block statues A unique type of Egyptian sculpture that first appeared during the 12th Dynasty. The subject (almost always male) squats on the ground with his knees drawn up to his chest. In one type, arms, legs, and torso are enveloped in a cloak providing space for inscriptions.
burial cache A collection of items found stored and sealed together in or near a burial or tomb chamber for safekeeping.
burial shaft A deep rectangular pit usually dug vertically into the ground that was accessed through the roof of a tomb on ground level. The deceased body and burial goods were usually placed in a chamber at the bottom of the shaft.
canopic A vase, jar, chest, or other container that held one of the internal organs of a body removed during the mummification process. There were four canopic jars per set, one each for the liver, the stomach, the lungs, and the intestines.
chariotry The introduction of chariotry as a military unit and weapon in ancient Egypt, whereby chariots (light, open, two-wheel carriages pulled by horses) were used to carry riders into battle, occurred during the Hyksos invasion at the end of the Middle Kingdom. Chariots were effective for high speed, strength, and mobility during warfare and hunting.
cuneiform This term means “wedge shape,” referring to one of the earliest known systems of writing, which is characterized by imprints or wedge-shaped marks. It first appeared on tablets in Sumer from about 3100–2900 BCE.
Dynasty 0 (ca. 3100–2960 BCE) Refers to the transition period between the Predynastic and Early Dynastic Periods of ancient Egyptian history, also called Naqada III. It was a time of ongoing state formation and political unification where kings began to be present at the head of influential states.
faience More correctly known as “Egyptian faience,” this blue-green glaze is a nonclay ceramic of silica made from sand or crushed quartz. It was commonly used to make jewelry, amulets, scarabs, figurines, and vessels.
fingerbreadth A unit of measurement that is the approximate width of an adult human finger. It was used to measure length.
funerary goods Funerary objects or grave goods played an important part in Egyptian burial customs. The items that were placed in the tomb with the deceased were objects that could be used in the afterlife. Most of these goods were everyday objects: pots, chests, tools, baskets, furniture, amulets, statues, clothing, weapons, etc.
mortuary text A general term that encompasses various collections of text that deal with life after death and act as guidebooks to help the deceased ascend to the afterlife and become one with the gods. Examples include: Pyramid Texts, Coffin Texts, and the Book of the Dead.
mummy A naturally or artificially preserved deceased human or animal body that has been conserved through drying of the skin and organs.
Red Crown The crown of Lower Egypt worn by the king of that region. Its formal name was deshret.
sarcophagus A container used to protect a mummified body, generally made of stone.
shabti A funerary figurine placed in tombs as part of the grave goods to act as a substitute for the deceased in the afterlife by performing manual labor tasks. Many were inscribed with the name of their owner and a shabti spell.
solar cult The term cult (synonymous with ritual) in ancient Egypt refers to the religious actions people performed to interact with the gods. In temples, divine cult involved adoration of the gods and the presentation of offerings. Solar cult refers to the ritual worship of the sun as a god.
stela A standing stone or wood tablet used to mark a tomb or boundary that was normally decorated with inscriptions, reliefs, or paintings. Stelae could also be used as votive monuments set up by individuals to worship gods or as commemorative monuments to record special events.
vassal state A state that is owned or dominated by another state and subordinate to it.
White Crown The crown of Upper Egypt. Its formal name was hedjet.
The Greek historian Herodotus (fifth century BCE) and the Egyptian priest Manetho (third century BCE) recounted that a King Min or Menes was the first ruler of a unified Egypt. It took the archaeologist’s spade to expand that narrative and push the history of Egypt farther back in time. Two British Egyptologists, J. E. Quibell and F. W. Green, began their work in 1897 at Hierakonpolis in southern Upper Egypt. In the 1898–99 season, in a low mound on the northern part of the site, they discovered a pit dug below the floor of a temple. Hundreds of discarded temple furnishings dating to the late Prehistoric and Early Dynastic Periods had been carefully buried during a later temple renovation. Largely grouped by type were stone mace heads and palettes (such as the Scorpion Mace Head and Narmer Palette), metal and stone statues, ivory and faience figurines, a large pottery lion, and other objects. A lack of accurate records from the original excavation makes it difficult to date the pit, with suggestions ranging from the Old to the New Kingdoms. The importance of the find lay in the discovery of hitherto unknown rulers who predated the kings of the First Dynasty, and the subsequent proposal for a so-called “Dynasty 0.” The most famous monarch of Dynasty 0 is King Scorpion.
