Summer placements!

After something of hiatus, we return to blogging with reports from our Archaeology Summer Placement student. First up, Sonia Prakash, on some highlights of the time spent in the museum in July!

Hi everyone! My name’s Sonia and I’ve just begun my third year studying Classics and Egyptology at the University of Manchester. I have had such a fantastic time doing this placement with Campbell as it really gave me a flavour of the wide range of work that goes on at museums.

A key highlight of mine would have to be sorting through correspondence from the early 1900’s. Although I have some previous experience of transcribing, I found this to be quite a challenging task as a lot of the handwriting was difficult to understand (especially Petrie’s!). However, it was incredibly rewarding after having deciphered a letter, especially if it revealed interesting information. A particularly exciting letter was one sent by W. M. Flinders Petrie (1853-1942) in which he invited the Manchester Museum to support him in establishing the Egyptian Research Account. Here he wished to promote scientific research in Egypt and allow students to take up their own original research. Since there was no British School of Archaeology in Egypt, Petrie expressed the need for a more definite Archaeological School to make excavations, the supply of materials and funds easier to acquire. This gave me a valuable insight into what Egyptology was like at the time, how it developed, and what a significant role the Manchester Museum played in the evolution of the field. There were also a number of peculiar letters, such as one from a costume shop owner who wrote to the museum asking them to assess some objects he was in possession of and to let him know if they were indeed genuine artefacts. However, when looking at his drawings (below), they appeared to simply be replicas. Another fascinating find was an original seal from the Egypt Excavation Fund – now known as the Egypt Exploration Society (where I currently volunteer).

The team – Michelle, Sonia, Carlotta (minus Jordan) at work…

Towards the end of the placement, we spent the majority of our time in the organic stores sorting through and cataloguing paintings. The Manchester Museum’s collection of Nina and Norman de Garis Davies paintings was especially exciting as it gave us an opportunity to decipher hieroglyphs, analyse small details and decode the artwork. These paintings were made by a married couple of illustrators who documented tomb paintings from the Theban Necropolis. One of the most impressive paintings comes from Tomb 51 of Userhet called Neferhabef, which displays him wearing a leopard garment, an elaborate usekh collar and bearing an offering cup. Analysing these paintings was a great opportunity to apply the skills and knowledge learnt at university in a sort of puzzle-solving activity.

I thoroughly enjoyed my time at the Manchester Museum as it was a chance to fully immerse myself in Egyptology and museum work. A huge thank you to Campbell and the other students for making this such an enjoyable placement!

Divinity and Display: Discussing Mummified Human Remains

Our international touring exhibition ‘Golden Mummies of Egypt’ returns to Manchester Museum this week, and presents a unique opportunity to display and discuss our collections.

Naturally, an exhibition which features mummified remains prompts discussion about the ethics of their display. Debate on the subject is not new but has attended the display of Egyptian mummified people at least since the first Western encounters with them in the 17^th Century. Manchester Museum itself has been the centre of consideration of the subject since it chose to cover some remains to prompt discussion in connection with an exhibition on ‘Lindow Man’, Iron Age remains preserved in a peat bog, in 2008.

Unlike the previous venues for ‘Golden Mummies’ in the US and China, we have decided to edit out all images of human remains derived from CT-scans and X-rays from the final Manchester showing. Digital interpretation now focuses solely on the outer decoration and materials used in the mummification ritual, one that was more about transformation of the deceased into a divine being than simply about preservation of the body.

By doing this, the exhibition resists the urge to look inside – the default expectation of recent exhibitions featuring mummified human remains but one that was never anticipated by ancient people. Instead, ‘Golden Mummies’ addresses the intention rather than the effect of the ritual of mummification, and focuses on the transformative imagery on the decorated exterior of carefully wrapped bodies. From the earliest identifiable depictions of gods, the wrapped, shrouded form has indicated (and imparted) divine status. Usually, Egyptology describes gods like Osiris and Ptah as ‘mummiform’ – when in fact the shrouded forms of mummified bodies imitate images of gods. These amorphous forms subsume individual human characteristics, and create a divine, ancestral image – an effigy for eternity.

