All the Gold of Egypt

Just to show that no matter how much time you spend in Egypt, you will always see something new. These coins are from 2005. In all my travels, I’ve never come across a LE 1 coin before (top), with that distinctive style, featuring the  mask of Tutankhamun. I would remember if I had done so! I have seen the 50 Piastre coin, with a profile portrait of Cleopatra VII only once or twice.

In Egypt, you rarely come across coins. Notes run right down to 25 Piastre, which is usually the smallest amount a foreigner is going to handle, being the price for a bus ride in most towns until recently (on my last visit the fare had gone up in some areas). So, to see that the Egypt mint has taken the trouble of producing a LE 1 coin is quite a surprise, though a welcome one. Why they don’t produce more of both coins and withdraw the huge piles of dog eared 25-50 piastre, and LE 1 notes from circulation, and replace them all with these beautiful bits of metal is anyone’s guess.

Lovely work, on part of the coin designers.

It is a general belief that the Ancient Egyptians had no coins. Throughout the vast majority of Egyptian history that is absolutely right. Instead a system of weights of metal were used to determine values – the deben (Old Kingdom and Middle Kingdom), and the deben-qedet systems (New Kingdom and Late Period). However, from the 26th Dynasty onward, Egypt hired large numbers of Greek mercenaries. Initially these mercenaries were paid as the Egyptians had traditionally rewarded their soldiers, by giving them fields. The problems with this solution however, are quite clear. Eventually, this situation gave rise to something relatively few people are actually aware of… Pharaonic coins.

This is not Ptolemaic, whose coins are quite widely known, or from the Persian occupation periods when Persians satraps did produce their own coins. Below, however is an actual pharaonic coin, minted in the 30th Dynasty reign of Nectanebo II, and is now in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.

The hieroglyphs on the side shown above read nb nfr, “Good gold”, a reassurance, or perhaps a guarantee, that the gold is pure.  The coin itself is something of an interesting hybrid, with it’s inscription in hieroglyphs and then a decidedly Greek looking horse. Some other coins also existed that had demotic rather than hieroglyphic inscriptions, but all retain their quasi-greek flavour, since it is most likely they were introduced with the specific intent of paying hired Greek mercenaries. Few coins have been found, and they seem to have had little impact on the populace as a whole.

 

Statue of Alexander Found in Alexandria

From State Information Service – Link to full article

A statue of Alexander the Great has been discovered in the Egyptian coastal city of Alexandria, Governor Adel Labib said on Wednesday 7/10/2009.

Archeologists have suggested the statue was of Alexander the Great and it was uncovered during excavations at el-Shalalat Park in the city, he said.

The discovery was made by a Greek mission working in the city.

 

Egypt Suspends Louvre Saqqara Excavations over Stolen Artefacts

Link to original article

Egypt has decided to suspend all archaeological cooperation with the Louvre, after the French museum refused to return fragments of a Theban Tomb. The news was confirmed today by Dr. Zahi Hawass, head of Egypt’s antiquities department. The artefacts were excavated in a tomb near Luxor, and according to Dr. Hawass were stolen by the French. This decision endangers planned conferences at the Louvre, as well as the French team’s current excavations at Saqqara, the ‘city of the dead’. A boycott of the Louvre‘s Egyptological activities also ensures no archeological expeditions sponsored by the French museum could go ahead in Egypt.

The decision to cut all ties with the Louvre, as well as its archaeological teams, was taken two months ago after the Louvre had repeatedly ignored requests for the return of four reliefs. Dr. Hawass says the reliefs were illegally taken from a tomb in Luxor’s Valley of the Kings in the 1980s.

The disputed artefacts are 5 fragments from the wall of Theban Tomb 15 (TT15), the tomb of Tetiki on the West Bank at Dra Abu’l Naga.  The tomb was photographed in 1968 and shown intact.  In the 1990′s the tomb was – like so many – lost, and thought to be destroyed by modern building. A team from the Heidelberg University rediscovered this tomb during excavations at Dra Abu El-Naga in 2001, but the fragments were missing.

