A PORTION OF LIFE SOLIDIFIED: UNDERSTANDING ANCIENT EGYPT THROUGH THE
INTEGRATION OF ARCHAEOLOGY AND HISTORY
Stuart Tyson SmithUniversity of California, Santa Barbara
Abstract
Archaeological evidence is often perceived as either illustrating the historical record or where independent, dealing mainly with small things of little larger importance, like the domestic economy. The search for individual action in the archaeological record seems futile compared to the richness of the historical record at places like Deir el Medina. The founder of modern Egyptian archaeology, W.M. Flinders Petrie, realized the potential for archaeology to reveal not just cultural generali-ties, but insights into the lives of individuals, most of whom left no written record behind. Both archaeological and historical evidence have unique limitations and challenges in interpretation, but at the same time truly integrating text and archae-ology has the potential to yield greater insights into the nature and dynamics of Egyptian society than each source alone could produce.
In later periods of man’s development the archaeologist is the handmaiden of history and supplements the story provided by written records.1
Texts have traditionally been given primacy over archaeology within Egyptology, an emphasis that the discipline shares with the study of other cultures that have a significant historical record. This bias is only natural; after all, with text the authors seem to speak to us directly, although as Redford has pointed out, it is not quite that straightforward in actuality. Archaeologists like trash, which commu-nicates less clearly. Archaeological evidence is thus often perceived as either illustrating the historical record or where independent, dealing mainly with small things of seemingly little larger importance, like the domestic economy. In particular, the search for individual action in the archaeological record, in the trash heap of history if you will, seems futile compared to the richness of the historical record at places like Deir el Medina. But do we need to relegate archaeology to a supporting role in historiography? To be sure, there is nothing
wrong with using archaeology to illustrate and refine the historical picture provided by texts, but I will argue here that archaeology has a much more vibrant and direct role in the historiography of ancient Egypt. First I will discuss archaeology’s potential to play a leading role in the reconstruction of broad historical events and political developments, then shift focus to archaeology’s potential to provide insights into individual lives and agency, finishing up with some remarks about the still largely unrealized potential for the integration of text and archaeology within Egyptology.
Archaeology’s Contribution to Historiography
If we consider that large sections of Egyptian history are very poor in writ-ten historical records . . . and if we consider also that even the other periods are not thoroughly reconstructable by written remains, it will become quite clear that . . . the only possibility of narrowing those gaps in a systematic way is the full study of the material remains by archaeological methods in their widest sense.2
Sixty years ago, Glyn Daniel characterized archaeology as the “handmaiden of history.” This attitude has been and to a great extent still is common in Egyptology, as Lisa Giddy recently pointed out, and indeed in other disciplines where there is an extensive written record, producing a similar historiographic subordination of archaeology to philology. Although many would argue against it, not all archaeologists would disagree with this proposition. For example, in 1964 Ivor Noel Hume characterized American historical archaeology in this way.3 Redford implied a similar secondary role for archaeology in 1979 by arguing that “the historian of Egypt must pose questions first, and then use archaeology to answer them,”4 although to be fair he also argues strongly for a systematic approach where archaeology plays a fundamental and dynamic role in historical interpretation. In 1984, Barry Kemp wrote a curiously pessimistic article arguing that archaeology in Egypt lay within “the shadow of texts.”5 He might have treated this as a problem to be rectified, as did Manfred Bietak only five years earlier.6 Instead,
2 Bietak, “The present state of Egyptian archaeology,” 157.3 Hume, “Archaeology: Handmaiden to History.”4 Redford, “Egyptology and History,” 13.5 Kemp, “In the shadow of the texts.” 6 Bietak, “The present state of Egyptian archaeology.”
he argued that while great discoveries might sometimes modify the historical framework, archaeology mostly provides a tableau, a general context and setting for the events and individuals described in the historical record. Moreover, he saw a disconnect between the archaeological record, which reflects popular culture, and the historical record, which concerns larger political developments. Again, he might have seen this tension as an interesting point of departure for investigating a fundamental dynamic of Egyptian civilization, but instead saw it as limiting the utility of archaeology as a historiographic tool. I do not know if he would still espouse all of the ideas expressed in this article – reading his larger body of work and especially the revised edition of Ancient Egypt, Anatomy of a Civilization leads me to believe he may not, but I do think that it reflects still commonly held beliefs about the relationship between archaeology and historiography.7
Bietak points out that the historical outline that Kemp sees as well established is in fact seriously flawed. Large periods of Egyptian history have few historical records to inform us. In particular very few texts survive from the earlier periods in Egyptian history (i.e., before the Middle Kingdom), along with the so-called Intermediate Periods, which seem to shrink and become less intermediate as they are subjected to both archaeological and philological scrutiny. Even the better known phases contain lacunae. Accidents of survival and the luck of archaeologists sometimes produce more texts to add to our corpus, but Bietak rightly observes that only archae-ology allows us to move forward in a systematic way. As Redford points out, historical sources require interpretation, including a careful assessment of author and audience,8 and are inherently biased towards elite concerns, considering that only perhaps 5% of the population was literate.9 When history and archaeology do not mesh well, which is not uncommon, we should not conclude,
7 Witness a recent exchange in Archaeology Magazine, “History and Archaeology Bulletin Board” (2000). Also see commentaries by Lowenthal, “Archaeology’s Perilous Pleasures”; Chippendale, “Archaeology’s Proper Place”; and especially Levy “Always a Handmaiden – Never a Bride.”
8 Redford, “Egyptology and History.”9 Baines, “Literacy in Ancient Egyptian Society”; Baines and Eyre “Four Notes
on Literacy.” Gee in this issue rightly notes the speculative nature of their estimates, but see my own calculations for the Middle Kingdom grounded in a combination of evidence from administrative documents and tomb models, Smith, “Sealing Practice, Literacy, and Administration in the Middle Kingdom.”
Author's illustration (compiled from various sources, basic map is generated from a geographic program).
a portion of life solidified 159
as Kemp does, that the two sources are largely incompatible, but rather see an opportunity to reach a greater understanding of the periods and questions that we are investigating. As Bietak argued, contradictions and inconsistencies between texts and archaeologi-cal remains indicate that “we still lack a perfect understanding of our ancient sources, both written and material, and that we should think over all the evidence again.”10 While Kemp is absolutely right when he asserts that archaeology only rarely yields the insights into people’s thoughts and desires that the historical record can produce, it does have the advantage of dealing with data that are inherently more egalitarian and objective. Everyone produces trash, and people rarely think about what they are throwing away. The best results are achieved when we can co-ordinate both textual and archaeological evidence to produce a richer understanding of the past than either source could provide alone.