Funerary mask for a woman. 2120. From Lahun. C. 100 BCE- 100CE. Photo: Julia Thorne.

Research that enquires into preservation techniques and palaeopathology – the study of ancient disease – has long fascinated people. But by narrowing in on the medical history of mummified individuals, this interpretation characterises the dead individual in terms of their illnesses, the identification of which is much more contested and subjective than many non-specialists realise.

When understood as transformation of a human body into a divine image, mummification actively denies these human frailties. Texts and images repeatedly assert that the (elite) dead have become something more than human, impervious to change, divine and therefore without imperfections.

This generically god-like, and mostly androgenous, face is what appears in countless plaster-and-linen masks; these were mass-produced and subsume individual identity into a standardised – even hieroglyphic – vision of an eternal face or ‘head of mystery’, to quote from spell 151 of the Book of the Dead.

Mummified body of a young man. c. 2nd Century CE. From Hawara.

Roman Period painted wooden panels are often held up as if, by contrast, they are snapshots of reality – a definitive break from the supposedly stiff and caricatured form of Pharaonic-style mask. Yet if – as seems likely – most were painted posthumously, then these painted ‘portraits’ are no simple reflections of what people looked like in life. At best, they are highly stylised approximations – much as we might want these to be ‘the way people actually looked’. Reference to a certain Roman Emperor’s hairstyle is often used to date these images – although emperors were themselves deified, providing a further divine model to imitate. These lifelike images are, therefore, not less ‘godly’ than the Pharaonic-style masks.

Unlike in Pharaonic times, there is evidence that wrapped bodies with panel paintings and masks were placed on selective display for a period perhaps up to several years after funeral rituals. Although the archaeologist Flinders Petrie assumed this to be in a domestic context, dedicated sacred spaces seem more likely. This kind of direct interaction with the dead – present as ancestors – is common in many cultures, although we are often unfamiliar with such practices in the West.

The unwrapped mummified body of a woman named Asru remains on display in our Egypt and Sudan gallery, as she has for almost 200 years. She is covered in ancient linen from collar to feet, as are the royal mummies at the National Museum of Egyptian Civilisation in Cairo. Over the next few months we will be consulting with our audiences about how we might approach the display of Asru’s remains in future.

Celebrating Jubilees in Ancient Egypt

As Queen Elizabeth II marks an historic 70 years on the British throne, it seems timely to reflect on what is known about Pharaonic attitudes to such regnal milestones. Although the term ‘heb-sed’ (or ‘sed-festival’) is often translated as ‘jubilee’ in English, it seems to have had a particular set of ritual and religious associations that do not imply simply the numerical commemoration of the accession of a ruler. The rituals were often – although not exclusively – tied to a king’s 30^th regnal year. While after that point a heb-sed seems to have been celebrated intermittently every few years, several kings seem to have celebrated heb-seds before that point. As so often, the Egyptological quest for a neat pattern often has to reckon with the rather more complex realities of human behaviour.

Heb-sed scenes of Niuserre from Abu Ghurab

Elements of the episodes associated with the heb-sed – such as ritual running and the king seated under a baldachin – are attested from as early as the First Dynasty, with fuller scenes from the sun temple of the Dynasty 5 king Niuserre at Abu Ghurab. From the earliest Pharaonic times, the king is shown in both 2- and 3-dimensional representations as wearing a so-called sed-festival ‘cloak’ – although the appearance of this garment seems broader than contexts narrowly defined as relating to the heb-sed, and it ought to be remembered that – as Christina Riggs has demonstrated – cloth imparts an elevated status and sanctity, so the act of shrouding affirms the divine status of the wearer generally. Egyptology has adopted the misleading term ‘mummiform’ for such three-dimensional images in architectural contexts, although this formulation is likely the wrong way around: mummified bodies, swathed in linen, emulate the amorphous forms of gods – not the other way around.

