Abstracts

Patricia Berg: Travelling in the texts from Deir el-Medina

Journeys made by the Egyptians to foreign countries and inside Egypt occur in the preserved texts from the Old Kingdom onwards. Many of the literary tales have a protagonist performing some kind of journey as a part of the main plot. As literary tales, these are presumably fictional, where the travelling is used as a way to express a transition, a “crossing of a border” from the real world into a fictional one. Except for the literary tales also non-literary texts have been preserved from the Old Kingdom onwards, which mentions different forms of travelling. The literary texts reflects on cultural knowledge; what kind of fictional journey related issues the villagers were acquainted with, whereas non-literary texts, especially private letters, convey real life knowledge an attitudes towards travelling and the foreign, which presumably was quite different from how it was presented in the literary tales.

This paper forms a part of my doctoral thesis at Helsinki University, which provisional title is “Perspectives on travelling in literary and non-literary texts from the New Kingdom”. The purpose of my thesis is to examine perspectives on travelling during the New Kingdom as referred to in the texts from Deir el-Medina. Texts from other contexts are planned to be used to exemplify and strengthen the research results, but since most of the preserved non-literary texts from the New Kingdom were found at Deir el-Medina my thesis mainly belongs to the research field of this village. Using this material I intend to present a picture of the attitudes among the Egyptians towards the foreign, as these attitudes are to be found in the texts. In a broader context these attitudes can give an insight into the Egyptians relations to themselves, their families and the society they lived in. Further I intend to compare perspective of travelling as it is present in ancient Egyptian literary texts versus non-literary texts.

Debora Cilli: A new Corpus of Hieratic Ostraca from the Kings’ Valley (KV47)

The Basel digging project MISR “Mission Siptah-Ramses X”, led by the Ägyptologisches Seminar, follows a new research-method in the Kings’ Valley that has been active since 1998. For the first time ever, it envelops the documentation of a royal tomb, which is inscribed with religious texts (Siptah’s: KV 47) while it concurrently excavates the neighbouring vicinity. It was precisely from this area; enclosed between the surrounding cliff and the modern path across Siptah’s grave that, between 2000 and 2005, a great quantity of late 19th dynasty tokens were unearthed.

This corpus has been the object of the investigation in my Ph.D. project. The aim of my contribution to this congress will be to state the results gathered during the course of processing all the available data.

There is something I believe worthy of consideration: the area, where the artifacts originate from has undergone numerous vicissitudes. During the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, it was excavated and turned over in search of undisclosed tombs. These activities and consequent displacements of detritus hindered findings from having any stratigraphic context. Consequently, a part from one single ostracon, that has been found in situ by the edge of the digging area, the corpus is marked out by an ‘erratic’ nature.

Another peculiarity is that these documents display a rich variety of textual types and figurative typologies. Out of practical necessity due to their abundance and wide-ranging disposition, I had to restrict my study to the textual pieces. More precisely, I directed my attention on the inscriptions that could be labeled as specifically administrative (i.e. topics like: names lists, registers, delivery of supplies, countermarks etc). Consequently, the other categories have been documented into a catalogue but do not enjoy any critical interpretation.

The prosopographic analysis allows accurate dating inside a homogeneous time window (1204-1190 b. C.) for 90% of the samples. This chronology is also verified by the explicit mention of a regnal year inside the body of some of the inscriptions. It can be inferred that if the over 100-year digging activity compromised the findings, it did not elicit the incorporation of material belonging to foreign areas.

Moreover, the paleographic similarities inside this corpus make it reasonable to assume that a single head-scribe and few other wordsmiths (complying with his ‘muster’ handwriting) might have been responsible for compiling it. This basic statement, in concert with archaeological confirmations, allows the researcher to impart that the ostraca originate from the same archive/office. This should not be intended as a metaphor, but as a physical place that, because of the dating of documents, can be connected, most likely, to king Siptah’s reign and was settled in the same area (defined in the digging log as “Areal A”) where the ostraca have been unearthed.

This point of view is reinforced by another aspect: the documents pertaining to the delivery of food or objects indicate a process of handing over what must have transpired directly in the Kings’ Valley, and not in the village of Deir el-Medine. The nature and peculiarity of those goods and the modality of their transmission echo favorably in accordance with this proposition.

If we put forth these considerations inside the bigger frame of the late 19th dynasty context, they appear to be very probable. A strengthening of bureaucratic practice marks, in fact, this period. This is evident in the economy of the inscriptions and finds a confirmation also in the preference granted to potsherds and limestone chips (instead of papyrus) for the administrative recording. In these conditions, assuming the presence of a structure that achieves the function of archive/office ‘on the field’ is a logical consequence.

Conclusively, we are dealing with a coherent corpus that shows A direct and indirect connection with the craftsmen’s work of cutting and decorating Pharaoh Siptah’s tomb. If the hypothesis is correct, we can proceed from this assumption that the findings, [object of my Ph.D. project] offer a complete documentation about its construction. These fragments are ostraca in full meaning, not brouillons, drafts.

