Cairo himself on October 29, `Brugsch came to lunch and to look at my antiques wh[ich] pleased him very much.` His knowledge of where and from whom to buy was employed by even the highest British official in the land: `In afternoon went to the Turkish bazaar and looked up at the different shops and chose some things for L[or]d Baring .... Went to bazaar in morning and got some pretty pieces of velvet .... Afternoon went to Gizeh to see the antiquity
vendors and got some rugs very cheap .... Went with Abdel Malik in morning to a pearl merchant. He hadn`t much however, but had some nice diamonds.` And on the trail of a good deal, Myers was ready for anything: `I quickly disguised myself in plain clothes and tarboosh ... .`
On the last day of 1887 General Stephenson and Myers completed their tour of duty. Myers`s emotions were mixed and heightened. `As soon as the General arrived [at the station] a salute of17 guns was fired from the citadel. I suppose everyone in Cairo was there to say goodbye .... I have certainly had a most happy time in Cairo and never expect to have so good a one again. I have also left some very good friends behind whom I regret very much …’.
Myers would, in fact, make three more visits to Egypt: February to March 1894, March to April 1896, and December 1896 to March 1897. He was by now a familiar and respected figure, with a wide acquaintance among the leading archaeologists and collectors of his time and well liked in social and cultural circles, both native and European. During these last three visits Myers`s collection of Egyptian art, already substantial, grew daily. The diaries continually mention meetings with well- and lesser-known dealers and collectors, such as Kyticas, Reinhardt, Philip, Fouquet, Dattari, and Robinow; but always under the watchful eye of Emile Brugsch.
But time was running out. In 1898, four years after retiring from the army, Major William Joseph Myers found himself back at Eton as
Adjutant to the Volunteers, a force made up of boys from the school. Within a matter of months restlessness had set in. Myers determined to return to the colours, travelling to South Africa and the defence of Queen Victoria`s empire. The decision proved a fateful one. Within four days of his arrival Myers was dead - killed by a Boer sniper`s bullet on 30 October 1899 at the battle of Farquhar`s Farm, Natal. It was a tragic and unexpected end.
Despite his wanderlust, Myers`s days at Eton had been happy ones, and it came as no surprise to those who knew him that he should remember the school in his will. At the time of his death, his Eton home was filled to overflowing with the collector`s treasures - prints,
brocades, porcelain, brass, stamps, and, of course, the abundant souvenirs of his time in Egypt. Of this material, much would remain at Eton. It was a far-sighted legacy. As one of the last of the great nineteenth century collections to remain substantially intact down to our own day, the Myers bequest represents a resource of enormous significance.
Myers was, for his time, an immensely sophisticated collector. The twin themes of perfection and colour - qualities which, for him, were at the essence of Egyptian decorative art - are very much in evidence in almost everything he acquired. And those pieces which remained at Eton were very much the cream of the crop, Myers` personal favourites, the finer objects with which he had chosen to surround himself in his Eton home. That this collection of choice objects is together still, to inspire in its perfection and beauty a new and very different generation and world, would for Myers be a source of immense satisfaction. As `a ... memorial of a brave soldier and a collector of fine and discriminating taste` – to quote the famous nineteenth century connoisseur Henry Wallis - it could hardly be bettered.
ART IN ANCIENT EGYPT
Hans D. Schneider
The Egyptian collections from Eton College and Durham University consist mainly of objects that we regard as examples of minor arts or applied art. They are utilities, but today they are also considered as works of art because the deliberate application of an aesthetic element is neither necessary for their intended function nor alters that function. Ancient Egyptians, however, would not have understood this way of looking at things, because they did not distinguish between different artistic forms and saw no difference at all between fine and applied art: Egyptian objects always have a function and are therefore in fact always applied art. The objects reproduced and discussed in this book were created at the time to bring about a certain situation for their original owners or for the execution of a particular activity. At the same time, they show that the artists of Egypt not only excelled in the production of monumental art but were equally skilful in making works of art on a smaller scale. They could be called the small-scale masterpieces of ancient Egyptian art – and many of those masterpieces which have come down to us are included in this exhibition. But before discussing these masterpieces in more detail, a few general remarks are called for on the nature and function of Egyptian art. What is Egyptian art, and who made it?
Did ancient Egypt have art in the sense that we give to the word? At any rate, the Egyptians did not have a word for art. We apply aesthetic criteria to decide whether something is art or not. We look for beauty and quality, and ask ourselves whether an image or an object is true to reality or only appears to be so. An important criterion for us is whether an image or object has a symbolic meaning that transcends its function. In the nineteenth century, when the civilisation of the Pharaohs was literally being recovered from underneath the sand, the question of whether Egyptian objects could be called art was usually answered in the negative. Following the great German classical archaeologist Winckelmann, those objects were viewed in the most favourable case as second-rate art because the Egyptians did not use
perspective, a Western invention. That was taken to explain why their images and statues failed to express spatiality and motion, and thus reality. Accustomed as the Western eye was to perspective, we can see how much difficulty it encountered right down to late in the
nineteenth century when confronted with the Egyptian style of representation. If we consider the copies of Egyptian statues and reliefs in drawings, they often display a purely European style of draughtsmanship. However, if you know something about the beliefs of the people of ancient Egypt, you can see that for them too truth and reality, the addition of an extra symbolic value, and certainly quality and beauty were
conditions that had to be satisfied if a product was to pass for art. That explains why their style of representation was lacking in perspective. Truth and reality meant something different to an Egyptian from what they mean to us. We understand them in the sense of realism or naturalism, since we represent the world around us as we perceive it at a certain moment and from a certain angle. The Egyptians, however, set out from the basis of a divine ideal of beauty. They endeavoured to represent the world and everything in it the way it looked when it was created by the gods, without the imperfections that were later introduced through human actions. The truth of the primeval creation was the standard. `Quality` was expressed by the word menekhu, which means `excellence` or `perfect effectiveness`. The quality of a work of art was determined by its approximation to the absolute quality and superlative beauty of the primeval creation.
An Egyptian artist always strived to make his work more beautiful and perfect than that of his counterparts in the past, and always took as his model the perfection of the primeval era, `the era of the creator god Re`. At the same time he realised that humans could not achieve the very highest level. That awareness was never put into words better than by the sage Ptahhotep around 2400 B.C.: `No one ever reaches the limits of skill, no craftsman is ever fully qualified`.
The Egyptian view of truth meant in practice that life and nature were recorded in the most ideal form. The standard of Egyptian art was set not by what is ephemeral and fleeting, but by what is ideal and typical. That is why the naturalistic rendering of a person - a portrait - is in principle inconceivable in the art of the Pharaohs. People were depicted as they were at their most ideal: at their peak, in the prime of youth.
The image was tied to a particular person by adding inscriptions with the name and other information about the subject of the `portrait`. Although the lack of an exact likeness does not mean that such ideal portraits are devoid of emotion, they should rather be seen as expressions of eternal humanity reduced to essentials. The characteristic Egyptian style of representing reality gained a firm hold in art around 2600 B.C.,during the transition from the 3rd to the 4th Dynasty. The basic principles or conventions of the Pharaonic style of art that became standard at that time can still be seen in the very last expressions of Egyptian art during the Roman empire in the first centuries of our era. Artists could fall back on those conventions, but they were an enormous challenge as well. Numerous examples show that, within the framework of those time-hallowed practices, the artists continued to express their own imagination, taste and craftsmanship with surprising results. They worked constantly in the field of tension between the eternal, divine ideal and everyday, human reality. The very works of art that are classified by us today as minor arts provide splendid examples of this.
The most striking principle of Egyptian art is the deliberate avoidance of illusion. Egyptian artists did not represent reality as it is perceived by the human eye, but as it is known to be. Hence they projected every aspect of the object to be represented onto the plane surface. In other words, Egyptian artists expressed space in two dimensions without the use of perspective. If you apply perspective, you depict the object to be represented from a certain point, making use of foreshortening and receding lines to give the impression of what is seen at a fleeting moment. Foreshortening was ruled out in the magical way of thinking of the Egyptians because it implied the foreshortening, and thus impairment, of reality itself. Overlapping was not permitted because what could not be seen could not exist. That is why Egyptian artists
`dissected` their subjects: they composed representations in two or three dimensions from different elements, each of which provided information about the whole. If an artist worked in two dimensions, he always showed the most characteristic aspect of those separate parts: an eye shown frontally, a face in profile, a seated person as a whole, thus seen from above. A house was depicted with all of its components and details by drawing the invisible parts too, unfolded on the plane surface. Thus a single representation could combine what we now show by means of ground plans and cross-sections. The aim was to record as many details as possible so that the viewer could arrive at a complete reconstruction of reality. The same planimetric principle applied to three-dimensional sculpture: statues are actually constructed from surfaces in direct alignment with one another, which gives them a strongly frontal character.
There were also conventions regarding the use of visual types and decorative themes. High-ranking officials were usually depicted as reading or writing intellectuals, and the mummy of the deified dead person was made to look like Osiris. Statues of gods and kings have their own fixed forms and attributes. People and events in their lives were represented on the basis of the principle of divine truth in their ideal form as young, seated or standing at rest. The women are slender and beautiful, the men proud, good-looking and dignified. Unlike the members of the elite, who were represented ideally, lower-ranking, usually anonymous figures - labourers, soldiers, foreigners and enemies - were depicted true to life with all their physical imperfections, such as a skinny rib-cage, a wrinkled skin, a bald head, or misshapen limbs. They can be seen in all kinds of attitudes, engaged in their profession, playing, fighting, or begging for mercy. It is the smallscale works of the artists that offer splendid examples of this realism.
Other conventions of the visual code are: important persons are larger than less important ones; gods and kings are the same size; successive stages of one event or action are incorporated in a single scene; different subjects that are thematically related are juxtaposed
without taking into account their actual relation to one another in reality; scenes are built up by piling friezes one on top of another - the lowest frieze represents what is nearest to the viewer, the topmost frieze what is farthest away.
The use of colour was coded too. Colour, skin, nature and character were related concepts to the Egyptians. That is why colours were seldom omitted, for colourless figures were incomplete. The range of colours was limited: black, white, yellow, red, green and blue, with the addition of a number of intermediate tints from the 18th Dynasty onwards. Women were given a yellow skin, men a red one. The gods were believed to have a skin of gold, so a golden yellow was used as the colour for images of gods. The additional colours of black and green, the colours of resurrection and fertility, were reserved for Osiris, the god of the kingdom of the dead and of the new crops. Colours were applied in fields with few transitions, for it was not considered relevant to indicate the effects of light and shadow. Figures were given a contour, usually in black or red.
The hieroglyphic script is a principal ingredient of Egyptian art. Sign and language were one in Egypt, where the language was written with signs. Hieroglyphs are representations of natural phenomena, people, animals and things. Each hieroglyph had a characteristic and therefore general, unchangingly valid meaning. Works of art generally include inscriptions naming the person represented. The inscriptions also conferred order to the composition. Many objects actually consist entirely of one or more hieroglyphs, making it possible to `read` them. They have the function of an amulet, an object that was intended to protect its wearer from harm and bring him or her good fortune. Common amulets are the scarab (`to become`), the wedjat eye (`health`), the ankh hieroglyph (`life`), the wadj or papyrus pillar (`youth, joy`), the djed hieroglyph (`stability`), and the sa hieroglyph (`magic`).
Art in ancient Egypt was in the service of religion and magic. It was a way of keeping the perfect creation of the gods, the cosmos of which Egypt was the centre and the Pharaoh the steward, in equilibrium and of protecting it from the dark forces that formed a constant threat to the world order. Art was the means of allowing the creation of the gods to continue forever, including after death. So Egyptian artistic objects
always have a specific function and in principle are never made for art`s sake. Representations were taken to be reality: the artist embodied actual life in the act of drawing or sculpting. An Egyptian sculptor was called a se-ankh-en-iner, `he who brings stone to life`. A temple
was the recreation of the primeval hill on which the sun god had first appeared to create the cosmos. A temple or funerary statue was intended to make a god or a person visible so that he could be taken care of like a living being. The shabti - statuettes that were buried in the funerary chamber - stood for their owners and were brought to life through the spell inscribed on them, and amulets were intended to protect their wearer from harm.
Since the Egyptians believed that the world of the dead was a continuation of life on earth, they took objects from this life down with them in the grave: statues of themselves, their family and personnel, utilities and objects of which they were fond, such as jewellery, as well as aids that they needed to survive in the kingdom of the dead: amulets, statuettes, and texts on objects and the walls of the funerary chamber to ward off evil and attract good. It is to the will to cling to life at any cost that we owe so much information about the civilisation of the Pharaohs, more than about practically any other ancient culture.
Most of the techniques that were required to make works of art had already been developed in the Prehistoric period between about 4000 and 3100 B.C. The basic principles of these techniques remained unchanged down to the end of Egyptian civilisation. The tools were simple and timeless: saws, drills and chisels made of copper, later of bronze - iron tools were introduced around 1000 B.C.- and sturdy stone
hammers; moist sand was used as an abrasive. Most of the raw materials could be obtained in Egypt itself. Few countries in the world have as many different kinds of stone as Egypt. The main locations for stones and minerals were at Memphis (limestone), Hatnub (alabaster), Aswan (granite, diorite, steatite), in the Sinai peninsula (copper, malachite and turquoise), and especially in the Eastern Desert between the Nile and the Red Sea (stones, many minerals such as gold, copper, tin and lead, and precious stones such as agate, carnelian, amethyst, feldspar and jasper). The richest gold mines were situated in the Nubian Desert. A very popular stone was lapis lazuli, but that extremely
expensive material did not occur in Egypt, as far as we know, and had to be imported from Afghanistan.
The makers of expensive utilities used mainly minerals. They were regarded as divine products, each with its own symbolic meaning and mythology. The Egyptians called them the Sacred Stones, and the Eastern Desert where the major sites were was known as the Land of
God. Temples, the homes of the gods, were called Sacred Mountains because they were regarded as models of the mountain ridges in the East. Raw minerals were therefore kept in the temple storehouses. It was believed that the colour, sheen and brilliance of a mineral were the result of being touched by the gods. The intensity of the sheen, which was often revealed or enhanced by human intervention (refining and
polishing), determined not only the material value, but also the magical, symbolic meaning of the different raw materials. There was a hierarchy of minerals. The most important were the metals silver and gold - called bia, `wondrous things` - and the shiny mineral stones: lapis
lazuli, turquoise, and faience (a ceramic produced from minerals). These five materials were regarded as emanations of the main sources of light in the firmament: the sun, the moon, and the star Sothis (Sirius). They were particularly associated with Hathor, the night sun. One of the epithets of this goddess was `She who causes the minerals to exist`.
Faience was made by mixing quartz sand with salts, a little lime, and a pigment made from finely ground copper ore. It was mixed with water to form a paste which could then be shaped by hand or using a mould. Firing the object at a very high temperature automatically gave it a colourful glaze. Faience was used as a substitute for the expensive turquoise and the even more highly rated lapis lazuli. The Egyptians
called faience tjehenet, literally `that which is brilliant, scintillating`. They regarded it as the materialisation of the divine light that is the source of life, resurrection and immortality. Both Hathor and Thoth, gods who function in the solar mythology as the bringers and bearers ofthe sun and the moon - the eyes of the sun have the epithet tjehenty, `dazzling`.