King Osorkon II pours water from a ritual hes-vessel, on a block from his ‘festival hall’ at Bubastis. This block has been cleaned for Manchester Museum’s reopening in 2023.

Such ritual actions were about rejuvenating the king, proclaiming or promoting his divinity, and marking the occasion in monumental records. These had the aim of impressing the gods, and while they might have included large numbers of participants these tended to be elite people, temple or palace staff and would have been inaccessible to most of the population. The so-called ‘Festival Hall’ of Osorkon II at Bubastis is decorated with scenes showing human participants as well as gods. Such divine presence was ensured during the reign of Amenhotep III but creating statues of a series of deities – notably some 1000 sculptures depicting Sekhmet – several of whom carry the epithet ‘lord/lady of the heb-sed’. Inscribed pottery vessels from Amenhotep III’s palace at Malqata imply high officials donated lots of food and wine to the festivities – ‘bring your own bottle’ for a right royal knees-up.

A key organiser of the celebration of Ramesses II’s sed-festivals was his fourth son, Prince Khaemwaset. Khaemwaset was High Priest of the god Ptah at Memphis, and seems to have wished to place himself at the front and centre of marking his father’s heb-sed, which appears to coincide with a great emphasis on the king’s divinity.

Model blocks of Khaemwaset

Manchester Museum holds several ‘foundation deposits’, often-inscribed objects made of alabaster, granite and faience – essentially model blocks which carry the names of both Ramesses II and Khaemwaset. The faience example places the king’s titulary above a sign for ‘heb’ or ‘festival’ and the blocks are likely included in the foundations of an extension to the temple of Ptah at Memphis known as the ‘West Hall’, associated with Ramesses II’s first heb-sed. While these objects are tied to a particular (series of) event(s), they are not the ancient Egyptian equivalent of so many sets of commemorative china. They actively effect the perpetually divine status of the king, having been transformed (or at least enhanced) by heb-sed rituals.

Reconnecting with Collections

An update on our latest project, ‘To Have and To Heal’!

hello future

To mark Mental Health Awareness Week this guest post from Campbell Price, Curator of Egypt and Sudan, offers some personal reflections of getting the collections ready for the ‘To Have and To Heal’ project. To Have and To Heal is a unique arts and wellbeing programme, supporting Covid recovery and resilience using Manchester Museum’s world class Egyptology collection, and the popular fascination with ancient Egypt.

Among my highlights of 2021 were the spring days spent in the Museum photographing and filming content for our ‘To Have and To Heal’ project, when we were able to be onsite again after months of Lockdown.

Campbell (Curator of Egypt & Sudan), Jake (Filmographer) and Julia (Photographer) excited to be back in the Museum after Lockdown 2, in the Egyptology store, ready to select artefacts for To Have and To Heal.

Over the space of several weeks, photographer Julia Thorne visited the…

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Object biography 28: Hippo ivory tusks from the Ramesseum Tomb

One of Manchester Museum’s most intriguing sets of objects derives from an unusual context – or contexts – known as the ‘Ramesseum Tomb’. Commonly known by the name of the much later ‘Temple of Millions of Years’ of Ramesses II that was built on top of it, ‘tomb 5’ – as it is sometimes referred to – appears to date to the late Middle Kingdom.

Quibell’s publication of the ‘Ramesseum Tomb’ object finds

Excavations directed by James Quibell in 1897-8 encountered a mixed group of objects, including a significant collection of papyrus documents, which have been studied from many different perspectives since. Among the most striking objects found in the mixed deposit accompanying the papyri are several smoothed and incised hippo ivory tusks. Hippopotami exhibit maternal behaviour and are still amongst the most fearsome animals in Africa, hence their particular connection to mothers and infants in ancient times. Once, when presenting a talk about these objects to a group of gynaecologists and obstetricians, the observation was made to me that such objects could have been used as forceps to assist in childbirth: so ‘birth tusks’ rather than ‘magic wands’ (with unfortunate connotations of Harry Potter) seem a good designation.