Kathlyn M. Cooney: The Context of 20th and 21st Dynasty Theban Funerary Arts Production

Very little evidence for the commission and decoration of west Theban private tombs survives from the second half of the 20th Dynasty (K. M. Cooney, ‘Profit or Exploitation? The Production of Private Ramesside Tombs within the West Theban Funerary Economy’, Journal of Egyptian History 1 (2008)). Intriguingly, much of the documentation that does exist suggests occasional tomb robbery, the re-appropriation of funerary arts, and the re-use of coffins; however, there is ample evidence that the craftsmen of Deir el Medina were still producing coffins in large numbers during this period, including some very costly commissions. In this paper, I will examine the increasingly unstable social and economic context of funerary arts production during the 20th Dynasty, including the seemingly contradictory evidence of coffin reuse, on the one hand, and costly coffin commissions, on the other. My evidence includes a systematic examination of the west Theban textual data (including inventory texts, receipts, lawsuits, letters, absence lists, and tomb robbery papyri) as well as the funerary arts themselves (tombs, canopic jars, Books of the Dead, shabti figurines, and coffins that also date to the 21st dynasty). The consideration of this broad dataset will serve to elucidate the possible reactions, adaptations and defensive burial strategies employed by both consumers and artisans of the period.

Arlette David: Orality of Agreement, Literacy of Conflict: Legal Written Genres in Deir el-Medina

The legal material produced in Deir el-Medina comprises mainly documents concerning litigation before the local council or a person of authority, sometimes accompanied by an oracular procedure, unilateral promises under oath often made in the context of a dispute, wills and gifts registered before a court acting as notary or in the presence of witnesses. Other records do not represent legal documents, but are related to legal matters, such as reports of partitions of assets following inheritance or a couple's separation, private or administrative notes concerning various transactions, transfers and payments. Nowhere in this large corpus of texts is a true contract to be found, functioning as memorial and evidence of the agreement, as well as an operative fact having legal consequences; agreements remained verbal. The legal written repertoire in Deir el-Medina is thus limited mainly to litigation and to unilateral dispositions of assets recorded in public, probably in conflictual circumstances and in order to prevent disputes after the disponor’s death. A similar picture of restricted legal literacy emerges from the bulk of legal documents remaining from other sites and earlier periods: these are mainly records of conflicts debated in judicial or administrative forums, and private unilateral dispositions acted before an authority to prevent disputes over patrimony, based on the model of normative royal decrees regulating conflicts between administrations regarding reserved resources. Verbal contracts were apparently the norm, and the few contract-related pre-Ramesside documents represent mostly unilateral declarations and guarantees, or administrative records of transactions. Interestingly, studies related to legal literacy in the Ancient World show a different picture of the historic development of legal textual genres from that in pre-demotic Egypt. For instance, the first breach in general legal orality in Mesopotamia happens in the field of contracts, with a mass of protocols of verbal agreements, albeit not yet title-deeds. In Greece, legislation on new institutions represents the first step towards legal literacy; written contracts and wills emerged later, but writing remained peripheral in litigation in ancient Greece.

Rob Demarée: Some ”new” ostraca

Andreas Dorn: Pyramidia in Gräbern deponieren

In Hütte 19, einer der Arbeiterhütten östlich des Grabes Ramses’ X. im Tal der Könige, wurde Ostrakon KV 18/3.590 gefunden, auf dem die Aufbewahrung zahlreicher Pyramidia in verschiedenen Gräbern der Nekropole von Deir el-Medine erwähnt wird.

Der Text, der sich aufgrund der Fundumstände sowie durch die Nennung des Vorstehers der Mannschaft Nachemmut (vi) in die Regierungszeit Ramses’ IV. datieren lässt, weist neben seinem singulären Inhalt eine grosse chronologische Tiefe auf. Genannt sind unter anderem die Gräber der Vorfahren Nachemmuts, das Grab Sennedjems (i) und das seines Sohnes Chons (ii), die beide in der Regierungszeit Ramses’ II. lebten.

Weiter ist dem Text zu entnehmen, dass sich im Grab des Chons mehrere Pyramidia befinden sowie auch im Grab des Sennedjem und dass von diesen Pyramidia eines Chons gehört.

Genau diese Situation, wie sie hier geschildert wird, scheint bis in die Neuzeit bestanden zu haben, wie die Fundumstände des Pyramidions des Chons (Turin, Museo Egizio. Inv. Cat. 1622) nahe legen, das gemäss Bruyère im Bereich der Grabanlage Sennedjems bzw. Chons’ (TT 1) gefunden wurde. Die Tatsache, dass aus Deir el-Medine zahlreiche, fast intakt erhaltene Pyramidia stammen, lässt in Verbindung mit dem Text auf O. KV 18/3.590 die Vermutung zu, dass diese intakten Pyramidia nicht von ihrer ursprünglichen Position in fünf bis sechs Metern Höhe zu Boden gestürzt sind – dabei wären sie mit grosser Wahrscheinlichkeit stärker beschädigt worden –, sondern dass sie heruntergenommen und anschliessend in verschiedenen Gräbern bzw. Grabschächten aufbewahrt wurden.