Update from ABC News -

…Subject to a decision by France’s national museum scientific committee, Mr Mitterrand said he was ready to order the frescoes be handed back.

Under the UNESCO convention of 1970, member countries agreed measures to prevent the illegal export of national treasures.

Mr Mitterrand [French Cultural Minister] said the five Egyptian pieces had been acquired in good faith by the Louvre and it was only in 2008, after the discovery of the tomb from which the murals apparently came, that serious doubts were raised about their provenance….

It would seem that all is set to end well, but does this set a precedent of “gunboat diplomacy” with regards to antiquities? And where is the line drawn? Dr. Zahi Hawass, has repeatedly said that it is only ilegally aquired anqituities that should be returned to Egypt, and so, one assumes, where methods like this would be used.

However, Dr. Hawass has repeatedly referred to a desire to see the Rosetta Stone and Bust of Nefertiti returned to Egypt, despite both peices being regarded as legally removed by the UNESCO Convention of 1983.  Will “gunboat diplomacy” be used to secure these peices? If it is, then the implications for both foreign archaeologial research in Egypt, and the status of all Ancient Egyptian collections in foreign museums could be far reaching.

Foreign museums will be loathed to surrender peices that they hold, in their and UNESCOs eyes, perfectly legally, and may have done so for the better part of 200 years. Yet, threatened with their ongoing work in Egypt being wiped out, they face a “Catch 22″ situation that may end up causing more harm than good.

In addition, the history of these artefacts is often entwined with the history of more than just Egypt. The Rosetta stone, for example, from the point of view of Ancient Egyptian history, is of relatively minor importance compared to it’s unique and hugely symbolic importance to modern Egyptology, which is essentially an international discipline centred as much around Paris, London, and any number of cities from Tokyo to Buenos Aires, as well as Cairo.

 

Hawwas: L.E. 700m spent annually on restoration, development of archaeological sites

From the Egypt State Information Service (FULL ARTICLE)

The head of the Supreme Council of Antiquities on Thursday 20/8/2009 unveiled restoration work under way at one of Egypt’s most famous synagogues, a project he denied was meant to assuage Jewish anger at the country’s culture minister.

The Egyptian government has rallied around Culture Minister Farouk Honsni, but Zahi Hawwas, the head of the Council said the decision to restore the Moses Ben Maimon Synagogue in Cairo had nothing to do with Hosni’s candidacy.

“I believe these rumors were started to harm Hosni’s bid to become the next director general of the UNESCO,” said Hawwas. “The Jewish monuments are Egyptian monuments … they are part of us and part of our culture”, he said

He added that the Ministry spends L.E. 700m annually on the restoration and development of archaeological sites, especially the ones which were damaged after the earthquake of October 1992.

This seems to be part of a trend I’ve noticed over the last 18 months or so, highlighting SCA work on post – Pharaonic sites, such as the Rosetta Museum (highlighting the Ottoman heritage in the city), the rebuild of the Abu Haggag mosque in Luxor and the long term Islamic Cairo projects, the last of which was first mooted back in the early 2000′s, but has only recently really begun to make an widely publicised impact.

It will be interesting to see how this develops, and whether this will mean a long term broadening of the SCA’s focus, and the implications of that for Pharaonic era monuments and artifacts.

 

Seti I Before Hathor (B7)

This week, from the birthplace of Egyptology, the zenith of Pharaonic art…

 

Egypt warns pharaohs’ tombs could disappear

AFP – Wednesday, August 19

LUXOR, Egypt (AFP) – - The ornate pharaonic tombs in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings are doomed to disappear within 150 to 500 years if they remain open to tourists, the head of antiquities has warned.

Zahi Hawass said humidity and fungus are eating into the walls of the royal tombs in the huge necropolis on the west bank of the Nile across from Luxor, which is swamped daily by several thousand tourists.