1799 (bottom) and 1800 (top): Photo by Julia Thorne / Tetisheri photography

Use of hippo tusks for special objects is attested from the Predynastic Period, and remained important in ancient Egyptian material culture – particularly during the Middle Kingdom, when most ‘birth tusks’ are attested. These two worked tusks have been split, smoothed, and incised with powerful apotropaic imagery. A series of entities are engraved upon the surface, although in common with other examples of this type there are no texts added to caption the images. These span entities we might recognise as full deities and those that are not so easy to categorise as such. Thus, from right to left, a frog, a griffin, a vulture, a turtle and a hare. The other fragment of a tusk has a long-necked griffin of the type seen on the famous Narmer Palette; a lion supported by a large ‘ankh’ (‘life’) sign; and a front-facing, snake-grasping depiction of Aha, ‘the fighter’, an antecedent to the much better-known deity Bes. The same deity appears to be represented by a wooden figurine also from the Ramesseum tomb group, and perhaps the same entity is evoked by a mask from the town of Kahun.

This imagery imbues the tusk with ‘heka’ – the ‘magical’ power of the gods that might be used by human beings to fend off the untoward; this was a threatening defensive power, as indicated by the knives held by several of the entities depicted. There can be little down that a tusk such as this was a vital weapon in the ancient arsenal against misfortune. Whether the group of objects from the ‘Ramesseum Tomb’ in fact came from a single burial belonging to a ‘magician’ now seems doubtful, but the objects would undoubtedly have had a particular resonance for those people that used them.

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These items are part of Manchester Museum’s ‘To Have and To Heal’ project, an attempt to use ancient Egyptian material culture – visualised through the photography of Julia Thorne – to address big questions in the post-pandemic world while Manchester Museum is closed (August 2021-late 2022) to complete its capital building project. Find out more at the website: https://www.mmfromhome.com/to-have-and-to-heal

The early years of British Condominium in Sudan

As part of a continuing series of explorations of the colonial history of Egypt and Sudan, Phoebe Aldridge writes a guest post on a little-known aspect of the modern history of Sudan, the complexities of British rule, and the collecting of objects as loot.

The Anglo-Egyptian Condominium rule of Sudan in the 19th and 20th centuries is a story of government, misgovernment and the nature of rule. Throughout its existence, Sudan has been shaped by its perpetually differing controlling forces. After the ‘scramble for Africa’ in the 1880s, Sudan was less a nation to govern than an opportunity for exploitation and control. The British set out – and ultimately failed – to impose a new state, different to previous rule by the Mahdi – Muhammad Ahmad bin Abdullah (later Muhammad al-Mahdi), who launched a religious and political movement (Mahdiyya) in 1881 against the Khedivate of Egypt, which had ruled the Sudan since 1821.

1894 political map of Sudan

During research in the Durham Sudan Archives, delving through hand-written scripts, internal government communications and propaganda messages, it is clear that the anti-Mahdist attitudes harboured by the British undermined their rule. Manifested in part by exploitative British looting, the Condominium inadventently maintained the profile of the previous regime. Propaganda against the Mahdiyya was extensive: whilst Mahdism was far from angelical and was a regime that Britain was attempting to quash, Europe treated it as purely diabolical and ‘of a witches’ brew of African primitivism and Muslim fanaticism’. A letter from the Madhi to British officials helps to explain why. In the letter, the Mahdi discusses the status of captives, seemingly threatening the British; he appeals for them to ‘be warned of the disasters that have befallen Hicks Pasha, Gordon Pasha and others’. The correspondence was not made public, yet the adoption of anti-Mahdist propaganda increased. The significant role of fear and anger in the British establishment of a ‘new’ Sudan should not be neglected, not least how this translated into control and exploitation. Both rules were led by figures shrouded in cult of personality, with Gordon playing the Mahdi’s ever-present foil, and parallels of policy and brutality emerged.

