Dipartimento Collezione e Ricerca

TT 14 and MIDAN.05 must be set in their proper environment and considered in tight connection with it. This area of Dra Abu el-Naga necropolis, likewise many other spots of the Theban region, are known to have suffered from ancient times the devastating effects of occasional flash-floods. These ruinous events arise from the rare but vigorous and sudden rain storms which sometimes strike the desert situated West of the area of the Theban necropolis. The waters collect on the desert highlands and flow into the various natural channels (widian) which pour the floods onto the rocky slopes and the plain of the necropolis 1 . The big wadi known as Khawi el-Alamat 2 , which cuts the hill of Dra Abu el-Naga slightly to the north of TT14 and MIDAN.05 , is the main responsible for the flooding and the damages occurred in many tombs of the area, especially those situated at the base of the hillside. Modern and ancient evidence 3 , as well as archaeological and geological observations 4 agree on the violence and strength that these floods were able to, and still could, express, washing away whatever is in their path and dragging great amounts of mud, limestone chips and debris. The discovery of the passage which connected the two tombs in ancient times ) affected and slightly modified our first evaluation of the deposits which we found inside the rooms of TT 14. The existence of new burial spaces on a higher level than those of TT 14 must of course be taken into serious account. In fact, part of the materials discovered in the funeral chambers of TT 14 were carried by the waves of mud and rubble flooding first into MIDAN.05 and from there down the passageway and into TT 14. The inner rooms of the latter therefore contain what had been intentionally laid there as burial equipment for the original interments, part of the funerary materials of MIDAN.05 as well as items coming from the outside which were washed through the access points to the two tombs. The great strength of the flooding mud waters in this low-lying sector of the necropolis was not, however, the only disturbing and damaging event suffered by the archaeological deposits of the two tombs. As is almost always the case in the Theban necropolis, and in many other Egyptian historical sites as well, in this funerary complex too the human activity has changed, often extensively, the way things had been in the preceding periods. The two original rock-cut tombs have been reused as burials for long time, and that often involved deep changes to their original architectonic layout. In addition to this "internal" disturbance factor, as we may call it, there is clear evidence of the upsetting changes brought about by "external" disturbance elements, namely the recurring plunders, both ancient and modern.

The objects known as “votive beds” are similar to handmade terracotta bed models, but show taller legs and a vertical panel on one of the long sides. The panel indicates the main/front face of the objects and always shows an open-work decorative motive, a molded scene or a combination of both types of decoration. Nearly omnipresent in these decorations are dancing or standing Bes figures, usually flanking a central scene with female figures on a boat with duck-headed prow. Among them, a standing naked female figure in frontal view and holding papyrus stems with both arms may represent a specific manifestation of the goddess Hathor, while a seated female lute-player points to the connection of the votive beds with the musicians and chantresses of the god Amun.

When the provenance of these objects is known it is tightly linked with the Theban area (Medinet Habu, Deir el Medina, Dra Abu el Naga, temple of Sethi I, Karnak Nord). The finding contexts are mainly connected with domestic structures and their dating falls within the Third Intermediate Period. The total absence of textual evidences makes the decipherment of these objects challenging. Nevertheless, a thorough analysis of the archaeological contexts and an in-depth study of the iconographic details can offer a chance to catch interesting glimpses of the fertility and birth-protection rituals which were probably performed by female members of the religious musical troupe within their houses.

Fifty-eight pocket diaries, written by the famous British archaeologist Flinders Petrie, two of them by his wife Hilda, are today in the possession of the Petrie Museum. They preserve notes written on a daily basis between 1881 and 1941. These documents complement the information contained in the better known journals and notebooks of the archaeologist, while adding to them a more complete chronological frame. Moreover, where the other documents only refer to the season of work in Egypt, the pocket diaries almost invariably cover the whole year. The digitization of these interesting, yet fragile, documents is a recent and important accomplishment for the Petrie Museum Archives. The paper presents an overview of the pocket diaries and some preliminary comments on their contents, in order to widen their knowledge among scholars and to stress the informative potential of these documents for the study of the history of Egyptian archaeology.

One of the first anthropogists to research Egypt's peasant culture and its traditional jewellery, Winifred Blackman's personal notes and diaries provide invaluable  insights into her life and work and a great opportunity for the correct appreciation of her collection which is today split between the British Museum, the Pitt-Rivers Museum and the Garstang Museum in Liverpool.

Egyptology, as a Western cultural product of the 19th century, has been shaped through an intense archaeological
exploration of Egypt and an impressive flow of artefacts towards hundreds of collections around the world. Flinders
Petrie played a central role not only in the development and professionalization of the discipline but also in its
representation to the general public through the presentation of his excavations and of the relative finds. It has been
argued that the artefacts retrieved in an excavation are at the same time the product of the culture that originally
created them, as well as the product of the excavator who restores, inscribes, classifies and stores them. The double or
multi-sided nature of material culture invites us to devote more attention to the operational chain of the excavation
and to the processes of knowledge production and presentation as were established within Egyptian archaeology in
its formative phase. All these elements heavily contributed to shape the discipline as we know it today. It is argued
that the materiality of ancient Egypt has progressively obliterated the humanity populating the archaeological
landscapes, and that the only possible way to exit this trend would be an increasing involvement of the local communities
and of Egyptian society as a whole in the processes of archaeological knowledge production and presentation.