Editions (Mag+Journal)

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The Significance of the Crossed Arms Pose -  Part 2: Osiris, The Osiris and the Osirides

The Significance of the Crossed Arms Pose – Part 2: Osiris, The Osiris and the Osirides

Is it a futile activity to ask, as I do in this series of articles, “What is The Significance of the Crossed-Arm Pose?” It might be argued, for instance, that variations in the pose at death exhibited by royal mummies simply reflect what embalmers decided to do on the day, or at least the customary practice of a particular undertaker. Similarly, it might be argued that each individual anthropoid coffin might be expected to reveal some unique design characteristic, and that no significance should be attached to the specific hand/arm pose depicted on the lid. [more…]

Marianne Brocklehurst

Marianne Brocklehurst and the West Park Museum, Macclesfield. Part 2

In part 1 I looked at how Marianne Brocklehurst acquired a collection of some 500 Ancient Egyptian objects during the three trips to Egypt that she records in her diary, cartoons, sketches and watercolours. In this section I look at the museum and the collection that Marianne and her brother Francis built for the benefit of the residents of Macclesfield in northwest England. [more…]

Figure 6. Dr Granville's Mummy, from Thebes, 600BC

The Significance of the Crossed Arms Pose in the New Kingdom – Part 1

Amongst the many miracles through which delicate objects are preserved from ancient Egypt down into modern times, perhaps the most remarkable is the survival of the mortal remains of a virtually complete sequence of New Kingdom rulers. These kings, along with a number of queens and lesser royalty – who date from the end of the Seventeenth Dynasty through to the start of the Twenty-Second Dynasty – are generally referred to as the Royal Mummies, and were for the most part recovered from the Royal Cache of 1881 (in tomb TT320), and the Second Royal Cache of 1898 (in tomb KV35, the tomb of Amenhotep II). [more…]

An Exploration of the term ‘inw’  from the Early Dynastic Period to the New Kingdom

An Exploration of the term ‘inw’ from the Early Dynastic Period to the New Kingdom

The term inw has been described as ‘vexatious’ in its complexity, touching as it does on a range of intricate subjects outside the scope of this article. The following article does not claim to cover all aspects of inw. A reading list for those who wish to explore the subject in more detail, is provided at the end. [more…]

In his book ‘The Official Gift in Ancient Egypt’ (1996) Edward Bleiberg notes that there are thirty eight different interpretations for the term ‘inw’ in English, French and German. As Bleiberg notes ‘The Egyptians could not have been as vague as the numerous translations suggest’  [more…]

Book Review: Dawn of Egyptian Art

Book Review: Dawn of Egyptian Art

The United States was blessed with two exhibitions about the Predynastic in the last two years: Before The Pharaohs at the Oriental Institute in Chicago (March 29th to December 31st 2011) and Dawn of Egyptian Art at the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art (April 10th – August 5th 2012). Both museums produced books to both accompany the exhibition and serve as standalone works, edited by their curators, with contributions by a number of well-known scholars in Predynastic and Early Dynastic research. In this edition I will look at will look at Dawn of Egyptian Art. In Edition 9 I will review Before the Pharaohs. [more…]

Figures 5 and 6.  The seal of Heqanakht and Letter III

Revisiting Heqanakht

Heqanakht’s ‘letters’ consist of a number of related papyri which have been dated to the early part of the Twelfth Dynasty (2025-1700 BC). The papyri deal with the day-to-day concerns of a well-to-do, land owning farmer who lived near Thebes and who carried out his professional duties as a kA-priest near Memphis. The letters and accounts which make up the papyri were found unopened and, apparently unread, ‘in the condition of their original shipping’ (Goedicke, 1984, p.5). In two instances, the letters still bore their original clay seals [more…]