Tackling the technical history of the textiles of El-Deir, Kharga Oasis, the Western Desert of Egypt

The site of El-Deir is situated north of Kharga in the “Great Oasis” of the Egyptian Western Desert (fig. 1). The site was occupied between the 6th century BC and the 6th century AD. A complex history emerged with the influence of many cultures: Persian, Greek, Roman and early Christian. Archaeological finds in both El-Deir and the oasis itself (the site of Dush and the temple of Darius in Hibis, a city north of Kharga) confirm that the Great Oasis was a wealthy region. This is also substantiated by texts from Ain Manawir and Dakhleh. The presence of an artesian aquifer, a great economic asset, further underpinned the prosperity of the area, which was a crossroads for numerous routes from the earliest dynasties. There are currently three different sources of textiles on the site (fig. 2): the six cemeteries (five polytheistic and one Christian), the workshop of the embalmers, and the Roman fortress with adjacent temple. Most of the textiles have been found in a funerary context. The study of the textiles takes place within an oasis, a circumscribed setting with a specific geography and climate, and over a long continuous period. Such conditions are favourable for emphasising traditions and changes. Before briefly mentioning the material from El-Deir, we feel it is important to underline that comparisons with other textile studies are difficult. The majority of the necropoleis of the site are Ptolemaic and very few studies have concentrated on this period. In consequence, any possible comparisons must be made with recourse to Pharaonic textiles. On the other hand, the examples of textiles retrieved from the soundings in the fortress can be easily placed due to studies conducted in the Eastern Desert. Likewise, material from the Christian cemetery finds parallels in the numerous sites in Egypt that date to the Byzantine era. Technical and aesthetic criteria of the textiles from the site are important for the study of the social status of the buried individuals and provide an assessment of the local standard of living. The study of textiles can also help in reconstructing, at least partially, the textile industry of the oasis. Textiles can also shed new light on religious, cultural and economic life. Lastly, they can serve as a comparative tool for other sites. How does one deal with the diversity and quantity of textiles found in such a specific oasis site? Four hundred pieces of textile were selected in the field, entered into a database and then analysed. An essential step in the first instance was to choose, on-site, representative textiles according to quantity and quality, archaeological context, per individual, per tomb or en masse. These were in the great majority mere fragments, the site having been looted many times in the not too distant past. Once the textiles had been sorted, the second step involved a technical examination stretching from fibre to fabric, in order to shed light, for each, on the characteristics, the techniques used to transform them and, when possible, the tools used to do so. Only a few examples, which illustrate the diversity of the site, will be presented in this article, while focus shall remain on the raw material. We have chosen to present, one by one, the three textile fibres found on the site: linen, cotton and wool

25th Dynasty

The era of the 25th Dynasty during the eighth and seventh centuries BCE witnessed the annexation of Egypt by kings from the neighboring land of Kush. The phrase “Twenty-fifth Dynasty” may therefore refer to either this family of royals, the state they commanded, or the historical period of their rule, but in each case research has consistently focused on the regime’s foreign aspect and its possible effects. The sequence of discovery has also proven especially consequential: not only have sources known first to scholarship shaped the interpretation of evidence found later, but the modern political contexts of those earliest discoveries have left a lasting and often misleading impression upon subsequent understanding of the period. As a result, fundamental assumptions made by scholars during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have been drawn into question during the twenty-first century through a reevaluation of that evidence, particularly in debates related to the dynasty’s origins, chronology, and statecraft

The Eastern Necropolis in Cairo and its Buffer Zone (Towards a Sustainable Conservation Strategy)

AbstractThe Eastern Necropolis is part of the World Heritage property of Historic Cairo in the URHC 2010-2012. It underlies a diversity of forces that lead to urban informality and ruins the sky line of Old Historic Cairo. Applying a sustainable conservation strategy will supposedly stop further slum formation and achieve urban equality. The research is divided into: 1)Pilot study, 2) Field Work and Survey; Evaluation for the study zone and creating a Base Map for the Eastern Necropolis, 3) Documentary studies; Conservation of heritage areas as an approach to regional planning, 4)Research results and final conclusion

Rethinking 'cattle cults' in early Egypt: Towards a prehistoric perspective on the Narmer Palette

The Narmer Palette occupies a key position in our understanding of the transition from Predynastic to Dynastic culture in Egypt. Previous interpretations have focused largely upon correspondences between its decorative content and later conventions of elite display. Here, the decoration of the palette is instead related to its form and functional attributes and their derivation from the Neolithic cultures of the Nile Valley, which are contrasted with those of southwest Asia and Europe. It is argued that the widespread adoption of a pastoral lifestyle during the fifth millennium BC was associated with new modes of bodily display and ritual, into which cattle and other animals were incorporated. These constituted an archive of cultural forms and practices which the makers of the Narmer Palette, and other Protodynastic monuments, drew form and transformed. Taking cattle as focus, the article begins with a consideration of interpretative problems relating to animal art and ritual in archaeology, and stresses the value of perspectives derived from the anthropology of pastoral societies

