Campbell Price

Saqqara in particular, and the Memphite necropolis in general, constituted the arena for the prolific and significant monumental self-presentations of Prince Khaemwaset, fourth son of King Ramesses II (c. 1279–1213 BCE). The present paper explores the role of the prince in fashioning a persona that addressed past, present and future audiences. This discussion is used to contextualise results of the 2009 Saqqara Geophysical Survey Project, showing the greater-than-expected extent of the New Kingdom necropolis south of the Unas Causeway. It considers responses to the deep palimpsest of the sacred landscape of the Memphite necropolis by—and later commemorations within it of—this notable Ramesside individual

In ancient Egypt, statues provided a terrestrial manifestation for non-physical and preternatural entities, namely deities and the dead. Numbers of statues in wood and metal are likely to have been significant in Pharaonic Egypt, but these have not survived evenly, with a resulting bias in favour of stone. Manufacture of any image was a highly skilled, quasi- divine process in Pharaonic Egypt, effected chiefly by trained and properly initiated people. Somewhat paradoxically, therefore, Egyptian sculpture has often been perceived to be inherently accessible—a cultural judgement that has persistently informed reconstructions of the statues’ original settings and functions. Egyptian deities were characterised by their multiplicity of manifestations. It might reasonably be assumed that colossal statues of Pharaoh and the gods—so emblematic of 'Ancient Egypt' in general—were the most visible and therefore the most accessible of sculptures for the Egyptians themselves.

In 1889–1890, Flinders Petrie directed clearance of a late Middle Kingdom town site near al-Lahun to produce a plan of the buildings and a general description of Middle Kingdom material culture. The finds include a dramatic limestone image of the mixed hippopotamus-lion known in Egyptology by the Late Egyptian name Taweret “the great (female power).” This sculpture was mentioned, but not illustrated, in his excavation report and has therefore not attracted the attention of researchers. Here we assess the figure through its modern and ancient history, in the light of recent fieldwork at settlement sites contemporary with the Lahun town.

The jewellery from tomb 124 at Riqqa, consisting of one pectoral and one winged beetle in gold and cloisonne work, one gold shell pendant decorated with wires and granulation, and one hollow gold amulet in the form of god Min, was analysed by handheld X‐ray fluorescence and scanning electron microscopy with energy‐dispersive X‐ray spectroscopy. This group of jewellery, dated to the second half of the 12th Dynasty (c. 1900–1840 B.C.), was excavated inside the coffin of an adult male, which had been crushed after burial by the collapse of the chamber roof during an episode of looting. Both the male and the looter's body were found inside the chamber, evidencing that the group of jewellery was intact. Despite having been highly restored in the past, as referenced in the correspondence between the excavator Flinders Petrie and the curators of the Manchester Museum, it could be shown that the jewellery was produced using Ag‐rich electrum alloys containing platinum group element inclusions that indicate the use of alluvial gold. The analysis of some joins has confirmed the use of hard‐soldering, with solders obtained by addition of Cu to the base‐alloy. Data obtained for the jewellery of tomb 124 were compared with data previously obtained for tomb 296, also excavated at Riqqa, but dated to the 18th Dynasty. The comparison demonstrates the continuity of the workshop traditions in one location between the Middle Kingdom and the New Kingdom but also reveals discrepancies in the alloys employed in those two periods.

Publication of the fragmentary lower portion of a limestone seated statue, now in the Manchester Museum (acc. no. 4624), from the 1907 EEF excavations at Deir el-Bahri. Although the name of the individual is not preserved, surviving titles, phraseology and the assertion that the statue was given m ḥswt nt ḫr ḥmt-nṯr ‘as favour of the God’s Wife’ allow the piece to be identified as belonging to Senenmut, the well-known courtier of Queen Hatshepsut, and dates it to the early part of his career before Hatshepsut assumed full kingship.

The fragmentary statue under discussion belonged to a man named Hor, who discharged a number of important functions during the reign of King Psammetichus II but who is not presently known for certain from any other monumental source. Hor's statue illustrates the Egyptological tendency to excerpt and privilege textual information over the understanding of an object in context; while the statue is referred to as a source for particular geo-military titles many times, it has never been the subject of a discrete publication until now.

The so-called ‘healing’ statues form a relatively small but well-studied category of monuments attested chiefly from between the 26th Dynasty and early Ptolemaic Period. They represent men of elite status, generally shown in a standing pose supporting a Horus cippus. Scholarly attention has tended to focus on the magico-medical texts of the statues, rather than the function and perception of the statues in context. The visual impact of the densely-inscribed statues, when viewed in temple spaces amidst other more traditional elite statue types, is likely to have been significant. Such a departure from the ‘norm’ is seen in New Kingdom chauves d’Hathor statues, where the peculiarity of the sculptural form was a means of attracting attention. ‘Appeal to the living’ texts on the healing statues make clear that the intended audience for the statues was among temple staff. Claims made in the statues’ inscriptions to ‘save everyone’ are part of an age-old rhetoric to persuade passers-by to offer to the deceased; in contrast to modern, egalitarian expectations about access to healthcare, those with physical and intellectual access to the statues are likely to have been restricted to a knowledgeable few, rather than a broader ‘public’ proposed by many commentators.

