A Sumerian Bearded Bull's Head

Fig. 1 - Sumerian Bronze Bull's Head, Michael C. Carlos Museum

     The Carlos Museum collection also has a number of Middle Eastern pieces from places other than Egypt. The one shown in figure 1 is a Sumerian bronze bull's head which may once have decorated a musical instrument like those found at Ur.

     The bull often represented the god An, who was a fertility god and also was considered the source of the king's power and right to rule.

Figures 2 and 3 show examples of bull's heads mounted on re-constructed harps from Ur, which are now in the British Museum. In figure 2 the bull's head is made of gold with the beard made of Lapis Lazuli, as is the beard on the harp in figure 3.

     When Leonard Wooley excavated the harps at Ur, he was unable to preserve the wood, but he was able to make plaster casts of the harps as they remained in the ground and these casts were used to re-construct the wooden portions of the harps. Note the "tuning pegs" at the top of the harp in figure 3.

Michael C. Carlos Museum Collection

     On Friday night the attendees of the annual ARCE convention jumped on a bus and headed over to Emory University for a reception at the Michael C. Carlos Museum. The highlight of the evening was the museum's collection of Middle Eastern art.

     One of the most unusual pieces in the collection was a Sixth Dynasty mummy from Egypt. Very few mummies survive from the Old Kingdom. This one is wrapped differently from later mummies in that the limbs are wrapped separately and the ears are modeled in linen on the sides of this young man's head. The head of the mummy rests on a wooden head rest and the deceased lies on his side. It was not until after the end of the Old Kingdom that mummies were laid to rest prone without the head rest.

     This particular mummy was found at Abydos.

Ancient Egyptian Hairballs

     Kevin Cahill of the University of Pennsylvania gave a lecture (entitled “Elite Tomb or Family Burial Vault? Report on Recent Excavations at South Abydos, 2015 – 2016”) at the annual ARCE convention that takes the prize for the oddest discovery of the 2015 - 2016 excavation season (see the final paragraph below).    

      Several New Kingdom tombs were excavated at Abydos near the funerary temple of Senwosret III. One tomb (from early Dynasty 19) was for the “Scribe” and “Overseer of Stables” Horemhab. Tomb TC.16 was probably used for two burials and contained a Mycenean stirrup jar. Another tomb had a couple of ushabtis, which were carved with texts, except that one of them had the name of the owner written on it in ink, rather than carved. Obviously it was an “off the shelf” ushabti.

     Tomb TC.17 was of mud brick construction with a vaulted roof. It had a stairway and two chambers, all on a straight line. The main chamber was loaded with bones from an estimated 32 persons (15 females, 14 males and 3 persons whose sex is uncertain). Some of the bones had arthritis and some showed signs of anemia at a young age. The tomb also contained some “Cross Line” bowls which date to the Late Middle Kingdom to the end of the Second Intermediate Period. A biconical vase probably dates to the reign of Tuthmose I. The tomb also had sixty very odd objects called :hair balls" by the excavator. These are balls of mud containing human hair and their exact purpose is unclear. A small limestone face was also found which might have been part of one of the Second Intermediate Period “micro-face” masks. The rear chamber had some fragments of what might have been a Rishi coffin.

The Aten Icon

     A fascinating paper given by Gay Robins at the annual ARCE convention noted several interesting things about representations of the sun gods of Egypt, including the Aten. For instance, the winged sun disk, which is a common representation of the sun god is shown with the wings covering representations of gods and kings, but private persons are often not covered by one of the god’s wings. If a stela shows a king or god on one side of a “picture” and a nobleman on the other, the winged sun disk will often have only one wing, which extends over the representation of the god.  On some stelae, the one wing of the sun covers the king or god, while the eye of Horus is shown over the private person. I had noted the “one-winged” sun disks in the past, but did not understand why this was done until now.

     The Aten is always shown extending its rays to the King and Queen, even Akhenaten’s daughters do not have the rays of the Aten extending to them. The Aten’s rays are shown with hands at the end holding an Ankh to the noses of the King and Queen. What is the significance of the hands? One possibility lies in the legend of Atum, who created the divinities Shu and Tefnut by masturbating. The Egyptian word for hand is feminine and the “God’s Wife of Amun” is sometimes referred to as “The God’s Hand”.  Possibly the hands of the Aten have a relation to the reproductive power of the Aten?

Some Interesting Things from the Theban Tombs of Dynasty 18

Fig. 1 - The Litany of Re from the Tomb of Tuthmose III

     A lecture  by Emily Russo at the annual ARCE meetings highlighted some interesting facts relating to Theban tombs of the Eighteenth Dynasty.  TT61 contained a copy of the Litany of Re and had the same “unrolled Papyrus” decoration as the tomb of Tuthmose III (see Figure 1 for an example of what this type of decoration looks like).

     Some of these tombs also had copies of some “spells” from the Pyramid Texts in them, including: TT82, TT87and TT85 (Pyramid Text #32).

          What is most interesting about this is two fold: the Pyramid Texts are still in use centuries after the end of the Old Kingdom and some religious texts used by royalty in the early New Kingdom were also in use in the tombs of the nobles (the Litany of Re for instance). Many scholars have claimed that certain texts were "reserved for royalty" and only came into use by non-royalty over many years. But the Litany of Re is clearly used in both the tombs of 18th Dynasty kings as well as nearly contemporary noble men. These texts may not have been as "reserved for royalty" as we thought.

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Mystery of the Mouse Demon Solved

Figure 1 - an Ichneumon-headed Deity (on the right)

     I just got back from the American Research Center in Egypt conference which was held in Atlanta this year. There were some interesting papers presented and I will be covering some of what I heard in the next few posts. But the first thing I want to cover is a paper that solved a mystery I wrote about in a blog post a couple of years ago.

     I took the photo of the papyrus in figure 1 several years ago because I had no idea what the figure on the right is. At one of the talks (presented by Lisa Swart of Cumberland University), I found out the figure is an Ichneumon-headed god. So what on earth is an Ichneumon? It is a type of mongoose.

     An Ichneumon-headed deity is sometimes shown in Chapter 125 the Book of the Dead accompanying the deceased to the hall of judgment. He is referred to as “He who is the Head of the West” on one papyrus. This god’s iconography consists of:

• The figure is male
• He has a human body and the head of a mongoose
• He usually holds a hand to his mouth (symbolizing the restoration of the power of speech to the deceased?)
• Normally he is shown wearing both a kilt and a corselet
• He does not wear a crown (although he does have the feather of Maat on his head in one case)

   

Egyptian Wooden Models (continued)

Figure 1 - Cow Giving Birth, Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto

     Middle Kingdom wooden models show slices of daily life in ancient Egypt. Some are true works of art (the wooden statues of the servant girl from the tomb of Meketre I showed in an earlier post for instance). Others are of lower artistic quality, but are still interesting in their own right.

Figure 2 - Cuts of Beef Drying, Metropolitan Museum

     Figure 1 shows a wooden model of a cow giving birth. Egypt having an agriculturally based economy, most ancient Egyptians would have been familiar with farm animals giving birth and a statue of this sort was probably included in a tomb to magically ensure that the tomb owner would have an abundance of cattle in the afterlife.

     Figure 2 shows another wooden model of what might happen to the calf after it had grown up. A nobleman's store house has many cuts of beef hanging up to dry so that they could be preserved for later use as food.