Die möglichen Gründe, die zu dieser bisher nicht nachgewiesenen Praktik geführt haben, sollen näher untersucht werden. Zudem wird versucht, die anderen Besitzer von Pyramidia sowie deren Gräber zu identifizieren.

H.-W. Fisher-Elfert: A strike in the reign of Merenptah? (Pap. Berlin P. 23000 and P. 23301)

Presentation and preliminary interpretation of a convolute of papyrus fragments, recently restored in the Papyrussammlung of the Egyptian Museum Berlin. Although extremely fragmentary with only parts of sentences preserved, a dating in the reign of Merenptah is almost certain, as his birth name is mentioned more than once. Recto and verso refer to him and there are at least two passages mentioning a “passing of the guard posts” (zni n3 inbw.t) and once the “inspection of the guard post” which may refer to a hitherto unknown strike in this particular reign. A couple of personal names from the Deir el-Medinah community indicate a provenience from this spot. Two of the foremen of the gang and two chief of the Medjay are attested as well, which in the end may help dating the fragments in the early years of Merenptah.

Christopher Eyre: The Man whose Father is Still Alive, and the Younger Brother: Social Status and Kinship Categories

At the core of Deir el Medina studies lies the question of how this best documented of pharaonic Egyptian sites provides informant data for writing a social anthropology of pharaonic Egypt. My interest is not to focus on the unusual nature of that community – its eccentricities – but on the way in which documented behaviour there provides details of a picture that is not ideological, but that is focussed on the individual, and on the social and economic constraints that promoted or restrained the exercise of the personal identity of that individual. The concept that a man expected to pass on his offices to his son is so clichéd in the Egyptian inscriptional record that one does not consider hard what the practical implications of this are. The idea that only one son can succeed - the eldest living son - seems perfectly natural in the context of kingship. However the theme raises wider questions, throughout society, about the balance between kinship, meritocracy and social stratification based on the hereditary principle. This is a particular issue in the context of the patrimonial household as a socio-economic structural pattern, where the role of the head of the household as patron serves as the model of the leader in a hierarchical structure. The importance of kinship based and kinship modelled social hierarchies is a standard theme in cultural anthropological, and particularly micro-ethnological fieldwork, but it has been little applied in Egyptology, largely from the apparent intractability of Egyptian data for such low-level analysis. It is one of the surprises and disappointments of Deir el Medina that, despite the huge body of genealogical information, the difficulty of tying the women to both their natal and marital families makes it impossible to track precise kinship-relations, and potentially kinship-based group rivalries within the village. Office holding is presented as an outside appointment by the vizier. The division of the crew into two sides is similarly understood as an administrative division. In contrast, studies of more modern Egyptian villages focus on the importance of at least quasi-kinship divisions and structures as the patterns for structural divisions in the community, with their distinctive and rival leaderships. It would, then, be particularly interesting to investigate the kinship identities and marriage patterns of the members of the different sides. Perhaps it is possible, but I cannot see the necessary examples. What is clear, however, is that succession to post and role in the community was essentially hereditary.

Of particular interest is the practical functioning of the concept of the staff of old age, not as a sort of mode of pension and quasi-retirement, but as the direct overlap between the education of the son and his accession to office after the death of his father. In this respect I take history of the family of Amonnakhte son of Ipuy to be characteristic, in their succession to the post of scribe from the reign of Ramesses III through into the 21st Dynasty. This family was a large one, with several boys receiving scribal training, but unable to succeed to the office that passed from father to (first) son in direct succession, and not as part of a clear institutionalised cursus honorum. Reserves were also educated, trained, but not required. We are not in a position to say which, if any second and later sons found patronage and scribal employment outside the community.

These themes pose core questions for describing the social norms Egyptian society: the practical and cultural restrictions on a man whose father lived long, or who was a younger brother; the real nature of meritocracy, and the concept of the curriculum vitae and a career structure in the pattern of a cursus honorum; how people were trained; and what their life-expectations and ambitions were. This then gives focus to a number of the more intractable questions of ordinary Egyptology: whether people built their own tombs during their lives, or whether they were built by family after death; and if they were built during life, when did a person know to start building. Tombs do not seem to have be started early and gradually extended, but more typically to be built quite late in life, when people have reached high office. The issue is partly the question of what proportion of a person’s wealth went into his tomb. At Deir el Medina, the tomb of Kha gives a fairly strong impression that he really tried to take everything with him.

There is, than, a direct contradiction between the motif of the eldest son who succeeds to his father's (indivisible) office in the hierarchy, performs his cult in the role of his manifestation and continuation on earth, and receives the explicit transmission of endowed property – particularly tomb and temple property – through entail ‘from son to son, heir to heir’ without division in perpetuity. This contrasts to the role of the eldest son as leader of equals in the family, where ordinary inheritance of personal property was expected to be equally divided among all the children.