The faience industry reached its zenith during the 18th Dynasty and underwent a subsequent renaissance in the Third Intermediate Period. In spite of the political chaos and social unrest that prevailed in Egypt during that period, important masterpieces were created under the Pharaohs of the 21st and 22nd Dynasties. They indicate innovations in the field of iconography and technique. In terms of beauty and craftsmanship, the small-scale works of art from this period are in no way inferior to the monumental art of the preceding and subsequent periods. The artists of the workshop at Tuna el-Gebel, the leading centre for the production of faience in Egypt at the time, performed miracles in this respect. Incidentally, the name `faience` is misleading, because it is derived from Faenza, the Italian town where the shiny pottery known today as majolica was made in the late Middle Ages. It is therefore better to speak of `Egyptian faience`.
Finally, a few remarks on the Egyptian artists themselves. In the light of the function that art had in Egyptian society, it can be stated that artists and craftsmen formed a professional branch in Egypt. In practice the production of works of art involved teamwork. Many individuals were involved in the process of production, each of whom contributed from his own specialisation: draughtsmen, craftsmen to cut out the contours of the reliefs, sculptors, workers to mix the pigments, painters, carpenters, stone masons, bronze founders, workers in precious metals and stones, faience producers, and so on. Representations of artists` workshops in funerary chambers indicate that all those
specialists worked simultaneously on the production of various objects. Most of them, however, confined their activities to giving shape to the ideas that others had devised. Egyptian art is thus strongly orientated towards craftsmanship. There were no words for `artist` or `art` in Egyptian. Hemut, `skill`, was the word that they used for artistic creation – and the hieroglyph for this word is a stone drill! As a rule, therefore, Egyptian works of art are anonymous, and their profession, like other professions in Egypt, was passed on from father to son.
We know the names of a large number of artists, but only in a few cases are we able to link them to specific works. Works of art were almost never signed.
The artists` workshops were established in the royal palaces and great temples. The supervision was in the hand of high-ranking officials, such as the Director of the Treasury and All Public Works, or the High Priest of Ptah in Memphis and the High Priest of Amun in Thebes. The personal intervention of the Pharaoh in art projects was undoubtedly great. After all, it was he who placed the important commissions in which his role as representative of the gods on earth and steward of the cosmos was displayed in public, and who influenced the way in which those projects were to be carried out. We know that King Sahure of the Old Kingdom gave personal instructions on the painting of
monuments. The serious, portrait-like style in which images of the various Pharaohs of the 12th Dynasty are executed is believed to have been decreed by these rulers themselves. The Pharaoh Akhenaten developed a view of nature based on his personal religion and
deliberately introduced it into art. His leading sculptor, Bak, received instructions from him in person. It is suspected that even the jewels that this Pharaoh gave to his friends on festive occasions may have been of his own design. Pharaoh Sheshonq I of the 22nd Dynasty is also
supposed to have exerted a personal influence on the art of his time. His reign witnessed the emergence of the majestic lotus chalices decorated with reliefs, which were inspired by the mythology of the creation of Hermopolis. These reliefs display a liveliness, emotion and sense of space with which the faience artists of Sheshonq I showed that they preferred to express the transitory drama of life rather than the typical and the timeless that characterise the traditional, idealising pharaonic style.
But the real artists of Egypt were of course the people who devised the artistic concepts and gave expression to them by combining a formidable talent with a high level of skill. They were artists and scholars at the same time, for they had a thorough knowledge of the
Egyptian script, religion, mythology and the materials. It is these intellectual, all-round designers who were in charge of artistic production. The leading artist Nebamun from Thebes, a contemporary of Amenhotep III, was such a man, as was his colleague Apuia, head of the royal workshops in Memphis.
The artists who enjoyed the most prestige of all were the workers in gold and precious stones. The imy-ro-nubtiu, `overseer of the goldsmiths`, was the master artist who made the designs. In the hierarchy of the workshop he was followed by the neshdy, `cutter of
precious stones`, who was specialised in the production of small sculptures and in cutting elements of precious stone and glass to be inlaid in metal and wooden frames. The baba and the iru-khesbed, `faience makers`, produced bowls, beakers, statuettes of the gods, shabti, and amulets. During the 18th Dynasty the field of operations of these two specialists was enlarged to include the manufacture of glass, a specialisation in which Egypt led the world at the time. The set-ro worked exclusively on necklaces, such as collars and chains, in close collaboration with the iru-weshbet, the `bead maker`.
Thanks to their exceptional position, renowned artists could climb very high on the social ladder. Many of them lived at court and were awarded the `Gold of Honour`, the highest decoration that a subject of Pharaoh could receive. A large number of artists were among the celebrities of Egypt. The Pharaohs owed the vitality of their civilisation to the great talent of their artists, the translators of truth. It is talent exceptionally well represented in this exhibition of Egyptian art from the unrivalled collections of Eton College and Durham University.
CATALOGUE OF OBJECTS
Contributors to the catalogue:
CB - Craig Barclay (Oriental Museum, Durham University)
TH - Tom Hardwick (Bolton Museum)
SQ - Stephen Quirke (Petrie Museum, University College London)
NR - Nicholas Reeves (Myers Museum, Eton College)
JR - John Ruffle (formerly Oriental Museum, Durham University)
HS - Hans Schneider (formerly Rijksmuseum van Oudheden, Leiden)
Section 1: Beginnings
The origins of ancient Egypt lie in the period after 5000 B.C. when changing climatic conditions led Neolithic communities to forsake the drying lands of what is now the Western Desert and move en masse into the Nile Valley. Already equipped with skills such as pottery-making and stone-working, social groupings evolved which later formed the two kingdoms of Upper and Lower Egypt. Many of the characteristics which we consider to be typically Egyptian derive from this formative period. These included hieroglyphic writing, which by the period’s end was fully developed and would form the basis of Egypt’s startling cultural prosperity over the next three millennia.
JR
1. Hand axe
Prehistoric Period, Paleolithic, after ca. 700,000 B.C.
From Western Thebes
Flint: Length 10.5 cm
Eton College, Myers Museum, ECM 2318
The stone implements produced by the early hunter-gatherers of the Lower Paleolithic and today encountered on the high terraces of the Nile valley are virtually identical to those found across North Africa and Europe. Taking the form of so-called ‘hand axes’, these heavy, pear-shaped implements are roughly chipped from the pebbles and boulders of the flint so commonly found in the limestone cliffs of the Theban region. The surface of this particular had axe has patinated beautifully from an original dark grey to its current warm honey colour during the many millennia since its creation at the hands of earliest man.
NR
2. Hollow-base arrowhead
Prehistoric Period, Neolithic-early Bronze Age, after ca. 5200 B.C.
From the Faiyum
Flint: Length 4.4 cm
Eton College, Myers Museum, ECM 1218
The advance in lithic technology from the Palaeolithic, or ‘Old Stone Age’, to the Neolithic, or ‘New Stone Age’, is marked. Agriculture was now the preferred method of subsistence, necessitating the first permanent settlements. Hunting still had its place, however, as this ‘hollow-base’ arrowhead illustrates - meticulously worked from flint and typical of those found in the Faiyum region from the Neolithic period through to the early Bronze Age.
NR
3. Fish-tailed knife
Predynastic Period or later, after ca. 3100 B.C.
Flint: Length 18.5 cm
Eton College, Myers Museum, ECM 803
By early Predynastic times the skills of the flint-knapper had reached a peak, achieving the highest levels of perfection. Suitable pieces of flint were carefully chipped or ground to shape to create a form which was then refined by the application of ‘pressure flaking’, permitting far greater control over the finished result. Contrary to the impression its form initially suggests, the implement shown here is not a lance-head; as closer inspection reveals, its cutting edges are located at the object’s bifurcated end. The object’s precise function is unknown, but similar forked forms continue in use into dynastic times when they play a key role in the ‘opening of the mouth’ ceremony performed to revivify the mummified corpse.
NR
4. Image of a bearded man
Predynastic Period, Naqada II, before ca. 3100 B.C.
Alabaster: Height 6.7 cm
Durham University, Oriental Museum, EG 5281
The bald head, inlaid eyes and pointed beard of this figure link it to a group of objects of similar style which are frequently encountered in graves of the Predynastic period, produced in a range of materials including bone, ivory and stone. Related objects occur in the form of birds, animals, or simple tusks. Common to many is a deep groove at one end or occasionally in the middle, as in this example, which sometimes preserves the remains of a leather thong. The proposal has been made that such figures were used as tags to identify the owner or the contents of a bag; it has also been suggested that they may have been used in magic.
JR
5. Bull head amulets
Predynastic Period, Naqada II, before 3100 B.C.
Serpentine and steatite: Widths 2.1 cm and 2.3 cm
Durham University, Oriental Museum, EG 2763 and 2771
These stylised heads with their deeply cut eyes (formerly inlaid with shell) and their powerful curved horns were intended to confer on the wearer the fearsome might of the bull in a country where herds of cattle during this early period often wandered wild. For similar purposes of power transfer, one of the country’s earliest named rulers, Narmer, is shown on his palette wearing a bull’s tail as an integral part of his ritualistic costume. In dynastic times the epithet ‘Strong Bull’ would in due course be incorporated as a standard part of the Egyptian king’s titulary, while in the realm of the gods several were believed to take on the physical form of a bull - notably Ptah who was worshipped at Saqqara as the Apis, and Montu whose incarnation at Armant was the Buchis bull.
JR
6. Rhomboidal cosmetic palette
Predynastic Period, Naqada I or later, before 3100 B.C.
Siltstone: Length 42.0 cm
Eton College, Myers Museum, ECM 1866
7. Cosmetic palette in the form of a turtle
Predynastic Period, Naqada II, before 3100 B.C.
Siltstone: Width 12.2 cm
Durham University, Oriental Museum, EG 5283
From the earliest periods of settled life in Egypt eye paint played an important role in the ritual of bodily adornment for both men and women. This cosmetic (which in Predynastic times was produced from a ground copper ore - malachite) was employed both as a protection and as a beautifying aid, and palettes for its preparation employing a pebble grinder generally accompanied their owners to the grave. Clearly of magical as well as practical use, such palettes are among Egypt’s earliest decorated objects and appear in any number of forms from geometric to animal. The first of the palettes displayed here displays in raised relief at either end on its principal face a schematized double-‘bird’ or -‘serpent’ decoration of uncertain amuletic meaning. The second palette follows in shape the outline of a turtle with a large round body and small head and legs; white shell inlays would originally have defined its eyes. Green patches of malachite on the surface show that this palette had actually been employed for its intended purpose.
TH/NR
8. Buff-ware vessel with boats
Predynastic Period, Naqada II, before 3100 B.C.
Pottery: Height 18.0 cm
Eton College, Myers Museum, ECM 1868
This large, shouldered jar with vestigial pierced lug handles is a fine example from a well-known series of hand-made, late Predynastic vessels produced in marl clay and often with surface decoration added in red. The subject-matter here consists of multi-oared boats which sport double cabins and divine or tribal standards – a reminder that the Nile was Egypt’s principal artery, for practical as well as ritual purposes, from earliest times. There is some evidence to suggest that this type of vessel was produced exclusively for funerary use, rather than (as so often) a domestic form subsequently pressed into use for the grave.
NR
9. Black-top vessel
Predynastic Period, Naqada I-II, before 3100 B.C.
Pottery: Height 13.7 cm
Eton College, Myers Museum, ECM 1194
10. Black-top sherd with drill holes
Predynastic Period, Naqada I-II, before 3100 B.C.
Pottery: Height 7.6 cm
Eton College, Myers Museum, ECM 1872
Like so many Egyptian vessels this small and beautifully shaped storage jar has a conical base designed for standing in the sand rather than sitting on a flat surface. The fabric is a Nile silt, coil-made, with reddish-brown hematite wash and a characteristic burnished black top produced by firing upside down in ash in a reducing atmosphere. First mistakenly identified in 1895 as ‘New Race’ pottery introduced into Egypt following the fall of the Old Kingdom, the prehistoric nature of this and other associated wares soon became apparent. A relative dating system (‘sequence dating’) had by 1901 been developed for the various Predynastic pottery types by the famous British Egyptologist W.M. Flinders Petrie – ‘the father of archaeology’. The fragment of a larger black-top vessel shown alongside has holes drilled along two of its three edges – evidence of ancient repair employing leather thronging or fibre, and an indication of the vessel’s intrinsic value in antiquity.
NR
11. Footed vessel
Predynastic Period, Naqada II, before 3100 B.C.
Limestone: Height 16.0 cm
Eton College, Myers Museum, ECM 1863
12. Footed vessel
Predynastie Period, Naqada II, before 3100 B.C.
Basalt: Height 13.0 cm
Eton College, Myers Museum, ECM 1864
13. Footed vessel
Predynastic Period, Naqada II, before 3100 B.C.
Steatite: Height 5.2 cm
Durham University, Oriental Museum, EG 5288
In the production of vessels from the stones available to them - alabaster, basalt, breccia, diorite, dolorite, limestone and serpentine - the Egyptians early demonstrated an extraordinary mastery. From as early as the fourth millennium B.C. an abundance of finely made vessels is found in a range of types among burials of the Egyptian privileged classes. Some of these vessels were clearly produced solely for funerary use; others may originally have had a domestic or ritual function. The string-holes of the two larger footed examples displayed here show considerable wear, presumably as a result of the vessels having been suspended, and therefore in use, over an extended period of time.
NR
14. Disc-shaped mace head
Predynastic Period, Naqada I-IIb, before 3100 B.C.
Porphyritic diorite: Diameter 7.6 cm
Durham University, Oriental Museum, EG 3526
15. Pear-shaped mace head
Predynastic Period, Naqada IIb or later, before 3100 B.C.
Gneiss(?): Diameter 5.2 cm
Durham University, Oriental Museum, EG 5323
16. Pear-shaped mace head
Predynastic Period, Naqada IIb or later, before 3100 B.C.
White breccia: Diameter 6.0 cm
Durham University, Oriental Museum, EG 5324
17. Elongated pear-shaped mace head
Predynastic Period, Naqada IIb or later, before 3100 B.C.
Red breccia: Height 5.8 cm
Durham University, Oriental Museum, EG 5327
It is evident that the spread of a standardised culture throughout Egypt as the Predynastic progressed, resulting in the eventual unification of Upper (southern) and Lower (northern) Egypt, was a not entirely peaceful process. A weapon-type commonly encountered on Predynastic sites is the stone mace head. During the early Predynastic Period such mace-heads are of a standard form, cut and ground from black and white diorite, conical in shape and with a sharp cutting rim. Later in the Predynastic Period the type changes to a less fragile ovoid, and a wider variety of desirable stones begins to be used including white limestone and blood-coloured breccia. The mace comes in time to epitomize the power of the warrior victorious in battle: for the next three and a half thousand years - long after the introduction of bronze and iron had made the weapon obsolete – it is with a mace of this type that Pharaoh appears in commemorative and ritualistic scenes delivering the coup de grâce to his defeated enemies.
TH
18. Composite bowl
Early Dynastic Period, 1st Dynasty or later, after ca. 3000 B.C.