Looting by British soldiers was rampant and nowhere was this more apparent than in so-called exotic and distant corners of the Empire. The plethora of sources surrounding the looting of military equipment and Mahdist items evidences how, fuelled by propaganda, exploitation was rampant. The British lowered themselves to the perceived level of the enemy that they had vilified and without realising it, demonstrated their inadequacies as rulers. After the Battle of Omdurman, ‘every variety of loot was hawked about the camp for sale… everyone had a Dervish sword or two’. Babikr Bedri, a Sudanese diarist who vividly chronicled the three days of looting after the battle, wrote that soldiers ‘entered our houses and took and ate everything within reach of their eyes and hands’.

Dervish sword from Sudan, now in the British Museum

Perhaps more shocking, it appears that systems were in place for British peoples at home to buy objects found in the field. Lists of war trophies were requested by British authorities such as Dunbar Parish Council in 1919. Likewise, an 1896 letter from G. Benson to Sir Wingate, not yet Governor-General, asked that ‘my dear Wingate…can you tell me what has become of the trophies? My name was put on things that I wished to buy…’. The evident acquaintance of Benson to Wingate suggests an initiative of purchasing trophies operating among high-ranking British officials, corroborated by the final sentence of the letter which reads ‘love to Slatin [appointed Inspector-General of the Sudan in 1900].’ Such an organised initiative implies an overarching irony: that the manifestation of Mahdist memory in British rule was in fact facilitated to a large degree by the very high-ranking figures of governmental authority who were trying to combat it and their low morals were exactly the values being vilified in their propaganda against the Mahdis.

Evidently, looting and exploitation in Condominium Sudan were exacerbated by defiant anti-Mahdist attitudes and a desperation for control. Whilst debate can be made over the failure of the British to distance themselves from the past, in light of the recent discussions surrounding the restitution of the Benin Bronzes and the Parthenon Marbles perhaps it is more important to explore these contexts with arguments for repatriation in mind.

Phoebe Aldridge graduated from Durham University in 2020 with a joint-honours degree in Ancient, Medieval and Modern History. With the Durham Sudan Archives on her doorstep and examining original government correspondence, Phoebe’s dissertation focused on the Condominium years in Sudan and the manifestation of Mahdism in the British rule. Since graduating she has reached out to others in this field and has been enjoying delving back into history and exploring her interests!

Working with Wellcome: A virtual student placement

A guest post by University of Manchester museology student Molly Osbourne, describing a virtual placement working on a little-known aspect of the Egyptology collection.

The first thing I want to point out about this placement is that due to the pandemic, it was self-organised, virtual placement through the University of Manchester’s MA programme, Art Gallery and Museum Studies. With this being virtual, I was not to visit the museum, and all my research was done at home. After the placement ended, I was invited in to go on an object “hunt”, and finally was able to see some of the collection. This has been both incredibly rewarding and challenging. It was research-based, hosted by Campbell Price, with the aim to find the status of a number of stelae and cast replicas from the collection originally amassed by the pharmaceutical baron Sir Henry Solomon Wellcome (1853-1936). The Wellcome Collection is renowned for housing medical objects from all of history, though Wellcome himself was an avid collector of Egyptian antiquities. There are index cards of these auctioned pieces catalogued by this institution, contained detailed descriptions of the objects, a variety of types of the numbering systems used to track these objects, and their prices. After Wellcome’s death, a trust was made, who decided that many objects should be dispersed worldwide, including Manchester. There are more than the eighteen I have researched also in the anthropology and archaeology department, though with the time limit of fifteen days, eighteen seemed like a reasonable amount to work with.