Hierakonpolis, the “City of the Hawk,” was home to the earliest rulers of a unified Egypt. The best known of these is King Narmer.
Some things you just don’t throw away. When priests deposited the Narmer Palette into a pit in the floor of a temple under reconstruction, they were burying one of their most iconic royal monuments. From the White Crown worn on one side and the Red Crown on the other, to the bull’s tail attached to his kilt, the king is sporting regalia that would be seen on royal representations for three millennia.
MANETHO
ca. 323–246 BCE
Egyptian priest
JAMES EDWARD QUIBELL
1867–1935
British archaeologist
FREDERICK WILLIAM GREEN
1869–1949
British archaeologist
Ronald J. Leprohon
One of the most famous discoveries from Hierakonpolis, the Narmer Palette depicts the king vanquishing his enemies.
When is a tomb not a tomb in ancient Egypt? When the body is missing—or was never there in the first place. This is the great mystery of Queen Hetepheres’ tomb at Giza. As the wife of King Snefru and the mother of King Khufu, Hetepheres should have enjoyed an elaborate subsidiary pyramid, perhaps near her husband’s pyramid at Dahshur. But Harvard University–Boston Museum of Fine Arts Expedition staff stumbled upon her burial shaft at Giza, sunk almost 100 ft. (30.48 m) below the limestone bedrock, just east of her son’s Great Pyramid at Giza. No superstructure, no pyramid, no chapel. The year was 1925, and expedition director George Reisner was teaching at Harvard when his team made the find: piles of deteriorated wood and gilded furniture, pottery, metal vessels, and jewelry. Meticulous documentation over the next two years allowed for stunning restorations of some of the oldest furniture from the ancient world. But a canopic chest with organic matter still in liquid form after 4,600 years was all that remained of the queen. Was she moved here from Dahshur? Was she buried in one of Khufu’s queens’ pyramids? Were plans changed due to temple and causeway construction up on the surface? Was this a funeral deposit, not a burial? A definitive explanation awaits.
Perhaps the greatest Giza discovery, this deep burial shaft and chamber revealed hundreds of deteriorated objects, plus one empty alabaster sarcophagus. But where was Queen Hetepheres originally buried?
George Reisner loved detective novels and his intriguing theory about the Hetepheres burial (original tomb at Dahshur, robbery, then a secret reburial at Giza but with the body destroyed, unbeknown to Khufu) has all the makings of one of his beloved thrillers. This romantic story is difficult for us to accept today, but no other explanation offered since has answered all the questions either.
QUEEN HETEPHERES
ca. 2550 BCE
Wife of Snefru, mother of Khufu, Fourth Dynasty
GEORGE REISNER
1867–1942
Director of the Harvard University–Boston Museum of Fine Arts Expedition (23 archaeological sites over 42 years), Harvard professor and MFA curator.
Peter Der Manuelian
Hetepheres’ tomb contained many treasures, such as gilded furniture and jewelry—but no body.
Herbert Winlock couldn’t believe it. After all, the tomb had been looted in ancient times, and Georges Daressy had explored these cliffs in 1895. On March 17, 1920, the Metropolitan Museum expedition was just reclearing Theban Tomb 280 for drawing when flashlights aimed through a crack in a partially collapsed corridor illuminated a world in miniature—the world of Chancellor Meketre, who served under Middle Kingdom pharaohs Nebhepetre Mentuhotep through Amenemhat I. Meketre packed a side chamber of his tomb with intricately carved models of plastered and painted wood, intended to magically be provision for his afterlife: two models of a house facade with a tree-lined courtyard pool to be sure of a luxurious home life; model carpentry and weaving workshops to craft household fixtures; and, supplied from a model granary, a bakery-brewery to produce staple bread and beer. In a 5-ft. 9-in. (1.75-m)-long model, Meketre and his scribes sit on a pillared porch counting livestock, which, after fattening in a model stable, seem destined for the slaughterhouse model. Two half-life-size female offering-bearers deliver baskets of food and beer, complementing a smaller, four-person funeral procession. Twelve model boats complete the set to accommodate mundane and sacred afterlife journeys alike.
As ancient Egyptians anticipated the twilight of their years, they envisioned—sometimes quite literally—a model life in the next world.