Ben Haring: The earliest necropolis records: workmen's marks of the Eighteenth Dynasty

To date no hieratic text is known that can be demonstrated to date from the Eighteenth Dynasty, and to be related to the royal necropolis. Yet administrative records of the necropolis workforce are available, even from the pre-Amarna period. These are ostraca inscribed with marks that represent individual workmen. Similar marks and ostraca are known from the Ramesside Period, but the corpus as a whole remains poorly investigated. This paper focusses on ostraca with marks of the pre-Amarna period from Deir el-Medina and from the Valley of the Kings, many of which are still unpublished, but which give us important information about the earliest history of the royal necropolis in the New Kingdom.

Heidi Jauhiainen: Feasts at Deir el-Medina

Studying feasts can play an important role when attempting to understand both modern and ancient cultures and social life. The written sources found at Deir el-Medina and its surroundings indicate that religious feasts played a notable role in the lives of the inhabitants of the village. My doctoral thesis “Do Not Celebrate Your Feast Without Your Neighbours” is a study of the forms and functions of feasts celebrated at Deir el-Medina in view of Ramesside Period non-literary documents pertaining to this community. In this paper, the main results of the study are presented.

Kristina Lahn Dumke: Die Verehrung der Qedeschet in Deir el-Medina

Sechs Stelen aus Deir el-Medina legen Zeugnis über die Verehrung der Göttin Qedeschet in der Arbeitersiedlung ab. (Winchester Nr. 830, Moskau GM I.1.a 4614, BM 646(191), BM 650(355), Louvre C86, Turin 1601). Es wurde schon oft vermutet, daß die angeblich „syrische“ Göttin in Ägypten hauptsächlich von Ausländern verehrt wurde. Bei näherer Analyse der Stifter konnte dies jedoch nicht bestätigt werden. Von insgesamt nur 30 ägyptischen Belegen (Stelen, Amulette, Altäre, Statueninschriften, Tempeldekorationen und Papyri) gehen lediglich 12 näher auf die Stifter ein. Sechs der Stifter dieser Objekte stammen aus Deir el-Medina. Die Stelen wurden von den Arbeitern (sDm-oS) Neferhotep (i/ii), Seba (ii) bzw. Neferhotep (i), Ay (Aia), Huy (iv), dem Vorarbeiter (o# n ist), Qaha (i) und dem Schreiber (sS) Ramose (i) gestiftet, für die alle ein rein ägyptisches Umfeld angenommen werden kann.

Die Göttin Qedeschet generell hat eine einmalige Entstehungs- und Entwicklungsge¬schichte. Sie ist weder eine rein syro-palästinensische, noch eine genuin ägyptische Göttin. Vielmehr ist sie aus wechselseitig im- und exportierten ikonographischen Elementen zwischen dem ägyptischen und vorderasiatischen Kulturraum entstanden. Ihr Name hingegen ist eindeutig semitischen Ursprungs, obgleich eine Göttin dieses Namens in Syrien-Palästina nicht belegt ist.

Auf nahezu allen Belegen wird die Göttin in ihrer üblichen Ikonographie gezeigt. Sie steht nackt und mit frontalem Gesicht und Körper ausgestaltet auf einem Löwen. Ihr Haupt ist in der Regel von einer Hathorenperücke bekrönt, auf die eine Krone aus Mondsichel und -scheibe gesetzt wurde. In ihren erhobenen Händen hält sie Schlangen und Blumen. In vier der sechs Beispielen wird sie innerhalb einer Triade mit den Göttern Min(-Amun) und Reschef gezeigt. Anhand dieser lokal eingeschränkten Materialgruppe sollen in meinem Vortrag nun einige Fragen gestellt und mögliche Antworten gegeben werden:

Wie stellt sich die Situation der Qedeschetverehrung in Deir el-Medina im allgemeinen dar? Wie sehen die Darstellungen der Göttin auf den einzelnen Stelen aus? Sind ähnliche Typen feststellbar? Wer ist der Stifter und was gibt es zu den Stiftern in Bezug auf ihre Stellung/ihren Beruf zu sagen? Wer ist außerdem auf der Stele zu sehen, z.B. aus der Familie oder von den Kollegen? Gibt es Verbindungen zwischen den Stiftern, und wenn ja, welche? In welchem Zeitfenster wurden die Stelen gestiftet? Und schließlich: Welches Fazit kann man ziehen: Könnte die Göttin Identität unter ihren Anhängern gestiftet haben? Könnte es demzufolge eine Art Kultgenossenschaft gegeben haben? Kann man in diesem Kontext von Persönlicher Frömmigkeit sprechen? Wie kann der „Sitz im Leben“ ausgesehen haben?

K. Lahn, Qedeschet – Genese einer Transfergottheit im ägyptischvorderasiatischen Raum, in: SAK 33, 2005, 201-237.
I. Cornelius, The Many Faces of the Goddess, The Iconography of the Syro-Palestinian Goddesses Anat, Astarte, Qedeshet, and Asherah c. 1500-1000 BCE, Fribourg 2004.

