IFAO

The study of two statues from the Cachette of Karnak, the recently published Caire je 37374 and the unpublished Caire je 37348, permits us to link them with two unpublished groups of coffins and cartonnages from the Louvre. This leads to a reconstruction of the family and the analysis of the career of Iufaa, son of Penmumut, a Deputy of Amun’s treasury, Third Prophet of Amun and Governor of Thebes during the reign of the Theban king Harsiese in the 22 nd Dynasty.

This archaeobotanical study focuses on a Roman pool used to hold water at the outlet of an underground water-collecting gallery (qanât) dug into the butte of ‘Ayn-Manâwir. Plant remains were found both in living position (roots, stem bases) in and around the pool, as well as in the wind-blown sand filling it. They provide us with information about the garden surrounding the pool, composed of planted and spontaneous palms and trees, and the fields located farther north. The data reflects a complex palm grove oasis agricultural system, that resulted from the use of water collecting and distributing techniques, domestic animals and varied crop associations. The agricultural economy was locally rich, and seems to have been very little influenced by imported plants.

The thirty-five inscribed mummy linen from The British Museum, London published here include 34 bands and only one cloth. The inscribed texts are written in demotic and derived from literature belonging to the Book of the Dead. They probably go back to the first century a.d. and come from the area of Panopolis (Achmim). The pieces provide us with at least 20 proper names, some of which are not attested to in Demotisches Namenbuch.

A restitution in fac-simile of the upper part of the East wall of the newly discovered funerary chamber of Queen Ânkhesenpepy is presented here, with a short comment on the Pyramid Texts included. From the assembled 116 fragments, the following suite of spells can be -reconstructed for the sixty-one columns of AII/F/E sup: PT 364, 441, new spell, 321, N561A, 310, 463 + 464, 407, 604, 301, 473, 474, 460 and another new spell.

Although many attempts have been made to identify the Seth-animal, it is usually regarded as an imaginary creature. However, there are striking similarities between the shape if its ears, forehead and snout with those of the aardvark.

In many parts of sub-Saharan Africa this animal plays an important symbolic role, as the appearance and the behavior of this very peculiar mammal make good “food for thought”. It is often associated, like Seth, with the night, the underworld and the dead.

This short study shows a particularity in royal protocol: the title sȝ-Rʿ preceding the cartouche of the birth name could change occasionally depending on the origin of the monument. The examples discussed in this article give the variants sȝ-Jmn and sȝ-Ptḥ. They appear on monuments coming exclusively from the cult centers of Amon (Thebes and al-Kawa) and Ptah (Memphis). This rare substitution of Ra in this title is certainly the work of the local clergy who tried to promote their gods.

During the 2003 season of excavations at El Deir (East area of the necropolis), several fragments of a painted shroud were discovered in a lot of funerary wrappings much disturbed by pillaging. The body is decorated with a diamond pattern and a column of hieroglyphic text inscribed on the centre of the shroud gives the name of the deceased with the usual funerary formulas. Comparative analysis of these fragments with shrouds preserved in select museums located in Cairo, London and Paris shows that it belongs to a well-known series, dating primarily from the first to second centuries a. d., found throughout the Theban area.

During the last campaigns (2002-2004) carried out at the necropolis at El Deir (Kharga Oasis) by Fr. Dunand and the French team, a significant collection of mummies and skeletons of dogs were discovered inside several human tombs. These tombs, which had been occupied during the Ptolemaic period, were reused for mummified animals. Many of these were carefully wrapped. X-rays identified traces of violent death. So it is obvious that they must have been offered as ex voto to a canine god, Anubis or Wepwawet , whose sanctuary has not yet been discovered in this area.

The Marischal Museum of the University of Aberdeen houses a fine collection of more than 60 individual copies of the Book of the Dead written on papyrus and mummy linen. The present survey, which is the first detailed treatment of the Book of the Dead material in Marischal Museum, starts with a short introduction to the history of the collection of Egyptian antiquities (N. Curtis) and continues with an overview of the Book of the Dead documents (papyri: I. Munro, mummy wrappings: H. Kockelmann), specifying names of owners, spell sequences and measurements. Moreover, it discusses a number of peculiari-ties found in some of the manuscripts.

This paper is divided in two parts. Part one is a translation and a commentary on the sections of the Kamose stelae mentioning the conquest of the oasis of Djesdjes by the king of the Theban XVIIth dynasty. It is argued that all the passages about the oasis, in the Kamose text, concern only one campaign and one oasis, Bahariya. Bahariyans are considered enemies like other Egyptian populations from Middle Egypt who collaborated with the Hyksos rulers. Part two presents the recently prospected cemeteries of Bahariya in the context of the material culture of Egypt during the Second Intermediate Period. The IFAO mission in Bahariya has discovered on the surface of the necropolis of Qaret al-Toub some clear fragments of Tell al-Yahudiya ware, probably imported from one of the production centres located mainly in the Eastern Delta of the Nile. This attestation to commercial relations between Bahariya and the Northern part of Egypt, directly under Asiatic rule, provides interesting data complementary to textual evidence suggesting that Bahariyan elites were in contact with the Hyksos at the end of the Second Intermediate Period.