The tombs in the Valley of the Kings were intended to contain a range of objects to assist the king’s journey to and survival in the afterlife. Tutankhamun’s almost intact tomb (KV 62) gives the most complete picture of one royal tomb group, but fragments of the same types of objects, and depictions of objects in wall scenes, survive from other tombs. The king was provided with many of the same items as contemporary private individuals: statues depicting himself, shabti figures, furniture, weaponry, clothing, food, and drink. Some objects, such as statues of the gods, and some models seem to have been restricted to royal tombs. Most items of any value were stolen or were abandoned when the royal mummies were rehoused during the Twenty-first Dynasty, but surviving remains illustrate the range of royal afterlife expectations during the New Kingdom.

This study presents and examines evidence for the functions of, and concepts behind, statues of private individuals in Egypt between the Twenty-fifth Dynasty and the Ptolemaic period. Discussion is based on a corpus of 407 statues found in a temple deposit known as the Karnak Cachette.
Chapter One evaluates traditional approaches to Late Period non-royal sculpture. These have tended to create artificial distinctions between the aesthetic and the textual; some studies view statues as museum art objects, while others believe the statues’ supposedly formulaic inscriptions are chiefly of interest as historical sources for names and titles. A methodological discussion follows, suggesting ways in which these approaches might be bridged to take account of the statues as objects viewed in their original setting(s).
Chapter Two discusses the archaeological context of the statues in the Cachette, and the implications their excavation, preservation and deposition have for how the statues are understood. Chapter Three presents a catalogue of the inscriptions on 99 statues – 14 of them unpublished – that mention a word for ‘statue’ or carry dedication formulae. The catalogue is arranged chronologically and includes hieroglyphic transcription, transliteration and English translation.
Analysis of these texts proceeds in a thematic manner. Chapter Four discusses the process of setting up a statue. Based on the 14% of statues that carry dedication formulae, mostly sited in visually prominent positions, the role of the son as donor and active ritualist for his parents is highlighted.  Sparse evidence for the occasion of dedication suggests a posthumous context.
Chapter Five presents evidence of royal involvement in the dedication of private statues before the Late Period. This serves as a basis for the discussion of deliberate copying of styles and forms. Such archaisms are illustrated by the labelling of the elite statues as ‘favour of the king’ (Hswt nt xr nsw). Chapter Six examines the development of this concept in the Third Intermediate and Late Periods through the use of the term ‘favoured one’ (Hsi) to designate a statue.
Chapter Seven explores evidence for settings – both physical and conceptual –for the statue. Taking into account the statues’ size and iconography, a wide distribution around the Karnak complex is suggested as enabling optimum participation with those with access to temple space.
Expected encounters between statues and the living are analysed in Chapter Eight. Inscriptions make clear that interfaces were hoped to include ritual actions, food from the ‘reversion of offerings’ process, and even the cleaning of the statue. Pleas against damage or neglect additionally demonstrate the continuing conception of the statue as a material ‘body’ for an individual, susceptible to injury. Most significant are claims by the statue (owner) to reciprocate for beneficial acts carried out for him, a characteristic feature of the relationship between statues and the living.
Conclusions drawn demonstrate that the material collected – so often overlooked in favour of earlier private, and royal or divine statues – offers significant insight into the Egyptians’ own concepts of how the statues’ functioned. In spite of traditionally reductive understandings of Late Period private sculpture there is substantial evidence of how the statues were viewed: as powerful, reified objects, able to engage in a number of ways with the living, the dead and the gods.

Temple complexes were the main context for elite sculpture in Egypt from at least 1500 BC until the Roman occupation. Pharaonic temples provided both relative safety for statues and the proximity of regular ritual offering. This was in contrast to tomb-chapels, to which access was less closely mediated and which might be accessed by persons intent on damaging or repurposing a statue.

Elite temple statues, although almost always recovered out of context, carry hieroglyphic texts anticipating interactions with the living and the gods. Such inscriptions can be used to model the intended settings for statues, and the elite audiences they engaged. The appearance of some statues, such as those of unusually archaising types, stood out from groups of sculpture that accumulated in temple spaces to capture the attention of peers and monumental competitors.

This paper discusses textual and artefactual evidence to evaluate encounters with statues in the particular context of Pharaonic temples.