Renata Landgráfová and Hana Navrátilová: The scribes of Deir el-Medina and the ancient Egyptian love songs

Ancient Egyptian love songs belong to most interesting ancient Egyptian texts; there is their importance for our knowledge of the Egyptian language and literary genres (importance which they share with numerous Egyptian texts), and there is - allegedly transcending the time of their making - their aesthetic impact that is subject to numerous reinterpretations and appropriations. The songs also stir the debate on their social applicability. Was the world of the love songs “fictional” or not far removed from real life?

Deir el-Medina is the likely place of origin of currently known copies of the songs, while the scribes of that community are not always recognised as authors. Deir el-Medina provided also a substantial source base for analyses of Egyptian everyday life during the New Kingdom. Non-literary papyri and ostraca, being often legal and administrative documents show ancient Egyptian day-to-day dealings including family matters, marriages, quarrels and divorces. Authors studying the Deir el-Medina public, as well as private, life have usually made an extensive use of these texts, sometimes extrapolating their conclusions to all Egypt of that time, while overlooking the specificity of Deir el-Medina.

Material coming from Deir el-Medina and relevant for comparative studies of love songs in context comprises of three large groups.
1) the literary texts on ostraca and papyri the origin of which can be traced to Deir el-Medina.
2) the non-literary texts on papyri and ostraca originated in Deir el-Medina.
3) the figural ostraca from Deir el-Medina, tomb decorations from Deir el-Medina; As an exceptional source is usually added P. Turin 55 001.
The present paper suggests that most letters as well as administrative texts are not contrary to the world of the love songs; if anything, they are parallel though not dealing with identical situations.

Richard Mandeville: Wage Accounting in Deir el-Medina

The material covered by this paper forms part of a doctoral thesis on accounting in Deir el-Medina, which will include rations as its largest component, and also accounting for wood, fish, vegetables and other commodities brought in from outside the village. An attempt will be made to examine any possible evidence for work-in-progress and how state property such as lamp wicks and copper tools were accounted for. The wages of the workmen in Deir el-Medina took the form of grain rations with which they could fulfil their basic dietary requirements as well as trade for other goods. This paper discusses some of the methods which the scribes used to account for the movement of rations by examining primary data contained within documents from the Journal of the Necropolis and delivery records to the workmen. The bringing together of as much relevant textual material as is available enables a non-selective approach; rather that state something was standard on the basis of limited evidence we can gain insights on procedures which took place, and which can perhaps be substantiated by future finds.

Previous studies on rations have concentrated on the ration amounts given to the different classes of workmen. This paper takes things further by performing analyses on basic and additional rations (diw and dni respectively) during three core periods within the Ramesside period; the late 19th Dynasty covering the reigns of Ramesses II to Siptah, Year 25 of Ramesses III through to the middle of the reign of his successor Ramesses IV, and the late 20th Dynasty covering Ramesses IX - XI. Comparisons are then made, facilitating discussions on any changes in accounting techniques between these periods.

By detailed examination of the day, month and season of ration deliveries, it is possible to get some degree of conjecture of delivery patterns and importantly any absences, and then to ascertain when the payments were made. This in turn can foster investigation into any arrears of wages and the degree to which the system adjusted in the event of known non-payment of wages, as was the case during the strikes of Year 29 of Ramesses III. Coupled with exploring the possibility that ration delivery patterns were influenced by local festivals, we can speculate as to the reasons behind any delivery patterns.

The second part of this paper tackles the content of the material with detailed examination of the recipients and the amounts recorded. Two “master” ostraca from the 19th and 20th Dynasties are taken and form the basis of the analysis of the dated corpus in terms of who was recorded as receiving rations. This includes all workmen who are classified and named, the groups of non-specific men as well as those affiliated to the crew such as doorkeepers and women servants. The total of each delivery is then compared with an “ideal” wage list. In both exercises, differences in accounting techniques can be gleaned and suggested reasons put forward.

Gema Menéndez: Deir el-Medina stelae and other inscribed objects in Cairo Museum

The Cairo Museum received 28 stelae and other inscribed objects found in 1912 by Baraize, while clearing the Ptolemaic temple at Deir el-Medina. In 1922 Bruyere started excavating in the village and the surrounding area for the IFAO, adding to the Cairo collection about 33 more inscribed objects as a result of the partage.

The latter published most of them in the ASAE and in several Rapport sur les fouilles de Deir el Médineh between 1948 and 1952. His publications include photographs of most of them and some drawings, but their quality is not always the same. The description and commentary for each one of the monuments are of great value, but at the same time quite unsystematic. After Bruyere’s work, several objects have received attention from various scholars, who have studied them from different points of view, for example, focussing on specific aspects of the social history or the religious practices of the village’s workmen.

Some of the Deir el-Medina stelae and other inscribed objects are kept in Cairo Museum inside showcases located in different rooms. Among them, a few fragmentary stelae are in display together with large figurative ostraca, and one is placed inside a vitrine mixed up with small stelae coming from the Delta. Others are stored in magazines, not only labelled as “New Kingdom” but also pertaining to the “Middle Kingdom” section.

