Newsletter Egypt and Sudan
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Newsletter Egypt and Sudan Issue1, 2014 Neal Spencer Keeper, Department of Ancient Egypt and Sudan, British Museum Ancient Egyptian objects have formed part of the British Museum’s collection since 1753, and the permanent galleries remain ever-popular among the 6 million visitors each year. Behind these displays, and the website which received 14 million visits from across the globe in 2012– 2013, lies a busy programme of research, documentation, collections care, conservation and analyses, from the basements of the British Museum to the deserts of Nubia. Much of this work is undertaken by curators, conservators, scientists and other specialists from across the Museum – seven of the eight curatorial departments care for objects made in, found in or depicting aspects of Egypt and Sudan, past and present. The potential of digital technologies, and increased collaboration between museums and universities – in the UK and internationally, but especially in Egypt and Sudan – is opening up new ways of learning about the people and cultures of the Nile Valley and its environs. This newsletter provides a glimpse of the extraordinary range of activity undertaken in the past 12 months, which remains possible through generous government funding, but also the support of funding bodies and patrons. Looking ahead, this year will prove to be equally busy. A special British Museum exhibition, Ancient lives, new discoveries (22 May – 30 November 2014), will explore life in the Nile Valley, using the latest biomedical visualisation to analyse mummies from the collection. The Early Egypt Gallery (Room 64) will reopen in June, presenting the latest research on the earliest parts of Egyptian history, and new interpretation will be introduced in the iconic Egyptian Sculpture Gallery (Room 4). Other things are of course less predictable – the discoveries our curators and scientists (and scholars across the world) will make about objects in the collection, or the insights provided by excavation projects, from Naukratis to the Fifth Cataract. This winter our teams are excavating at Dangeil, Kurgus, Kawa and Amara West in Sudan, with projects at Naukratis, Elkab and Hagr Edfu in Egypt. Follow Neal on Twitter @NealSpencer_BM 2 3 Exhibitions and galleries Exhibitions and galleries Developing a new gallery of Early Egypt Ancient lives exhibition: the process of discovery Renée Friedman Climate change as an impetus for less happy developments John Taylor and Daniel Antoine Heagy Research Curator in Early Egypt, Department of is also reflected by Dr Wendorf’s even earlier discoveries at Curators, Department of Ancient Egypt and Sudan Ancient Egypt and Sudan, British Museum Jebel Sahaba in Nubia. Here he found a cemetery dating back to about 11,000 BC, a time when the Nile Valley was Following the success of Mummy: The Inside Story in 2004, The Raymond and Beverly Sackler Gallery of Early Egypt cold and dry, the river wild and high, and resources were a new exhibition will enable the visitor to see what lies displays objects from the Predynastic and Early Dynastic scarce. Flint chips, the remnants of weapons, found in the hidden beneath the wrappings and explore the bodies of periods – the formative phases of Egyptian civilisation. It bodies of 40% of the 61 men, women and children buried eight mummies, using CT scanning and recently developed opened in 1992 during a time of intensive research into in this cemetery indicate that they died of inflicted wounds. cutting-edge visualisation technology. Egypt’s origins, which has since resulted in many new These graves present what is widely considered the earliest insights into developments taking place during this time. evidence for communal violence in history. The skeletons The scanning process captures thousands of cross- Thanks to the renewed support of the Raymond and Beverly from this important cemetery are now housed in the British sectional images of the mummies at a thickness of 0.6mm Sackler Foundation, a new display will open in June 2014, Museum, and a new case is being designed to display two for every digital ‘slice’. These show internal features in to reflect these advances in our understanding and highlight of the unfortunate victims and the weapons that killed them, startling detail, and by stacking all the slices together and recent discoveries with a thematically based redisplay of just as they were found. using Volume Graphics software the mummy can be viewed objects long held by the Museum, alongside some more on screen as a three-dimensional model. ‘Segmentation’ recently acquired. Other themes in the gallery will include visions of the allows continuous surfaces of the same density – bone, afterlife, as we try to decode the symbols and images textile, or artefacts such as amulets of faience or metal – to Among the most exciting recent discoveries were those important in the preliterate world of Predynastic Upper be visualised separately with precision, clarity and from