Me in front of Manchester Museum when I visited in June 2021.

My main highlights have been collaborating with many people associated with Wellcome research, and of course working with Campbell. These include Kenneth Griffin (Egypt Centre, Swansea), Alexandra Eveleigh (Wellcome Collection, London), Lee McStein (Monument Men), and Rosalie David, the curator of Manchester Museum at the time of the transfer of Wellcome objects. I met with Ken and Alexandra over Zoom, where much of current research is being done was discussed. Ken’s typology of stickers found on objects will be beneficial for when I am able to visit the museum and find these objects myself. Alexandra collaborated over emails, providing answers for the many questions I had about those who represented Wellcome at auction houses and the location of slips that are missing from my research. Through this collaboration, it came to light that the casts at Manchester, were given the same number system as those transported to the Science Museum, which was most unusual. I met with Lee McStein towards the end of the experience, where I learnt about his work with the casts, unlike the other collaborators who aided with the research of the stelae. The casts, being owned by Manchester, have been passed on to the Lee to do amazing work on photogrammetry (making three-dimensional, digital images) and the casts, which casts a new light on the production of these casts and the decoration on them.

Through collaboration, I attended a lecture by Lee McStein and a Transcribathon event held by the Wellcome Collection in March. The lecture provided information about a photogrammetry project being done on a selection of Manchester replicas that have barely been seen by the public. This research is very beneficial as these casts portray the birth chapel of Nectanebis I, a chapel that has had restricted access over the years, with only a few people going inside to see it. The Transcribathon was a one-day event, where people from the museum sector with objects connected to Wellcome met to practice transcribing the Wellcome slips and transit records of the Science Museum. On some of the slips, there is a book reference, that refers to the auction catalogues, but also the information I believed was missing from the slips before, including the date of the sale, the auction house, and the lot number.

The Wellcome slip for the object labelled A78283

I learnt so much about the transfer of Wellcome objects from the meeting with Rosalie David, and most of what Rosalie said is supported by documents and letters. Correspondence between the Wellcome Collection and Manchester Museum state that the museums would apply for the objects they wanted for their collections, and “[the Welcome Collections] wanted good homes for their collection”. As the representative of Manchester Museum, Rosalie said the museum would be a good fit for the objects as they are a university museum, and would use the objects for their teaching programme, as well as their outreach programme and for their new display they were planning at the time. Altogether, “it took at least a year for everything to go through” and the transfer to be completed.

Screenshot of Campbell, Rosalie and I having our meeting over Zoom.

It wasn’t until towards the end of the placement, I was able to see a few of the objects and copies of the slips held at Manchester Museum, that Campbell sent over. These photos were extremely helpful, as it provided new slips for the objects, I was not able to find at the beginning of the research, and even some new information altogether on objects unrelated to the original eighteen pieces.

Image of the stela labelled A211251

I would like to thank my course convenor, Andy, and Campbell for this opportunity, and those who have and will keep collaborating while I do more research.

The Reception of Manchester Museum’s ‘Hippo Bowl’ (Acc. no. 5069)

Another post from guest blogger and Predynastic specialist Matt Szafran – on one of Manchester Museum’s most iconic objects.

The so-called ‘hippo bowl’ (accessioned as no. 5069) is undoubtedly a beautiful and unique object, as can be seen from its inclusion in numerous books, postcards, documentaries, scholarly articles, and exhibitions – most recently the Garstang Museum’s ‘Before Egypt : Art, Culture and Power’ exhibition at the Victoria Gallery and Museum at the University of Liverpool, and to Bolton Museum and Art Gallery while Manchester’s Ancient Worlds galleries are closed.

Unfortunately, Predynastic material culture typically garners significantly less attention than later Dynastic periods – especially anything gold or jewel encrusted. The Manchester Museum’s current curator, Dr Campbell Price, has been vocal on his appreciation of this object, but what did his predecessors think? Thankfully archival research allows us to answer this question.