Taken into account these circumstances, it was considered an appropriate and fruitful project to gather together all the material and publish a catalogue that will meet the expectations of scholars and will help current and future research on Deir el-Medina. Thus, a Spanish team directed by Dr. José M. Galán and based at the Spanish National Research Center in Madrid, started in 2001 a project together with the late Aadel Mahmoud, to collect the material, and one by one photograph, draw and study 69 stelae and other inscribed objects. Thanks to the collaboration of Dr. Mamdouh el-Damaty and the current director of the Cairo Museum, Dr. Wafaa el-Saddik, the project has been possible and is in its final stage.

Matthias Müller: Ostraca from the Mortuary Temple of Merenptah

The present paper gives an overview on the ostraca found during the Swiss excavation at the mortuary temple of Merenptah in the 1990s. The various literary and administrative texts (including some unpublished dockets – cf. Aston, Merenptah IV) are discussed as well as ostraca with pictorial representations. Conclusions are also drawn of the scribal school located at the temple.

Miriam Müller: Deir el-Medina in the dark – the Amarna period in the history of the village. Workmen moving to Akhetaten?

The state of preservation of the village Deir el-Medina in Western Thebes, home of the workmen constructing the tombs of the pharaos in the nearby valley of the kings, and the remarkable finds of the community result in an extensive documentation dealing with almost every aspect of daily life and reconstructing a timeline for the historical events in the 450 years of the village and its development in time – with one great exception: the Amarna Period. About this period in the history of the village there is only guessing and most scholars avoid to struggle with those few but important years. They establish a more or less convincing theory about the resettlement of the workmen’s community to Akhetaten were the new capital and more important the new necropolis of the Amarna kings are to be found. Not only the fact that the new king Akhenaten needed skilled artisans for the construction of the tombs in the new valley of the Amarna kings suggests this assumption, in the eastern desert in close vicinity to the necropolis a very similar workmen’s settlement was discovered.

Parallels between the two villages are obvious. The structure of the houses, typical finds and paintings and special constructions inside the homes are eyecatching. Even more interesting are findspots outside the enclosure walls. Small chapels, a special feature for those communities living apart from the main town and great temples surround both settlements. But actually striking are special facilities in the vicinity of the villages which can not be traced immediately. What is known from various texts and small notes which were preserved in Deir el-Medina can virtually be found as archaeological features next to the workmen’s village in Amarna: facilities for the provisioning of the workers and traces of guard posts and security devices. Further on specific characteristics in the cultic life of the workmen’s community of Deir el-Medina like the worship of the ancestors are retrieved in the village of Akhetaten although to a smaller extent. Family interactions, observed in Amarna, could not be raised in the short time the village was in use - just to name a few of numerous similarities.

Nevertheless the theory about the resettlement of the workmen’s community from Deir el-Medina to Amarna and their return after the Amarna Period lacks the final written proof and arguments against it have to be considered carefully. My speech will comprise a closer examination of the archaeological finds and the settlement structure of Deir el-Medina in the Amarna period. Compared with the village in Akhetaten it intends to reconstruct those dark years in the history of the workmen’s community and the previous and following events.

Gregor Neunert: Prestigeanspruch in Deir el-Medine

Der Vortrag basiert auf der im März 2009 abgeschlossen Doktorarbeit Mein Grab, mein Esel, mein Platz in der Gesellschaft – Prestige im Alten Ägypten am Beispiel Deir el-Medine.

Das Phänomen Prestige wird als zwischenmenschliche Bewertung beschrieben, die aufgrund einer bestimmten, kulturell determinierten Wahrnehmung entsteht und durch soziale Muster geformt wird. Dabei wird Prestige nicht auf rein materielle Werte bezogen, sondern in einen gesellschaftlichen Zusammenhang gestellt, der das Wirken und die Bedeutung von Prestige durch Fallbeispiele für eine Gemeinschaft erkennbar macht, und den Prestigeanspruch verdeutlichen soll, den Personen innerhalb der Gemeinschaft von Deir el-Medine äußern konnten, um Prestige oder Ansehen unter ihren Mitmenschen zu erlangen und zu repräsentieren.

Pavel Onderka: The Deir el-Medina Collection of the National Museum, Prague

Jaroslav Cerný, undoubtedly the most important Czech(oslovak) Egyptologist, contributed as no other individual to the enlargement of the Egyptian collection in Prague. Thanks to him the National Museum acquired from the French Institute of Oriental Archaeology in Cairo the gift of a set of roughly 230 objects excavated at the village of royal workmen at Deir el-Medina. Furthermore Cerný’s private collection of hieratic ostraca ended up in the National Museum’s collection as well.

The majority of the objects of the National Museum’s collection were excavated during the season of 1934–1935 in the so-called Eastern Cemetery (including the so-called Children Cemetery), however identification of pieces coming from other excavation seasons and the Western Cemetery may be well established. The majority of objects date to the pre-Amarna 18th Dynasty.

A substantial part of the collection comes from the tomb of Sennefer (DM 1159), discovered in 1928. By the time when the set of objects came to the National Museum, the skeletal remains of Sennefer had already been in Prague, deposited in the Hrdlicka Museum of Man of the Faculty of Sciences of the Charles University in Prague as well as some early Third Intermediate Period mummies and parts of mummies originating from the graves at Deir el-Medina.

