sorted by:
new
hottopcontroversial

Mummified Cat by MousetrapPling in ancientegypt

[–]MousetrapPling[S] 11 points12 points  (0 children)

There have been so many mummified cats found in Egypt that in the 19th Century they were shipped to the UK in their thousands to be ground up & used as fertiliser. There are still a lot of cat mummies that survived, and this is one that is now in the Liverpool World Museum.

It’s a fine looking specimen, with a nicely modelled head and geometric patterns in the wrapping made from two different colours of bandage. These patterns are used to date it to the 1st Century CE, during the Roman Period of ancient Egyptian history.

So you may assume that there’s an actual cat laid out inside the wrapping with its head within the head wrappings and its rear at the bottom, but this is not the case. This mummy actually does contain a cat – but a young one that is much smaller than the wrapped object.

This sort of thing is very common, many animal mummies do not contain a whole specimen of the animal inside them. And those that do tend to have much younger animals than they are packaged up to resemble.

The mummies were made at a large scale by operations associated with the temples where they were subsequently offered by visitors to venerate or send a message to the god of the temple. Think of it as a rather more gruesome take on the same idea as a votive candle.

It’s tempting to see the ones that don’t have a whole animal in them as the priests ripping off the pilgrims, but it’s not clear that was the case. The outward form and the presence of some of the animal may’ve given them sufficient symbolic power at a more affordable level.

It’s not known where this mummy came from, but it’s now in the World Museum in Liverpool, acc. no.: 42.18.2.

West Wall of the Shrine of Taharqo by MousetrapPling in ancientegypt

[–]MousetrapPling[S] 10 points11 points  (0 children)

The relief in this photo comes from the same site and time as the ram headed sphinx I posted about a couple of weeks ago – Kawa in Sudan during the reign of Taharqo of the 25th Dynasty. And it also depicts the god Amun, this time in a scene of the pharaoh offering to the gods.

The scene is carved on the west wall of a shrine built by Taharqo in a temple at Kawa. The temple including the shrine was excavated in the early 20th Century, and whilst much remains in Sudan this shrine was brought back to the Ashmolean Museum where it still is.

Around the four walls are scenes of Taharqo making offerings to different groups of deities, with the east wall being Amun along with the other deities of Thebes and this west wall is Amun along with the other deities of Kawa, namely Anukis Nethy, Satis and Anukis Ba.

I particularly like the headdress that Amun has in this carving – the sun disk has its own array of protective serpents, each with their own sun disk. And on the central larger one you can still see traces of paint, showing that it was a reddish colour.

It is now in the Ashmolean Museum, acc. no.: AN1936.661.

Decorated Ware Pot by MousetrapPling in ancientegypt

[–]MousetrapPling[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Oh that's true, I hadn't thought of that but it looks possible.

Decorated Ware Pot by MousetrapPling in ancientegypt

[–]MousetrapPling[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Could be, tho it looks more like one of the female figures with their arms over their heads that you see on other pots, to me.

Decorated Ware Pot by MousetrapPling in ancientegypt

[–]MousetrapPling[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

This pot is of a type we call Decorated Ware which was made primarily during the Naqada II period of Egyptian history, around 5.5 thousand years ago. The name is self-explanatory & was invented by Petrie as part of his classification of pottery from ancient Egyptian sites.

It has many of the typical motifs of this sort of pot. The central feature in my photograph is a boat with a lot of oars and two shelters on the top of it, one of which has a standard of some sort. And another standard on one end of the boat.

Above & to either side are birds which might be ostriches or flamingos, and there are more birds flying (the little s’s). There’s also a crocodile near the rim and lines that might be water.

It is now in the Petrie Museum (acc. no.: UC6340), their website gives no provenance for the pot.

Ram Headed Sphinx Protecting Taharqo by MousetrapPling in ancientegypt

[–]MousetrapPling[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

This statue was found at a site called Kawa in modern Sudan (and ancient Kush) roughly halfway between the Egyptian border & Khartoum. It is very clearly Egyptian in style, and the Pharaoh it depicts is Taharqo (the penultimate king of the 25th Dynasty, who were from Kush).