Pottery and other artifacts play a particularly important role in establishing patterns of cultural interaction and trade. Of course, texts can provide important evidence in this arena as well, especially for items that do not appear in the archaeological record, but as noted above, the historical record in this regard is highly fragmen-tary and anecdotal when it does appear. Archaeological evidence allows us to get at questions of volume and consumption, e.g., how much was traded and who had access? The pot shown here was actually found at Tombos at the edge of Egypt’s New Kingdom southern empire (Fig. 2). On the one hand, it serves to flesh out the tableaux of New Kingdom colonialism known from the written record, but it is important to recognize that archaeological context conveys meaning. In this case, the presence of a Mycenaean pot has implications about the social organization of the community as well as that community’s integration within the larger political economy. It tells us something about social organization, that even middle class colonists had access to exotic goods. The presence of Mycenaean pottery at the edge of imperial control also demon-strates the interconnectedness of the Egyptian prestige economy. This type of Mycenaean pot appears in such great quantities at Amarna that it is called the “Amarna Style,”11 just as a particular kind of pottery imported from Israel-Palestine in the late Predynastic
10 Bietak, “The present state of Egyptian archaeology,” 158.11 Mountjoy, Mycenaean Pottery.
period is known as “Abydos Ware.”12 Quantifying and documenting the appearance of pottery like this allows us to assess the nature and extent of trade relationships over time, something that is hard to do with texts alone.
I characterized Kemp’s 1984 article as curiously pessimistic in large part because Kemp himself has used rather mundane archaeologi-cal data to drive similar reconsiderations of fundamental historical questions, like the identity of the tomb owners in the first dynasty cemetery at Saqqara and the nature of Egyptian urbanism. Indeed, only seven years earlier, Kemp himself concluded that:
It must be recognized that archaeology in Egypt can do more than supply works of art and typical examples of the objects of everyday life; it has considerable power to magnify the whole basic picture we have of ancient Egyptian society.13
As examples of how archaeological evidence has played a central role in dramatic revisions of important elements in ancient Egyptian history, I will look at Kemp’s revision of Emery’s interpretation of the Archaic cemetery at Saqqara and challenge to Wilson’s philologically driven idea of Egyptian urbanism. I will then move on to a consideration of the historiographic impact of Manfred Bietak’s excavations at Avaris (Tell el-Dab‘a) on our understanding of the Hyksos, and my own work on the collection from Alexander Badawy’s excavations of the second cataract fortress at Askut on the idea of an Egyptian withdrawal from Nubia at the end of the Middle Kingdom.
Archaic Saqqara
In 1957, Walter Emery concluded that the tombs that he had exca-vated at Saqqara were those of the earliest kings of Egypt, made in parallel to the tombs at Abydos.14 His argument was based upon two lines of evidence, primarily textual – that the names of these pharaohs appeared consistently in these tombs, but also archaeo-logical – that they were larger than their counterparts at Abydos, and therefore could not be private, an interpretation that was also based upon his notion of the absolute power and wealth of Egyptian
12 Amiran, Ancient pottery of the Holy Land.13 Kemp “The early development of towns in Egypt,” 199.14 Emery, “The tombs of the first Pharaohs.”
kings derived from Egyptian ideology. Kemp’s counter-argument serves as a reminder that texts have an archaeological context that can bear heavily on their interpretation.15 He noted that all of the royal names appear on seal impressions, and that the names of several kings appear on sealings in more than one tomb. This pat-tern is more consistent with the provision by the king of offerings to a noble’s burial. In contrast, royal names appear on a variety of objects in the tombs at Abydos. He also countered Emery’s archaeological argument by observing that when one combines the actual burial with the separate funerary enclosures, the royal tombs at Abydos are larger than the noble’s tombs at Saqqara. The identification of the cemetery at Saqqara as private, not royal, has larger implications for royal prestige and power at the dawn of the Egyptian state. In contrast to the strong materialization of royal power and authority represented by later pyramids, the more mod-est differences between royal and elite burials in the First Dynasty points towards the king as more of a paramount than the absolute ruler who appears in later expressions of the state ideology.16
Urbanism
In 1958, John Wilson attended a large symposium called “City Invincible,” a survey of urbanism throughout the ancient Near East. Comparing Egypt to Mesopotamia, where cities were essential for the emergence of states, he came up with the provocative idea that ancient Egypt was a “civilization without cities.”17 This idea of Egypt as an exception to a general rule – that early states are urban, but one that could be logically explained by its environmental setting, proved so appealing that many archaeologists and historians adopted it, in spite of some very sensible objections raised in the same session by Helene Kantor in her response in the same vol-ume. Wolfgang Helck later placed Wilson’s line of reasoning on a more secure footing by demonstrating the structural lack of cities or town in ancient Egypt.18 He argued that the special conditions of the Nile and geographic position of Egypt obviated the need for cities by facilitating transportation and enhancing security. This
15 Kemp, “The Egyptian 1st Dynasty royal cemetery.”16 For example, Guksch, “On Ethnographic Analogies.”17 Wilson, “Civilization without cities.”18 Helck, Wirtschaftsgeschichte des Alten Ägypten.
is a historical question that should have been immediately tested archaeologically, and the answer should have been clear with even a cursory survey, given the massive stratified tells at sites like Abydos and Edfu (Fig. 3). Noting that their arguments were made without reference to archaeology, Kemp easily countered their very elegant text-based arguments by simply demonstrating that the large tells that surround ancient Egyptian temples like Abydos and Edfu actu-ally do represent walled cities that go back to the very foundations of the Egyptian state.19 He accomplished this not through extensive excavations or spectacular finds, but simply by documenting pottery associated with architecture, including city walls and strata visible in the cuts made by sebakheen. Here is an example where humble potsherds from domestic refuse helped completely change what had been the consensus about an important dimension of Egyptian civilization, urbanism.
19 Kemp, “The early development of towns in Egypt.”
Fig. 3 The temple and settlement at Edfu. Note the scale of the settlement mound and obvious long stratigraphic sequence in the cut. Author’s Photo.
