Mummy's Wrap

Posted By Page Strong on September 1, 2010

The Paleolithic (Old Stone Age) time period has been broken into five smaller time periods, the Lower Paleolithic (250,000 years ago), the Middle Paleolithic (250,000 to 50,000 years ago), the Upper Paleolithic (33,000 years ago), the Late Paleolithic (21,000 to 12,000 years ago), and the Epipaleolithic (Final Paleolithic) (10,000 years ago). Each of these periods is notable for specific types of lithic artifacts (Bard, Kathryn A.; An Introduction to the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt; pg. 69).

Few Paleolithic sites are preserved in the Nile Valley due to erosion both from water (alluvial) and wind (aeolian). Thus, the sites within the Western and Eastern deserts are vastly better preserved. These sites are often attributed to hunter-gatherers (Bard, Kathryn A.; An Introduction to the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt; pg. 69).

The Lower Paleolithic sites are difficult to study as most of the artifacts are found in eroded deposits near the edges of the Nile Valley. The original location of these sites are difficult to attest. The artifacts probably were moved by erosion. The artifacts are dated by typology only. These artifacts were large stone-chipped tools, worked on both sides. These bifacially worked lithic tools were worked mainly along the edge of the original cobble. They were too heavy and too cumbersome to have been used for arrows or spears, and were thus merely hand tools, possibly hand axes and crude knives (Bard, Kathryn A.; An Introduction to the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt; pgs. 71-72).

During the Middle Paleolithic, the hand axes that were common within the Lower Paleolithic, became rarer until they were no longer manufactured. Instead, smaller tools became the norm. These tools, instead of being made from larger cobbles, were made from the flakes garnered from the cobbles. By the later part of the Middle Paleolithic, these flake tools became definite blades, tools more common in the Upper Paleolithic (Bard, Kathryn A.; An Introduction to the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt; pg. 72).

The Upper Paleolithic is less remarkable than the same time period in Europe where beautiful cave paintings and jewelry have been discovered. Instead, this period in Egypt seems to be characterized by the stone blades that were produced (Bard, Kathryn A.; An Introduction to the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt; pg. 76).

The number of sites attributed to the Late Paleolithic are far more numerous than the sites pertaining to the Upper Paleolithic. These sites consist of technologies that rapidly advanced past the previous time period. Bladelets were more common, pointing to the ability of the peoples to produce finer and more delicate tools than they were previously able. These delicate tools show evidence of being hafted to wooden shafts and handles, creating compound tools. The possible existence of these compound tools suggest that the bow and arrow may have appeared during this period. Hunting and fishing, often used only supplementarily during the previous periods when gathering was more reliable, surged in use to become equal to, if not more important than, gathering. Burials dating to this period sometimes show deep cuts on the bones, possibly showing the beginnings of conflict in ancient Egypt (Bard, Kathryn A.; An Introduction to the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt; pg. 77-78).

While in other parts of the Middle East, the Epipaleolithic period is noted by the transition from gathering wild cereals to harvesting domesticated cereals, this is absent in Egypt. The economy of domesticating cereals was not invented in Egypt, but rather was introduced to Egypt via an outside source. Furthermore, sedentary culture appears to be lacking in Egypt at this time. Fishing, which became prominent in the previous period, was still of great import to the Egyptians of this era. Boats were used  for deep-water fishing. The stone tools of this period are even smaller than before, becoming microlithic tools. Grinding stones are also in evidence during this period, but were probably not for cereal processing. Pigments still stain many of these grinding stones, thus they were likely used in pigment production (Bard, Kathryn A.; An Introduction to the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt; pg. 79).

It is hypothesized that the peoples living during these time periods were not all Homo sapiens sapiens, the Homo species of modern times. Instead, this ancient landscape was populated both by Homo sapiens and Homo erectus. There is no fossil evidence of Homo erectus, but it is presumed that this species was dominant during the Lower Paleolithic. While Homo sapien Neanderthalenis was known in Europe during the earliest of these periods, this species has not been found on the African continent (Bard, Kathryn A.; An Introduction to the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt; pg. 70-71).

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Category: Ancient Egypt, Archaeology, Egyptology, Fieldwork, Fieldwork, life | 1 Comment »
Tags: aeolian, alluvial, Ancient Egypt, cobble, debitage, domestic cereals, egypt epipaleolithic, egypt late pleolithic, egypt lower paleolithic, egypt middle paleolithic, egypt paleolithci, egypt upper paleolithic, epipaleolithic, flake tools, flaked stone tools, flakes, homo erectus, homo erectus neanderthalenis, homo sapiens, homo sapiens sapiens, hunger-gatherers, late paleolithic, lithic, lithic tools lithic debitage, lithics, lower paleolithic, middle paleolithic, nile valley, paleolithic, predynastic, predynastic egypt, stone chipped, stone chipped tools, stone flakes, upper paleolithic, wild cereals, wild to domestication

Posted By Page Strong on August 19, 2010

From The Chocolate Archaeologist:

 

Yesterday was absolutely brilliant. My parents and I went to see Tutankhamun: The Golden King and the Great Pharaohs at the Denver Art Museum. We had tickets for everything, from the actual exhibit, to the audio tour accompanying the exhibit and the Egypt 3D: Secrets of the Mummies film. We arrived around 1:00 p.m. and our tickets to entry the exhibit were for between 2:00 and 2:30 p.m.

