 (p. 387) During the course of excavations carried out at the mortuary temple of Hatshepsut at Deir e-Bahri in 1893/4 and (probably) 1894/5, the Egypt Exploration Fund recovered two small, round name-beads (fig. 7), which were presented to the British Museum in 1896 (109). Both beads are engraved with variants of the same hieroglyphic text. This may be translated as follows:
"The good god Maatkare, beloved of Hathor who resides in Thebes, who presides over Djeserdjesru. The hereditary prince and steward Senenmut".
Although neither of these beads seems to have been found in situ (110), the two versions of the inscription they carry would perhaps indicate that they, and a number of published parallels (111), had originally been intended for the foundation deposits of the Hathor (p. 388) shrine situated adjacent to the temple proper (112). The principal deposits of this latter structure were apparently placed at the time work first began, in Year 7 of the reign or thereabouts (c. 1497 B.C.) (113). The precise date of the foundation deposits from the shrine of Hathor is less certain. However, they are perhaps unlikely to pre-date the deposits of the main temple (114), whilst a reasonably firm terminus ante quem is provided by the disappearance from the historical record of the official Senenmut after Year 16 of Hatshepsut`s reign (c. 1488 B.C.) (115).
The main interest of these beads lies in their material, which for many years has been misrepresented as "crystal" (116). Close examination reveals that this is, in fact, an artificial imitation of the natural stone: a clear, colourless, soda-lime-silica glass, the transparency of which is impaired solely by the presence of numerous air bubbles and partially dissolved inclusions (117). Hitherto, the earliest closely dated specimens of colourless glass to have been published were a number of small inlays from objects found in the tomb of Tutankhamun (reg. c. 1361-52 B.C.) (118) - though the text of a fragmentary canopic jar in the British Museum, prepared for a queen of the Amarna period (c. 1379-61 B.C.), is also inlaid with colourless glass (119). The present beads, however, datable with fair certainty to the years c. 1497-88 B.C., push back the appearance of colourless glass in Egypt by more than a century.
These few colourless glasses have a double importance. Firstly, they show us that it was through choice and not lack of technical skill that glass was chiely used for the production of brightly coloured imitations of semi-precious stones. They also indicate the composition of the base glass, which enables us to infer which of the minor impurities in contemporary coloured glasses arrived in association with the major constituents and which with the colourants. The quantitative analyses of these glasses and a detailed discussion of their significance in the development of glass technology will be published elsewhere.
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(109) British Museum EA 26289 (fragmentary) and EA 26290 (intact).
(110) EA 26289 was found "among the dwellings in the north colonnade", season 1893/4: E. Naville, in Egypt Exploration Fund (henceforth EEF), Archaeological Report 1893-4, 7; cf. id., The Temple of Deir el Bahari. Introductory Memoir (London, 1894), 19; id., The Temple of Deir el Bahari, vi (London, 1908), 12. For the general findspot, cf. the plan of the temple in EEF, Arch. Report 1893-4 ("northern colonnade"). This is clearly the bead referred to by W.C. Hayes, Mitt. deutschen arch. Instituts, Abt. Kairo, xv (1957), 88 f. The precise findspot of EA 26290 is not recorded, though the bead is evidently that alluded to in EEF, Report of the Ninth Ordinary General Meeting 1894-5, 19, and Naville, Deir el Bahari, vi, 12.
(111) The following parallels may be cited: (i) Merseyside County Museums, Liverpool, M 11568. Provenance unrecorded. Cf. H. Stobart, Egyptian Antiquities (Berlin, 1855), pl. I; J.G. Wilkinson, The Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians, 3rd edn., ed. S. Birch (London, 1878), ii, 141, n. 3 ("of a black and white colour, ... resembling glass, ... supposed to be agate"); C.T. Gatty, Catalogue of the Mayer Collection, i: The Egyptian Antiquities, 2nd edn. (Liverpool, 1879), 56 f., n. 358 ("basalt with a small streak of quartz running through it"); K. Sethe, Urkunden, iv: Urkunden der 18 Dynastie, ii (Leipzig, 1906), 381, 117: B. Porter, R.L.B. Moss and E.W. Burney, Topographical Bibliography of Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphic Texts, Reliefs, and Paintings, ii: Theban Temples, 2nd edn. (Oxford, 1972), 353; M. Eaton-Krauss, in E. Brovarski, S.K. Doll and R.E. Freed, Egypt`s Golden Age (Boston, 1982), 169, no. 193, 308 ("turquoise and dark blue glass"). (ii) Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, MMA 26.7.746. Formerly in the Carnarvon collection, provenance unrecorded. Cf. W.C. Hayes, The Scepter of Egypt, ii (New York, 1959), 105 ("white amethyst"). (iii) Formerly in the collection of "Captain Henvey, R.N."; present whereabouts unknown. "Found at Thebes." Cf. Wilkinson, op. cit. 141, no. 381, figs. 3-4 ("the specific gravity ..., 25.23, is precisely the same as of crown glass now manufactured in England" - to which Birch adds (n. 3): "This bead has been recently examined by Professor Maskelyne, who considers it to be a kind of obsidian"). (iv) "Im Handel"; present whereabouts unknown. Cf. Sethe, op. cit. 381 (material not specified).
(112) For the attribution, cf. Sethe, op. cit. (note 111), 381.
(113) H.E. Winlock, Proc. American Philosophical Soc. lxxi (1932), 325; J.M. Weinstein, Foundation Deposits in Ancient Egypt (Ann Arbor, 1973), 154 f.
(114) cf. D. Arnold, in W. Helck and E. Otto (eds.), Lexikon der Aegyptologie, i (Wiesbaden, 1975), 1017 ff.
(115) A.R. Schulman, J. American Research Center in Egypt, viii (1969-70), 29 ff.; cf. C. Meyer, Senenmut. Eine prosopographische Untersuchung (Hamburg, 1982), 264 ff.
(116) cf. the references cited in note 110 above.
(117) The analysis was carried out by Dr I.C. Freestone of the British Museum Research Laboratory. Petrie, with characteristic flair, had recognized the true nature of one of the beads (presumably EA 26289) as early as 1896: "A clear white glass bead of Senmut was found at Deir el Bahri (1894)" (A History of Egypt during the XVIIth and XVIIIth Dynasties (London, 1896), 90). To judge from a photograph kindly supplied by Dr P.F. Dorman, MMA 26.7.746 (note 111 (ii) above) appears to have been fashioned from a similar material.
(118) cf. A. Lucas, Ancient Egyptian Materials and Industries, 4th edn., rev. by J.R. Harris (London, 1964), 190; M. Bimson, Annales du 6e Congres International d`Etude Historique du Verre (Liege, 1974), 291 ff.
(119) British Museum EA 9558. This piece will be published fully elsewhere.
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Fig. 7 Two name-beads of Hatshepsut and Senenmut in the British Museum Drawn by Christine Barratt
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