Egyptian sources, like Hatshepsut’s Speos Artemidos Inscription, and later traditions, most notably the Jewish-Roman historian Josephus citing Manetho, characterized the Hyksos takeover of northern Egypt and dominance of the Theban 17th Dynasty as the result of a dramatic invasion that overwhelmed an already weakened Egyptian state.20 Already in the 1950’s, Törgny Säve-Söderbergh mounted a challenge to this text-based model, which he argued relied on sources written long after the events depicted and tainted by an anti-foreign ideology.21 Noting the spread of Asiatic influence in material culture, like the distinctive Tell el-Yahudiya ware, into Egypt and especially the Nile Delta, he formulated an alternative model of gradual infiltration that eventually led to a less dramatic Hyksos takeover.22 Helck attempted to refute Säve-Söderbergh’s reconstruc-tion through an elegant but misguided defense of Josephus and Manetho’s accounts of a Hyksos invasion.23 Bietak’s archaeological work at Tell ed-Dab‘a has demonstrated conclusively that quite to the contrary, the emergence of Avaris as a major center and eventu-ally capital was gradual and probably more political and economic than military. He accomplished this through the careful analysis and quantification of pottery and other artifacts and documenta-tion of archaeological contexts, including both the mundane and monumental.24 For example, the increasing proportion of pottery types over time connected to the Middle Bronze Age (MB) cultures of the Levant demonstrates that the origins of the Hyksos in the Delta go back into the 12th Dynasty, while the increasing presence of MB pottery and other material culture, types of architecture, including temples, and burial practice, including the tombs of war-riors with MB style weaponry and equid burials, demonstrate the growing power and authority of emergent Hyksos rulers. Bietak’s work has shown that this was a long process to a great extent inter-
20 For example, Breasted, A history of Egypt, 214–215, who does however admit that the sources for the period are scarce and late, and Wilson, The burden of Egypt, 154–165, who accepts the narrative of Greco-Roman historians more wholeheartedly.
21 Säve-Söderbergh, “The Hyksos Rule in Egypt,” 55–56.22 Säve-Söderbergh, “The Hyksos Rule in Egypt,” passim, later supported by Van
Seters, The Hyksos, 121–126, who argued that archaeology ultimately trumped Helck’s, Die Beziehungen, 92–97, otherwise persuasive arguments for a more literal reading of the Hellenistic sources.
23 Helck, Die Beziehungen, 92–97.24 Bietak, Avaris.
nal to Egypt in spite of the association of the Hyksos with the MB city-states to the north. Evidence for Avaris’s reoccupation in the early 18th Dynasty provided perhaps the most surprising result.25 Drawing on an extensive ideology of the violent “expulsion” of the Hyksos, Egyptologists had assumed that Avaris was completely destroyed and abandoned in the aftermath of Ahmose’s capture of the city. Instead, although some parts of the city were abandoned at this time, Bietak found evidence of continuity in other areas, and no evidence for a general conflagration. The discovery of an early 18th Dynasty palace with Aegean style decoration in at least one room demonstrates the strategic importance of the site at the beginning of the New Kingdom as a gateway to the Levant and the Mediterranean.26 Manfred Bietak’s research at ancient Avaris has changed the reconstruction of Egyptian history in the Second Intermediate Period, not particularly through extraordinary finds, although he has made many, but through careful and meticulous archaeology.
The Nubian Fortresses
An impressive series of fortresses constructed between the reigns of Senwosret I and III guarded Egypt’s new Middle Kingdom colony in Lower Nubia and southern frontier at the second cataract. Conventional wisdom holds that the Egyptians either abandoned or were forcibly ejected from the fortresses.27 This conclusion was informed by the assumption that the Hyksos invasion would have required the movement of military forces north to meet the Asiatic threat, resulting in either the weakening or outright abandonment of the Egyptian colonial establishments in Nubia. To Walter Emery, who excavated at Buhen, one of the largest fortresses located at the second cataract, archaeology served to illustrate the impression gained from textual sources. When he found evidence of destruction and burning at Buhen associated with Kerma pottery, he concluded that Kerma was to blame for the sack of the fortress.28 I naturally expected to find this gap in my study of the Askut collection, one
25 Bietak, Avaris, 63–83.26 Bietak, et al., Taureador Scenes.27 E.g., Emery, Egypt in Nubia, 167; Shinnie, Ancient Nubia, 77; Bianchi, Daily Life of
the Nubians, 74, 99–100; but cf. Trigger, Nubia under the pharaohs, 84–85.28 Emery, et al., The Fortress of Buhen, 92.
of several forts built at the second cataract and excavated by the late Alexander Badawy in the early 1960’s during the Aswan High Dam Salvage Campaign.29 Not only did the gap fail to appear at Askut, but strong evidence for continuity emerged, including the maintenance of buildings like the “Commandant’s Quarters” and stratigraphic continuity across the Middle Kingdom-Second Intermediate Period transition. As I have argued elsewhere, seri-ous flaws emerge in Emery’s stratigraphic interpretation when subjected to close scrutiny.30 For example, the association of Kerma and Second Intermediate Period pottery with destruction layers at the fortress, especially the sealed contexts in Block C (particularly House E), and Block J (especially Rooms 29–39),31 demonstrates that Kerma pottery was extensively used within the fortress at the time of, and not after the sack, which must therefore have taken place at the end of the Second Intermediate Period, presumably during Kamose’s Nubian campaign. The evidence for continuity from the late Middle Kingdom into the Second Intermediate Period at Askut and elsewhere supports this sequence of events, which implies that the expanding Kerma state co-opted the Egyptian colonial communities, who saw the advantage of working with their putative adversaries.32 Indeed, the textual record itself supports this reconstruction, with stela found at Buhen indicating that its Commandant served the king of Kush.33 This reconstruction also forces a re-dating of the famous Buhen horse from the late 13th Dynasty,34 which would make it the earliest horse in Africa (Clutton-Brock 1974),35 more sensibly to Kamose’s late Second Intermediate Period assault on the fortress. A horse would be out of place in a Middle Kingdom garrison, but expected to accompany a late 17th Dynasty Egyptian army.36
29 Curated in the Archaeological Collections of the Fowler Museum of Cultural History at UCLA. See Smith, Askut in Nubia, for details.
30 Smith, Askut in Nubia, 107–137.31 Emery, et al., Buhen, 61–63, 76–79.32 Smith, Askut in Nubia, 78–83.33 Säve-Söderbergh, “A Buhen Stela from the Second Intermediate Period.” Emery,
in Egypt in Nubia, 167, explained them away as Egyptians serving the Kushite rul-ers who arrived after the sack of the fortresses, but the stelae and their texts make much more sense as in the context of the archaeological evidence for continuity found at Askut.
34 Emery, et al., The Fortress of Buhen, 191–196.35 Clutton-Brock, “The Buhen Horse.”36 Smith, Askut in Nubia, 121–123.
Fig. 4 Horizontal and vertical stratigraphy at Askut showing continuity through the Second Intermediate Period. Parts of the main fortress, including some of the Barracks and the Granary complex were abandoned towards the end of the Middle Kingdom, but floor levels were maintained through the New Kingdom in the Commandant’s Quarters and an adjacent house. Vertical stratigraphy shows continuity in the extra
mural Southeast. XXX.