We arrived early so we could see the film first and just barely made the 1:00 pm show.

Read more at The Chocolate Archaeologist: Tutankhamun: The Golden King and the Great Pharaohs

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Category: Ancient Egypt, Exhibit, Mummification, Mummy, News | 1 Comment »
Tags: bob brier, Christopher Lee, Denver Art Museum, Egypt 3D, Egypt 3D: Secrets of the Mummies, Harrison Ford, Hatshepsut, Imax 3D, Inty-Shedu, King Tut, King Tut Denver, Mr. Mummy, mummies, Mummification, Mummy, mummy DNA, Neferure, Rameses-Nakht, Ronald Wade, Secrets of the Mummies, senenmut, senet, thot, thoth, tutankhamun, Tutankhamun And the Golden Age of Pharaohs, Tutankhamun The Golden King and the Great Pharaohs, Tutty Bear, Zahi Hawass

Posted By Page Strong on August 4, 2010

Pottery in ancient Egypt stretches as far back as the Predynastic periods. Indeed, some of the finest examples of ancient Egyptian pottery predate the pyramids. In the early nineteenth century, William Flinders Petrie developed a typology for these vessels, naming each type after a specific culture or place with which they were associated. The earliest pottery types found were from the areas of Tasa and Badari, dating from 5500 to 4000 BC. The Tasa pots were usually of a dark red color, formed into a tulip-shape, with etched designs around the outside of the pot.

The Badari pots, made of a lighter clay than the Tasa pots, were fired at very high temperatures and placed upside down in ashes to cool, giving them a distinct black rim. Later pots from the Naqada I period (4000 to 3500 BC) were of a lighter red than the Tasa pots, but were still dark, often with pale slip painted on the surface forming unique designs. The Naqada II period (3500 to 3100 BC) produced pottery of a lighter shade than the previous ceramics, with dark red or brown decorations sporting animals and plants. These pots often have handles or lugs in addition to the decorations (Strudwyck, Helen; The Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt; pg. 236).

The hand-turned potters wheel was introduced to Egypt in the Fifth Dynasty (2465 to 2323 BC), allowing for finer pottery to be produced. Truly well-crafted ceramics were not common until after the Second Intermediate period (1650 to 1550 BC), when the assisted potters wheel was introduced. This new wheel allowed the potter to use both his hands to steady and from the clay, allowing for faster rotations and letting the potter use centrifugal force to help form the pots. Finer pottery was thus common during and after the New Kingdom (1550 to 1069 BC) (Strudwyck, Helen; The Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt; Pg. 234).

There were two types of pottery often used later in ancient Egyptian history, one being a soft pottery, but commonly used. This pottery was of many different shades, spanning from red to cream-colored, to yellow. In later periods, this pottery was often polished to appear richer and more lustrous. It is questioned, however, whether the polished cream-colored ware was truly produced in Egypt, as it was a common import from Cyprus. This first common ware pottery was used for amphora, casks and other household vases (www.2020site.org).

The other type of pottery was softer than the common red or cream pottery, and was covered in a glaze or enamel. This ceramic type was used for smaller objects, such as cups and figurines. The enamel is often white or blue, the blue being known as faience (www.2020site.org). Calling the blue-enameled pottery “faience” is a misnomer, as true faience is a tin glaze from Italy. The Egyptian faience is made of pulverized quartz or quartz sand, lime and natron salt, which was most notably used in the mummification process (Strudwyck, Helen; The Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt; pg. 237). The glazed pots were often decorated with rudimentary figures, far inferior to many of the figures often produced by scribes (www.2020site.org).

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Category: Ancient Egypt, Every Day Life, Science/Technology | 2 Comments »
Tags: ancient egyptian ceramic, ancient egyptian ceramic types, ancient egyptian ceramic typologies, ancient egyptian ceramic typology, ancient egyptian ceramics, ancient egyptian pots, ancient egyptian pottery, ancient egyptian pottery typologies, ancient egyptian pottery typology, ceramics, pot, pots, pottery, pottery types, pottery typology, typology

Posted By Page Strong on July 21, 2010

Though Fayum Portraits were mentioned in a previous post, more attention is needed to be given on the subject.

Named for the Fayum Oasis where many excellent examples have been found, the soulful portraits attached to many Greco-Roman mummies hail from nearly all corners of Egypt. The first mummy portrait described was discovered by Pietro della Valle from Italy in 1615. The mummy portrait he described was found in Saqqara. It was not until the early nineteenth century that the portraits once again emerged from Saqqara and Thebes (wikipedia.org).