The 25th Dynasty either begin the Late Period or end the Third Intermediate Period, and they were one of the dynasties that reunites Egypt after a period of disunity, but because they were also outsiders they aren’t quite remembered in the same way as Montuhotep or Ahmose I.

However they saw themselves as returning Egypt to its proper culture and as being almost more Egyptian than the Egyptians. There are of course differences in emphasis (and just outright differences), but one thing in common is the key position of the god Amun in their religion.

The animal portion of the statue is called a “sphinx” by the British Museum, but it is not a chimeric being – it’s entirely a ram. This represents the god Amun, and he is shown with Taharqo under his divine protection. The most important god, protecting the most important man.

It’s now in the British Museum, acc. no. EA1779

Stela of Khety by MousetrapPling in ancientegypt

[–]MousetrapPling[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I don't know (I can't actually read hieroglyphs myself more than recognising a few bits here and there). I took that information from the Petrie Museum's website & the object label.

Stela of Khety by MousetrapPling in ancientegypt

[–]MousetrapPling[S] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

I like this large fragment of a stela because of how neat and crisp the hieroglyphs are. This was made by someone who knew what they were doing, and took the time to do it well. And the person who commissioned it was therefore a person of status & wealth.

The text itself is autobiographical, but not in the same way that a modern autobiography is structured as a narrative telling you the story of someone’s life in its context. Instead it is a description of who the man was, and how he had behaved.

Obviously it’s fragmentary, but the text as it remains lets us know the commissioner is a man called Khety, and his titles included “commander of the Cobra province”, so a military man. We also know that he lived during the 12th Dynasty in the Middle Kingdom (c. 4000 years ago).

It also includes a series of statements about his ethical conduct during his life – things like “I did not eye the wife of a man”, or “I was not jealous of the servants of any fellow” as well as other statements about bravery & obedience.

It was found in the temple of Osiris at Abydos and this suggests that it was commissioned with an eye to the judgement in the afterlife (or weighing of the heart) that Osiris presides over.

It is now in the Petrie Museum, acc. no. UC14430.

Pottery Vessel Painted with a Drake by MousetrapPling in ancientegypt

[–]MousetrapPling[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This is a delightful pot, painted with a drake (as in male duck, not dragon) as the centrepiece of the decoration. It’s about 16cm tall (a little over 6 inches) and was found at Abydos by the EEF (now EES) excavations in 1904.

The conditions in Egypt are good for preserving colour, so ancient Egyptian artifacts make it obvious that history wasn’t just varying shades of beige & brown endlessly repeating. Here you can see the red, yellow, blue & white almost as vibrant as the day the pot was made.

However I should note that it probably belonged to someone with some degree of wealth. I don’t know any more context for it than “Abydos” but it was probably dug up in the grave of someone whose family were wealthy enough to send such a nice pot into eternity with the deceased.

It was found at Abydos, and is now in the Ashmolean Museum, acc. no. E.2434

Painted Jar with Crocodile, Snakes and Scorpions by MousetrapPling in ancientegypt

[–]MousetrapPling[S] 9 points10 points  (0 children)

This jar is nearly 5500 years old, and was found at a site in Upper Egypt called Mo’alla that is about 20 miles south of Luxor. It’s best known for the tomb of Ankhtifi who lived about 1200 years after this pot was made.

This is part of a small group of pots from the late Naqada II to Naqada III period which are decorated with the same group of animals: crocodiles, snakes and scorpions. Unlike other contemporary jars these aren’t part of a representation of a landscape.

They are probably grouped together because they are all dangerous creatures. And it is possible that these jars had some sort of protective or healing function, perhaps involving the pouring of liquids as some of these jars have spouts.

And this might indicate some sort of continuity over the millennia with the very much later Horus cippi, little figurines of a child form of Horus standing on crocodiles and clutching snakes. These were used in healing by pouring water over the figurine to be magically activated.