In each of these case studies, archaeological evidence has driven reinterpretations that arrive at a more accurate picture based upon a combination of archeological and textual evidence, each informing the other, neither truly subordinate. At Saqqara, Kemp illustrates how texts have an archaeological context that allows us to understand their historical significance, resulting in a very different reconstruction of Archaic society and politics than Emery’s original simplistic equation of royal name to royal tomb. Kemp’s study of archaeological stratigraphy at various sites easily refuted Wilson and Helck’s arguments for a lack of Egyptian urbanism that had completely ignored the archaeological record. Here archaeology also contributes to the Egyptian lexicon, showing how terms for settlements followed a very different logic from our size-oriented
Author's illustration, photo of Askut by the late Alexander Badawy.
168 stuart tyson smith
terminology of city, town, and village. The idea of a dramatic Hyksos invasion was heavily influence by biased written sources, particularly Manetho, whose narrative owed more to the memory of the Assyrian and Persian conquests than a recollection of Hyksos domination,37 while the idea that barbaric Nubians overwhelmed the Egyptian fortresses stemmed more from assumptions about the relationship between Egyptians and Nubians derived from Egyptian ideology. In each case, archaeology provides not only an important corrective, but allows us to penetrate the veil of Egyptian ideology and understand more about the role of foreigners in the legitimiza-tion of royal power versus the realities of interaction and politics on Egypt’s northern and southern frontiers. One could argue along the line of Kemp’s pessimistic view that texts ultimately drove each of these inquiries by providing a starting point against which archae-ology is deployed, but this is really an effect of the late emergence of a more sophisticated archaeological methodology in Egypt and the early dominance of the historical record in Egyptology.38 Had texts not existed, archaeology would have provided a more accurate historical narrative than the initial Egyptological interpretations.
Archaeology and Individuals
Every tablet, every little scarab, is a portion of life solidified; so much will, so much labor, so much living reality. When we look closely into the work we seem almost to watch the hand that did it . . . The work of the archaeologist is to save lives; to go to some senseless mound of earth, some hidden cemetery, and thence bring into the comradeship of man some portions of the lives of this sculptor, of that artist, of the other scribe; to make their labor familiar to us as a friend, to resuscitate them again, and make them live . . .39
The previous examples demonstrate that pottery and other artifacts can do more than just yield information about the use of domestic space or provide dressing for tableaux illustrating historical periods. But how can archaeology compete with the potential richness of the historical record in revealing details about individual lives and beliefs? Kemp is particularly pessimistic in this regard, arguing that in the absence of texts, we “cannot enthuse about individual
37 Aldred, The Egyptians, 142.38 Bietak and Giddy.39 Petrie, Methods and aims in archaeology, 177–178.
Bietak,"The present state of Egyptian archaeology"; Giddy, "The Present State of Egyptian Archaeology: 1997 update".
a portion of life solidified 169
lives.”40 He supports this limited view of archaeology largely through a comparison of the Amarna workmen’s village with Deir el Medina. At Amarna, archaeology was effective at finding details about the domestic economy and the organization of households, two important social contexts that are largely invisible in the his-torical record. In comparison to the extensive textual record at Deir el Medina, however, finding the individuals who created the heaps of trash and other residues of life at places like Amarna was at best challenging, an arena where archaeology seemingly cannot compete with texts. At first glance, it seems like Kemp is right. In the absence of a natural disaster like Pompeii, how can we get at individual lives and agency with just a bunch of sherds?
The first thing to recognize is that this is not a competition between archaeology and philology for primacy in historiography. Each brings its own strengths and weaknesses to the task of recon-structing ancient Egyptian history. In framing his argument, Kemp sets up a straw man by comparing the somewhat limited results of his own excavations at Amarna with the rich detail about individu-als derived from the many ostraca and papyri from its Ramesside counterpart at Deir el Medina. But Deir el Medina is not only extraordinary and unique, which Kemp acknowledges, but is also the textual equivalent of an archaeological Pompeii. As Kemp himself admits, most artifacts at Amarna were recovered from secondary trash deposits, limiting any detailed contextual studies. As a result, it is not surprising that Kemp’s archaeology of Amarna is somehow devoid of people. Montserrat saw this as a legacy of Kemp’s processual bent.41 One of the key critiques of processual archaeology was its focus on a materialist approach to the exclusion of the “ideational,” so much so that things like belief, theology and ideology were relegated to the status of epiphenomena. Kemp does not go that far, but along the lines of processualists, simply views the search for individuals as an area where archaeology cannot contribute much.
I contend here that archaeology can provide a powerful primary source for writing a history that takes individuals into account – a social history. Archaeology provides our best, in some cases our only access to people below the literate elite. Part of the problem in bridg-ing the gap between artifacts and individuals is a general tendency
40 Kemp, “In the shadow of the texts,” 22.41 Montserrat, Akhenaton: history, fantasy and ancient Egypt, 92–93.
to view agency as a quest to find an individual, like Akhenaton or one of the denizens of Deir el Medina like Nedjembehdet (Fig. 5), wife of the tomb builder Pashed, or the notorious Paneb, who lived large but paid for it in the end.42 Since, however, individuals produced the archaeological record, it should be possible to make inferences about individual behavior based upon a careful consider-ation of archaeological context. Petrie was on the right track, even if, as Kemp argues, his practice of archaeology did not live up to this vision. As the quote above illustrates, Petrie saw that even an individual object, like this scaraboid from my excavations at the colonial cemetery at Tombos (Fig. 6), reveals something about the individual(s) who made or used it. On the one hand, the symbol-ism evokes elements of the solar cult with an image of the scarab god Khepri on one side, who represented the restorative power of the sun’s rebirth at dawn, and on the other a lion with a lotus above and cobra in front, perhaps a reference to the creator god Nefertum, who like Khepri was a manifestation of the creative power of the sun god Re.43 So far archaeology serves to illustrate theology in practice, but the archaeological context here reveals more about the theology of death. In contrast to the impression gained from texts like the Book of the Dead, this kind of amuletic jewelry is far more common in burials of the lower classes than specialized amulets like heart scarabs, which are strongly correlated with burials of only the highest elite.44
Archaeologists and historians both tend to adopt a normative view of culture and a top-down approach that emphasizes the power of the state and elite to influence events while neglecting the everyday actions of men and women that ultimately shape a society. The argument that only texts can reveal individuals is ultimately an elitist view of agency, since texts tend to be written by men and in the context of the bureaucracy and promulgation of a state ideology. In some cases, artifacts can show how individuals articulated beliefs that resonated with the state theology, as with the small scaraboid plaque with its solar symbolism from a burial at Tombos (noted above). The more modest but nonetheless significant votive offerings
42 Romer, Ancient lives, 61–93.43 Wilkinson, The Complete Gods and Goddesses, 133–35, 230; Andrews, Amulets of
Ancient Egypt, 25, Fig. 21.44 The same can be said for other items often considered to be a “standard” part
of the New Kingdom burial assemblage, including papyri, shabtis, and Ka-statues, see Smith, “Intact Theban Tombs and the New Kingdom Burial Assemblage.”
placed by a wide range of Egyptian society at sites like the Sphinx temple at Giza, Khenty-Amentiu temple at Abydos, Hathor chapel at Deir el Bahari, and temple of Satet on Elephantine Island, pro-vide evidence for the practice of religion that cannot be found in temple scenes or papyri. As Kemp notes, this material “serves in its own right as the main evidence for an aspect of ancient religion”45 that is not represented in the formal theology.