The bowl was rediscovered at the site of el-Mahasna as a part of an Egypt Exploration Fund (EEF) sponsored excavation led by British archaeologists Edward Russell Ayrton and W.L.S. Loat during the in 1908-9 season. The bowl was found in a large square tomb, designated as H.29, alongside many other ‘elite’ status items (such as carved ivory, stone beads, malachite, and greywacke palettes) in what Ayrton and Loat would describe as the ‘richest grave found on the site’ in their 1911 publication. The bowl itself was described as ‘superb’:

The EEF held an exhibition at Kings College on the Strand in London between the 8th and the 31st of July 1909, showcasing objects excavated that season by EEF archaeologists at both Abydos and el-Mahasna before their distribution between various institutions. The EEF also published an exhibition catalogue, with a cover price of sixpence, which even though a small and limited book still featured a detailed description of the H.29 tomb group. Upon conclusion of the 1909 Abydos and el-Mahasna exhibition all objects were crated and distributed between the Egyptian Museum, Cairo and 27 different international institutions who had subscribed to support the EEF. The distribution of the 50 creates of objects was handled by E. W. Morgan & Co. LTD, with two of those crates finding their way to the Manchester Museum:

Both the acting director of the museum, Sydney J. Hickson, and his secretary acknowledged the receipt of the two crates by letter to the EEF on the 26th of August 1909. Hickson’s letter was essentially a ‘fill in the blanks’ template and made no special mention of any of the objects. However Hickson handwrote a letter to the EEF on the 11th of September 1909 to confirm that the crated objects had been unpacked and had ‘arrived safely’ and thanking the EEF’s president and committee for the donation, he went on to make a special mention of the ‘unique pre-Dynastic bowl’ and saying that it’s an ‘interesting and valuable’ addition to the Museum’s collection. Whilst the letter doesn’t explicitly say that this is the ‘hippo bowl’, there were no other significant bowls included in the distribution to the Manchester Museum and it is therefore extremely likely that this letter is proof of Hickson’s admiration for the ‘hippo bowl’:

Winifred M. Crompton was appointed as the Assistant Keeper of Egyptology in 1912, a role synonymous with a ‘curator’ today. During her tenure at the museum before this posting she was tasked with organising and cataloguing the Egyptian collections. This led to Crompton writing to the EEF on the 16th of September 1909 to request purchasing copy of the object catalogue of the el-Mahasna and Abydos exhibition. Sadly, Crompton does not refer to the ‘hippo bowl’ in this letter, although she does add a postscript note saying that the Manchester Museum received additional jars than were on the object distribution list – including one from the H.29 tomb group:

From the archival evidence it would therefore appear that the ‘hippo bowl’ has been able to capture the attention of both Egyptologists and non-Egyptologists alike. One would assume that its original owner was just as awed by the bowl, although with no written sources from the Predynastic period it is impossible to truly know what meaning and significance was truly ascribed to the bowl and the hippopotami it represents.

Object Biography # 27: A ‘stick shabti’ of Teti-sa-intef (Acc. no. 6038)

Although among the rather less prepossessing artefacts in the Manchester collection, this crudely carved wooden figurine holds significant interest. Often called a ‘stick shabti’, the figurine may in fact not really be a shabti – in the conventional Egyptological sense of a ‘servant’ – at all.

Acc. no. 6038. Photo: Glenn Janes

Often described as ‘mummiform’ in shape, several examples of similar crude wooden figurines have been found in small wooden coffins and/or wrapped in linen. They apparently all date to the laste Second Intermediate Period and early New Kingdom. A recent find by an Egyptian-Spanish team at Dra Abu el-Naga consisted of several such figurines wrapped in linen, some within a small wooden coffin. These were uncovered underneath the outer courtyard of the tomb of Djehuty (TT 11, reign of Hatshepsut) and appear to have been left there by a donor some time after the funeral – perhaps on the occasion of the ‘Beautiful Festival of the Valley’, when friends and family of the deceased would visit the tomb chapel.