In 1915 at Deir el-Bersha, the Harvard University–Museum of Fine Arts, Boston Expedition found the largest single set of wooden tomb models. Although ransacked by robbers, Tomb 10A (made for a provincial governor and his wife, both named Djehutynakht) contained at least 103 models, including offering-bearers; processions (soldiers, scribes, and officials); 8 granaries; 3 bakery-breweries; plowing, planting, and herding scenes; woodworking, weaving, and (rare) brick-making operations; 9 cattle feedings; and a fleet of 58 boats.
GEORGES DARESSY
1864–1938
French Egyptologist
HARRY BURTON
1879–1940
English archaeologist and photographer; photographed the Meketre discovery
HERBERT WINLOCK
1884–1950
American Egyptologist and archaeologist, director of the Metropolitan Museum Expedition that discovered the Meketre models.
Nicholas Picardo
This group of models portray the ideal afterlife, with all the deceased’s worldly needs forever satisfied.
In 1881, Gaston Maspero, the director of the Egyptian Antiquities Service, was alerted by the appearance of new royal objects on the antiquities market that a previously unexcavated burial had been discovered. Local tomb robbers had unearthed a rich tomb in the rocky cliffs at Deir el-Bahari a decade earlier and had been looting it ever since. Subsequently cleared by the Service, the tomb was originally constructed as the final resting place for the mummies and funerary goods of the family of the powerful High Priest of Amun, Pinudjem I, and his successors, who ruled as kings in southern Egypt during the 21st Dynasty. It was later used for the reburial of many of the greatest New Kingdom pharaohs, including the founder of the 18th Dynasty, Ahmose I; the warrior-king Thutmose III; and Ramesses II, one of the longest-reigning pharaohs in Egyptian history. Altogether more than 40 mummies of kings, queens, royal children, and members of the extended family of priest-king Pinudjem had been interred in the narrow corridors and two small chambers of the tomb. The New Kingdom mummies had been brought together sometime in the 22nd Dynasty, after their original tombs in the Valley of the Kings had been plundered, and reinterred in the Pinudjem family’s well-hidden tomb for safekeeping.
Rampant tomb robbery during the later New Kingdom led the ancient Egyptian authorities to gather up and deposit many royal mummies in secondary burial caches.
Seventeen years after the amazing discovery of the Deir el-Bahari mummy cache, a second group of royal mummies was found, reburied in the tomb of Pharaoh Amenhotep II in the Valley of the Kings. It contained the remains of ten more New Kingdom rulers, including Amenhotep II and III, Merneptah (son and successor of Ramesses the Great), and possibly the female pharaoh Tausret, who ruled at the end of the 19th Dynasty.
ÉMILE BRUGSCH
1842–1930
German-born Egyptologist. Maspero’s assistant and excavator of the Deir el-Bahari mummy cache
GASTON CAMILLE CHARLES MASPERO
1848–1916
French Egyptologist and director of the Egyptian Antiquities Service (1881–1886, 1899–1914)
Rachel Aronin
Built for Pinudjem I (right) and his family (left) the tomb was later used as a safe reburial place for over 40 royal mummies.
The reign of Senwosret III (1878–1841 BCE) epitomized the character of one of Egypt’s stablest dynasties and had profound, lasting effects on government and society. The son of King Senwosret II and Queen Khnumetneferhedjet I, he was the fifth of eight kings comprising the 12th Dynasty in the Middle Kingdom. He married at least three wives, fathering five daughters. His successor, Amenemhat III (1844–1797 BCE), with whom he eventually shared the throne to ensure a smooth transition, was probably also his offspring.
Senwosret successfully initiated aggressive foreign and domestic policies. He annexed at least one area of Palestine, and Egyptian occupation of Nubia intensified substantially under his rule. Expanding old fortresses and building new ones beyond the Second Nile Cataract, he took firm control of the region and established a frontier farther south than that of his predecessors. The military embarked upon brutal campaigns to quash the growing power of the Kushite Nubians beyond the Third Cataract at the site of Kerma. Senwosret commemorated these exploits on boundary stelae at several forts, claiming to have burned crops, slaughtered livestock, and taken women and children captive.
Domestically, Senwosret III may have invented “Big Government.” He adjusted the administrative districting of the country, added new bureaus at the capital, and brought the nation’s labor force under tight state control. This was a time of burgeoning bureaucracy during which the government’s regulatory arm stretched more pervasively into Egypt’s provinces and towns. The king’s statues represent him often with heavy, weary expressions as if to convey how taxing his efforts on behalf of the country were. However, whether the notably big ears on many statues denote a receptive royal listener or actual physiological features is debatable.