'Statues in Context(s)': Sackler Colloquium, British Museum, 13-14 July 2016

Temples were the almost exclusive setting for non-royal sculpture in the First Millennium BC. Such images were intended to ensure the perpetual presence of the individual represented and to engage the attention – and interaction – of a relatively small group of temple staff. One means of standing out from the ‘crowd’ of temple images was to make meaningful visual allusions to sculptural forms of the past.
One striking example of such Late Period archaism is the standing statue of Tjasetimu (BM EA 1682), of 26th Dynasty date and putatively from Giza. As a priest of statues of Psamtek I, Tjasetimu would have been familiar with the proper rituals expected to be performed. In the inscriptions on the statue’s base, the word mitt, ‘likeness’, is used in reference to the statue itself. The most likely interpretation here is not that the statue ought to look ‘like’ the living individual – but rather that it emulates much more ancient forms. 
This paper examines Tjasetimu’s statue in the context of a functioning Late Period temple. It’s archaising appearance and the anticipated role of the statue are compared with contemporary sculpture and inscriptional evidence, chiefly from the Karnak Cachette.

JE 37136 (Legrain’s excavation number: K 164) is an unassuming statuette – 34 centimetres in height – depicting a man named Nesmin and his wife Tasheritmin. Stylistic and textual evidence suggest the piece dates to the late 30th Dynasty or Ptolemaic period. During the Late Period, the pair statue – or dyad – is very unusual in non-royal sculpture. Evidence is examined for the statuette’s emulation of earlier styles and is placed within the context of contemporary artistic archaism.

Inscriptions on the statue include dedication formulae that record the role of the couple’s son Pa-bik in the provision of the piece for his parents. On the statue’s back pillar is an interesting but unfortunately broken ‘appeal to the living’ with unusual phraseology. Contemporary statue inscriptions, with parallel statements of filial piety, are presented and discussed. Building on recent research into the conceptualisation of non-royal temple statues in the Late Period, suggestions are made about how this small object from the Cachette reflects awareness of the past in Karnak at this time.

The texts inscribed on Late Period non-royal statues address a range of audiences, encompassing the living, the dead and the gods. Several forms of interaction are expected and invited from those with access to the statue; these statements are typically framed within the traditional “address to the living.” Despite being characterised in pejorative terms as formulaic, Late Period examples show that the relationship between the statue and its audience(s) was complex. This paper focuses on statuary from the Karnak Cachette, including several unpublished pieces. In particular, it examines the meaning of a formula found inscribed on a number of Cachette statues: “I am a saH for the one who acts for him” (ink saH n ir n=f).
The term saH has commonly been translated as ‘noble dead’, ‘défunt’, ‘Würdiger (Toter).’ By the Late Period, saH classifies a material form of both the deceased and the divine. Usages of the term within statue inscriptions demonstrate that in these contexts it refers specifically to the statue itself rather than being a purely biographical statement, as has previously been suggested. By claiming to be a saH, the individual represented by a statue asserts an identity as an active participant within the setting of a functioning temple, capable of reciprocating for the ritual actions he expects to receive.  Interactions between a statue owner and the living are well-known from the inscriptions of earlier non-royal statues such as the so-called chauves d’Hathor of the New Kingdom. Late Period statue inscriptions from Karnak will be presented to show that the concept of reciprocity continued – and found new means of expression – into the Ptolemaic period.

Since 1990 the Saqqara Geophysical Survey Project (SGSP), a Scottish mission directed by Ian Mathieson and under the patronage of the National Museums  of Scotland (1990-2001) and Glasgow Museums (2001-to date), has been engaged in producing a comprehensive and up-to-date archaeological and subsurface map of the Saqqara Necropolis. In October 2009, the Survey continued its investigations to the south of the Unas causeway and east of the Sekhemkhet enclosure, in the area of several well-known New Kingdom tombs.

This paper presents the SGSP’s latest findings from the 2009 season, including several previously unidentified structures. Mudbrick elements of these constructions were detected through the use of geophysical prospection; many are consistent in their roughly east-west orientation with known tomb chapels of the Ramesside period. The latest geophysical data are evaluated, and contextualised by earlier archaeological explorations undertaken by the EES and University of Leiden among others. This allows a greater topographical understanding of the use of the multi-period Memphite necropolis.

The Association of Curators of Collections of Egypt and Sudan (ACCES) was founded in May 2006 as a Subject Specialist Network for museum curators responsible for looking after archaeological collections from Egypt and Sudan in the United Kingdom. Its main aim is to facilitate the sharing of information and good practice between 15 core museums with large Egyptian and Sudanese collections, some 200 smaller collections elsewhere in the UK, and a broader academic and public audience. This presentation reports on some of the ways ACCES has been active in achieving its aims as a distinctive resource for Egyptologists and non-specialists alike, from developing its website (and the entries for relevant collections on the Cornucopia site) to organising a series of workshops for museum professionals.