Although the collection has been in Prague for more than 70 years, it has never been published. The paper shall provide a general overview of the collection and highlight the key pieces it includes.

Virpi Perunka: Private Chapels of Deir el-Medina as a part of the Sacred Landscape of Western Thebes

This paper has two aims; firstly to discuss some specific features, such as dating and orientation, of Deir el-Medina’s private chapels and secondly, to assess the potential these structures can offer as data when examined together with their immediate setting as well as other important components of the Western Theban landscape. This paper presents some of the initial steps of a new doctoral research at Helsinki University which will employ the private chapels as main group of evidence in a study which aims, for example, to explain how the villagers of Deir el-Medina perceived their ritual space in a broader context.

Recent archaeological studies related to the village have discussed for example social differentiation and gendered space using either the village and houses or the tombs as their main data. The private chapels, however, have not been a focus of any major study since Ann Bomann’s study (1991) focusing on the private chapels of Amarna which utilized the Deir el-Medina chapels as comparative material. The total number of chapels surviving to our days is around thirty and even though their condition is now rather poor it is firmly believed that a re-investigation, which is not solely “structure-orientated”, could reveal new aspects of these chapels together with the landscape in which they were built.

Approaches and methods adapted from studies in landscape archaeology can facilitate new appreciation of the chapels when surveyed in connection with elements from their surrounding natural and social environment. Proposed elements from natural environment include wadis, terraces and moreover mountains, which have a number of essential aspects such as elevation, shape and form as well as their connection to gods like Meretseger and Hathor. The social environment offers components from both private and royal spheres; the private ones are other chapels and tombs from Deir el-Medina and the latter comprise of the royal funerary monuments of the Theban West Bank in addition to known processional routes in the area.

Slawomir Rzepka: Rock-graffiti in Western Thebes

On the rocks of Theban gebel a huge corpus of ca. 4000 graffiti was documented so far, among which the inscriptions and drawings left by Deir el-Medina workmen prevail. The absolute majority of their graffiti are short inscriptions, containing only a personal name (names) and titles. A single inscription of this type does not really give us much new information about Deir el-Medina community (sometimes it can contain a personal name not known from other sources or can help in correcting a genealogical tree). This material, however, has the potential to reveal much more. Combination of prosopographical, palaeographical and topographical analysis can bring us data useful in answering at least two important questions:
1) the question of mobility of Deir el-Medina community (i.e. who, when and why was visiting various parts of the Theban gebel)
2) the question of the functions of graffiti left by members of Deir el-Medina community.

Yasmin El Shazly: Representations of Sequences of Royal Ancestors on Deir el-Medina Monuments

The paper is based on some of the work that I have done for my Ph.D dissertation, the topic of which is Royal Ancestor Worship in Deir el-Medina During the New Kingdom. Two forms of ancestor worship seem to have been practiced at Deir el-Medina: Private and Royal. Evidence for private ancestor worship from Deir el-Medina comes mainly from the Ax iqr n Ra-stelae and the anthropoid busts, also known as “ancestor busts”. Both types of objects were found in houses in Deir el-Medina, which suggests that they were part of a domestic cult. The first type of object was heavily dealt with by R. J. Demarée in his work The Ax iqr n Ra-Stelae: On Ancestor Worship in Ancient Egypt, while the anthropoid busts were the subject of various articles by J. L. Keith-Bennet, Florence Friedman and Nicola Harrington, among others.

Royal ancestor worship also seems to have played a very important role in the lives of the inhabitants of Deir el-Medina. Works have been written about the posthumous cults of specific royal figures, such as Amenhotep I and Ahmose-Nefertary, but a comprehensive work about royal ancestor worship in Deir el-Medina has never been produced. My dissertation attempts to focus on this form of ancestor worship at Deir el-Medina, by cataloguing some of the most important monuments from that village on which royal ancestors are represented. These monuments are divided into categories, based on the types of scenes represented on them, or the class of objects they belong to. Through these categorizations one attempts to achieve a better understanding of the nature of the relationship the inhabitants of Deir el-Medina had with their deified royal forefathers. This paper, however, focuses on one specific scene type that is frequently seen on Deir el-Medina monuments, and that is, representations of sequences of royal ancestors. What is the significance of these types of representations? When do they first appear at Deir el-Medina and why? What determines the choice of royal ancestors represented in such sequences? Are deified royal ancestors equal to the great gods? What caused the rise of royal ancestor worship during the New Kingdom and particularly at Deir el-Medina? These are all questions that this paper attempts to answer.

The worship of the royal ancestors dates to the very beginning of ancient Egyptian history, yet the form it took in earlier periods is different from that which it took in the New Kingdom. While New Kingdom reliefs depict the great procession of the Min Harvest Festival, in which statues of royal ancestors are carried before the king, and identified by name, the oldest form of royal ancestor worship did not distinguish between individual rulers, but rather, took the form of the worship of a collectivity. Each king became a part of this collectivity at his death. In the Turin King-list, for instance, we find a category designated “The Axw, followers of Horus”. This category refers to kings of the distant past. The worship of royal ancestors in the New Kingdom differed from this earlier form. Individual deceased royal figures were distinguished by image as well as by name and no site yielded more evidence for the veneration of the royal ancestors than Deir el-Medina.