One Thoedor Graf was one of the first to describe the portraits. Little was known about the locational information of the portraits Graf was studying, but he ascribed the portraits to known Ptolemaic pharaohs, using as his basis coin portraits. Though the theory was not well argued by Graf, the study did garner Graf much attention, attention that was soon turned to the Fayum Portraits (wikipedia.org).

Beginning in 1887, the portraits were studied in a more methodical, scientific light by William Flinders Petrie. His first year of excavation in a Roman necropolis in Fayum provided Petrie with 81 portraits. The second year found Petrie competing with a German Egyptologist and an Egyptian art dealer. Despite this setback, Petrie found 70 more portraits. Petrie’s published works about the mummy portraits, though dated, remains one of the most important sources for the Fayum portraits (wikipedia.org).

The portraits were produced often on boards or wood panels. The paint is often of the encaustic style, pigment mixed with wax. These styles of portraits are often the best preserved. Another style is that of tempera, a watercolor used with a binding agent such as egg whites. The portraits would be set within the intricate wrappings of the mummy (Strudwyck, Helen; The Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt; pg. 336).

It has long been speculated that the portraits were “Salon paintings,” produced sometime during the deceased’s lifetime and displayed in their home until their death. Recent studies, however, have found this to be far from actual fact. The likenesses between different individuals indicates these portraits were, at least in part, mass-produced with small variances to each face (wikipedia.org).

While not a source of physical representations of the deceased, the portraits do provide archaeologists with a unique look into the lives of the people they are meant to depict. Greco-Roman fashions are well portrayed within each painting. These provincial fashions, while not at odds with the fashions in the Roman court, were somewhat out-of-date with the popular Roman fashions (wikipedia.org).

By the middle to second half of the third century AD, the mummy portraits fell out of favor. There are many reasons why this shift occurred. In the third century AD, the Roman Empire underwent an economic crisis, limiting the amount of money people, especially the upper classes, could spend. While money was still spent on such things as sarcophagi, the majority of money was spent on the living, not on the deceased. Christianity was also becoming more popular and the need for preserving a person’s visage was no longer necessary for the afterlife. Furthermore, the Constitutio Antoniniana, the granting of citizenship to all free subjects of the Roman Empire, changed the social standings greatly, allowing for more of a distribution of wealth (wikipedia.org).

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Tags: encaustic, faiyum, faiyum mummy portraits, faiyum portraits, fayoum, fayoum portraits, fayum, fayum mummy portraits, fayum portraits, fayyum, fayyum mummy portraits, fayyum portraits, greco roman mummification, greco roman mummy, greco roman mummy portraits, greco roman portraits, Greco-Roman, mummies, Mummification, Mummy, mummy portraits, petrie, portraits, salon paintings, tempera, william flinders petrie

Posted By Page Strong on July 14, 2010

Though dating from the Middle Kingdom, the Aten did not rise to prominence until the middle of the New Kingdom. During the Middle Kingdom, the Aten was only occasionally mentioned, usually as the sun disk with a god determinative hieroglyph. By the middle of the Eighteenth Dynasty, the sun disk was elevated from near-obscurity to a protector deity of the pharaoh during war. This version of the Aten was used by Tuthmosis IV and his successor, Amenhotep III. Amenhotep III increased the use of the Aten, often using epithets such as ‘radiance of Aten,’ and stressing solar worship. It was Amenhotep III’s successor, however, who truly brought Aten worship to its height (Wilkinson, Richard H.; The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt; pg. 236).

Amenhotep IV, or Akhenaten, as he came to be known, intensified the worship of the Aten to a never before encountered extreme. While many deities were considered patrons of specific pharaohs, the Aten was elevated far beyond that, to become the primary deity above all other deities. Indeed, the Aten was raised to such heights that most other deities were even banned during Akhenaten’s rule (Wilkinson, Richard H.; The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt; pg. 236).

The unconventional worship of a single deity within ancient Egypt was intensified by the manner in which the Aten was worshipped. While priests of the Aten did exist, they were known as ‘Priests of Akhenaten.’ No one was allowed to worship the Aten directly save for Akhenaten himself and his family. The priests and commoners were forced to worship Akhenaten, who would worship the Aten in their stead (Wilkinson, Richard H.; The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt; pg. 237-238).

During the reign of Akhenaten, the traditional priests and followers of the traditional deities were powerless against Akhenaten. After his death, however, the return to orthodoxy was quick. Akhenaten’s successors returned to Thebes, abandoning the newly constructed Akhetaten, which was built in honor of the Aten. The traditional gods and goddesses were reinstated and their temples, which had long been closed, were reopened. The Aten was abandoned much like Akhetaten, and the sun disk was rarely, if ever, mentioned in religious texts (Wilkinson, Richard H.; The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt; pg. 240).

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Category: Ancient Egypt, Aten, Deity | 1 Comment »
Tags: akhenaten, akhetaten, Amarna, Amenhotep III, Amenhotep IV, ancient egypt monotheism, Aten, egypt monotheism, Eighteenth Dynasty, monotheism, monotheism in ancient egypt, priests of akhenaten, radiance of aten, the aten, Thutmosis IV