Recrystalised limestone: Diameter 12.0 cm
Durham University, Oriental Museum, EG3
Stone-working was a pre-eminent craft during the earliest years of Egyptian civilization, and the Predynastic period witnessed craftsmen tackling with consummate ease some of the hardest stones known to man. The vessel-makers’ skill reached its peak in the Early Dynastic period, when this particular jar (which will originally have been fitted with a separately modelled rim) was produced; subsequently such technically perfect tours de force are displaced by vessels worked in much softer limestone and Alabaster. Although the drill with its copper bit, heavy weights and cranked handle early became the hieroglyphic sign for ‘craft’, there is little additional evidence to indicate the vessel workers’ methods and how such extraordinary results were achieved in the most intractable of materials.
JR
Section 2: Gods
For the Greek historian Herodotus the Egyptians with their many peculiar, animal-headed gods – cosmic and domestic, national and tribal - were among the world’s most religious people. Religion permeated every aspect of life in the Nile Valley, with the divine acknowledged in every act and occurrence. It was a system within which Pharaoh, as the sole intermediary between gods and men, was key from earliest times down to the domination of Christianity in the fourth century A.D.: access to the divinity could be achieved only through him. In return for Pharaoh’s ministration to their needs, the gods maintained the balance, stability and proper order of things – maat – by which Egypt flourished.
JR
19. Scarab with the king before Amun
New Kingdom, 18th Dynasty, ca. 1360 B.C.
Steatite: Length 1.8 cm
Eton College, Myers Museum, ECM 1625
20. Scarab with the goose of Amun
New Kingdom, 18th Dynasty, ca. 1425 B.C.
Steatite: Length 1.5 cm
Eton College, Myers Museum, ECM 1624
The principal god of the New Kingdom was Amun, ‘The hidden one’, the local divinity of Thebes who, combined with the attributes of Re of Heliopolis, rose to pre-eminence as ‘king of the gods’ following the expulsion of the Hyksos invaders and the reunification of Egypt by the Theban prince Ahmose. Famed for his magnificent temple complex at Karnak, Amun-Re’s estates came to be managed by a priestly elite as skilled in the ways of politics as in theology, creating a virtual state within a state which soon threatened the very power of the king himself. The amuletic protection which Amun-Re’s image, manifestations and name provided was clearly strong, and they are consequently found everywhere in Egyptian art.
NR
21. Amulet of Mut
New Kingdom, 18th Dynasty, ca. 1360 B.C.
Glass: Height 4.7 cm
Eton College, Myers Museum, ECM 1664
22. Figure of Mut
Third Intermediate Period, 22nd Dynasty, ca. 900 B.C.
Faience: Height 10.0 cm
Eton College, Myers Museum, ECM 1689
23. Model decree case of Mut
Third Intermediate Period, 22nd Dynasty, 900 B.C.
Glassy material: Height 4.2 cm
Eton College, Myers Museum, ECM 1665
The goddess Mut - the name in Egyptian means ‘mother’ - is identified by the double crown of Upper and Lower Egypt which she traditionally wears. Mut was one of Pharaoh’s guardians. She was also the mythological consort of Amun-Re, lord of Karnak temple and preeminent god of the country from the New Kingdom on. Mut enjoyed great popularity, and was the subject of many images and amulets. The two figural representations - one amuletic, the other votive, the first in a deep blue, glassy material imitating lapis lazuli, the latter in an equally sumptuous blue glaze - are each of the highest quality. The third piece is more unusual, replicating in the same deep blue, glassy material the container for a ‘decree’, or oracle, uttered by the goddess, preserved on papyrus and carried as a powerful amulet.
NR
24. Amulet of Re
New Kingdom, 18th Dynasty, ca. 1340 B.C.
Red faience: Height 2.8 cm
Eton College, Myers Museum, ECM 1120
The New Kingdom date of this flat-backed faience pendant is proclaimed by its distinctive red glaze, which was first employed in the late 18th Dynasty during the reigns of Amenhotep III and his son, the ‘heretic’ Pharaoh Akhenaten who in time abandoned the worship of Egypt’s traditional pantheon. It is a particularly appropriate colour for its subject-matter - Re of Heliopolis, shown crouching, finger to mouth, childlike, the manifestation of the new sun reborn each day at dawn.
NR
25. Stela of Nesyweret
Third Intermediate Period, 22 Dynasty or later, ca. 900 B.C.
Limestone: Height 30.2 cm
Durham University, Oriental Museum, EG 497
This stela – the word is derived from the Greek and means ‘erected stone’ – once stood near the tomb of a woman called Nesyweret. The round topped upper part symbolises the curve of the sky, the winged disc below the presence of the sun god Horus of Behdet. The lady is shown with a long transparent gown, wearing a short wig and a necklace. Her right arm is raised in adoration of Re-Harakhte - a manifestation of the sun god Re, shown falcon-headed and mummiform; her left arm is pendent, holding a lotus bud symbolic of new life. In the centre stands an offering table with libation jar. The inscription contains a typical prayer addressed to the god: ‘Re-Harakhte, lord of the sky - may he give invocation-offerings, consisting of bread and beer and all good and pure things, for the ka (spirit) of the Osiris, the lady of the house, Nesyweret’.
HS
26. Triad of Osiris, Isis and Horus
Probably Late Period, 26th Dynasty, ca. 600 B.C.
Bronze: Height 6.8 cm
Durham University, Oriental Museum, EG 5214
From the Third Intermediate Period on the majority of votive images dedicated to the gods were made of bronze. In the simplest process a single mould of clay or stone could be employed to produce hundreds of identical products, both satisfying and stimulating a demand. Among such mass-produced castings ‘triads’ - which represent group images of the various divine families - were particularly popular. In this example Osiris, Isis and their son Horus are combined, each represented in his or her stereotypical form. They stand together on a base with a loop at one end and on the back, enabling the ancient owner to carry the object as an amulet or, more likely, hang it as an ex voto within a temple or shrine.
HS
27. Statuette of Isis suckling Horus
Late Period, 26th Dynasty, ca. 600 B.C.
Faience: Height 14.0 cm
Eton College, Myers Museum, ECM 1717
28. Amulet of Isis suckling Horus
Late Period, 26th Dynasty, ca. 600 B.C.
Faience: Height 4.1 cm
Eton College, Myers Museum, ECM 790
Isis was the mythic sister-wife of Osiris, who was murdered by his anarchic brother Seth and subsequently became lord of the Underworld. Osiris was magically revived by his widow to beget a child, Horus, who would in time challenge Seth for his father’s inheritance. As the mother of Horus, Isis was also the mother of Pharaoh and guarantor of the royal succession. Always a goddess of importance in Egypt, from the first millennium B.C. on her cult was especially popular, spreading in Roman times throughout the empire. The goddess par excellence, Isis lactans is seen by some as a natural prototype for the Christian image of the Madonna and Child. The physical similarities between the two images shown here - which date from the 7th-6th centuries B.C. - are remarkable, despite their differences in scale and likely provenance.
NR
29. Nephthys amulet
Ptolemaic Period, ca. 300 B.C.
Faience: Height 7.5 cm
Eton College, Myers Museum, ECM 776
Nephthys was the sister of Isis and the nominal partner of Seth, god of confusion (who, because of his disruptive character, is rarely represented in figural form). Along with her sister, Isis, the goddess was one of the principal mourners at the death of Osiris, lord of the Underworld. Her headdress, as here, is formed by the hieroglyphs which make up her name: nebet hut, ‘Lady of the Mansion’.
NR
30. Horus pectoral
Probably Late Period, 30th Dynasty, ca. 350 B.C.
Blue glassy material: Height 6.5 cm
Eton College, Myers Museum, ECM 1530
This magnificent, double-sided pendant takes the form of a divine falcon wearing the double crown of Upper and Lower Egypt; this identifies the subject as Horus, god of kingship and defender of the cosmic order. Large-scale pectorals similar to this occasionally appear in sculptural representations from the 26th Dynasty on, and as we now know this is not merely for their decorative value. A Late Period papyrus in Brooklyn reveals their function: a falcon image of this precise sort was employed in the ritual for confirming royal power which had to be enacted by the king himself, or by a priest taking his part, at the start of each New Year.
SQ/NR
31. Apis bull amulet
Ptolemaic Period, after ca. 300 B.C.
Faience and gold: Length 3.0 cm
Eton College, Myers Museum, ECM 1696
This small, bichrome faience amulet (one of two similar specimens collected by William Joseph Myers and now at Eton) takes the form of a miniature pectoral ornament depicting the Apis bull standing within a shrine; the whole is contained within an (ancient?) gold mount which the second Myers amulet lacks. The Apis bull was the earthly manifestation of the creator-god Ptah, lord of Memphis, a creature which, by means of divine oracle, functioned as the god’s intermediary on earth.
NR
32. Figure of Nefertum
Third Intermediate Period, 21st Dynasty, ca. 1070 B.C.
Glazed steatite and bronze: Height, 18.8 cm
Durham University, Oriental Museum, EG 1933
The material of this statuette is a hard white steatite which originally carried a green glaze, traces of which are still extant. The god depicted is Nefertum, identified by the open lotus flower in bronze on his head; he was the son of Ptah and Sakhmet, and a personification of the primordial lotus flower from which the world came into being. The throne upon which the god sits is richly decorated, the left- and right-hand sides each bearing images of Nile gods flanking the sema-hieroglyph symbolising the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt. Around the base runs a frieze of was and ankh hieroglyphs, denoting ‘dominion’ and ‘life’. Two cartouches on the front are each venerated by kneeling figures: the cartouche on the right reads ‘Menkheperre’, the other ‘Usermaatre-setep(en)amun’ - a rare reference, presumably, to the 21st Dynasty High Priest of Amun Menkheperre, the first of his priestly line to openly express Pharaonic pretensions.
HS/NR
33. Figure of Sakhmet
Late Period, 26th Dynasty, ca. 600 B.C.
Faience: Height 9.5 cm
Eton College, Myers Museum, ECM 1716
34. Figure of Bastet
Third Intermediate Period, 22nd Dynasty, ca. 900 B.C.
Faience: Height 10.2 cm
Eton College, Myers Museum, ECM 1663
Their fine modeling and glaze suggest that these large faience cat-headed figures, of Sakhmet and Bastet respectively, date from the 22nd Dynasty. Judging by their size they are most probably ex voto images offered at a shrine of the goddess by devout pilgrims. The cult center of Sakhmet - ‘The powerful one’, daughter of the sun-god Re and mother of Nefertum - was at Memphis. She was revered both as an avenger and, conversely, as a healer, called upon to strengthen the king’s resolve in battle and to ward off plague. The cult center of the tribal goddess Bastet was Bubastis - ‘The Place of Bastet’ - in the Delta, home of the kings of the 22nd Dynasty.
NR
35. Votive cat
Late Period, 26th Dynasty, ca. 600 B.C.
Bronze: Height 42.0 cm
Durham University, Oriental Museum, EG 5082
36. Votive cat
Late Period, 26th Dynasty, ca. 600 B.C.
Bronze: Height 19.5 cm
Durham University, Oriental Museum, EG 5231
The goddess Bastet manifested herself to the common people in the form of a cat, and during the Late Period, when her cult was particularly active, representations of the animal were produced in great numbers. The bronzes shown here were employed as containers for cat mummies dedicated at temples and shrines of the goddess as offerings by believers. The bandaged cat (or kitten) mummy was slid into the statuette through an opening in the base. Such cat containers possess great aesthetic appeal, and are often of superb quality. The ears of the larger cat have finely incised internal striations, and the neck an incised collar; the throat is adorned with a winged scarab, manifestation of the sun god. The smaller cat has holes through one of the ears and the nose which once would have carried gold rings, while on the top of the head there is a recess which formerly held a scarab inlay.
HS
37. Votive ichneumon
Late Period, 26th Dynasty, ca. 600 B.C.
Bronze: Height, 8.2 cm
University of Durham, Oriental Museum, EG 1423
The animal represented in this charming bronze figure is an ichneumon or mongoose, a predatory animal found in the marshes of the Nile Delta where it feeds on vermin. The image was dedicated to Wadjet of Buto, a town in the Delta worshipping a goddess to which mummified ichneumons, stored in containers in the shape of the animal, were frequently donated. A cemetery for both cats and ichneumons is attested at another Delta site also - Bubastis. The figure shown here is conspicuous by its extremely fine craftsmanship. Undoubtedly the artist has observed the animal in its marshland habitat, sitting upright with its forepaws raised on the very brink of catching its prey. The pattern of the skin has been indicated by minute incised lines. On the back is a loop for suspension in the temple, to which it was presented in the hope of divine intervention on the dedicator’s behalf.
HS
38. Baboon of Thoth
New Kingdom, 18th Dynasty, ca. 1350 B.C.
Egyptian blue: Height 4.5 cm
Eton College, Myers Museum, ECM 722
39. Baboon of Thoth
Late Period, 26th Dynasty, ca. 600 B.C.
Bronze: Height 6.0 cm
Durham University, Oriental Museum, EG 5059
Thoth was the divine patron of learning, and figures of the god in his manifestation as a baboon are commonly encountered in a scribal context - presumably to receive the writer’s offerings and inspire his written words. The two baboon figures shown here are particularly well modelled – the first in the powdery artificial compound known as ‘Egyptian blue’ (that same intensely coloured material which, when ground, was employed as a pigment), the second a casting in bronze.
NR/HS
40. Baboon of Thoth
Late Period, 26th Dynasty, ca. 600 B.C.
Faience: Height 4.5 cm
Eton College, Myers Museum, ECM 1718
This image of the sacred baboon of Thoth squats on its haunches to proffer a wedjat eye - the left, in deference to the god’s lunar associations. According to one version of Egyptian myth the eye was that of the sun god Re, sent out to destroy his enemies, and it was Thoth who was responsible for coaxing its return. This achievement was celebrated by ceremonies held in temples throughout Egypt to mark the restoration of order and stability - which became manifest in the annual rising of the Nile following the months of summer drought.
SQ/NR
41. Ibis amulet
Late Period, 30th Dynasty(?), ca. 350 B.C.
Alabaster and bronze: Height 3.0 cm
Eton College, Myers Museum, ECM 1691
42. Ibis amulet
Late Period, 30th Dynasty(?), ca. 350 B.C.
Alabaster and bronze: Height 3.0 cm
Eton College, Myers Museum, ECM 1692
These two composite ibis amulets, or ex votos, each have bodies of Alabaster to which heads and feet of gilded bronze have been attached; tails of some similar contrasting material were once fitted also but are now lost. The ibis, now extinct in Egypt, was from earliest times recognized as a creature sacred to Thoth, god of the moon, patron deity of scribes and the world of knowledge – the secretary to the gods. The deity’s cult centre was at the much-ruined site of Hermopolis in Middle Egypt.
NR
43. Inlaid wedjat eye
New Kingdom, 19th Dynasty or later, after 1292 B.C.
Faience: Length 6.6 cm
Eton College, Myers Museum, ECM 842
44. Multiple wedjat eye
Third Intermediate Period, 22nd Dynasty, 946/45-736 B.C.