Senwosret III made an unusual decision to commission mortuary monuments at two locations. A traditional pyramid complex in the north at Dashur complements a subterranean tomb in the south at Abydos that foreshadows later tombs of the Valley of the Kings. It is not clear where he ultimately was buried; no mummy has been discovered. Senwosret’s accomplishments secured him notoriety in history in several ways. Many centuries later, Classical historians in Egypt heard of a legendary King Sesostris, a figure clearly modeled on Senwosret III, but whose supposed achievements include some actually undertaken by his dynastic ancestor Senwosret I (1971–1926 BCE) and Ramesses II (1279–1213 BCE) of the New Kingdom’s 19th Dynasty.
Nicholas Picardo
Discovered in 1887 by peasants digging for fertilizer at Tell el-Amarna, site of the ancient capital of King Akhenaten, the Amarna Letters recount the relationship between the pharaoh and the major rulers of the time, along with lesser vassal states in the Levant. Written in cuneiform script on clay tablets, the correspondence covers a period of around 25 years in the late 18th Dynasty. The powerful kings of Egypt, Mitanni, Babylon, and Assyria addressed one another as “brothers,” as in a family, while the subservient city-state rulers addressed the pharaoh as “my lord.” The main topics in the letters between the major powers were trade and diplomatic missions, marriages, and giving gifts. Sometimes one ruler felt slighted by another’s inferior offering—for example, the king of Mitanni grumbled to the recently widowed Queen Tiye that her husband Amenhotep III had promised him solid gold statues, but her son Akhenaten only sent wooden statues covered in gold. Vassals assured the pharaoh of their eternal loyalty while accusing their neighbors of rebelliousness. Akhenaten’s inactivity on these petty squabbles has occasioned the accusation of his not caring for state affairs but may have simply been sound politics, because he refused to meddle in local disputes.
The Amarna Letters are the diplomatic correspondence between the superpowers of the ancient Near East and their vassals in the 14th century BCE.
The Amarna Letters indicate that the vassals farther away from Egypt felt particularly burdened by their oath of loyalty to the pharaoh. The king of the Hittites, at the peak of his power, pressured the northern city-state rulers in the Levant to either side with him or the Egyptian king. Some vassals honored their original pledge to distant Egypt, while others switched allegiance to the menacing new presence on their doorstep.
QUEEN TIYE
ca. 1398–1338 BCE
Wife of Amenhotep III
AMENHOTEP III
reigned 1390–1352 BCE
Ninth pharaoh of the 18th Dynasty
AKHENATEN
reigned 1352–1336 BCE
Son of Amenhotep III
Ronald J. Leprohon
The Amarna Letters provide a fascinating insight into international relations during the 14th century BCE.
The painted bust of Nefertiti, Akhenaten’s principal queen, now belongs in the permanent collection of the Neues Museum in Berlin, Germany. Not universally considered the best likeness among her surviving sculptures, its fame rests in large measure on the lively impression the well-preserved painting makes, along with the inlaid eyes—one of which is now missing—which has inspired theories about the bust’s function: did the master carve it as a model to be copied for other statues of the queen? Or did it play some role in the funerary cult? The use of red-brown paint, in contrast to the conventional yellow for women’s skin, is analogous to sculptors’ use of red-brown quartzite for other statues of royal women at Tell el-Amarna. This anomaly may reflect the role the queen and her daughters played in the solar cult as practiced by Akhenaten: they worshipped in the open, “caressed” by the sun’s rays. Symmetry is characteristic of Nefertiti’s facial features in her statuary. Sculptors used a grid based on the “fingerbreadth,” an Egyptian measure of length (3/4 in. / 1.875 cm), to design likenesses of her. Whether the bust is a portrait based on Nefertiti’s actual appearance is not known. Subtle signs of aging around the eyes suggest that the bust was made later instead of earlier in the reign of her husband.
The life-size bust of Queen Nefertiti wearing her tall blue crown is recognized worldwide as a symbol of ancient Egypt.
On December 6, 1912, German archaeologists excavated the bust along with other sculptures, including a deliberately smashed bust of Akhenaten, from the home of master sculptor Thutmosis at Tell el-Amarna. Following the division of the finds, both busts went to James Simon, holder of the license to excavate. After he ceded his portion to the German state, the queen’s bust was exhibited publicly for the first time in 1923; calls for its return to Egypt, which continue to surface from time to time, soon followed.