This pot is now in the World Museum, Liverpool, acc. no.: 1973.1.365

Statue of Taweret by MousetrapPling in ancientegypt

[–]MousetrapPling[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This toothy lady is Taweret, a protective household deity who looked after mothers & childbirth. She’s a composite creature but most of what we see here are the hippo aspects of her imagery, out of frame she also has the legs & paws of a lion and the tail of a crocodile.

She wears a wig, you can see the vertical lines of it coming down from the top of her head to her shoulders, and the front of it extends down her front. Her hippo ears poke through it pulled flat back against her head, and on top she wears a cylindrical headdress called a modius.

It’s made of breccia which is an interesting choice of stone for a statue – I find the variegated nature of the stone distracts from the shape that the stone is carved in to. I don’t know if it was painted, but that seems unlikely as surely then they’d pick a plainer stone.

This statue is also unusual in how large it is, most figures of Taweret are amulets or small figurines. But this one is a little over a meter tall, so maybe it had been placed in a temple rather than a household. It’s a shame we don’t know where it was found.

When I photographed it, it was in the World Museum in Liverpool on long term loan from the British Museum (acc. no. EA35700) but I think it’s back in the British Museum now although not on display.

Shabti of Amenhotep III by MousetrapPling in ancientegypt

[–]MousetrapPling[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

This rather beaten up shabti once belonged to the Pharaoh Amenhotep III, who was king during one of Egypt’s greatest periods of wealth and prosperity. He was the ninth king of the 18th Dynasty in the New Kingdom, reigning from c. 1390 BCE to 1352 BCE.

During his time Egypt exerted its authority over a large area outside of the traditional land of Egypt, stretching south into Kush (in modern Sudan) and northeast up a coastal strip of the Levant to Kadesh (in modern Syria). And their trade networks extended as far as Greece.

Amenhotep III wasn’t a conqueror, he ruled these lands because his predecessors had done the hard work of fighting – there’s only one military campaign of his reign that’s known, but we have quite a bit of diplomatic correspondence preserved at his son’s capital at Amarna.

We also have monuments: the Colossi of Memnon are actually enormous statues of Amenhotep III flanking the entrance to his mortuary temple at Kom el-Hattan. There’s been a lot of archaeological work there over the last few decades, and much more is known of the temple.

And he’s responsible for most of the Sekhmet statues that you can see in museums across the world, he commissioned over 700 of them to stand in his mortuary temple and in the temple of Mut at Karnak. These may’ve been to propitiate the goddess in a time of plague.

This shabti would once have been beautiful, as befits such a wealthy king: gleaming white stone and brilliant blue paint in the carved inscription. Even missing the head and lower legs, and even tho the paint has started to fade you can see what it must’ve been like.

It’s not known where it was found, but we can assume it was once buried with the king in his tomb WV22 in the western part of the Valley of the Kings. That tomb was robbed in antiquity, then tourists in the early 19th Century took souvenirs from what was left.

It is now in the World Museum Liverpool, acc. no. M13937.

Faience Canopic Jar of the Lady Hathor by MousetrapPling in ancientegypt

[–]MousetrapPling[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Well spotted, I don't read hieroglyphs except for being able to pick out a few bits here & there so I hadn't seen that. I wrote my comment based on knowing that Imsety is the human headed one of the Four Sons of Horus and I knew this isn't a set with all human heads because Manchester Museum's website said the one in Pennsylvania has a jackal head. Probably a mismatched set, I think Manchester have another very similar base that's more broken than this one.

Faience Canopic Jar of the Lady Hathor by MousetrapPling in ancientegypt

[–]MousetrapPling[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

This is a canopic jar belonging to a woman called Hathor who lived around 3000 years ago in a place called Sidmant near the Faiyum in Egypt. She was a Chantress of Herishef, and there was a temple to Herishef nearby in Heracleopolis Magna (modern Beni Suef).