The application of Practice Theory can help us bridge the gap between objects and intent, to find individuals in the mundane archaeological record that reflects everyday activities and encoun-ters. To sum it up briefly, this theoretical model rests on the idea that cultures do not produce people, rather people produce cultures through a constant dialectic between the constraints of habitus, cul-tural predispositions to some extent shared by other members of society, and the pressure of individual adaptation and innovation, which can bring about change.46 Thinking in these terms can bring us closer to understanding the complexity of ancient Egyptian social dynamics. A fundamental part of this approach is to focus not just on the big picture derived from texts, but instead to emphasize localized social contexts. In this way, archaeology has the potential to reveal individual action, even if we can’t necessarily put a name to the actors. I will illustrate this principle with case studies derived from my own research at the Egyptian colonial cemetery at Tombos in Upper Nubia and on excavations of the late Alexander Badawy at the fortress and settlement of Askut in Lower Nubia.
Funerary Practice at Tombos
Burials provide a more obvious link to individual action, although burial practice also reflects decisions made by surviving family members, since an individual rarely buries him or herself. In spite of this potential, Kemp saw the excavation of burials as simply pro-viding more examples for the archaeological tableaus that illustrate an historic past, and that is certainly how they are often treated, particularly in museums. As Lynn Meskell has shown for Deir el Medina, however, the rich context that burials provide represents an area where archaeology really can reveal insights into individual
45 Kemp, Ancient Egypt, Anatomy of a Civilization, 118.46 Bourdieu, Outline of a theory of practice.
lives. Death is a personal tragedy, but also rends the fabric of soci-ety, requiring the survivors to re-define their relationships. Funerals thus provide opportunities both for individual commemoration and an active re-assertion or re-negotiation of surviving family member’s social position and identity through the treatment of the deceased.47 I will illustrate these principles through two examples from Tombos.
Located at the headwaters of the third cataract of the Nile, Tombos lay upon an important internal boundary between terri-torial and XXX, marked and explicitly indicated by a number of stelae carved to commemorate the defeat of Kush by king Thutmose I in 1502 BC.48 Preliminary evidence from three seasons of exca-vation indicates that the cemeteries there were used from c.1400 to 700 BC and perhaps later, although whether there is continuity between the New Kingdom and later use of the cemetery is still being investigated.49 The first example comes from amongst several children who were buried around the pyramid of Siamun, a high colonial official at Tombos. One child was placed in a simple pit grave face down, a seemingly undignified position! Yet traces of wrappings and a coffin remained around the body and a string of amulets had been placed around the unfortunate child’s neck, sug-gesting a relatively elaborate and careful burial (Fig. 7).50 The mid 18th Dynasty burial of Bokiamun from the tomb of Nerferkhewet at Thebes provides an answer to this apparent contradiction. Boki’s mummy initially appeared completely normal, with distinctive feet and even a bulge for the nose showing through the wrappings. Once the wrappings were removed, however, it became clear that something had gone wrong during the embalming process. Like our child, poor Boki had spent nearly 3500 years upside down! The simple solution is that the embalmers lost track of which side was up. When they realized this, they simply added false feet and a nose to make the mummy more recognizable as a body. Face down buri-als appear as a regular component in New Kingdom necropoleis,
47 Morris 1987; Metcalf and Huntington, Celebrations of death; Meskell 1994; Hodder 1982.
48 Morkot, “Egypt and Nubia: The Egyptian Empire in Nubia,” 234–235, Smith, Wretched Kush, 86–96.
49 Smith, Wretched Kush.50 Although traces of coffins and wrappings are often present, most organic material
is poorly preserved at Tombos, which is often the case at Nubian sites of this period, in contrast to the generally excellent preservation in the Theban Necropolis.
Morris, Burial and Ancient Society Meskell, "Dying young: the experience of death at Deir el-Medineh"Hodder, The Present Past
a portion of life solidified 175
so much so that Säve-Söderbergh and Troy used this phenomenon at the Nubian cemetery of Fadrus to track the Egyptianization of burial practice in the form of a thorough wrapping.51
While the burial position provides interesting data about quality control in embalming, the amulet necklace offers a touching insight into grief and piety. Imagining the anguish of a family who had experienced such a loss does not require a great interpretive leap. They clearly wished to do the best by their young child, supplying an elaborate embalming and a string of amulets. These simple cut
51 Säve-Söderbergh and Troy, New Kingdom Pharaonic Sites, 62–63.
Fig. 7 Children’s burials surround the pyramid of Siamun and his mother Weren at Tombos. Note the upside down burial of the child at the top with amulets in situ
showing that the parents thought the mummy was oriented correctly. XXX.
glass beads included figures of the protective dwarf god Bes and hippo goddess Taweret, who were particularly involved in the pro-tection of women and children, and a baboon no doubt symbolic of the solar cult.52 If the child had suffered a long illness, perhaps the necklace was originally intended to help them recover, but in death was adapted to protect their child in the Afterlife. This kind of rich archaeological context reveals as much about individuals as any text – in this case as poignant an understanding of personal grief as a letter to the dead. We would not know about the foibles of embalmers or the sorrow of this anonymous family without archaeology. Knowing the role of deities represented on the amu-lets and the theological background to mummification provides us background, but finding these objects in context helps us to under-stand how individuals down the social ladder shaped those beliefs through material and cultural practice. In this case, the texts serve to enhance archaeological interpretation. The simple burial of a child at Tombos provides a personal narrative just as powerful as any text from Deir el Medina.