THUTMOSIS
ca. 1350 BCE
Master sculptor
JAMES SIMON
1863–1932
Benefactor of Berlin’s museums
LUDWIG BORCHARDT
1863–1938
Architectural historian and archaeologist; director of the excavations that uncovered the bust of Nefertiti
M. Eaton-Krauss
Egyptian sculptors based their designs on the fingerbreadth grid. This bust may have been used as a guide for other portraits.
Because the tomb in which Tutankhamun was laid to rest was not originally planned for a king, it had to be enlarged when he died to fulfill the minimum requirements for a pharaoh’s burial. Two types of equipment comprised the “treasure”: objects used by the king, both before and after his accession, and items essential for his journey to, and continued existence in, the hereafter. The first category included clothing, sandals, jewelry, furniture, games, and weapons. Some of these objects were inscribed for Tutankhaten, as the king was named at birth. The items for use in the afterlife included four gilded shrines inscribed with mortuary texts, the quartzite sarcophagus, three nested coffins (the innermost made of solid gold), the gold mummy mask, canopic jars, shabtis, food and drink, and amulets for magical protection. The contribution of the tomb to Egyptian political history was meager. Examination of the mummy showed that Tutankhamun, who had died as a teenager, was a royal family member, not a usurper as some scholars had supposed, and wine jar labels documented his reign as lasting for nearly a decade, while the scene and texts on the gold throne confirmed that his wife was the third eldest daughter of Akhenaten and Nefertiti.
The discovery of the virtually intact tomb of King Tutankhamun was celebrated as the most spectacular archaeological find ever made; nearly a century later, it continues to inspire awe.
After five uneventful years working for Lord Carnarvon in the Valley of the Kings, Howard Carter struck pay dirt on November 4, 1922, with the discovery of the steps that led down into King Tutankhamun’s tomb. The clearance took nearly a decade to complete. Although some categories of objects in the “treasure” (such as archery equipment, chariots, musical instruments, and model boats) have been published, the majority still await scholarly study.
TUTANKHAMUN
reigned 1336–1327 BCE
The son (or nephew) of Akhenaten, the teenage pharaoh ruled during the 18th Dynasty
GEORGE EDWARD STANHOPE MOLYNEUX HERBERT, FIFTH EARL OF CARNARVON
1866–1923
Wealthy English gentleman and art collector; his death from an infected mosquito bite was attributed to the “curse” of the pharaoh
HOWARD CARTER
1874–1939
English draftsman and archaeologist
M. Eaton-Krauss
Treasures found in Tutankhamun’s tomb included items from his earthly life and objects intended to assist him in the afterlife.
The Karnak Cachette was a deposit of about 800 stone statues and 17,000 bronzes, buried with a motley collection of other objects in a huge pit more than 49 ft. (15 m) deep in the courtyard between Pylons 7 and 8 on the north–south axis of Karnak Temple. Georges Legrain discovered it on December 26, 1903; groundwater hampered the clearance, which was not completed until June 1907. The stone statues date to a wide time span (from the Fifth Dynasty to the Ptolemaic Period), but those older than the New Kingdom are comparatively few while none are younger than the first century BCE. Statue types run the gamut from striding and seated to kneeling and prostrate figures; there are also many block statues. New Kingdom pharaohs are well represented while priests of the Karnak Temple predominate among the later sculptures. One of the few statues of women depicts Thutmose III’s mother. Nearly all the bronzes are small figures of Osiris, god of the dead, which worshippers left in the temple during the Late Period. The objects were buried, all at the same time, apparently following a house-keeping action; since they had been dedicated in the temple, they could not simply be tossed out. This probably occurred in the mid-first century BCE, although a much later date (ca. 330 CE) has also been proposed.
The Karnak Cachette is not unique, but is certainly the largest deposit yet found in Egypt of statuary cleared from a temple and buried.
Before Georges Legrain died, he managed to complete three volumes of the Egyptian Museum’s catalog with about one-third of the stone statues from the Cachette. Since 1917, a number of Egyptologists have studied and published additional pieces. In 2006, a joint French-Egyptian project was initiated to compile an inventory of all the finds. This resulted in the posting of a continually updated database, accessible online since November 2009, at www.ifao.egnet.net/bases/cachette
GEORGES LEGRAIN
1865–1917
French archaeologist who supervised excavations and restorations at Karnak Temple
M. Eaton-Krauss
Statues discovered at the Karnak Cachette include this one of Thutmose III’s mother.