Deborag Sweeney: The Art of Prayer: gender, status and age on private stelae from Deir el-Medîna

An investigation of over 350 private stelae from Deir el-Medîna illuminates aspects of religious practice related to the ownership of stelae, the occasions on which they were erected, and the acts of worship represented on them. Although these scenes of worship are strongly marked by artistic convention, we may assume that the artist would not depict anything in a formal medium which was socially impossible – for instance, if women are portrayed making offerings, then women indeed did make offerings, even if not necessarily very often.

Most of these stelae were erected by men, often singly, but more frequently with their sons than their wives. This may be because arranging for one’s son to continue in his father’s footsteps was an important male achievement in Ancient Egypt, but in this community it was not necessarily to be taken for granted (e.g. O CGC 25566, 25800). This paper will look at men and their sons associated on stelae to see whether any common factor unites such cases.

Whereas personal feasts were often celebrated with friends, stelae privilege family. This lecture will also highlight instances where stelae include people who are not family connections. For instance, the royal cult allowed men to enhance their professional status by being represented on stelae with the vizier (e.g BM stela 317.) The rich, childless scribe Ramose, who had no sons to share his monuments, erected a stela with his servant Sankhptah (Museum Schloss Hohentubingen, Inv. No. 1716), and another with his junior colleague Penbuy (Cairo JdE 21064).

As Gay Robins has shown (1994, 1997), decorum in Egyptian art gave precedence to men, and if a woman wanted to take first place on a stela, normally she had to appear without her husband. Nonetheless, there were various ways of highlighting women in a stela they shared with their husbands or sons, such as heading a register of ‘her own’ or being associated with a long text of her own. This research will investigate possible common ground between such cases, and also attempt to elucidate the rare cases of women who erected stelae in their own right, such as the stela (Turin Cat. 50053) erected by the well-attested mother-and-daughter pair of mourners Hemetnetjer and Iy (from their earnings?), or the stela erected by Heria (Turin Cat. 50050) featuring a prayer by a woman called Iyi to Queen Ahmes-Nefertari to deliver her from darkness by day. Could this be the Heria who stole the copper objects in O Nash 1 (Kitchen 2003: 243), and could her need to support a blind dependent have driven her to a career of crime?

The cult of the king – both deified kings and the cult of the royal ka – was very much a men’s sphere. Their wives were rarely represented on stelae in honour of divinised royalty (e.g. BM EA1347; Turin Cat 50037, 50041), and in all such cases Queen Ahmose Nefertari was worshipped, with her son or alone, maybe as a focus for the women’s devotions. On the other hand, the akh iqer stelae, which rarely represented worshippers, had a relatively large female proportion of female orants (e.g. Louvre Inv. E 16348; Turin Cat 50021(?)) maybe because the cult was often practiced at home. The stela Louvre Inv. E 16348 which depicts a widow and her mother making offerings to her late husband could in fact be related to a claim on a house (as in O Petrie 21 when someone set up a stela in a hut whose ownership was disputed) (Demarée 1982). Generally women lived in the village through marriage to one of the tomb building crew (Toivari-Viitala 2001: 5), and maybe after the man’s death they hoped that honouring his memory would reinforce their right of residence.

The offerings represented are often related to the orants’ status and gender; even though they may not necessarily have been offered in that way by those particular individuals, they refer to widespread attitudes about which items would have been appropriate for which persons. Meat offerings on braziers tend to be offered by the leading male worshipper (occasionally by women), long- necked vessels with liquids by women (never by men) and papyri and birds by secondary worshippers, who are often children. Exceptions to these trends may be significant and merit attention.

Robert J. Demarée, “Remove your Stela” (O. Petrie 21 = Hier.Ostr. 16,4), in: Robert J. Demarée and Jac. J. Janssen eds., Gleanings from Deir el-Medîna (Egyptologische Uitgaven 1), Leiden, 1982, 101-108.
Gay Robins, “Some Principles of Compositional Dominance and Gender Hierarchy in Egyptian Art,” JARCE 31 (1994), 33-40.
Gay Robins, “Women and Votive Stelae in the New Kingdom,” in: Jacke Phillips with Lanny Bell, Bruce B. William, James Hoch and Ronald J. Lephoron (eds.), Ancient Egypt, the Aegean and the Near East, Studies in Honour of Martha Rhoads Bell, vol. II, San Antonio, Texas, 1997, 445-454.
Kenneth A. Kitchen, Ramesside Inscriptions, Translated and Annotated: Translations, vol. IV, Oxford, 2003.
Jaana Toivari-Viitala, Women at Deir el-Medîna. A Study of the Status and Roles of the Female Inhabitants in the Workmen’s Community during the Ramesside period. Egyptologische Uitgaven XV, Leiden, 2001.