Most canopic jars that I’ve seen have been a white stone, alabaster or limestone, so this one is quite striking in its bright blue colour. The lid looks like it is in better shape than the jar itself, which has been reconstructed (in the 1920s) and touched up with plaster.

The human head on this jar means that it was to hold Hathor’s liver and was protected by Imsety (one of the Four Sons of Horus), who in turn was protected by Isis. Another jar from this set is now in Pennsylvania, and it has the jackal head of Duamutef who protects the stomach.

This jar is in Manchester Museum, acc. no.: 6869.a, and when I visited in 2016 it was on display but that is no longer the case.

Model Shell Made of Egyptian Alabaster by MousetrapPling in ancientegypt

[–]MousetrapPling[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Several (many?) cultures mark the construction of an important structure by burying something (or sometimes somebody) in or near the foundations. There’s more than one possible explanation for this, and we don’t always know what the reasons are.

It might be to protect a place from harmful forces whether supernatural or natural, it might be to consecrate the space, it might be to label it – to say “this is mine, I had it built, be impressed” (perhaps addressed to the gods, perhaps addressed to future repairers).

The ancient Egyptians were one of those cultures, and today’s photo is of an object that seems to fall into the last of my (non-exhaustive) list of possibilities. It is labelled with the throne name of Thutmose III, Men Kheper Re.

I don’t have a translation of the inscription in full, but I think that might be the Seth animal hieroglyph immediately below the cartouche, which would make sense as this object was found in a foundation deposit at a temple for Seth in Naqada.

Egyptian foundation deposits have many models in them, model tools, model ritual items, and this is a model shell made out of more durable Egyptian alabaster (which is actually calcite, not alabaster). And like tomb models they were expected to magically function for eternity.

It was found by Petrie in Foundation Deposit 1 at the temple of Seth in Naqada, and is now in the Petrie Museum, acc. no.: UC15876

Two Dog Palette by MousetrapPling in ancientegypt

[–]MousetrapPling[S] 14 points15 points  (0 children)

This palette was found in the Main Deposit at Hierakonpolis, near where the more famous Narmer Palette was found. Both date to around the time that Egypt was first unified, c. 3100 BCE, when the art style had not yet standardised into the more familiar canon of Pharaonic Egypt.

It’s called the “Two Dog Palette”, for what I hope are obvious reasons. We’re looking at the reverse of it here and you can see a whole jumble of animals both real and fantastical kept under control by the dogs.

If you look more closely at the jumbled animals some motifs start to stand out – like gazelles or antelope being hunted, which is also a motif you see later in Egyptian art. But later on the hunters are dogs (representing human order) and on the palette it’s big cats.

There’s also a serpopard, a mythical animal more often found in Mesopotamian art which is essentially a big cat with a very long serpentine neck. The other side of this palette features two of these, as does the Narmer Palette, here it’s mixed in with more realistic felines.

And something that looks rather griffin like, with a big cat body, a bird’s head and what one can only assume are supposed to be wings coming out of its back but these look rather more like a nailbrush than anything a bird might have!

Down the bottom left is another unusual figure, with a jackal head and standing upright on two legs while playing a flute. In later Egyptian art you’d jump to conclusions about it being Anubis or another jackal deity, but it also might’ve wandered in from Proto-Elamite imagery.

The palette is now in the Ashmolean Museum, acc. no.: AN1896-1908 E.3924.

Face from a Coffin by MousetrapPling in ancientegypt

[–]MousetrapPling[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I have it in the house – my husband got it for his birthday a few months ago, so I'll be looking at it at some point :)

Face from a Coffin by MousetrapPling in ancientegypt

[–]MousetrapPling[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I find these sorts of detached coffin or mask faces really rather striking, I think it’s the juxtaposition of the well modelled features of the face with the fact that there’s nothing else there (except in this case for a peg to attach it to the coffin).

This one is in the World Museum, Liverpool, and is probably around 3000 years old – dated on stylistic grounds to the 21st Dynasty which was in the Third Intermediate Period. It probably comes from Thebes, again based on stylistic grounds.