Faience: Length 7.5 cm
Eton College, Myers Museum, ECM 1684
Wedjat, the Egyptian name applied to the eye of the falcon-god Horus, translates as ‘that which is whole’ or ‘uninjured’. The allusion is to the magically restored eye which had been torn during combat from the face of Horus (a metaphor for the reigning king, the upholder of cosmic order) by Seth, murderer of Osiris (a metaphor for chaos). Wedjat amulets are among the most familiar of Egypt’s magical charms, and common funerary amulets. Few, however, are as large and elaborate as the specimens shown here.
SQ/NR
45. Figure of Imhotep
Late Period, 26th Dynasty or later, after ca. 600 B.C.
Bronze: Height 18.4 cm
Durham University, Oriental Museum, EG 143
Imhotep was a high official of king Djoser of the Third Dynasty, responsible for the planning of the Step Pyramid at Saqqara. His reputation for wisdom and technical ability grew after his death, and he became one the very few Egyptian mortals to be deified, posthumously baptised as a son of the creator-god Ptah. By the Ptolemaic period Imhotep had become identified with the Greek healer god Asklepios, and had shrines erected to his worship at Saqqara and Thebes. This small bronze figure, cast by the cire perdue or ‘lost-wax’ method, was made as an offering given in hope of or in thanks for the god’s intervention. Imhotep is shown in characteristic form as a seated scribe, with a close-fitting cap recalling representations of his divine father, Ptah; a papyrus scroll - symbolizing his wisdom – is shown unrolled on his lap. An inscription on the base bears a standard formula for such votive figures: ‘May Imhotep give life to the Osiris …’; the name of the dedicator is, however, illegible.
TH
46. Bes amulet
Late Period, 26th Dynasty or earlier, before ca. 525 B.C.
Faience: Height 8.6 cm
Eton College, Myers Museum, ECM 1540
47. Bes image
Late Period, 26th Dynasty, ca. 600 B.C.
Faience: Width 6.7 cm
Durham University, Oriental Museum, EG 5254
The domestic protector-god Bes - dwarf-like, lion faced, lion tailed and wearing a multi-plumed crown - was a popular subject for amulets and other images during the late second and first millennia B.C.; examples may be found today in their thousands, and not only in Egypt but throughout the Roman empire. The god owed this popularity to his perceived efficacy - by virtue of his ugliness - as one who wards-off evil and catastrophe during childbirth and childhood. Bes was also the guardian of eroticism and sexuality.
NR/HS
48. Bes image
Roman Period, ca. A.D. 50
Faience, set into a wood block: Height 19.5 cm
Eton College, Myers Museum, ECM 1508
In the absence of parallels from documented excavations the original function of archaeological materials is not always obvious. This substantial image of the household god Bes is a case in point, though its modeling and the rough, sugary surface of the glaze clearly identify it as a product of Roman times. Parallels for the image are not unknown, but quite unique is the figure’s wooden matrix - a feature which hints at an original architectural setting for the piece. Most likely it served as a protective or iconic device set into the wall of a building where the god was invoked – though whether this was a private domestic dwelling, a ‘birthing room’, or a dedicated chamber within a formal temple complex where the oracle of the god might be consulted, cannot now be judged.
NR
49. Votive Taweret
Late Period, 26th Dynasty, ca. 600 B.C.
Faience: Height 10.4 cm
Eton College, Myers Museum, ECM 1885
Alongside Bes the composite hippopotamus-lioness-crocodile goddess Taweret - ‘The great one’ - was one of the principal tutelary deities of the Egyptian home. Doubtless because of her pregnant form, Taweret was particularly venerated as a protectress in childbirth. Amulets of the goddess are frequently encountered, but examples as large and well-modelled as this are uncommon.
NR
50. Horus on the crocodiles
Late Period, 30th Dynasty, ca. 350 B.C.
Steatite: Height 8.8 cm
Durham University, Oriental Museum, EG 5256
This little stela belongs to the genre of so-called healing statuettes which become popular after the 25th Dynasty when magic began to play an increasing role in daily life and images of child gods were considered particularly efficacious. On the front is displayed a nude image of Horus, shown with the side lock of youth and standing on two crocodiles; in his hands are snakes, scorpions, a lion and an oryx - animals related to evil and destruction. Touching an object such as this - inscribed over its entire surface with spells which once healed the young Horus himself when poisoned by a scorpion sent by the evil god Seth - or drinking water which had been poured over the words, would provide all necessary cures. A sample spell reads: ‘Be greeted Horus, come quickly to me (the owner or user of the stela) today, to protect me from the lions in the desert, the crocodiles in the river and the snakes in their holes. Remove the corrosive poison that is in my body. May I be saved by the power of your words’.
HS
51. Pantheistic amulet
Late Period, 26th Dynasty or later, after ca. 600 B.C.
Faience: Height, 5.1 cm
Durham University, Oriental Museum, EG 5255
The grotesque being depicted on this plaque is a composite of features belonging to a range of different gods. His physiognomy is that of the bearded dwarf-god Bes, while the arms holding snakes remind one of the strong child-god Horus in other contexts. He also has the skin of an animal, while two pairs of arms grow out of the body: one hand holds a was-sceptre, another grasps an ankh, and the two remaining hands strangle snakes. The figure further displays two pairs of bird wings and tails, and stands upon an oval formed by a snake which bites in its own tail; within this oval we distinguish a group of animals which are all related to evil - a lion, snakes, a hippopotamus, two scorpions, and a dog. By their depiction in this manner each and all of these disorderly manifestations would be subject to divine control. The amulet is flat-backed, and has a loop for suspension.
HS
52. Votive sistrum
Third Intermediate Period, 22nd Dynasty or later, after ca. 945 B.C.
Faience: Height 23.5 cm
Eton College, Myers Museum, ECM 1693
The sistrum was a ritualistic rattle, called in Egyptian seshseshet - an onomatopoeic word evoking not only the noise made by the instrument itself but also the rustling of the cow-goddess Hathor as, in tradition, she pushed her way through the reed beds of the Delta marshes. Quite exceptionally the votive example of the form shown here is virtually intact: moulded in blue-green faience (an early example in this material), it lacks only the metal crossbars and loose metal jangles intended both to catch the attention of the divinity and mark time in temple ritual. The inscriptions on either side of the handle are invocations of Bastet - the preeminent Egyptian goddess at the time it was made.
NR
53. Door bolt
Probably Late Period, 26th Dynasty or later, after ca. 600 B.C.
Bronze: Length 44.0 cm
Durham University, Oriental Museum, EG 3561
In all probability this heavy bolt was originally attached to the doors of a large temple shrine containing a cult image: when the gods of Egypt retired for the night the doors of their ‘houses’ were locked and sealed against intruders both mortal and divine. The bolt would have slid in a metal sleeve into a square metal loop or staple located on the opposite door leaf. The end of the bolt takes the powerful form of a lion, whose ferocity added a protective dimension to the object’s physical strength. There is also an element of word-play at work in the choice of this subject-matter: the Egyptian word for a pair of gates was ruty – commonly written with twin lion (ru) hieroglyphs and in the dual form sharing the same approximate vocalization.
JR
54. Incense burner
Ptolemaic Period, ca. 250 B.C.
Bronze: Height 59.0 cm
Durham University, Oriental Museum, EG 1522
At temple rituals various kinds of furniture were used, such as water vases, libation pots, altar stands, and incense burners – both portable, in the shape of human arms, and static versions. The object represented here is the lower part of an incense burner of the second type – or at least its trumpet-shaped stand; the upper section with the wide-mouthed tray upon which the incense was burnt is broken away and missing. The chased, two column inscription reads: ‘May Osiris-Apis give life to Padjerkhons, son of Padiamunnebnesttawy, son of Hor’. Such items were found in quantity in the extensive galleries employed for the burial of mummified falcons at North Saqqara, dedicated by pious donors to the gods Thoth, Osiris the Ibis and Horus the Falcon.
HS
55. Situla
Late Period, probably 30th Dynasty , ca. 350 B.C.
Bronze: Height 40.3 cm
Durham University, Oriental Museum, EG 1523
56. Situla
Late Period, probably 30th Dynasty, ca. 350 B.C.
Bronze: Height 28.0 cm
Durham University, Oriental Museum, EG 5073
The offering of libations of water, wine or milk was a fixed part both of temple cult and of the burial liturgy. Liquids were poured over altars with small basins and drainage channels, and statues, mummies or individuals brought into contact with these consecrated fluids were considered purified and to be permeated with new life. A common vase type for the storage and offering of milk was the situla, a drop-shaped, handled bucket of bronze with a rounded base decorated like an open lotus flower - the symbol of resurrection. Both of these situlae carry hieroglyphic inscriptions chased in columns on the belly, containing prayers addressed by their respective dedicators to Mehyt (the lioness-headed goddess of This) and Osiris-Khentimentiu. A number of the hieroglyphic signs display internal cross-hatching which is typical for inscriptions dateable to the 30th Dynasty.
HS
57. Label
Late Period or after, 26th Dynasty or later, after ca. 600 B.C.
Bronze: Width 5.7 cm
Durham University, Oriental Museum, EG 3144
In what appears to be a label of bronze the offrant is shown on the right worshipping the figure of a standing god who is shown wearing a rounded wig with disc and uraeus and holding a was-sceptre. An offering table stands between. Columns of illegible inscription are incised above the figure of the deity and above and behind the standing figure. Two crude holes have been punched through the metal, presumably for attachment of the label to the votive image or to the item of temple furniture the dedicator intended to present to his god.
JR
Section 3: Kings
Although the king was divine – identified in life with the god Horus, in death with the father of Horus, Osiris lord of the Underworld - his responsibilities were mortal too. An absolute ruler enjoying boundless power, he oversaw an immense, complex bureaucracy regulating every aspect of human existence – from the maintenance of law, order and prosperity within Egypt’s own borders to warfare and trade with the farthest limits of the then-known world. Whatever the bombast of his inscriptions, he was judged by his contemporaries – and subsequently remembered – by one thing alone: his success in maintaining maat, or proper order.
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JR
58. Tomb inscription
Old Kingdom, 5th Dynasty, reign of Userkaf, ca. 2470 B.C.
Limestone: Width 57.8 cm
Durham University, Oriental Museum, DUROM.U1100
This finely detailed block, carved in sunk relief, originates from the tomb of an unnamed courtier of Userkaf, the first ruler of the 5th Dynasty. It illustrates well the form of the rope oval, or cartouche, which symbolized the course of the sun’s path and which convention dictated should surround the hieroglyphs of a king’s prenomen and nomen. The top line of the relief contains a prayer: ‘May he (the deceased) go in peace on the beautiful road’ towards rebirth; the second line lists the deceased owner’s titles: ‘Prophet of Userkaf, Royal Acquaintance of the Great House …’. ‘Great house’, with an Egyptian vocalization approximating to per-ao, by the New Kingdom had become a common circumlocution for the king himself – Pharaoh.
JR
59. Stone weight of Pepi I
Old Kingdom, 6th Dynasty, reign of Pepi I, ca. 2300 B.C.
Feldspar: Height 6.3 cm
Durham University, Oriental Museum, EG 457
Regulating standards of measurement has been a royal responsibility in all cultures throughout history. This weight, carved in a high-status material, was presumably intended for the weighing of precious metals. It takes the form of a soft-edged, regular cuboid - a shape which, as well as being aesthetically pleasing, would have complicated any attempt to tamper with the stone and give short measure. The inscription informs us whose authority the weight carries. Two of the five names of Pepi I of the 6th Dynasty are given: his Horus name Merytawy (‘Beloved of the Two Lands’); and his throne name, or prenomen, Mery-Re (‘Beloved of the sun god Re’). The third column of inscription, on the left, places the king under the protection of the cobra goddess Wadjet, mistress of the Delta city of Dep (Buto). This last inscription suggests that the weight may have formed part of the equipment of the temple of Wadjet at Dep.
TH
60. Pendant of Senwosret (I)
Middle Kingdom, 12th Dynasty, reign of Senwosret I, ca. 1935 B.C.
Oyster shell: Height 17 cm
Eton College, Myers Museum, ECM 1844
Over fifty specimens of these handsome pendants have been recorded. Fashioned from oyster shells of Red Sea origin, the outer surface has in each case been ground down and polished to reveal the mother-of-pearl lining, with two holes drilled for suspension and a cartouched kingly prenomen (or nomen) inscribed on the outer surface. The names generally encountered are those of Senwosret I, but specimens are known bearing the names of Amenemhat II and Senwosret III. Whether such pendants are to be recognized as military awards or unit badges (as the context of some specimens might suggest), or as objects more generally amuletic in character, remains uncertain.
NR
61. Bowl of Sebekhotep IV
Middle Kingdom, 13th Dynasty, reign of Sebekhotep IV, ca. 1710 B.C
From Thebes (Asasif?)
Faience: Diameter 10 cm
Eton College, Myers Museum, ECM 1475
This simple but graceful cup echoes, albeit in a more precious material, the common pottery drinking vessel of the late Middle Kingdom. Made of faience, the piece is distinguished by a striking blue glaze and, beneath the rim, by a band of hieroglyphic inscription in manganese black which records the names and titulary of King Sebekhotep IV of the 13th Dynasty. Presumably the cup had been placed as a mark of royal favour in the grave of a well-to-do official of this king, located somewhere in the rich cemetery-site of Asasif at Thebes where the vessel is said to have been found.
NR
62. Statuette of Amenhotep I and Ahmose-Nofretiri
New Kingdom, probably 19th Dynasty, ca. 1250 B.C.
From Thebes
Steatite: Height 19.4 cm
Durham University, Oriental Museum, EG 493
Egypt was rescued from the upheavals of the Second Intermediate Period by the efforts of the local rulers of Thebes, culminating in the campaigns of Ahmose which finally expelled the Hyksos invaders and reunited Egypt under the 18th Dynasty. Ahmose’s son, Amenhotep I, came to the throne young and evidently shared power with his mother Ahmose-Nofretiri. Among their achievements was the founding of the necropolis workmen’s village at Deir el-Medina, which ensured for the royal couple a personal cult which would last well into the Ramessid period. In this dyad of the king and his mother the principal head was already lost when acquired by the Duke of Northumberland in the early years of the nineteenth century. By a miracle, in 1974, it turned up in the hands of a Belgian collector, and a cast of it slots neatly into place to complete the sculpture. The findspot of this head was said to have been Karnak, but it seems more likely that it and the statue it completes originated on the Theban west bank where there existed shrines specifically dedicated to the cult of this celebrated mother and her son.
JR
63. Bag-shaped jar
New Kingdom, 18th Dynasty, reign of Thutmose II, ca. 1485 B.C.
Alabaster: Height 21.7 cm
Durham University, Oriental Museum, EG 4402
Egypt’s rich temple treasuries contained not only items of metal and semi-precious stone but also large quantities of oils and perfumes which played a vital part in rituals designed to please the gods. The importance to the ancient Egyptians of these now long-decayed substances should not be underestimated, one proof of their value in antiquity being the fact that they were highly sought-after by tomb robbers - often in preference to jewellery and furniture. Traces of the oily contents of this fine alabaster vessel can still be seen both around the stopper and smeared on the body. The inscription records the name and queenly titles of Hatshepsut as principal wife of Thutmose II – a queen who later assumed pharaonic style and reigned alongside her stepson Thutmose III. The vessel may have been withdrawn from royal stores to be presented as a gift to the burial of one of Hatshepsut’s favoured officials.