The second example comes from a small group of women buried in a Nubian-style flexed position, head towards the East in contra-vention of normal Egyptian practice. One of these Kerma-style burials lay on her back with arms and legs splayed in a bizarre position otherwise unattested in either Nubian or Egyptian burial practice (Fig. 8). A careful examination of the body’s position, however, showed that looters had shifted her from an originally flexed position. The remains of a string of beads and amulets points towards a motive for the thieves, since anyone pilfering valu-able jewelry would have to displace the arms to get at a necklace, shifting the entire body as a result. The fact that her skeleton was still articulated implies that the robbery took place not long after her death before the body had dried and stiffened, perhaps even by a member of the burial party. Herbert Winlock noted similar evidence for contemporaneous looting a few hundred years later in the 21st Dynasty burials of the High Priest of Amun Menkheperre and his family. Several burials in the sealed complex showed signs of vandalism by later burial parties, including the removal of the gilded face and hands of the coffins of the first inhabitants of the tomb, with their palls carefully replaced to conceal the crime. Gold jewelry had been stolen from two of the women even before their
wrappings were completed. The sticky fingerprints of the robbers show that the bodies were disturbed before the resins applied to the bandages had dried, implying that they were robbed even before leaving the embalming house! Once their wrappings were finished and palls sewn in place, no one would know the difference.53 As with the example from Tombos, only jewelry made of precious metals was taken. Their heart scarabs had been put back into position and otherwise their furnishings were undisturbed, the burials seemingly intact. The famous “Tomb Robbery Papyri” do record the confes-sions of criminals caught at the end of the New Kingdom robbing both royal and private tombs, but these were professional thieves. Archaeological evidence shows that this kind of robbery was com-mitted by members of the burial party, perhaps part of the families involved, and even by the embalmer’s themselves, connected with
53 Winlock, “The Egyptian Expedition 1924–1925: The Museum’s Excavations at Thebes,” 26–28; for another example, see Winlock, “The Egyptian Expedition 1929–1930: The Museum’s Excavations at Thebes,” 24.
Fig. 8 Burial of a woman in Nubian style from a middle class family(?) crypt at Tombos. The unusual position is due to the robbery of the body, which was originally in a flexed or fetal position. The remains of a string of beads with the Bes amulets
shown inset here were found behind her skull. Author’s photo.
the priesthood of Anubis. As Winlock remarked, “what a picture do we get for the moralist!”54
Through a careful consideration of archaeological and historical context, this burial at Tombos tells a story of crime and perhaps jealousy within a family and/or community. The juxtaposition of Bes amulets and Nubian burial style also tells us something about the woman buried at Tombos and by implication the larger cul-tural dynamic within Nubian colonial society. On the one hand, she provides an example of a Nubian woman having intimately joined an Egyptian colonial community but still insisting on a Nubian burial, forcefully enough that everyone complied with her wishes in spite of the bureaucratic and cultural pressure towards assimilation in the Nubian colony.55 Since Egyptian (and presum-ably also Nubian) funerals were public events, the burial of women in Nubian style at Tombos would make a very overt assertion of ethnic identity against the very Egyptian monumentality of the elite pyramids and traditional funeral processions and rituals that took place regularly within the cemetery.56 In spite of her insistence on a Nubian burial position, however, she was devoted to Bes, a popular Egyptian household deity, who perhaps not coincidentally figures prominently during the Egyptianizing Napatan and Meroitic periods in Nubia. She was particularly fond of a headless dancing Bes amulet that had been broken in antiquity, yet was saved and included in her burial, found in situ strung through the gap between the dwarf god’s arms. In spite of the looting, the care taken with her burial suggests that she was not a slave or even a servant, but rather a Nubian woman who had become a vital member of the colonial community through marriage with one of the colonists.57
54 Winlock, “The Egyptian Expedition 1924–1925: The Museum’s Excavations at Thebes,” 27.
55 For the New Kingdom acculturation policy, see Säve-Söderbergh and Troy, New Kingdom Pharaonic Sites, 10–13, Smith, Askut in Nubia, 8–22, Smith, Wretched Kush, 56–96. Even if her children or other immediate relations decided on this course of action, a similar social dynamic would apply.
56 There is direct evidence for funeral feasts and/or rituals in the form of cen-sors, “flowerpots” and beer bottles, hearths, cookpots, and serving vessels from the pyramid’s courtyard.
57 Biometric and Strontium Isotope analyses support this reconstruction, provid-ing evidence for the presence of both migrants from Egypt and natives, and a mix of Egyptians, Nubians, and those of mixed heritage, Buzon, et al. “Migration in the Nile Valley during the New Kingdom period.”
These cultural juxtapositions suggest a process of cultural blending and/or entanglement that is common in colonial communities.58
Pottery and People at Askut
Although the task of finding individuals in pottery from secondary trash deposits is far more daunting, it is still possible, particularly when looking at questions of cultural interaction. As I have argued elsewhere, a careful examination of the distribution of Nubian pottery found in secondary deposits associated with households at Askut reveals insights into the day to day interactions between Nubians and Egyptians that paint a somewhat different picture of the Nubian colony than that derived from texts alone. As one might expect, Nubian pottery makes up a small percentage overall, ranging from around four percent in the Middle Kingdom, rising to fourteen percent during the Second Intermediate Period, and falling to less than ten percent during the New Kingdom. If we stopped here, we would conclude that there was some interaction and trade with Nubians, but no very deep relationship between the colonial occupiers and the native population. This notion resonates with the ideological depiction of foreigners as inferior and subordinate. When the pottery is broken into sub-assemblages connected with food service, storage, and cooking, however, an interesting pattern emerges that contradicts the usual interpretation of aloof relations between Egyptians and Nubians in Lower Nubia. Nubian cooking pottery starts at around forty percent of the cooking sub-assemblage, rising to around two thirds during the Second Intermediate Period, and continuing to rise into the New Kingdom, when it accounts for over eighty percent of its sub-assemblage (Fig. 9). Similar pot-tery appears in the other Lower Nubian forts,59 as well as Upper Nubian temple-towns like Sesebi (personal observation), although unfortunately the lack of systematic recording from old excavations makes it impossible to quantify its relative percentage.
58 For example, Lightfoot and Martinez, “Frontiers and boundaries in archaeological perspective”; Deagan, “Transculturation and Spanish American ethnogenesis”; Stahl, “Colonial Entanglements and the Practices of Taste”; and Smith, Wretched Kush.
59 E.g., Shalfak: Dunham, Second Cataract Forts II, pl. LXIV, F; Semna: Dunham and Janssen, Second Cataract Forts I, pl. 113, 11, 12, 15; Emery, et al., The Fortress of Buhen, 185–188, figs. 5, 7, 33, 36, 47, pl. 78.