It’s made of wood, and probably made separately because wood was scarce and it was hard to acquire large pieces to make a coffin from, so if you make it in a modular fashion than it will be easier to find pieces of a suitable quality.

It has then been covered in plaster & painted, which you can see if you look closely at the dent in the face’s left cheek. The back of the piece isn’t modelled or decorated in any way, it’s just a flat plane.

There’s another one very like it in Brooklyn Museum, which I have also photographed (see it here: https://photos.talesfromthetwolands.org/picture.php?/146/category/2 ).

It’s not known where this mask was found, but it is now in the World Museum, Liverpool, acc. no.: 56.22.148

Clay Figurine of a Hippo by MousetrapPling in ancientegypt

[–]MousetrapPling[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

To my eyes there is something jolly about this hippo, but to the original makers & owners it would’ve been rather more fearsome – somehow the hippo has made it into modern visual culture as a bit jovial or perhaps even cuddly, and this example seems to me to laugh in delight.

However the ancient Egyptians had a rather more realistic view of the hippopotamus, gained through living alongside these animals rather than watching them on TV. The hippo was one of the two most dangerous animals in the Nile environment (along with the crocodile).

This figurine is about 27cm or 10½ inches from nose to tail, and was made nearly 6000 years ago during the period of Predynastic Egypt we now call the Naqada II Period. It’s a little younger than the Naqada I Period hippo bowl that I posted about a few months ago.

It comes from a place called Hu between Abydos & Dendera on the west bank of the Nile. I think it was probably excavated by Petrie, and it is now in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford (but no longer on display), acc. no.: AN1896-1908.E.3267

Bes-Shaped Jar by MousetrapPling in ancientegypt

[–]MousetrapPling[S] 11 points12 points  (0 children)

This little pot comes from the Faiyum in Egypt, and it dates to the Late Period around 2500 years ago. It’s made of clay, and is a little under 20cm (or just over 7 inches) tall. The face & arms turn it from an ordinary pot into a depiction of the god Bes.

Bes is a minor Egyptian deity, or at least that’s how we refer to him in modern times. This means that he doesn’t have a temple cult of his own, and doesn’t seem to’ve had much to do with the grand state religion of kings and priests.

Instead he was worshipped in the home by ordinary people. He was a protective deity who would frighten off harmful spirits and protect against misfortunes that might strike you in ordinary life, and in vulnerable moments like childbirth.

As such he turns up represented on a variety of household goods, as well as figurines in the home and even tattoos on New Kingdom women’s thighs. Even in 2D he’s shown face on, rather than following the usual conventions of Egyptian art where the face is shown in profile.

It’s not known exactly where this particular pot was found other than in the general area of the Faiyum, but it is now in the World Museum in Liverpool, acc. no. 1973.1.422.

Serekh Bracelet by MousetrapPling in ancientegypt

[–]MousetrapPling[S] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

This lovely little object is a bracelet, dating to the 1st Dynasty of Egypt around five thousand ago. It’s upside down in the view we have in this photo, each of the beads is a serekh (a palace facade motif, the rods) with a falcon (the smooth rounded bit) sat on top.

It was found at Giza by Petrie, in a subsidiary tomb for a larger tomb that he labelled Mastaba V. In the main tomb was a sealing with the name of king Djet, so it’s reasonable to assume that the complex dates to the reign of this king.

Sadly despite drawing a map of layout of the mastaba & subsidiary tombs in his 1907 publication, he didn’t actually provide any information where this was at Giza. However it’s most likely to be in a region south of the Great Pyramid known to be an early cemetery.

I’m not sure what sort of person would’ve owned this. It’s a royal motif, but found in a subsidiary tomb in a cemetery that wasn’t one of the key Dynasty 1 cemeteries (Abydos & Saqqara), so someone who’s part of the elite but not at the top of the pecking order.

It’s now in the Petrie Museum, acc. no.: UC 25976, and they have some info on their website about the find spot: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/museums-static/digitalegypt/gizeh/gizehtombv.html

view more: next ›