TH
64. Shrine facade of Thutmose II and Hatshepsut
New Kingdom, 18th Dynasty, reign of Hatshepsut, ca. 1470 B.C.
Probably from Thebes (Deir el-Bahri)
Painted wood: Height 29.5 cm
Eton College, Myers Museum, ECM 1888
This carved and painted façade appears to be the front portion of a small, privately dedicated shrine. The lintel inscription contains the Horus-name of Hatshepsut - the best known to history of those very few women who occupied the ancient Egyptian throne. The side jambs carry the cartouches of Thutmose II, Hatshepsut’s (deceased) husband - a personage with whom the queen rarely associated herself after his death. The deities invoked in the text are Amun, ‘Overlord of the Two Lands’, and Hathor, ‘Lady of Dendera’ - a combination suggesting that the complete shrine and its now lost statue may originally have been dedicated at Hatshepsut’s well-known Deir el-Bahri temple, among the ruins of which many hundreds of ex votos have been found.
NR
65. Obelisk of Amenhotep II
New Kingdom, 18th Dynasty, reign of Amenhotep II, ca. 1420 B.C.
Red granite: Height 215. 0 cm
Durham University, Oriental Museum, EG 6789
The obelisk is one of the most distinctive motifs in Egyptian architecture, its form based on the benben – the object of worship in the temple of Heliopolis, cult-centre of the sun god Re from the earliest times. During the New Kingdom obelisks were erected in pairs in front of temple gateways - the first part of the temple on which the sun’s rays fell at dawn and the last to be illuminated at sunset. The largest of these monuments stood over 30 metres in height and weighed as much as 300 tons. Though considerably more modest, this obelisk replicates perfectly in both proportions and detail its larger exemplars. At the apex is carved a representation of the god Khnum-Re before whom Pharaoh Amenhotep II kneels in adoration. As the deity indicates, the monument had originally been erected by Amenhotep II on the island of Elephantine at Aswan, where it was discovered at the start of the nineteenth century reused as a threshold. It was presented to Lord Prudhoe by Muhammad Ali when he visited Egypt in 1838. Its pair is now in the Cairo Museum.
JR
66. Head of a royal woman
New Kingdom, 18th Dynasty, probably ca. 1390 B.C.
Granodiorite: Height 17.5 cm
Durham University, Oriental Museum, EG 3976
Royal women played a vital role in maintaining the cosmic order, which was one of the primary functions of ancient Egyptian kingship. As Pharaoh was the earthly manifestation of the god Horus, so his queen was associated with Hathor, goddess of the sky and fertility. The heavy wig worn by this unidentified queen recalls the association the Egyptians made between luxuriant hair growth and good health, potency and therefore rebirth; the cylindrical modius platform which surmounts it once served as the base for a more elaborate headdress which probably included feathers or horns and a sun-disc - additional Hathoric symbolism. The statue itself, when complete, probably showed the queen seated, either beside her husband or alone. The bland, idealizing features are in the style of the early to middle 18th Dynasty - a time when royal women played an increasingly visible role in state ideology.
TH
67. Kohl tube with the names of Amenhotep III and Tiye
New Kingdom, 18th Dynasty, reign of Amenhotep III, ca. 1370 B.C.
Faience: Height 12.5 cm
Eton College, Myers Museum, ECM 1640
One of the commonest containers for eye-paint was the simple hollowed reed - a type which, under Amenhotep III and Akhenaten, was frequently reproduced in coloured faience as a royal festal gift. The fronts of such tubes are often inscribed with glaze- or pigment-filled hieroglyphs which contain not only the name of the gifting king but also that of one or other of his queens - to emphasize not only the queen’s increasing political importance but what, for the Egyptians, were complementary themes of cosmetics and sensuality.
SQ/NR
68. Marriage scarab
New Kingdom, 18th Dynasty, reign of Amenhotep III, ca. 1388 B.C.
From Thebes
Blue-glazed steatite: Length 6.5 cm
Eton College, Myers Museum, ECM 1480
69. Lion-hunt scarab
New Kingdom, 18th Dynasty, reign of Amenhotep III, ca. 1378 B.C.
Green-glazed steatite: Length 8.5 cm
Eton College, Myers Museum, ECM 1641
The reign of Amenhotep III was unique in its issue of a limited series of five large ‘historical’ scarabs recording the principal events of the king’s first ten years of rule. The two specimens shown here - among the finest extant - are the so-called ‘marriage scarab’ and ‘lion-hunt scarab’. The former served to publicize the identity of his new queen, Tiye, and unexpectedly records the names of her commoner parents, Yuya and Tjuyu. The lion-hunt type, as a demonstration of his power over the forces of nature, records the number of lions killed by Pharaoh during this first decade - 102.
NR
70. Ring with the name of Ramesses II
New Kingdom, 19th Dynasty, reign of Ramesses II, ca. 1250 B.C.
Bronze: Diameter 2.3 cm
Eton College, Myers Museum, ECM 1654
Because of his shameless self-aggrandisement, willfully carving his name over those of his predecessors and upon any uninscribed surface he found, Ramesses II is today one of Egypt’s best known and most celebrated kings. This stirrup-shaped bronze ring, bearing on its flattened bezel the hieroglyphs of the king’s prenomen, will have been issued by the State to a minor official required to seal documents and other items in Pharaoh’s name. Higher ranking officials will have been given similar rings in more precious metals - silver, and gold.
NR
71. Battle axe blade
First Intermediate Period-Middle Kingdom, 12th Dynasty, before ca. 1800 B.C.
Bronze: Length 43.0 cm
Eton College, Myers Museum, ECM 1829
72. Battle axe
Middle Kingdom, 12th Dynasty, ca. 1850 B.C.
Bronze and wood: Length 79.0 cm
Eton College, Myers Museum, ECM 208
Several different types of battle axe were employed over the three millennia span of Egyptian civilization. The two displayed here are formally classified as ‘segmental’ and ‘tanged’. The former makes its appearance in the First Intermediate Period, and extends in use throughout the Middle Kingdom - which is the date of production of the latter. Both axes are substantial weapons, with thick, blunt-edged blades intended not to cut but to deliver a crushing blow to an adversary’s skull or body. Of particular interest is the well-preserved haft of the second axe displayed here, upon which impressions of the lashing which originally secured the blade can clearly be seen. Deep, parrying chop-marks in the wood suggest that the weapon saw actual use.
NR
73. Butt-plate from an axe of Amenhotep III
New Kingdom, 18th Dynasty, reign of Amenhotep III, ca. 1360 B.C.
Probably from Thebes (Valley of the Kings, tomb of Amenhotep III, WV22)
Faience: Width 5.1 cm
Durham University, Oriental Museum, EG 469
The tomb of Amenhotep III is located in an annexe of the Valley of the Kings known as the West Valley, and was once one of the richest burials in Egypt. The interior, until recently filled high with rubble, has been raked over both by locals and by a steady stream of tourists for more than two centuries - bringing on to the market various fragmented elements of the king’s original funerary equipment. Among such fragments is probably to be recognized this faience butt-plate, evidently once morticed to the wooden shaft of a battle-axe and sporting Amenhotep III’s prenomen in the purple/pale blue-green glaze typical of the period.
NR
74. Gaming piece in the form of a bound captive
New Kingdom, 18th Dynasty, ca. 1350 B.C.
Faience: Height 2.5 cm
Eton College, Myers Museum, ECM 1929
Games of chance dominated leisure time in Egyptian antiquity, with Tutankhamun taking to the tomb with him some four different sets. New Kingdom game boards are most often marked out in a grid of 20 or 30 squares, the 30-square game of senet in time coming to symbolize the interaction of skill and fate required to secure a good afterlife. These bloodless conflicts of skill were often given a military flavour, and associated with the fight for divine order against the enemies of kingship. The gaming piece shown here takes the form of an Asiatic enemy who - though shown grasping a bow and arrow - has been rendered harmless by the binding of his arms.
NR
75. Mummy soles
Ptolemaic Period, after ca. 300 B.C.
Cartonnage: Length 22.5 cm
Eton College, Myers Museum, ECM 1322
The traditional image of the king trampling the foreign nations of the outside world - Egypt’s traditional enemies - is here transferred from the realm of Pharaoh to that of commoner. With these painted soles attached to his mummy, every step the deceased took would symbolically crush underfoot the powers of chaos and confusion and everything hostile to the Egyptian way of life which might seek to impede his successful rebirth.
NR
76. Head of a Nubian woman
Third Intermediate Period, 22nd Dynasty, ca. 900 B.C.
Faience: Height 5.0 cm
Eton College, Myers Museum, ECM 822
Magical figurines and wands of faience with characteristic black-spotted decoration first appeared in the Third Intermediate Period, their function related to fertility and protection during childbirth. Predominantly of Delta manufacture and origin (with workshops identified at Tanis, Bubastis and elsewhere), they comprise variations on a restricted range of themes: the god Bes, a vervet monkey, or a standing (Nubian) woman. The head shown here comes from a large and well-modelled example of the third of these types and displays well the cruciform hair and dramatically exaggerated features often seen in such genre figures.
NR
77. Syrian (?) head
New Kingdom, 18th Dynasty or later, after ca. 1350 B.C.
From Thebes
Shell, with stone and glass inlays: Height 4.0 cm
Eton College, Myers Museum, ECM 820
The exotic materials employed to fashion this small but spectacular head identify it as an object of high status and importance. Carved from the central core of a Red Sea shell and richly inlaid with coloured glass (and perhaps other more precious materials, now lost), the style of the work is clearly foreign and most probably Levantine. Curiously, Myers acquired it (in November 1887) in the Luxor area. It perhaps functioned as the head-shaped stopper of a horn containing precious oil - similar to those seen carried by Syrians as tribute for Pharaoh in a number of 18th Dynasty Theban tomb scenes.
NR
78. Stirrup jar
New Kingdom, 18th Dynasty or later, after ca. 1350 B.C.
Probably from Tuna el-Gebel
Faience: Height 6 cm
Eton College, Myers Museum, ECM 1632
79. Rhyton
New Kingdom, 18th Dynasty, ca. 1400 B.C.
Faience: Height 19.5 cm
Eton College, Myers Museum, ECM 1633
The Egyptian craftsman was accustomed to reproducing in a variety of native materials a range of those vessel-forms which intruded into his closed world from outside the Nile valley. The first of the vessels shown here, a ‘stirrup jar’ (so named after the peculiar form of the handles) was a Mycenaean pottery type imported in great quantities during the late 18th Dynasty, particularly under Amenhotep III and Akhenaten. Although the jar’s content (we guess a form of precious, scented oil) was the important element, as this and other imitations in faience reveal the Egyptian fascination was equally with the container and its peculiar form. The second is a reproduction in faience of a funnel-shaped pottery rhyton—another contemporary foreign form (guessed, from the perforated base, to be a ritualistic sprinkler).
NR
80. False door with a Carian inscription
Late Period, 26th Dynasty, ca. 600 B.C.
From Saqqara
Limestone: Height 30.5 cm
Durham University, Oriental Museum, DUROM.1971.140
This carved stela takes the form of a ‘false door’ through which the spirit of the deceased would pass to receive offerings; it would have formed the focus of its owner’s funerary cult. Unusually, however, this quintessentially Egyptian object bears an inscription not in Egyptian hieroglyphs but in Carian – a now-extinct language which was then current in south-west Turkey. The inscription’s presence is explained by the fact that the rulers of the 26th Dynasty maintained control of their realm through a heavy reliance upon foreign mercenaries recruited from the Greek world. A number of stelae which mix Egyptian and Greek motifs and inscriptions are attested from the Saqqara burial ground, though the extent to which these monuments attest to an amalgamation of religious beliefs is uncertain. So far as it is presently understood, the Carian script is alphabetic and shares some letters with Greek. The stela’s short inscription has been translated as ‘Pedeto son of Pedrem the mügok’; mügok is an unknown word, but the suggestion has been made that it represents the designation ‘Caro-memphite.’
TH
81. Coin: Eighty drachma
Ptolemaic Period, reign of Cleopatra VII, 51-30 B.C.
Struck at Alexandria
Bronze: Diameter 2.5 cm
Durham University, Oriental Museum, DUROM 1985.13
In late 332 B.C. the Macedonian king Alexander the Great seized control of Egypt from the Persian satrap Mazaces, founding the city of Alexandria at the western end of the Nile Delta the following year. Upon Alexander’s death in 323 B.C. Egypt fell under the control of his general Ptolemy, who established a dynasty which continued to rule the land for almost three centuries. The rulers of the Ptolemaic dynasty struck vast numbers of coins in gold, silver and copper at the mint of Alexandria. The last of the Ptolemaic rulers was the beguiling Cleopatra VII (51-30 B.C.). Cleopatra was portrayed on her coins in a Hellenistic rather than an Egyptian style and the eagle that appears on the reverse of her bronze coins is similarly associated with Zeus, the chief god of the Greeks.
CB
82. Coin: Cistophoric tetradrachm
Roman Period, issue of Mark Antony, ca. 39 B.C.
Struck in Western Asia Minor
Silver: Diameter 2.7 cm
Durham University, Archaeology Museum, DURMA 2004.357
This silver coin was struck under the authority of the Roman general Mark Antony, the lover and military ally of Cleopatra. The pair hoped to conquer the Mediterranean world, but instead both committed suicide in 30 B.C. following the defeat of their combined naval forces by a Roman fleet loyal to their rival Octavian. Antony is portrayed on this coin surrounded by a wreath of Dionysiac ivy, symbolising his claim to the title of ‘the New Dionysos’. On the reverse of the coin the link with Dionysos is again and explicitly made, with the head of Antony’s wife Octavia shown above the cista mystica - a sacred basket used by worshippers of Dionysos to house a snake representing the god. A similar basket was revered by the worshippers of Isis, for whom the serpent contained within it represented the missing phallus of Osiris.
CB
83. Coin: Tetradrachm
Roman Period, reign of Nero, A.D. 57
Struck at Alexandria
Base silver: Diameter 2.5 cm
Durham University, Archaeology Museum, DURMA 2004.358
When Egypt fell under the control of the Romans it became the personal property of the emperor himself. Its new master continued to produce coins in the style of those produced by the Ptolemaic kings and queens. The mint at Alexandria struck silver tetradrachms and low-value copper coins with inscriptions in Greek and designs reflecting the religious and secular life of Egypt. The obverse of this coin bears a laureate portrait of the emperor Nero (A.D. 54-68). The reverse design portrays the Greek goddess Demeter holding corn ears and a long torch. Demeter - known as Ceres by the Romans - was the goddess of crops and agriculture. Her appearance on an Egyptian coin is a reference to the country’s great fertility and to the huge quantities of grain which it shipped to Italy each year in order to feed the poor citizens of Rome. Demeter, often portrayed holding a torch, was believed to search the Underworld for her daughter Persephone who had been kidnapped by the Hades - god of the dead.
