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Edition - August, 2012

sAb Corpus - v3

sAb Corpus – v3

We are pleased to now host v3 of Etienne Vande Walle’s sAb Corpus Prosopographie. /2012/05/sab-corpus-9142 If for any reason you still require v2 then for the moment it remains available at http://www.glyphs.info/wp-content/uploads/sAb%20Corpus%20-%20v2.pdf [more…]

Editorial: First Anniversary Edition

Editorial: First Anniversary Edition

Egyptological is one year old and we celebrate with a bumper edition with eighteen original articles, reviews and albums for your delectation. The Journal It is hard to know where to start!  Perhaps with Edition 5 of the Journal.  Although three articles have been deferred to the next edition of the Journal we still have […] [more…]

Illustration 3 - BotD Spell 135 in TT1 © Thierry Benderitter / www.osirisnet.net

Solar Eclipse Events in the New Kingdom – Part 1: Texts and Funerary Material

This paper discusses a class of inscriptions appearing on eleven artefacts together with text and vignettes from five tombs and funerary material from Deir el-Medina, which may contain expressions made in response to eclipses. It is proposed that: [more…]

a) these artefacts record the witnessing of a deep solar eclipse; and [more…]

b) ill understood at the time, the eclipse was interpreted by witnesses as a form of punishment or omen and was consequently expressed in religious terms on stelae; protection against recurrences of the event was also included in tombs and on funerary furniture. [more…]

Faience manufactured by the author

Brilliant Blue: A Practical Investigation of the Production of Ancient Egyptian Faience

Abstract. Ancient faience material found in large quantities throughout Egypt display a wide variety in the quality and intricacy of workmanship. Although evidence has shown that that there were temple and royal workshops the amount of pieces discovered in and around domestic dwellings suggest a thriving cottage industry existed. This paper investigates this possibility through experiments to recreate the traditional conditions and the processes used in the manufacture of faience. A wood fired kiln based on the traditional Ancient Egyptian bread oven was used with electric fired control pieces produced in order to trial recipes and develop an understanding the role of temperature in the nitrification process. The experimentation explored the processes of application, efflorescence and cementation and the techniques of moulding, bead making, inlay and stone glazing.  [more…]

The Papyri of Heqanakht and the Emergence of a Middle Class in Middle Kingdom Egypt

By Barbara O’Neill.  Published in Egyptological Journal Articles, Journal Edition 5. August 14th 2012 Introduction: An Individual Life The following article will focus on the life and times of an Egyptian farmer through an exploration of his letters and accounts.  Heqanakht’s papyri offer a rare glimpse into the life of a minor official during the […] [more…]

Notes on Legal Vocabulary (Old Kingdom and the First Intermediate Period)

Notes on Legal Vocabulary (Old Kingdom and the First Intermediate Period)

In approaching the study of sAb, I raised the issue of the purport of this title and proposed a hypothesis for its translation (Vande Walle 2011) which differs from the usual notion of judge. In doing so, I collected some data on terminology concerning the act of judging and of the actors revolving around its implementation, which are the subject of this work. [more…]

In the 18th Dynasty, Akhenaten posed the only real challenge to Egyptian religion with his Aten heresy

Ancient Egyptian Religion, Part 7 — Roots Too Deep to Dislodge

We have been watching the force and flow of three concepts in the stream of Egyptian culture and religion through the course of this series — order, duality, and divine magic — which informed Egyptian thought and practice for more than 3,000 years. The business of this article is to go back into the deep past and look at the roots of Egypt’s religious and socioeconomic culture, and then to test the durability of those formative ideas by examining the only major departure — the 18th Dynasty heresy of Akhenaten — which, by threatening the ancient heritage, actually reconfirmed it. [more…]

Figure 9. Opening of the Mouth Ceremony

Arthur Cruttenden Mace – Taking His Rightful Place, Part 2

In Part 1, we discovered how Arthur Mace took excellent advantage of a distinguished family name, overcoming the fact that wealth would not play a part in making his dreams a reality. Through education, an apprenticeship with his distinguished relative Flinders Petrie and a devotion to proper artifact conservation, Mace ensured respect from his peers. In Part 2, I will show how Mace continued to make contributions to Egyptology throughout a prolonged illness. His conservation techniques preserved artifacts spanning the Metropolitan Museum in New York to the pyramids in Lisht. Mace’s final acts of preservation, as he worked in the tomb of a previously unknown pharaoh made a name for him, although it may very well may have also contributed to his untimely passing. [more…]