Middle Kingdom sealings from Avaris

Newsletter Egypt and Sudan Issue 4, 2017 Introduction Neal Spencer Keeper, Department of Ancient Egypt and Sudan From a vacant shop in downtown Cairo to the state-of-the-art Sainsbury’s Exhibition Gallery at the British Museum, over 3500km apart, two very different displays of Egyptian objects were created last year. The BP exhibition Sunken cities: Egypt’s lost worlds was a first opportunity for audiences in London to see the stunning discoveries made off the coast of Egypt by the French and Egyptian underwater archaeologists over the last two decades. Alongside their scale and beauty, these objects are important in providing new perspectives on Egyptian, Greek and eventually Roman interaction, resonating well with recent Museum research, not least at the cosmopolitan riverine port of Naukratis. Our annual conference took the three colossal statues in the exhibition as inspiration to consider the function, meaning and re-use of statuary in Egypt, from the Predynastic era through to Late Antiquity. In contrast, the Modern Egypt Project pop-up told very different stories. Only publicised by word of mouth and social media, this brought together some of the first objects acquired by the Museum to tell stories of 20th- and 21stcentury Egypt. More an installation than an exhibition, we avoided labels and information panels, and let visitors wonder and think. Why are such day-to-day items being collected by a museum? What modern Egypt do they represent? Our new fieldwork project near Asyut is also emphasising living Egypt, and how the present-day inhabitants interact with the past around them. Similarly, in Sudan we are focusing upon then and now. With the generous support of the Royal Anthropological Institute, we have two cultural anthropologists studying aspects of modern life in the rapidly changing world of northern Sudan, while community engagement becomes increasingly important for our archaeological excavations at Dangeil, Amara West and Kawa. A significant milestone was reached in 2016, with the 25th anniversary of the Sudan Archaeological Research Society, which has played an important role in the flourishing of interest in Sudanese archaeology, in the UK and abroad. As always, this newsletter is but a snapshot of some of the work being undertaken by the Museum on the cultures of Egypt and Sudan, from cataloguing to scientific analysis and conservation, training projects to fieldwork. For more, follow the redesigned Museum blog at british.museumblog.org, or use the new dynamic search interface search.britishmuseum.org. Finally, while not limited to Egypt and Sudan, the first public release of the open source ResearchSpace platform provides more nuanced ways of searching cultural heritage data (including the British Museum collection), and is available for researchers to customise and use for their own projects. For more information, visit researchspace.org Finally, the whole Department would like to send best wishes for the future to Bridget Leach, the British Museum’s outstanding papyrus conservator who retired last year. Follow @NealSpencer_BM on Twitter and @nealspencer_bm on Instagram The collection ‘…after so many Fables had been Printed upon this subject’: A new history of Ethiopia (1682) In Egypt Middle Kingdom sealings from Avaris Marcel Marée Curator, Department of Ancient Egypt and Sudan Excavations at Tell el-Dab’a, the site of ancient Avaris in the eastern Nile Delta, are bringing to light a growing corpus of Middle Kingdom seal impressions. A full decipherment and historical interpretation of the sealings will help reshape our understanding of the city’s remarkable history. Susanne Woodhouse Ann El-Mokadem Librarian, Department of Ancient Egypt and Sudan A selection of books relating to Ethiopia is housed within the Department of Ancient Egypt and Sudan. After all, the Blue Nile originates in the country, the ancient land of Punt with which pharaonic Egypt traded is thought to have been located there, and 19th-century scholars defined the Kushite and Meroitic civilisations as ‘Ethiopian’. Recently a fine copy of A new history of Ethiopia: being a full and accurate description of the kingdom of Abessinia, vulgarly, though erroneously, called the empire of Prester John by the German orientalist Hiob Ludolf (1624–1704) was added to the collection. Published in 1682, this is the first English translation of the Latin original Historia Aethiopica (1681), the influential first exhaustive study of the country and civilisation of Ethiopia. Avaris was a centre of key commercial and political importance from the late Middle Kingdom to the early New Kingdom. During the late 12th Dynasty and 13th Dynasty, it became Egypt’s primary trading port, drawing merchants from the Levant and the Aegean. The kings of Egypt, ruling from distant Lisht, ordered the construction of local palaces and large administrative buildings. It was also at Avaris that a burgeoning community of Canaanite settlers began to crown its own kings, triggering a time of political fragmentation known today as the Second Intermediate Period. Most of the copy’s binding is original, with blind fillets creating two asymmetrical vertical panels on the calf leather of boards, a minimalism typical for bindings of the second half of the 17th century. This contrasts the rich embellishment of the spine, rebacked during the mid- to late-19th century. Robert Elphinstone of Lopness