CB
84. Coin: Tetradrachm
Roman Period, reign of Hadrian, A.D. 124
Struck at Alexandria
Base silver: Diameter 2.3 cm
Durham University, Archaeology Museum, DURMA 2004.360
The obverse of this coin bears a portrait of the emperor Hadrian (A.D. 117-138) wearing a laurel wreath. On the reverse is a representation of a ‘canopic’ jar bearing the head of the goddess Isis; such jars appear on numerous Egyptian coins of the Roman period. Like many of the coins struck at the mint in Alexandria, this tetradrachm bears a date. This is to be found on the reverse of the coin, where the Greek numeral ‘H’ informs us that it was produced in the 8th year of the emperor’s reign (AD 124).
CB
85. Coin: Tetradrachm
Roman Period, reign of Antoninus Pius, A.D. 154 or 158
Struck at Alexandria
Base silver: Diameter 2.4 cm
Durham University, Archaeology Museum, DURMA 2004.355
The obverse design shows a laureate bust of the emperor Antoninus Pius (A.D. 138-161) facing left. The reverse design shows Isis Pharia sailing to the right, holding a billowing sail with both hands. Isis Pharia, or ‘Isis of the Lighthouse’, was the protecting goddess of seamen. She was particularly associated with the great Egyptian port of Alexandria, home of the famous Pharos or lighthouse which was regarded as one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. Isis was greatly revered by the Romans, who considered her to be a more respectable foreign deity than her fellow Eastern goddess, Cybele.
CB
Section 4: Life
Daily life in ancient Egypt was dominated by the Nile in all its aspects – the annual inundation, the river’s fish and animals, and the crops the life-giving waters supported. It was an existence of rhythm and fecundity, providing the stability and prosperity which all Egyptians sought in their lives and seem generally to have achieved.
JR
86. Fecundity figure
Third Intermediate Period, 23rd Dynasty, ca. 750 B.C.
Bronze: Height 27.0 cm
Durham University, Oriental Museum, EG 5233
The creature depicted in this cast bronze fragment (which perhaps originally ornamented a box or piece of temple furniture) is a semi-divine personification of the Nile flood, annually nourishing the soil of Egypt. Surmounting the figure’s divine tripartite wig is a clump of papyrus, emblematic of Lower Egypt; originally the plaque would have been accompanied by a second, similar fecundity figure symbolizing Upper Egypt. The king who commissioned the item will thus have been represented commanding the riches of all Egypt, which he piously dedicated to the gods. The inscription within the cartouche gives his name as ‘the son of Re, Ini’ - a ruler of the Third Intermediate Period attested from less than a handful of small-scale monuments recovered from the Theban area. Ini’s name, as well as the placement of his royal title ‘Son of Re’ within the cartouche, are archaizing features harking back to the Old and Middle Kingdoms – a vain attempt to reestablish, in the troubled and divided Third Intermediate Period, the stability of these earlier times.
TH
87. Statue of Mesehty
Early Middle Kingdom, 11th Dynasty, ca. 2000 B.C.
From Asyut (tomb of Mesehty)
Wood: Height 62 cm
Eton College, Myers Museum, ECM 2167
88. Staff of Mesehty
Early Middle Kingdom, 11th Dynasty, ca. 2000 B.C.
From Asyut (tomb of Mesehty)
Wood: length 99.5 cm
Eton College, Myers Museum, ECM 2168
Mesehty was a provincial nomarch (district governor) of the early Middle Kingdom, seal-bearer of the king and overseer of the priests of Wepwawet. His tomb was found by locals digging in the early Middle Kingdom cemetery at Asyut in 1893 or before, the most famous of the objects recovered from the burial at this time being two wooden models representing squads of bodyguard troops - one Egyptian, one Nubian - now in the Egyptian Museum, Cairo. Within Mesehty’s coffin will have been placed the walking staff displayed here, which shows clear evidence of use in life. Eton’s statuette is one of the principal images from the tomb assemblage - a representation of Mesehty himself, shown as a mature man in a long, triangular-fronted kilt. The sculpture will have been intended as a repository for the ka, or spiritual essence, of the deceased.
NR
89. Stela of Mes
New Kingdom, 19th Dynasty, ca. 1220 B.C.
From Thebes (Deir el-Medina)
Limestone: Height 49.0 cm
Durham University, Oriental Museum, EG 590
This overcrowded stela commemorates a man named Mes, the head of a family shown here in its full, multitudinous presence. In the top register the deceased stands before Osiris and Isis at an offering table piled high with fruit, flowers and bread. He is described as ‘overseer of goldworkers in the Place of Truth’ - i.e. the famed workmen’s village responsible for the cutting and stocking of the royal tombs in the Valley of the Kings. In the middle register Mes is shown making offerings to his father Iay - also an overseer of goldworkers - and his mother Mutemwia. Serried ranks of lesser family members kneel behind. At the foot of the stela is a formal offering scene, with Mes and his wife - a second Mutemwia - receiving offerings from their son, while more relatives occupy the remaining space. One of the queens of Ramesses II was named Mutemwia which may account for its adoption for two members of this family and suggest a date for Mes’s monument.
JR
90. Statuette of a servant girl
New Kingdom, 18th Dynasty, ca. 1350 B.C.
Wood: Height 27.4 cm
Durham University, Oriental Museum, EG 3568
One of the star pieces collected by the Duke of Northumberland and now in Durham is this exceptional statuette of a nude girl. The creation of a master artist-craftsman, it testifies to the taste and masterly capability of the artists working under the 18th Dynasty. The increase of prosperity and luxury in 14th century B.C. Egypt was accompanied by a far broader application of erotic motifs than previously in Egyptian art. Love poems praise a woman’s beauty, while nude female servants and musicians appear increasingly in paintings and the minor arts. The girl seen here wears a black striated wig, the curls of which are carved in great detail in the fine-grained wood. The facial features and the deep navel remind us of the typical Amarna art-style which flourished under Pharaoh Akhenaten. The right arm is bent in front of the stomach, the other arm is pendent along the body. Both hands originally held attributes.
HS
91. Head of a woman
Late Period, 25th Dynasty, ca. 750 B.C.
Faience: Height 1.5 cm
Eton College, Myers Museum, ECM 1707
The short curly hair (or wig) depicted on this tiny head broken from a small figure is a feature of archaizing sculpture of the Late Period. Since ear ornaments seem to have fallen out of use with the demise of the 25th Dynasty, not recurring until the time of the Ptolemies in the late 4th century B.C., the piercing of the ears on this piece would suggest an earlier rather than later date for it - a conclusion compatible with the quality of the glaze. Despite the absence of royal attributes, the head may come from the figure of a ‘divine adoratrice’ - effectively the high priestess of the god Amun in Theban (Karnak) ritual, married off to the deity to fulfil his every earthly need.
NR
92. Writing palette
New Kingdom, 18th Dynasty, ca. 1370 B.C.
Sycamore: Length 39.0 cm
Durham University, Oriental Museum, EG 1033
93. Writing palette
New Kingdom, 18th Dynasty, ca. 1370 B.C.
Wood: Length 30.1 cm
Durham University, Oriental Museum, EG 1039
The typical palette of the Egyptian scribe was of wood, rectangular in form, with round cavities for the ink and with a rectangular slot for storing brushes. The ink consisted of a solution of soot and water mixed with a binding agent and dried to form blocks. Red ink, used in texts to emphasize important passages, was made from ground-up ochre. The brushes were made from a type of rush about 20 cm long, the tip cut diagonally and its fibres separated by chewing to form a brush. Both palettes are inscribed with neatly written hieroglyphs. One has a single line of text only, reading: ‘The scribe of the treasury of the Lord of the Two Lands, Tjuri’. The inscriptions along the sides down the length of the other palette contain formulae beginning ‘Words spoken by Thoth, one summons’. Also mentioned are the scribe Iratju and the royal scribe Meryptah.
HS
94. Writing board with hieratic text
New Kingdom, 18th Dynasty, ca. 1410 B.C.
Wood with plaster skim: Width. 14.7cm
Durham University, Oriental Museum, EG 1037
The Egyptians employed a range of different writing materials. Stone was favoured for royal decrees and for temple and tomb inscriptions intended to last forever. Literary texts and legal documents, as objects of this life, were normally written on papyrus - a Greco-Roman form from which our word ‘paper’ is derived (itself directly borrowed from the Egyptian ‘pa-per-aa’, ‘property of the king’, a reference to the fact that the production of papyrus was originally a royal monopoly). A less exclusive writing surface for daily life was provided by the potsherds or flakes of limestone conveniently to hand everywhere. Finally there were washable and reusable writing boards of wood, sometimes merely smoothed but often finished, as here, with a coat of gesso, primarily employed in the writing schools by the teacher who would set out a text for his pupil scribes to copy. The three-line text on this fragmentary board is written in hieratic – a cursive form of the more formal hieroglyphic script – and preserves a record dating from the reign of Pharaoh Amenhotep II concerning the sale of a slave.
JR
95. Burnisher with the name of Tiye
New Kingdom, 18th Dynasty, reign of Amenhotep III, ca. 1370 B.C.
Faience: Length 3.0 cm
Durham University, Oriental Museum, EG 6793
This oval object is a technically complicated imitation in faience of a simple stone pebble, glazed in two colours and used as a burnisher to seal the surface of a sheet of papyrus to provide a smooth writing surface. The hieroglyphic inscription on one face names ‘The Royal Wife, Tiye’, principal consort of the 18th Dynasty ruler Amenhotep III and mother of the ‘heretic’ king Akhenaten. Although the owner of the piece is far more likely to have been an official of Tiye rather than the queen herself, there is good evidence that many royal women of the 18th Dynasty were literate and possessed writing equipment of their own.
TH
96. Thistle beaker
New Kingdom, 18th Dynasty, ca. 1375 B.C.
Alabaster: Height 11 cm
Eton College, Myers Museum, ECM 470
97. Thistle beaker
New Kingdom, 18th Dynasty, ca. 1425 B.C.
Faience: Height 10 cm
Eton College, Myers Museum, ECM 1722
98. Thistle beaker
New Kingdom, 18th Dynasty, ca. 1375 B.C.
Blue glassy material: Height 10.5cm
Eton College, Myers Museum, ECM 1645
These three vessels represent variations in a range of different materials on a single form: the footed ‘thistle’ beaker. The glassy ‘Egyptian blue’ specimen is particularly remarkable. Examples of the type have been found in a variety of contexts, though none of these permit a definitive interpretation of their function. The pronounced rims on the alabaster and glassy specimens – which are perhaps awkward for drinking - suggest the alternative proposition that they functioned as jars for waxy ointment or salve.
NR
99. Pair of sandals
Probably New Kingdom, 18th Dynasty or later, after ca. 1500 B.C.
Plant fibre: Length 29.7 cm
Durham University, Oriental Museum, EG 4392
100. Pair of sandals
Roman Period, perhaps ca. A.D. 200
Plant fibre: Length 26.5 cm
Durham University, Oriental Museum, EG 4970
During the dynastic period Egyptian sandals were constructed primarily of plant fibre (papyrus and rush), and comprised a sole plate with a strap which ran between the toes to join a second strap passing across the instep. Sometimes another strap was added, passing round the heel. The form, when viewed from above, was adopted as a hieroglyph, read approximately as ankh and with the basic meaning ‘sandal-strap’. The ubiquitous Egyptian word for ‘life’ had a similar vocalization, and it was therefore written with the same sign. As one might expect with footwear, within the general pattern existed a range of variations dictated by date and fashion. The larger sandal soles shown here are the more characteristic New Kingdom form; the smaller, more waisted, specimens have a Roman feel about them. Sandals are commonly found among the burial paraphernalia of the middle classes and the elite, and occasionally in model form constructed of wood.
JR
101. Brand
New Kingdom, 18th Dynasty, circa 1340 B.C.
Bronze: Height 6.5 cm
Eton College, Myers Museum, ECM 1770
102. Brand with name of the Aten
New Kingdom, 18th Dynasty, circa 1340 B.C.
Bronze: Height 7.0 cm
Eton College, Myers Museum, ECM 1771
Branding - primarily of cattle, but also of slaves - was commonplace in Egypt, but only a very small number of branding ‘irons’ are known. Representations of the practice in an agricultural context are found in several Theban private tombs - including those of Qenamun, Neferhotep, Huy, Nebamun and Userhet. They show how, like today, the brand was heated in a grate prior to its application, in order to burn an impression of the brand motif into the animal’s hide and identify ownership or otherwise designate the creature’s intended role. The first of the brands displayed here reads ‘Royal cattle’, the second ‘[Property of] the Aten’ – the famous solar-disc elevated to sole-deity status by Akhenaten at the expense of Egypt’s traditional pantheon.
NR
103. Lidded basket
New Kingdom, 18th Dynasty or later, after ca. 1450 B.C.
Grass and other plant fibres: Length 22.7 cm
Durham University, Oriental Museum, EG 4968
104. Lidded basket
New Kingdom, 18th Dynasty or later, after ca. 1450 B.C.
Probably from Tuna el-Gebel
Faience: Height 8.5 cm
Eton College, Myers Museum, ECM 494
105. Lidded basket
New Kingdom, 18th Dynasty or later, after ca. 1450 B.C.
Probably from Tuna el-Gebel
Faience: Height 10 cm
Eton College, Myers Museum, ECM 845
Basketry is an extremely ancient manufacturing tradition in Egypt, and the Durham specimen, woven with a timeless design in a variety of plant fibres, is extraordinarily well preserved and contains still a few scraps of ancient linen. It represent, perhaps, an ancient version of the modern sewing basket. It was a form the Egyptians delighted in reproducing in a variety of media from the Predynastic Period on. Some copies, like the first of the vessels shown here - distinctive and extraordinary products of the faience workers of Tuna el-Gebel in Middle Egypt - are relatively abstracted; others are surprisingly accurate renderings. Hand-modelled over a form, with surface details added before firing, these faience models were evidently designed to contain cosmetics, probably for funerary use. That the intended content was of some value seems to be indicated by the elaborate method of closure which has been inferred from the string holes in the lid and around the rim of the faience ‘baskets’ proper.
NR
106. Baboon
Middle Kingdom, 13th Dynasty, ca. 1720 B.C.
Faience: Height 4.5 cm
Eton College, Myers Museum, ECM 723
107. Crocodile
Middle Kingdom, 13th Dynasty, ca. 1720 B.C.
Faience: Length 5.5 cm
Eton College, Myers Museum, ECM 742
Faience - in Egyptian, tjehenet, ‘that which glitters’ - was of particular significance to the ancients, its characteristic blue-green colour redolent of fresh shoots and rebirth and its shiny, reflective surface recalling that of the sun itself. These two figures belong to a particular class of miniature sculptures in faience excavated from, and seemingly made exclusively for, burials of the late Middle Kingdom. They reflect aspects of daily life which in the Beyond the deceased wished to avoid: the disorderly, marginal or feared - here, as represented by the baboon and crocodile, the wilds beyond man’s control.
SQ/NR
108. Bowl with lotus decoration
New Kingdom, 18th Dynasty, ca. 1375 B.C.
Faience: Diameter 15 cm
Eton College, Myers Museum, ECM 1761
The shallow blue bowl - decorated in black with a range of motifs associated with the goddess Hathor and the life-giving qualities of cool, fresh water - is among the most familiar products of the 18th Dynasty faience workshops. Lotus flowers and papyrus marshes, tilapia fish and the Hathor cow - all offered a sensuous artistic vocabulary from which different elements were variously combined.