Indeed, unlike most shabtis, which were buried close to the deceased in the inaccessible parts of the tomb, stick shabtis are mainly recorded as being found buried in the outer, open areas of tomb chapels – often in significant numbers. Texts are usually inked onto the wood but rather than the standard ‘shabti spell’ (Chapter 6 of the Book of the Dead) these consist of names, titles and perhaps an offering formula, suggesting a different function to most shabtis.

The fact that these figurines are ‘crude’ to our eyes need not imply they were created or dedicated by less well-off people – several seems to have been commissioned by wealthy and important members of society. The choice of wood may represent a deliberate means of employing reworked detritus from coffin manufacture, imbued with a special power and connection to the deceased. There is also an intriguing suggestion that the use of the figurines in contexts such as the ‘Beautiful Festival of the Valley’ influenced the later perception recorded in Herodotus and Plutarch that a figure of the mummy was sometimes exhibited at Egyptian feasts.

Dra Abu el Naga: Wikipedia

This example is dedicated to (rather than by) a man called Teti-sa-Intef (meaning ‘Teti son of Intef’, Intef being a name of some significance at Dra Abu el Naga from the Middle Kingdom onwards). Several other figurines are known donated in honour of this individual, known to come from the tomb of the mayor of Thebes Tetiky (TT 15) from the very beginning of the Eighteenth Dynasty and excavated by a team working for Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon in 1908. The Manchester example, although its precise find spot is not recorded, probably derived from the same area.

Just published! ‘Golden Mummies of Egypt: Interpreting Identities from the Graeco-Roman Period’

Published jointly by Manchester Museum and Nomad Exhibitions, the book accompanies a major international touring exhibition of over 100 objects.

Ancient Egypt is synonymous with gold, sex, art, and death – a combination as intoxicating as it is enduringly popular with book readers, documentary watchers, and museum visitors. But to what extent are these concepts representative of ancient concerns or realities, and how might modern interpreters – collectors, archaeologists, curators, writers, artists – have shaped the ancient past to fit a narrative attractive to themselves and their audiences?

The Graeco-Roman Period (c. 300 BCE-200 CE) of Egyptian history, so-called because Egypt was ruled at this time by Greeks then Romans, is one of the most overlooked in the popular telling of Egyptian history. Excavations at the important Graeco-Roman site of Hawara produced mesmerising painted mummy portraits, delicate glass and jewellery, and mummified bodies sheathed in gold. Manchester Museum, part of the University of Manchester, holds one of the most significant collections of material from Hawara anywhere in the world, the result of the division of finds at the height of British colonial control of Egypt.

Manchester Museum is delighted to have partnered with Nomad Exhibitions to produce, for the first time, a major publication based entirely on the Museum’s internationally significant Egyptology collections.

Richly illustrated with new photography by Julia Thorne and drawing on little-known archive material, Golden Mummies of Egypt showcases for the first time this extraordinary range of artefacts, examining how and why they came to Manchester, the ancient identities these objects helped to construct, and the ways in which they have been interpreted in the Western world.

250 pages

Colour photography throughout

Accompanies a major international touring exhibition, Golden Mummies of Egypt.

Author: Dr Campbell Price is Curator of Egypt and Sudan at Manchester Museum. He is Vice-Chair of Trustees of the Egypt Exploration Society, Honorary Research Fellow in Egyptology at University of Liverpool, author of Pocket Museum: Ancient Egypt (Thames & Hudson, 2018) and editor of Mummies, Magic and Medicine in Ancient Egypt (Manchester University Press, 2016).

*Front matter and Table of Contents available HERE*

You can now purchase copies of the book (for 25 GBP) by contacting the Manchester Museum shop on 0161 275 6256 Mon-Fri 10am-2pm.