The cookpots at Askut reflect the social practice of individual women, even though they appear in mixed secondary trash depos-its that cannot be linked to any particular individual. Very likely, this pattern reflects the same pattern of intermarriage of Nubian women with Egyptian colonists attested at Tombos, a notion sup-ported by the presence of Nubian style human and fertility figurines, including one fine example found near a household shrine. I have argued elsewhere that disproportionate representation of Nubian cookpots indicates that these Nubian women chose to maintain and emphasize a Nubian identity within the household, a social context over which they had some authority. The distribution of this pottery across the fortress indicates that many, if not most, households had Nubian women among their family members. Maintaining Nubian foodways would help to provide these women with a familiar social network, a practice attested ethnographically in South Africa when
women from the same ethnic group moved into an urban setting.60 Since we know that cooking was the responsibility of women in ancient Egypt, this pattern very likely reflects a kind of counter-acculturation of foodways within the putatively Egyptianized colony.61 Archaeologists have documented similar transformations in household material culture connected with cuisine in more recent colonial episodes at North American sites like Spanish St. Augustine in Florida and Russian Fort Ross in northern California.62 Even in the context of the dramatic shift towards Egyptianization that char-acterizes the New Kingdom empire, the material record reflects a complex mosaic of cultural influences negotiated by Nubian women and men, not wholesale assimilation by a hegemonic power – a social history of the Nubian colony that is difficult to find within a textual record that celebrates the subjection of foreigners by Pharaoh fulfilling his role of annihilating or taming the early forces of Isfet and establishing Ma‘at on earth.63
Conclusions
Such a concern for the material objects of the past, the “small things forgot-ten,” is central to the work of historical archaeologists. Archaeology is the study of past peoples based on the things they left behind and the ways they left their imprint on the world. Chipped-stone hand axes made hundreds of thousands of years ago and porcelain teacups from the eighteenth century carry messages from their makers and users. It is the archaeologists’s task to decode those messages and apply them to our understanding of the human experience.64
The late James Deetz’s characterization of the work of historical archaeologists is just as relevant to ancient Egypt as the archaeology of colonial and post-colonial America that formed the focus for his research. The founder of modern Egyptian archaeology, W.M. Flinders Petrie, realized the potential for archaeology to reveal not just cultural generalities, but insights into the lives of individuals,
60 find reference, either Royce or more likely Comaroff.61 Smith, Wretched Kush, 189–93.62 Deagan, “Transculturation and Spanish American ethnogenesis”; Lightfoot and
Martinez, “Frontiers and boundaries in archaeological perspective.”63 For discussion see Smith, Wretched Kush, 167–187, and for a philological approach,
Loprieno, Topos und Mimesis.64 Deetz, In small things forgotten, 4.
most of whom left no written record behind. Privileging written sources leaves us with an incomplete and one-sided view of the ancient Egyptians, that of a very narrow segment of elite men who produced the historical record and designed the temples and tombs that are the hallmark of ancient Egyptian civilization. Archaeology of course has its limitations, as does the historical record. Neither can give us a complete picture of life in the past. And there may be things that we can never know. Kemp’s own example of inte-grating texts and archaeology has gone a long way to refute his own arguments. Far from serving as the “handmaiden of history,” archaeological evidence often forces a re-evaluation of the histori-cal record, including the very origins of the Pharaonic state and seemingly straightforward historical questions like the supposed abandonment of the Nubian fortresses and the dramatic rise to power of the Hyksos at the beginning of the Second Intermediate Period. Although texts provide irreplaceable insights into Egyptian theology, archaeology plays a central role in understanding the belief systems of the illiterate masses, and even lower literate elite, which sometimes resonate, but often provide a counterpoint to the formal theology of temples and tombs. Both archaeological and historical evidence present unique challenges in interpretation, but at the same time truly integrating text and archaeology has the potential to yield greater insights into the nature and dynamics of Egyptian society than each source alone could produce. Kemp hints at a way forward by citing anthropology as a possibility. In anthropological theory, artifacts are material culture. As Hodder and others point out, objects are embued with meaning.65 We can’t always recover that meaning, but it is central to understanding a culture and so we must try. With the range of data available to us, the judicious application of theory like the Practice Theory outlined above can help us bridge the gap between philology and archaeology, between artifacts and individual life stories.
References
Aldred, C. The Egyptians. 3rd ed. rev. and updated by Aidan Dodson. London/New York: Thames and Hudson, 1998.
Amiran, R. Ancient pottery of the Holy Land: from its beginnings in the Neolithic Period to the end of the Iron Age. Jerusalem: Massada Press, 1969.
65 For discussion see Hodder and Hutson, Reading the Past.
Andrews, C. Amulets of Ancient Egypt. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994.Baines, J. “Literacy in Ancient Egyptian Society.” Man 18 (1983): 572–99.Baines, J. and C.J. Eyre “Four Notes on Literacy.” Göttinger Miszellen 61 (1983):
65–96.Bianchi, R. Daily Life of the Nubians. Westport, CT/London: Greenwood Press,
2004.Bietak, M. “The present state of Egyptian archaeology.” Journal of Egyptian
Archaeology 65 (1979): 156–160.———. Avaris, the capital of the Hyksos: recent excavations at Tell el-Dab‘a. London:
British Museum Press, 1996.Bietak, M., N. Marinatos and C. Palivou. Taureador Scenes in Tell El-Dab‘a (Avaris)
and Knossos. Denkschriften der Gesamtakademie Bd. 43. Untersuchungen der Zweigstelle Kairo des Österreichischen Archäologischen Institutes Bd. 27. Wien: ÖAW, Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2007.
Bossone, A. “Ancient Egypt Settlement Sheds Light on Everyday Life.” National Geographic News ( July 2, 2008). Accessed July 11, 2009. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/07/080701-egypt-discovery.html.
Bourdieu, P. Outline of a theory of practice. Cambridge studies in social anthropology 16. Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, 1977.
Breasted, J.H. A history of Egypt, from the earliest times to the Persian conquest. New York: C. Scribner’s sons, 1909.
Buzon, M.R., A. Simonetti, and R.A. Creaser, “Migration in the Nile Valley dur-ing the New Kingdom period: a preliminary strontium isotope study.” Journal of Archaeological Science 34 (2007): 1391–1401.
Chippendale, C. “Archaeology’s Proper Place – A field archaeologist replies to David Lowenthal’s ‘musings from his study’.” Archaeology 53, no. 2 (2000): 67.
Clutton-Brock, J. “The Buhen Horse.” Journal of Archaeological Science 1 (1974): 89–100.
Daniel, G., A Hundred Years of Archaeology. London: Duckworth, 1950.Deagan, K. Transculturation and Spanish American ethnogenesis: The archaeo-
logical legacy of the Quincentenary. In Studies in Culture Contact: Interaction, Culture Change, and Archaeology, ed. J.G. Cusick, 23–43. Occasional paper 25. Carbondale: Center for Archaeological Investigations, Southern Illinois University, 1998.