Poor ventilation and the breath of the hordes of visitors are causing damage to the carvings and painted decorations inside the tombs, he told journalists on a tour of the royal necropolis on Monday.

“The tombs (in the Valley of the Kings and nearby Valley of the Queens) which are open to visitors are facing severe damage to both colours and the engravings,” Hawass said.

“The levels of humidity and fungus are increasing because of the breath of visitors and this means that the tombs could disappear between 150 and 500 years.”

The Valley of the Kings and Valley of the Queens, where pharaonic royalty was mummified, is home to the tombs of legendary pharaohs such as the boy king Tutenkhamun and Queen Nefertiti.

Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities have taken a series of measures to protect the tombs, including setting up new ventilation systems, restricting the number of visitors and closing some tombs.

Hawass said the authorities have also decided “to close some tombs definitively to tourists and replace them by identical replicas,” including those of Tutenkhamun, Nefertiti and Seti I.

“A team of experts is currently using laser technology to examine these tombs in order to build the replicas… which would then open to visitors in a place near the Valley of the Kings,” Hawass said.

Link to full article

The idea of building exact replicas of the most visited tombs has long been suggested, though this is perhaps one of the most concrete statements I have come across so far that the SCA is seriously looking into giving this idea the go ahead.

 

Sarcopgagus of Nectanebo II – Last Native Egyptian Pharaoh

This weeks video, examining the sarcophagus of Nectanebo II (Cat. No. EA10) in the Egyptian Sculpture Gallery at the British Museum. I have wanted to make a piece on the sarcophagus for this blog for a long time now, as I feel it’s historical importance is often overlooked, as marking the end of an era, and in some ways an entire culture. I’ve always found this piece to be profoundly moving.

To practicalities, I do apologise in advance for the rather poor delivery on this video, as I had about 10 minutes to mentally go through the presentation before plunging in.  C’est la vie!

Next week, the video shall not feature an object from the British Museum collection, but somewhere else, whose collection is completely and utterly new for me, having never visited the institution in question before in my life.  It’s a very exciting time for me!

 

Objects in the Egyptian Sculpture Gallery – British Museum

Recently my partner has been active on producing videos for Youtube, so I have decided to produce a series of videos, each focusing on an individual object from the Ancient Egyptian collection of the British Museum, starting with it’s sculpture gallery.  Hopefully this will help lift this blog out of it’s neglect, for which I truly am sorry!

 

Glorious Technicolor

I have finally got round to getting some of my photos on-line, thanks to Flickr. You can find them here. I’ve licensed them under a Creative Commons licence, so feel free to use them for any non-commercial work you wish, just credit me as the source.

As Flickr limit your upload to 100mb per month, I’ve only been able to get photos from Abydos and the Ramesseum on-line so far, but more will follow.

 

Revering The Ancestors : A Duty To The Past

I’ve written on here before concerning the exceedingly black image that most of contemporary society has of Ancient Egypt. A lot of these views are based on old stereotypes from Hollywood, the press hysteria over the “Mummy’s Curse” surrounding the tomb of Tutankhamun (a.k.a. “King Tut”) and views based on the myths and folktales of an entirely different culture (I.e. Exodus).

Archaeology and study of Egyptian literature and administrative documents long ago dispelled these black myths, but the public perception lingers. This may be because that much of work done in translation and excavation is published in journals and books that are largely inaccessible and undesirable to the general public because of it’s highly academic nature, and many of the specialist publications are also not available in more general bookstores. Meanwhile increasing amounts of information come from TV, whose study of Egyptian culture is limited to Hollywood blockbusters or embarrassingly bad “edutainment” documentaries that focus on the sensational.

However, what good is research if it’s huge advances in understanding utterly pass by the general population, whom still cling the notions of the sneering Pharaoh keeping his slaves in line with the lash?

I am interested in getting some views and comments on this, so please debate!