The City of the Dead as a place to live: unpacking the narratives about tomb communities

Master of Regional and Community PlanningDepartment of Landscape Architecture/Regional and Community PlanningSusmita RishiThe housing crisis in Cairo, Egypt is a “wicked problem” that has stumped planners and built environment professionals for decades. Cairo’s 20 million residents are engaged in an everyday struggle for space, particularly housing. The current housing stock does not respond to the residents’ everyday needs. Overpopulation and lack of affordable housing has resulted in residents squatting and self-building housing. My research centers around one such “informal” settlement called the City of the Dead (COD). A series of cemeteries located in Cairo’s city center, COD is home to many of Cairo’s poor and rural migrants. Planning efforts such as the Masterplan Cairo 2050 outline intentions to evict these residents, without details on their rehabilitation. Standing between decision makers and new or modified development, are embedded place narratives that cannot be erased. Narratives hold power to shape, change, and ignore what already exists. This thesis explores the narratives about the City of the Dead that are ignored in Masterplan Cairo 2050. Using qualitative methods, I focus on unpacking these narratives about COD, held by major stakeholders such as government officials, urban planners, popular media, and other sources, in order to elucidate how these, determine the negative planning outcomes proposed in policy documents. Based in the analysis of primary and supplementary data, I unpack the dominant narrative based in themes around legality, relocation, services, historical and cultural aspects, urban fabric, planning and governance. Through this in-depth analysis of themes and terminology used by respondents, I show that the dominant narrative about COD imagines it to be a cemetery and not a residential settlement. Also, evident in the plans and policies pertaining to COD, and in the terminology used to describe those who live in COD, this dominant narrative ignores the value that COD brings as a place to live to its residents

Egyptian stelae from Malta

In 1829, four Egyptian stelae of Twelfth and Eighteenth Dynasty date were found, surprisingly, on Malta. Based on their far-flung findspot, some have suggested that the stelae were locally made by Egyptian colonists who had settled on the island during the second millennium BC. This contribution argues that the stelae offer no basis for such historical reconstructions. Style, content and petrology demonstrate that all four stelae were made in Egypt and that they originally stood in the necropolis of Abydos in Upper Egypt. Microfossils show that these stelae are made of Egyptian limestones, which are of a different geological age to limestones available on Malta. The examination of polished thin sections of samples from the stelae using scanning electron microscopy suggests that the limestones employed were quarried from four geological formations of different ages in the Nile Valley.peer-reviewe

Letters from a pilgrimage: Ken Inglis’s despatches from the Anzac tour to Gallipoli, April–May 1965

In April 1965, on the fiftieth anniversary of the landing at Gallipoli, Ken Inglis travelled to Anzac Cove with a boatload of diggers making a pilgrimage to the scene of Australia’s best-known battle. As they travelled from Australia to Turkey via Egypt and Greece, he wrote seven articles for the Canberra Times, which are reproduced in this ebook.  The three-week tour had been arranged by the Returned Services League and its New Zealand equivalent. The tour ship visited sites of significance in Anzac memory in the Mediterranean, culminating in a landing at Anzac Cove on 25 April. Some 300 pilgrims had signed up, and more than half the men in the party had served at Gallipoli. Accompanying the pilgrimage allowed Inglis, a professor of history at ANU, to talk at leisure with a large group of veterans, be with them as they returned, most of them for the first time, to old battlefields and the resting places of comrades, and report on the experience for Australian reader

The Potential of Architecture: The Meaning and Purpose of Commemorative Architecture in Islamic Civilizations

I have always found places that seem to exist out of time so to speak, extremely peaceful and alluring. These could include cemeteries, or even monumental and out-of-time structures like the pyramids. Yet there is something even stronger one feels when inside such a structure. That is, when a space - architecture - has been created that allows one to not simply witness something that seems to exist in eternity, but to reside within it. One cannot divorce these structures - and the human desire to construct them - from religion and religiosity. For throughout time, commemorative architecture has played a big role in the religious practices of peoples. While no two examples of commemorative monuments from different cultures could be interpreted in precisely the same way, it is likely that both would reflect deep-seated beliefs, perhaps of a religious nature, of the culture in which they originated. In Islam, the concept and permissibility of commemorative architecture is fraught. Some interpretations even advocate for the destruction of such structures. This thesis looks at the universal concept of commemorative architecture and traces the emergence of the form in the Islamic tradition