NR
109. Bowl with lotuses
New Kingdom, 18th Dynasty, ca. 1450 B.C.
Faience: Diameter 11.5 cm
Eton College, Myers Museum, ECM 1479
110. Bowl with emblems of Hathor
New Kingdom, 18th Dynasty, ca. 1450 B.C.
Faience: Diameter 17 cm
Eton College, Myers Museum, ECM 1590
111. Bowl with fish
New Kingdom, 18th Dynasty, ca. 1400 B.C.
Faience: Diameter 15 cm
Eton College, Myers Museum, ECM 1646
Evidently produced by moulding over a hemispherical form (perhaps a sand-filled textile bag, as found in workshops at Kerma), faience lotus bowls had their heyday under Thutmose III, as many as seven having been recovered from a single private tomb. They continued to be produced in a more developed form well into the Ramessid era. The bowls’ precise function remains uncertain. Residue in some examples appeared to excavators to be the remains of milk, but water seems a more likely liquid content - perhaps to float actual lotus flowers.
NR
112. Bowl with three fish sharing a single head
New Kingdom, 18th Dynasty, ca. 1400 B.C.
Faience: Diameter 11 cm
Eton College, Myers Museum, ECM 1880
The unifying theme of these faience bowls is the blue lotus (Nymphaea caerulea), which echoes in its exaggerated opening and closing the rising and setting of the sun - the principal image of rebirth in nature. On several extant vessels, among the lotus flowers, may be seen the tilapia fish - a creature which, protecting its eggs within its mouth, came to symbolize autogenesis by virtue of adult and offspring being present within a single body.
SQ/NR
113. Bowl with a seated nobleman
New Kingdom, 19th Dynasty, ca. 1250 B.C.
Faience: Diameter 13 cm
Eton College, Myers Museum, ECM 821
In the latest manifestation of the faience lotus bowl, produced during the 19th Dynasty, the lotus, fish and Hathor imagery gives way to a more pictorial form of decoration. A naked dancing girl, shown kneeling, playing a lute and accompanied by a pet monkey, is one popular theme. Here, the imagery is more sober, and appears to refer directly to the owner: a nobleman, shown seated on a formal chair before an offering table. The subject matter and design elements - in particular the preponderance of convolvulus, a common Ramessid symbol of resurrection - seem to indicate clear funerary intent.
NR
114. Dish with a calf
New Kingdom, 19th Dynasty, ca. 1250 B.C
Faience: Diameter 13 cm
Eton College, Myers Museum, ECM 1758
This flat-bottomed dish echoes in both material and design the rounded lotus bowls, though its principal motif is that of a young, dappled bull rather than a cow. As with those earlier bowls, the unequivocal message of the composition is new life - represented by the green papyrus marsh in which the fertile bullock stands, and the offerings of water (and actual lotus stems) the vessel will perhaps once have contained.
NR
115. Box of Perpauty
New Kingdom, 18th Dynasty, ca. 1370 B.C.
Painted sycamore wood; Length 51.5 cm
Durham University, Oriental Museum, EG 4572
116. Box of Perpauty
New Kingdom, 18th Dynasty, ca. 1370 B.C.
Painted sycamore wood: Length 43.1 cm
Durham University, Oriental Museum, EG 4573
On the death of their ancient owner, Perpauty, these two storage boxes will have been removed from his house for decoration and redeployment in his ‘eternal dwelling’ or tomb. On one long side of the larger box the deceased was shown with his wife, Ady, receiving gifts from a son and three daughters. On the other side Perpauty was depicted seated alone, receiving gifts from another son and two daughters, one of whom is already known from the first side. On each gable end of the box is a stylised tree with a pair of bovids reaching up to graze on the foliage - a motif more familiar from Near Eastern art. This larger box is fitted with an intricate locking device, with a latch that dropped into place after the lid was positioned so that once closed it could not be opened without using force. On the second box one side only opens, its frame fitted with two knobs around which a cord could be tied and sealed to secure the contents. The decoration of this second box is simpler - a geometric pattern in black and white. Perpauty himself is unknown to history, but there is a third box belonging to the man in Bologna, a stool in Leiden, and other items in the British Museum, evidently removed from his Theban burial in the rush for antiquities at the beginning of the nineteenth century when the boxes will have first been opened and their contents - perhaps bedding or items of clothing - removed.
JR
117. Headrest of Hekay
Old Kingdom, 6th Dynasty, ca. 2300 B.C.
Alabaster: Width 20.2 cm
Durham University, Oriental Museum, EG 4394
The form of the ancient Egyptian headrest remained more or less unchanged throughout the Dynastic period. As an item common to every prosperous home and well-stocked tomb many examples have survived. Those intended for daily use were normally made of wood; those intended for the use of the elite in the Afterworld are often of stone, made in three sections - base, column and curved rest - like the wooden prototypes. This fine funerary specimen carries an inscription naming the ‘count, royal treasurer, sole companion and overseer of the town, Hekay’. A further short line of inscription on the base mentions the Noble, Rekh, born of Iy, who presumably dedicated the piece to Hekay’s burial.
JR
118. Head of a dwarf
Middle Kingdom, 13th Dynasty, ca. 1720 B.C.
Faience: Height 3.5 cm
Eton College, Myers Museum, ECM 495
119. Dwarf with an animal
Middle Kingdom, 13th Dynasty, ca. 1720 B.C.
Faience: Height 6 cm
Eton College, Myers Museum, ECM 1841
Dwarfs, for the Egyptians, occupied the uncertain middle ground between the mortal and the divine, and images of them were commonly placed in later Middle Kingdom tombs. Their presence was intended not only to ensure the eternal survival of the services they discharged in life (such as ritual dancing), but to invoke control over the forces of disorder. The detached head, with its frontal distortion, is not a fragment but an intact, independent object - possibly a gaming piece. The freestanding figure represents a dwarf-servant, who is either kissing a puppy or, curious to our eyes, feeding by mouth an orphaned pig - a process encountered in two dimensions in a famous scene in the tomb of Kagemni at Saqqara.
NR
120. Composite head of a man
New Kingdom, 18th Dynasty, ca. 1370 B.C.
Glass and steatite: Height 5.0 cm
Durham University, Oriental Museum, EG 4347
Glass was occasionally employed to produce small-scale sculptures from the mid 18th Dynasty on, the technique employed being essentially that of the worker in semi-precious stones – i.e. grinding and polishing. Appropriately enough the face of this composite piece was originally catalogued as red jasper: close examination of the surface, however, reveals distinctive air bubbles and confirms its identification as glass, now partly discoloured. The face’s almond shaped eyes, delicate mouth and small chin are characteristic of representations of Amenhotep III, to whose reign it presumably dates. Although the wig is fractionally too large for the head, with differently shaped hairlines on each piece perhaps suggesting the possibility of a later marriage, the likelihood is that the two were combined already in antiquity to form the upstanding head of an elaborate cosmetic spoon of exceptional size and quality.
TH/NR
121. Amulet of Isis and Horus
Third Intermediate Period, 22nd Dynasty, ca. 945 B.C.
Faience: Height 5.5 cm
Eton College, Myers Museum, ECM 1532
Isis was the mythic sister and wife of Osiris - murdered by his anarchic brother, Seth, and revived by his widow to beget a child, Horus, who would in time challenge Seth for his father’s inheritance. Images of the divine mother and Horus child represented for the Egyptians a powerful literary and artistic motif. This particular image can be dated to the Third Intermediate Period by the brilliant colour of the glaze and the openwork technique. The loop on the back shows that the piece was intended either as an amulet or as a small ex voto image to be suspended in a temple or shrine.
NR
122. Blue lotus chalice
New Kingdom, 18th Dynasty, ca. 1350 B.C.
Faience: Height 13 cm
Eton College, Myers Museum, ECM 1578
123. Bowl of a blue lotus chalice
New Kingdom, 18th Dynasty, ca. 1350 B.C
Alabaster: Height 8.8 cm
Durham University, Oriental Museum, EG 4415
124. Blue lotus chalice
Third Intermediate Period, 22nd Dynasty, ca. 945 B.C.
Probably from Tuna el-Gebel
Faience: Height 14 cm
Eton College, Myers Museum, ECM 1721
Stemmed, chalice-like vessels with bowls in the shape of a lotus flower first appeared in the 18th Dynasty in a variety of materials, including metal, stone, faience, and glass. Two basic types of Egyptian lotus chalice may be distinguished: those modeled in the form of the narrower blue lotus (Nymphaea caerulea), and vessels which imitate the broader white lotus (Nymphaea lotus). The blue lotus – which, despite appearances, was not necessarily employed as a drinking vessel - was primarily cultic or votive in character, dedicated in temples and as offerings to the dead and occurring in both plain and elaborate forms.
NR
125. Blue lotus chalice
Third Intermediate Period, 22nd Dynasty, ca. 945 B.C.
Probably from Tuna el-Gebel
Faience: Height 13cm
Eton College, Myers Museum, ECM 1676
126. White lotus chalice
New Kingdom, 18th Dynasty, ca. 1425 B.C.
Faience: Height 10.5 cm
Eton College, Myers Museum, ECM 1579
The two chalices displayed here clearly illustrate the difference between the blue and white versions of the type - the former with its tightly waisted profile and flaring rim, the latter with broader in section with an incurved rim. The decoration on both examples is similarly naturalistic, executed in manganese black. Whereas the blue-lotus chalice appears to have been primarily cultic in character, employed in temples and elsewhere or among ritual offerings to the dead, the less common white-lotus chalice was essentially a drinking cup, associated in particular with the offering of milk and wine to the cow-goddess Hathor.
NR
127. Aryballos
New Kingdom, 18th Dynasty, after ca. 1400 B.C.
Glass: Height 7.7 cm
Durham University, Oriental Museum, EG 5104
This small round-bodied vessel, of aryballos type, was produced by the core-forming technique; hand- or mould-blowing of glass is not known until the first century B.C. By this method a clay and dung core was produced in the required shape and covered with molten glass. Trails of glass of different colours were then applied to the body and neck of the vessel, which was often then ‘combed’ to create a zig-zag effect. While the glass was still hot and soft the vessel was marvered (rolled on a flat stone) to smooth its surface, and the handle and twisted rim were applied, this last pulled out to make a small pouring lip, and the vessel left to cool. With the core subsequently removed piece by piece, the vessel was ready to begin its career as a container for some precious liquid, perhaps perfume, which required to be dispensed drop by drop.
TH
128. Two-handled flask
New Kingdom, 18th Dynasty, ca. 1350 B.C.
Glass: Height 9 cm
Eton College, Myers Museum, ECM 1589
129. Miniature two-handled flask
New Kingdom, 18th Dynasty, ca. 1350 B.C.
Faience: Height 4.5 cm
Eton College, Myers Museum, ECM 1620
Both of these flasks appear to be modeled on Mycenaean pottery forms which had been imported into Egypt in quantity during the second half of the 18th Dynasty as containers for some sort of precious liquid. Native Egyptian copies of the type are restricted to the reigns of Amenhotep III and Akhenaten - in glass and faience, as here, and also in alabaster. The function of these Egyptian specimens will similarly have been as containers of local and imported festive oils - a function to which the lotus garland of the smaller specimen perhaps alludes. The type later reappears in the Late Period as a New Year’s gift, and again during Christian times as the so-called ‘pilgrim flask’ employed to transport holy water gathered at the shrine of a saint.
NR
130. New Year`s flask
Late Period, 26th Dynasty, ca. 575 B.C.
Faience: Height 15 cm
Eton College, Myers Museum, ECM 1704
In its form, this flask echoes the glass and faience vessels of the 18th Dynasty, but here the twin handles are vestigial monkey-form lugs. Beneath each of these, on either side, are two crudely incised hieroglyphic texts which convey the usual wish for the opening of a good year and an invocation to the Memphite city god Ptah. The contents and purpose of these Late Period vessels can only be surmised, but it is possible they were used to hold water collected during the annual rising of the Nile - for the Egyptians, the start of the New Year. Most examples seem to have been produced at the end of the 26th Dynasty, under Apries and Amosis II.
SQ/NR
131. Cosmetic jar and lid
Middle Kingdom, 12th Dynasty, ca. 1850 B.C.
Faience: Height 4.5 cm
Eton College, Myers Museum, ECM 1476, ECM 1477
The gently flaring outline of this small faience jar identifies it as the container referred to by the Egyptians as a bas-vessel - a type which may be traced back to Predynastic times and is thereafter frequently encountered in a range of hard and precious stones, including obsidian. Because of the shared sound value, the hieroglyph denoting the vessel form is used in writing the name of the cat-goddess Bastet. This small faience version, with its accompanying disc lid decorated in black, will have served as an ointment jar for ritual or personal use either in this world or the beyond.
NR
132. Vessel for ointment
New Kingdom, 18th Dynasty, ca. 1370 B.C.
Calcite: Height 19.2 cm
Durham University, Oriental Museum, EG 4418
In the New Kingdom a combination of military might and foreign trade considerably increased Egypt’s sphere of influence, and many new and exotic goods found their way into the country. These included precious oils and ointments which were prized in daily life as cosmetics and also used in the embalming process. Their high value was emphasised by the containers which carried them, often impressive in their own right. Goods imported from Cyprus and Syria came in vessels the shape of which represents the inspiration for this elegant jar with its delicate strap handle. Alabaster was often the material of choice for these vessels: as well as being aesthetically pleasing it had the practical value of being non-porous, which prevented loss and probably kept the contents cooler than they might have been in a pottery jar. There is a residue in this jar which has not yet been analysed.
JR
133. Vessel in the form of a fish
New Kingdom, 18th Dynasty, ca. 1375 B.C.
Faience: Length 12 cm
Eton College, Myers Museum, ECM 1785
By virtue of its regenerative associations, the tilapia fish became a popular artistic subject-matter and is encountered in a range of contexts and reproduced in a variety of materials - including glass, pottery, and faience, as here. Intended, we may guess, as a container for precious oils poured out through the mouth, holes for the vessel’s vertical suspension are located in front of the faded black dorsal fin and beneath the gills.
NR
134. Cosmetic dish in the form of a shell
New Kingdom, 18th Dynasty, ca. 1370 B.C.
Alabaster: Width 16.4 cm
Durham University, Oriental Museum, EG 1041
In the 18th Dynasty, a time of excellence in the minor arts, shell-shaped dishes made of stone, ivory and glass are frequently encountered, characteristic Egyptian borrowings in a different material of those empty shells so frequently re-used as impromptu containers for cosmetics, incense, and artist’s pigments throughout Egyptian history. This particular dish copies in Alabaster the form of a freshwater mussel, Mutela nilotica, often used for beads and jewellery. It is said to have been found in a tomb at Thebes, along with a small cosmetic spoon. No trace of any original content now remains.
TH
135. Cosmetic dish in the shape of an oryx
New Kingdom, 18th Dynasty, ca. 1375 B.C.
Faience: Length 11 cm
Eton College, Myers Museum, ECM 799
Elaborate cosmetic objects are an especially characteristic feature of the 18th Dynasty - virtuoso displays of applied art with an underlying theme of devotion to Hathor, goddess of love and beauty. Intended, by this iconography, as emblems of procreation and rebirth, they tend to turn up in funerary contexts rather than in the now-ruined settlements of their rich owners. The bound oryx - emblematic of the vanquished god of disorder, Seth - represents a common motif in ‘spoons’ of this type, which seem to have been intended as containers for salve. The symbolism here, as frequently, is the control of disorder by order - often bolstered, in more elaborate versions of the type, through the presence of a specific Hathor-related iconography.