inscribed the title page in 1693 and thanks to a former library intern, Liam Sims (now Rare Books Specialist at Cambridge University Library), we know he was a Colonel in the army of the Prince of Orange and the Stewart Principal of Orkney and Shetland. He spent time in Holland (where he died in 1717 or 1727) and in the Orkney Islands. Not known as a book collector, there is no obvious link between him and the fields of Ethiopian studies. This copy of the first English edition of A new history of Ethiopia was donated by the Institute for Bioarchaeology. The library of the Department of Ancient Egypt and Sudan is generously supported by Dr Ahmed and Mrs Ann El-Mokadem. It was Ludolf’s scholarly approach that ultimately earned him the title ‘Father of Ethiopian studies’. Apart from having access to the best libraries he studied with an Ethiopian scholar, Monk Gorgoryos, initially in 1649 in Rome and then in Gotha in Germany during 1652. Ludolf recorded the new insights he gained from Gorgoryos and used them among others for the Historia Aethiopica, thus ensuring that the content was as accurate as possible. Avaris and the native Egyptian rulers, most notably those at Lisht. However, an excavation technique developed at Tell el-Dab’a in 2006 is now generating an important new body of evidence on these matters. The muddy soil that covers the ruins of Avaris is carefully collected, allowed to dry overnight and then sieved – a method that is revealing many fragments of clay sealings. A good proportion bears impressions of hieroglyphic seals that give the titles and names of officials. Middle Kingdom officials carried seals on signet rings, as a means of identification. They stamped the engraved designs and texts into lumps of clay affixed to boxes, bags, vessels, papyrus scrolls and door bolts, thereby restricting access to valuable articles and documents. The backs of these lumps retain imprints of the surfaces to which they were applied, inviting speculation on the items they once accompanied. The first succession of local rulers, the 14th Dynasty, controlled a limited realm but no doubt it benefited from continued commercial relations with the 13th Dynasty, which it may still have acknowledged as nominal overlords. The next local line, the 15th Dynasty, more aggressively exploited the waning authority of the government in Lisht and took the political initiative, proudly self-identifying as ‘foreign rulers’ (Hyksos). These kings soon overshadowed the 13th Dynasty, extending their political influence to Middle and, for some time, Upper Egypt. The Hyksos ruled largely by proxy, through a variety of regional allies, but the native rulers of Thebes (the 16th–17th Dynasties) became defiant and eventually launched a war of liberation and defeated the Asiatics. The private-name sealings from Tell el-Dab’a will shed new light on the relations that existed between Avaris and the 13th Dynasty government in Lisht. The examples discovered thus far all mention officials of the 13th Dynasty, insofar as we can determine from their titles and names. Yet many of these sealings were found in contexts attributable to the 14th and 15th Dynasties. This circumstance, it is hoped, will afford a better understanding of dynastic overlaps and contacts between the administrations of Avaris and Lisht. Among the highest officials are a vizier, a treasurer, a treasurer’s secretary, various high stewards, and a top official in the nationwide organisation of corvée labour. Some of the named officials recur in sources from other sites, including the Egyptian fortresses in Nubia. The full implications of the Tell el-Dab’a sealings are undergoing continued assessment, in preparation for a full publication. The chronological fixation of the Avaris dynasties and the circumstances of their respective ascendancies are still subjects of lively debate. Much also remains unclear about the progression of political and economic relations between The study of these seal impressions is a collaboration with the Austrian Archaeological Institute, as part of their fieldwork at Tell el-Dab’a, under the direction of Irene Forstner-Müller and with permission from the Ministry of Antiquities. A new history of Ethiopia is the result of 40 years of scholarship, explaining the languages, history, society, natural history and religion of Ethiopia. Some of the exotic marvels of the country are visualised in eight engravings, five of which are dedicated to animals which very few contemporary readers would ever have the opportunity to see in nature – for example, the fat-tailed sheep, the elephant and the hippopotamus. For this project Ludolf employed Johann Heinrich Roos, the most famous illustrator of animals of the time. Ethiopian elephants. The hippopotamus. The former owner Robert Elphinstone of Lopness inscribed the title page in 1693. 22 Originally published in Latin, most of Ludolf’s 15 pioneering Ethiopian studies were promptly translated into English and/ or Dutch to make them more accessible. A new history of Ethiopia even saw a second English edition in 1684. Having distinguished himself in the diplomatic services as well as in the world of finance, he continually encouraged establishing trade and diplomatic contact with Ethiopia and the translations fit perfectly into this context. Sealing stamped by a vizier of the 13th Dynasty. Imprints on the back show that it was attached to a bag. Image: Austrian Archaeological Institute. 23