any made by Dr Fred Wendorf at a place called Nabta Playa Egypt. The case on the unification of Egypt will highlight the angle. Using digital clipping tools, the researcher can cut located 100km into the Sahara Desert. His work has allowed stunning decorated palettes in the collection – some of the away any part of the data to perform a ‘virtual autopsy’ or to us to trace the development of Egyptian civilisation back most important documents of the state formation period. search for manmade objects within layers of wrappings. by another 4,000 years. In 2002 Dr Wendorf donated his The new display will also reunite the Battlefield Palette with unique collection and archives to the British Museum so its joining piece as a long-term loan from the Ashmolean The large files which contain this data are now being studied that we can now tell the story of the ingenious people who Museum, Oxford. The origins of writing and the technological and interrogated, revealing new discoveries about the lives made the desert their home after it had been transformed developments during the first dynasties, that made the age of ancient individuals. This ranges from examining brains into a savannah by the warmer and wetter climate of the pyramids possible, are some of the other themes that and digestive organs in two naturally preserved mummies to following the last Ice Age. At about 8500 BC, using some will be explored. scrutinising horrifyingly severe dental abscesses in temple of the earliest pottery known from Africa and herding its officials’ mouths. Visualising the pathway made by the earliest domesticated cattle, these hunting and gathering When it is completed, the new display will cover over 5,000 embalmers through the nose in order to extract the brain pastoralists colonised the desert after the annual summer years of dynamic experimentation during which many of the has given us a new respect for their skill and precision, while rains. They wintered by the Nile where all traces have long characteristics that will come to typify Egyptian civilisation complex arrangements of amulets and other trappings are since washed away, and it is to the river they returned when were first developed. Through the display we hope to give being uncovered without ever disturbing the wrappings, and the monsoon rains ultimately ceased at about 4500 BC. It visitors a better understanding of how and why this occurred rotated under virtual spotlights to reveal surface decoration. is no coincidence that this is exactly when the Predynastic and the debt that the Egyptians of Dynastic times owed to period in Egypt begins. Climate and its impact on ancient their early ancestors. Eight mummies will be included in the exhibition – from Egypt have long been topics of discussion, but this new a Predynastic man found at Gebelein to a woman from a evidence from the deserts now lets us look at the effects of The new display will open in June 2014. medieval Christian community in Sudan. These bookend four climate change from a long-term perspective. artificially preserved mummies from the pharaonic period British Museum research on Early Egypt is made possible and two Roman period bodies – people from higher and through the generosity of Mr Thomas C Heagy. lower strata of society who died at different stages of their The gallery of Early Egypt and its refurbishment were made lives (two of them as children). possible by the Raymond and Beverly Sackler Foundation. The new exhibition will feature interactive displays allowing the public to discover the results for themselves. Contextual objects will support the findings and explore several themes, including ancient Egyptian medicine, diet, hair and hairstyles, and funerary practices. Ancient lives, new discoveries will be open 22 May – 30 November 2014. Exhibition sponsored by Julius Baer. Technology partner Samsung. Previous page: Burials in the cemetery at Jebel Sahaba, with pencils marking position of flint arrowheads. The Battlefield CT scan of Palette, greywacke, the mummy c. 3200 BC, of a priest’s EA 20791, with daughter named cast from the Tayesmutengebtiu. Ashmolean From Thebes, Museum 1892.1171 Egypt, 22nd (upper left). Dynasty, c. 900 BC. 4 5 Exhibitions and galleries Pharaoh: King of Egypt – a retrospective The pharaohs were very selective in what they chose to communicate and often conveniently omitted any tricky details that might undermine their infallible image. King Nebhepetre Mentuhotep (2055–2004 BC) was renowned for reuniting the country after a period of civil war. Later kings revered him for this achievement, and many monuments, including several in the exhibition, were dedicated to his memory hundreds of years after his death. But while the magnificent reliefs in Mentuhotep’s mortuary temple commemorate his military victories, they omit the rival Egyptian forces whose defeat gave him his fame – the only A label with a scene showing the enemies depicted are foreign Asiatics, thereby avoiding the jubilee of King Den awkwardness of acknowledging this internal conflict.