NR
136. Cosmetic dish with a lute player
New Kingdom, 18th Dynasty, ca. 1350 B.C.
Steatite: Height 10 cm
Eton College, Myers Museum, ECM 1793
In this steatite cosmetic dish we see a female lute player wearing a short Nubian wig and broad collar, kneeling in a duck-prowed papyrus skiff upon a papyrus-filled lake which is detached from the main composition to form the container for the salve. The joyous imagery of the scene is confirmed by the rectangle beneath the skiff, the decoration of which simultaneously conveys the meanings ‘water’ and ‘festival’. Quite possibly the imagery was meant originally to be even more specific, alluding to a particular story or song familiar at the time but now wholly forgotten.
NR
137. Cosmetic spoon with Bes handle
New Kingdom, 18th Dynasty, ca. 1360 B.C.
Wood: Length 17.2 cm
Durham University, Oriental Museum, EG 4579
138. Cartouche cosmetic spoon
New Kingdom, 18th Dynasty, ca. 1360 B.C.
Wood: Length 12.0 cm
Durham University, Oriental Museum, EG 4583
Encountered in wood, faience, ivory or stone, ‘cosmetic spoons’ represent a characteristic luxury product of the New Kingdom. The principle imagery focuses on the encouragement in life of beauty and, in a funerary context, on rebirth through the depiction of beautiful young girls and rejuvenating marsh imagery. Here the oval bowl of both spoons takes the form of a cartouche which draws attention to and safeguards the contents - just as in royal contexts it guards the king’s names. The handle of the larger specimen takes the form of a Bes-image, the domestic lion-headed dwarf deity.
TH
139. Mirror-shaped cosmetic spoon
New Kingdom, 18th Dynasty, ca. 1360 B.C.
Alabaster: Length 8.9 cm
Durham University, Oriental Museum, EG 4352
140. Hand-shaped spoon with kohl-stick handle
New Kingdom, 18th Dynasty, ca. 1360 B.C.
Haematite: Length 8.9 cm
Durham University, Oriental Museum, EG 4368
Scenes in several Egyptian tombs show the application of make-up using a mirror, the basic shape of which, in the first of the items shown here, is borrowed to produce a spoon or scoop for cosmetic use. The second spoon - which forms the terminal of an applicator for kohl – takes the appearance of a hand used for measuring out the cosmetic in powder form to be mixed with water for application. As with most decorative items of this class both of these date from the 18th Dynasty and will have accompanied their respective owner to the grave for use in the next life.
JR
141. Handle of a cosmetic spoon
New Kingdom, 18th Dynasty or later, after ca. 1360 B.C.
Steatite: Length 7.6 cm
Durham University, Oriental Museum, EG 4366
The image of a woman standing in a papyrus marsh was a common genre scene in the New Kingdom. The lady shown here wears a clinging dress with a broad collar, and has a lotus on her head above a wig of shoulder-length ringlets. The form of the handle indicates that the object originally formed part of a large spoon, again most likely for cosmetic use in either a domestic and/or ritual context.
JR
142. Ibex cosmetic spoon
New Kingdom, 18th Dynasty, ca. 1360 B.C.
Schist: Length 9.3 cm
Durham University, Oriental Museum, EG 4369.
The ibex with its curved horns and the oryx with its straight horns are commonly encountered as decorative elements in combs, spoons and other cosmetic items. On one level this is with an intention to compare the delicate movements of the animal with the grace of the lady to whom the items belonged. The animals, however, are generally shown bound, occasionally with the head turned backwards as here – alluding, on another level, to the potential danger of such desert creatures as manifestations of chaos upon which order has been successfully imposed.
JR
143. Lotiform kohl pot with lid
New Kingdom, 18th Dynasty, ca. 1400 B.C.
Faience: Height 4.0 cm
Eton College, Myers Museum, ECM 1619
The use of cosmetics to enhance and protect the eyes had been a feature of Egyptian civilization since prehistoric times. During Dynastic times the black kohl eye make-up was based on galena (lead ore), whereas the older green variant (which had fallen out of favour by the New Kingdom) had been based on ground malachite. Special containers were produced to hold these cosmetics, in a range of forms - during the Middle and New Kingdoms, squat, lidded vessels such as that shown here being among the most popular, produced in a range of natural and artificial materials.
NR
144. Bes kohl tube
New Kingdom, 18th Dynasty, ca. 1450 B.C.
Steatite: Height 6.8 cm
Durham University, Oriental Museum, EG 4363
By the early New Kingdom fashions in kohl-pot design change, and a tubular shape overtakes the jar form in popularity. To provide extra stability and for visual stimulation, the more elaborate of these tubes are held upright by an attendant figure - in this instance, the apotropaic dwarf god Bes. The vessel as seen today is incomplete. The two pairs of holes down the front of the tube originally held metal hoops to rettain a baton-shaped applicator, made of metal, glass, or burnished haematite. Bes’s pierced ears may have been adorned with metal or glass earrings, while a lid will have originally slotted into the hole beneath his mouth.
TH
145. Palm kohl tube
New Kingdom, 18th Dynasty, ca. 1360 B.C.
Alabaster: Height 10.0 cm
Durham University, Oriental Museum, EG 4365
This graceful kohl tube is a miniaturized version of a large-scale architectural form, the palm column. Kohl tubes in this shape are popular in the mid to late 18th Dynasty, though they are more commonly found in wood, coloured faience or glass with Alabaster reserved for wide-shouldered kohl pots.
TH
146. Multiple kohl tube of Ptahmose
New Kingdom, 18th Dynasty, ca. 1375 B.C.
Probably from Saqqara
Obsidian: Height 6 cm
Durham University, Oriental Museum, EG 4362
The multiple vessel shown here consists of tubes drilled into a single block of precious, naturally occurring glass - obsidian. These tubes will once have contained mesdemet - kohl to paint the eyes. On the column flanking the tubes are written in exquisite hieroglyphs the titles and name of the vessel’s owner: a high ranking and well-known official named Ptahmose, whose titles included those of prince and count, sem-priest, and ‘one who pleases the heart of Ptah, greatest of the master-craftsman’. This last is a title carried by the High-priest of Ptah at Memphis, one of Egypt’s most important gods and patron god of artists and craftsmen.
HS
147. Flask with feathered decoration
Third Intermediate Period, 22nd Dynasty, ca. 945 B.C.
Perhaps from Tuna el-Gebel
Faience: Height 15 cm
Eton College, Myers Museum, ECM 1673
Eton’s Myers collection includes several narrow, tear-drop shaped flasks in faience which differ only in their relative sizes and quality - i.e. the greater or lesser extent to which their surfaces are decorated, with or without incised rishi (feather) decoration at the rim. Each of the vessels appears to have been produced by moulding in two longitudinal halves which were joined before firing and glazing. The function is quite uncertain, but if ever intended for practical use (rather than as votive simulacra) they may have originally contained precious cosmetics or oils.
NR
148. Three-handled flask
Late Period, 26th Dynasty, ca. 650 B.C.
Faience: Height 14 cm
Eton College, Myers Museum, ECM 1736
The material of this large yet exceedingly delicate three-handled globular flask is an extremely fine-grained faience with an almost metallic sheen. This, the thinness of the vessel’s walls and the fine modeling and ribbing of the handles and neck strongly suggest a metal prototype for the form - although the only close parallels traced so far occur on a much smaller scale in New Kingdom glass. The precise function of the vessel is difficult to determine, but was presumably scented or precious oil. The date is elusive, but the 26th Dynasty seems the most likely option.
NR
149. Alabastron with animal decoration
Late Period, 26th Dynasty or later, after ca. 600 B.C.
Eastern Mediterranean, probably from Rhodes
Faience: Height 10.0 cm
Durham University, Oriental Museum, EG 4364
This cylindrical faience vessel is an alabastron – a container for oils and cosmetics common throughout the ancient near east during the first millennium B.C. Decorated in horizontal registers in incised relief, in common with much Egyptian faience of the period, it employs the lotus flower, symbol of rebirth to frame and protect a microcosm of worldly order and disorder. The decoration takes as its theme the wild Egyptian desert scrubland and its fauna – lions, cattle, and antelopes – tamed by the human agency embodied in the collared hunting dog. Despite the Egyptian theme and material, the vessel was not actually made in Egypt. By the middle of the first millennium B.C. a modified Egyptian style prominently featuring floral motifs and registers of animals had spread throughout the eastern Mediterranean. The Durham alabastron, with no archaeological provenance, is in fact closest in form to a group of vessels associated with the Greek island of Rhodes.
TH
150. Nefer-shaped box
New Kingdom, 18th Dynasty, ca. 1450 B.C.
Wood: Length 13.8 cm
Durham University, Oriental Museum, EG 6786
This elegant box is carved in the shape of an animal’s heart and windpipe, a common hieroglyphic sign with the phonetic value nefer and conventionally translated as ‘beautiful’. The dark wood of the box was originally enlivened with blue pigment inlays, a typical New Kingdom technique. Across the widest part of the heart is an inscription for a man called Amenmose, a text which seems to have been added as an afterthought by its owner. The choice of hieroglyphic model is intriguing. Becoming nefer was not just a matter of looking beautiful: it carried qualities of youth, vitality, and physical and moral perfection. This box may have contained something to assist Amenmose in achieving this goal.
TH
151. Trinket box of semi-circular section
New Kingdom, 18th Dynasty, ca. 1360 B.C.
Wood: Length 11.5 cm
Eton College, Myers Museum, ECM 1782
This small, decorated trinket (or cosmetic) box is of a well-known type dating from the reign of Amenhotep III or Akhenaten. Manufactured from a tree-branch split lengthwise to provide a flattened upper surface into which compartments were cut, its base follows the natural contour of the wood. A flattened lid with decoration carved to match the base and similarly highlighted with pigment slides in a groove, for securing in antiquity by means of a cord wrapped around the two adjacent fastening knobs and sealed, in mud, with the owner’s personal scarab or signet.
NR
152. String of graduated spherical beads
Middle Kingdom, 12th-13th Dynasty, ca. 1790 B.C.
Faience: Length (of string) 41 cm
Eton College, Myers Museum, ECM 1853
These heavy spherical beads are arranged as a graduated necklace, of a sort worn by both men and women during the Middle Kingdom and not infrequently embellished with large silver or electrum ‘caps’ at the point of piercing. Such beads are encountered worn suspended from the head in an artificial braid or, in the case of dancing girls, attached individually to the ends of the hair. The association with hair, and the employment in the context of dance, seems to indicate that such beads were not merely decorative but imbued with deeper associations of sensuality and fertility.
SQ/NR
153. Drop-shaped beads
New Kingdom, 18th Dynasty, ca. 1360 B.C.
Glass: Length of each 3.3-4.2 cm
Durham University, Oriental Museum, EG 1816, 1817, 1818, 1819, 1820, 1821, 1822
Glass begins to appear in significant quantities in Egypt in the early 18th Dynasty. It was produced in Mesopotamia some time before it appears in Egypt, and the more sophisticated technology for the production of vessels in this material almost certainly brought to Egypt in the wake of the conquests of the early 18th Dynasty kings. It seems likely that throughout this early period the production of glass was a royal monopoly. The present beads were formed by twisting molten glass around a wire which was then removed. They are of a type which, alternating with ball-shaped beads, was commonly employed to suspend a rectangular pectoral ornament; from their colour they sought to imitate the much-prized stones lapis lazuli and turquoise.
TH
154. Penannular arrings
New Kingdom, 18th Dynasty, ca. 1350 B.C.
Glass: Diameter 3.0 cm
Durham University, Oriental Museum, EG 1133, 1134
Earrings are known in Egypt as early as the 12th Dynasty, but are only worn and depicted with any frequency from the late Second Intermediate Period on, leading to suggestions that their popularity was due to influence from the Hyksos. Study of mummified remains and grave goods shows that such ornaments were worn by men, women and children without distinction throughout the New Kingdom. In the visual record, however, mature males are rarely shown wearing earrings; kings are never depicted wearing them, although they are often shown with pierced ears suggesting that they did effect them during childhood. The two hoop-shaped earrings shown here, which are not a pair, are made of black and white glass, interestingly manufactured in different ways. One was formed by trailing a white glass rod around a thicker black rod, the other by fusing alternate coloured segments of glass.
TH
155. Dwarf amulet
Third Intermediate Period, perhaps 22nd Dynasty, ca. 945 B.C.
Pale blue glass: Height 3.5 cm
Eton College, Myers Museum, ECM 2076
The short stature and bowed legs of the dwarf were, for the Egyptians, emblematic of divine presence at birth, and amulets of dwarf form - representations of the lion faced Bes, or of the human-faced Pataikos, an all-purpose domestic form of the Memphite earth god Ptah - were particularly popular during and after the New Kingdom. The use of glass of a pale blue hue (originally surmounted by a headdress, we may guess in precious metal) might initially suggest a New Kingdom attribution, but the Pataikos-type representation is rare before the Third Intermediate Period, and the brief inscription incised on the base - a terse ‘Dwarf amulet’ - is similarly suggestive of a later dating.
NR
156. Scarab of Amenhotep III
New Kingdom, 18th Dynasty, reign of Amenhotep III, ca. 1360 B.C.
Steatite: Length 1.8 cm
Eton College, Myers Museum, ECM 1644
157. Inlaid scarab with geometric design
New Kingdom, 18th Dynasty, ca. 1360 B.C.
Glazed steatite and glass: Length 1.0 cm
Durham University, Oriental Museum, EG 5101
158. Inlaid scarab with a king before Amun-Re
New Kingdom, 18th Dynasty, ca. 1360 B.C.
Glazed steatite and glass: Length 1.8 cm
Durham University, Oriental Museum, EG 5102
159. Scarab of Ramesses II set as a ring bezel
New Kingdom, 19th Dynasty, reign of Ramesses II, ca. 1250 B.C.
Steatite and gold: Length 1.8 cm
Durham University, Oriental Museum, EG 475
Small, personal amulets are today among the most frequently encountered Egyptian antiquities, and those amulets which take the form of the scarab beetle (Scarabaeus sacer) are the commonest of all. The scarab beetle rolls its eggs in a ball of dung, and the appearance of new life from dead earth when these eggs hatch was seen by the ancient Egyptians as a perfect metaphor for the rebirth to which they aspired. In life as well as in death the scarab amulet therefore represented an immensely powerful talisman, and was carried by one and all either with beads on a string around the neck or set as the bezel of a ring for the finger. Each of the amulets shown here is individually fashioned - not moulded or otherwise mechanically produced. They exist today in their thousands, and the perfection of the best carved among them is truly remarkable.
NR
160. Hedgehog scaraboid
New Kingdom, 18th Dynasty, ca. 1350 B.C.
Green and blue faience: Length 1.5 cm
Eton College, Myers Museum, ECM 1727
There are no surviving ancient inscriptions to explain the significance of the hedgehog in Egyptian art and belief (beyond certain ‘medical’ texts which suggest the efficacy of h |