Deetz, James In small things forgotten: an archaeology of early American life. 2nd edition revised. New York: Anchor Books/Doubleday, 1996.
Dunham, D. Second Cataract Forts II: Uronarti, Shalfak, Mirgiaas. Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 1967.
Dunham, D. and J. Janssen. Second Cataract Forts I: Semna Kumma. Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 1960.
Emery, W.B. “The tombs of the first pharaohs.” Scientific American 197 (1957): 106–112, 115, 116.
———. Egypt in Nubia. London: Hutchinson, 1965.Emery, Walter B., H.S. Smith and A. Millard The Fortress of Buhen: the archaeologi-
cal report. Excavation memoir 49. Excavations at Buhen 1. London: Egypt Exploration Society, 1979.
Giddy, L.Guksch, C.E. “On Ethnographic Analogies.” In The Followers of Horus. Studies
dedicated to Michael Allen Hoffman 1944–1990, eds. R. Friedman and B. Adams, 7–10. Oxford: Oxbow Books, 1992.
"The Present State of Egyptian Archaeology: 1997 update." In Studies in Ancient Egypt in Honour of H. S. Smith, eds. A. Leahy, and J. Tait, 109-14. London: Egypt Exploration Society, 1999.
184 stuart tyson smith
Helck, W. Die Beziehungen Ägyptens und Vorderasiens zur Ägäis: bis ins 7. Jahrhundert v. Chr. Erträge der Forschung 120. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1995.
———. Wirtschaftsgeschichte des Alten Ägypten. Leiden: Brill, 1975.Hodder, I. 1982.Hodder, I. and S. Hutson. Reading the Past. 3rd edition, revised. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2003.Hume, I.N. “Archaeology: Handmaiden of History.” North Carolina Historical Review
41:2 (1964): 214–225.Kemp, B.J. “The Egyptian 1st Dynasty royal cemetery.” Antiquity 41, no. 161
(1967): 22–32.———. “The early development of towns in Egypt.” Antiquity 51, no. 203 (1977):
185–200.———. “In the shadow of the texts: archaeology in Egypt.” Archaeological Review
from Cambridge 3, no. 2 (1984): 19–28.———. Ancient Egypt, Anatomy of a Civilization, edition?Levy, P. “Always a Handmaiden—Never a Bride.” Archaeology Magazine Online
Features (February 23, 2000). Accessed July 3, 2009. http://www.archaeology.org/online/features/history/index.html.
Lightfoot, K.G., and A. Martinez. “Frontiers and boundaries in archaeological perspective.” Annual Review of Anthropology 24 (1995): 471–92.
Loprieno, A. Topos und Mimesis: zum Ausländer in der ägyptischen Literatur. Ägyptologische Abhandlungen 48. Wiesbaden: O. Harrassowitz, 1988.
Lowenthal, D. “Archaeology’s Perilous Pleasures – An eminent historian reflects on some uses and misuses of the past.” Archaeology 53, no. 2 (2000): 62.
Meskell, L. 1994.Metcalf, P. and R. Huntington. Celebrations of death: the anthropology of mortuary ritual.
Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991.Montserrat, Dominic Akhenaten: history, fantasy, and ancient Egypt. London/New York:
Routledge, 2000.Morris 1987.Mountjoy, P.A. Mycenaean pottery: an introduction. University of Oxford Committee
for Archaeology 36. Oxford: Oxford University Committee for Archaeology, 1993.
Morkot, R. “Egypt and Nubia: The Egyptian Empire in Nubia in the Late Bronze Age (c. 1550–1070 BCE).” In Empires: perspectives from Archaeology and History, eds. S.E. Alcock, T.N. D’Altroy, K.D. Morrison, and C.M. Sinopoli, 227–251. Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
Petrie, W.M.F. Methods and aims in archaeology. New York: Macmillan, 1904.Redford, D. “Egyptology and History.” In Egyptology and the Social Sciences, ed.
K. Weeks, 3–20. Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 1979.Romer, J. Ancient lives: the story of the Pharaohs’ tombmakers. London: Weidenfeld &
Nicolson, 1984.Säve-Söderbergh, T. “A Buhen Stela from the Second Intermediate Period
(Khartūm No. 18).” The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 35 (1949): 50–58.———. “The Hyksos Rule in Egypt.” The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 37 (1951):
53–71.Säve-Söderbergh, T., and L. Troy. New Kingdom Pharaonic Sites. Scandinavian
Joint Expedition to Sudanese Nubia 5:2–3. Uppsala: Almqvist and Wiksell, 1991.
Shinnie, P.L. Ancient Nubia. London/New York: Kegan Paul International, 1996.
Burial and Ancient Society: The Rise of the Greek City-State. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987.
Pharaoh
Sticky Note
"Dying young: the experience of death at Deir el-Medineh." Archaeological Review From Cambridge 13, no. 2 (1994): 35-45.
Pharaoh
Sticky Note
The Present Past: An Introduction to Anthropology for Archaeologists, London: Batsford, 1982.
a portion of life solidified 185
Smith, S.T. “Intact Theban Tombs and the New Kingdom Burial Assemblage.” Mitteilungen Des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts Kairo 48 (1992): 193–231.
———. Askut in Nubia: the economics and ideology of Egyptian imperialism in the second millenium B.C. Studies in Egyptology. London: Kegan-Paul, 1995.
———. “Sealing Practice, Literacy and Administration in the Middle Kingdom,” Cahier de recherches de l’Institut de papyrologie et égyptologie de Lille 22 (2001): 173–94.
———. Wretched Kush: ethnic identities and boundaries in Egypt’s Nubian empire. London/New York: Routledge, 2003.
Stahl, A.B. “Colonial Entanglements and the Practices of Taste: An Alternative to Logocentric Approaches.” American Anthropologist 104 (2002): 827–845.
Trigger, B. Nubia under the pharaohs. London: Thames & Hudson, 1976.Van Seters, J. The Hyksos: a new investigation. New Haven: Yale University Press,
1966.Wilkinson, R.H. The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt. London: Thames
and Hudson, 2003.Wilson, J.A. The burden of Egypt; an interpretation of ancient Egyptian culture. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1951.———. “Civilization without cities.” In City Invincible: A Symposium on Urbanization
and Cultural Development in the Ancient Near East held at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, December 4–7, 1958, eds. C.H. Kraeling and R. McCormick Adams, 124–164. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960.
Winlock, H.E. “The Egyptian Expedition 1924–1925: The Museum’s Excavations at Thebes.” The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 21, No. 3, Part 2 (1926): 1, 5–32.
———. “The Egyptian Expedition 1928–1929: The Museum’s Excavations at Thebes.” The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, Vol. 25, No. 11, Part 2 (Nov., 1930): 1, 3–34.
