Frank Merton Posted September 11, 2014 #26 Share Posted September 11, 2014 There were probably a few who didn't like the bread. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kmt_sesh Posted September 11, 2014 Author #27 Share Posted September 11, 2014 There were probably a few who didn't like the bread. It was a staple of the ancient Near Eastern diet, so bread would've been hard to avoid (right along with beer and onions). Always reminds me of when I was little and my family would spend a summer day at the beach. We'd bring a picnic basket and I would dig in for the obligatory peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Invariably it would get sand in it, and there were few things I hated worse than peanut butter, jelly, and sand. Imagine a time and place when that was so commonplace you would hardly notice it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kmt_sesh Posted September 12, 2014 Author #28 Share Posted September 12, 2014 I thought I'd post some more photos, and this time on the subject of stone sarcophagi. We have four of these on display at the Field Museum. Shows such as those on the History Channel (back when it had shows worth watching) make stone sarcophagi seem almost commonplace, but given technological limitations in the ancient world, stone sarcophagi were comparatively rare. I'll show them in chronological order (oldest to most recent). This one is made of pink granite and dates to the Old Kingdom. It is around 4,400 years old. It weighs a little over 2.2 tons. Typical of many Old Kingdom sarcophagi, it is plainly dressed and bears no inscriptions. It's the smallest of our sarcophagi. Also made of pink granite (one of the favored stones for sarcophagi), I date this one probably to late in Dynasty 18. This makes it around 3,300 years old (around the time of Tutankhamun) but it could also date to early Dynasty 19. In either case it dates to the early New Kingdom, the period of empire. It weighs nearly 4 tons. If you look closely you can see the full inscriptional plan. It's inscribed for the "royal scribe and secretary to the king, Amunem-monet." Which king he served is unknown; no cartouche is extant. This photograph is looking at the foot end, but toward the floor at the head end (out of view) someone drilled a large, neat, round hole. This is definitely not original to the New Kingdom craftsmen. The sarcophagus was found in the ruins of an early Coptic monastery located not far from Cairo and was purchased by our museum in 1908. Given the presence of the hole, it's entirely possible the early Christian monks who lived in the monastery were using this ancient sarcophagus as a bathtub. There's precedent for this, believe it or not. This sarcophagus is made of black granite and is beautifully carved and dressed. The photo in dim lighting doesn't do it justice. It dates to the Saite period, Dynasty 26, so the sarcophagus is around 2,400 years old. It belonged to a high-ranking priest named Peftjaukhonsu. We do not have the lids for the first two but do for this one; it is, however, heavily damaged and resides in storage. I've only seen photos of it but the lid is massive. The sarcophagus itself weighs 5 tons. It displays the high craftsmanship of the Late Period. It is fully inscribed on all inner surfaces and on both ends on the outside, but strangely not on the sides of the outside. If you look carefully you can see the inscriptional plan on the near end, which includes a scene of Peftjaukhonsu as a mummy reclining on a funerary couch, his canopic jars for organ storage beneath him and his soul in ba-form fluttering above him. A Greek sarcophagus excavated by amateur archaeologists in 1888 in an ancient Greek cemetery near the city of Alexandria. It dates to the first century CE, which places it in the early Roman Period. The lid and coffer together weigh 6.5 tons. There are struts and beams in the basement below it to hold it up. The research notes say this sarcophagus is made of marble but I personally suspect it's limestone. The face you see on the near end belongs to Dionysus, the Greek god of parties, frivolity, wine, and ecstasy (note the grapes below him). His face appears on the other end as well, and also twice on the side visible in the photo; in the middle on the visible side is the face and writhing hair of Medusa, There is an urban legend at the Field that this Greek sarcophagus was purchased for the world's fair in 1893 (the Columbian World's Fair), in Chicago. For some reason it wasn't displayed at the fair and ended up in a storefront in downtown Chicago, where it was labeled as "Cleopatra's tomb." My own research demonstrates something else. The amateur archaeologists who excavated it in 1888 found a fragmented inscription nearby which mentioned the name Cleopatra. This was a common Greek woman's name, but they marketed it in Egypt as "Cleopatra's tomb." A private man bought it and, as I recall, shipped it overseas to Chicago, where his son put it in storage. Eventually it was either sold or given to the Field Museum. The urban legend might be false but I have to admit it's probably more entertaining. You'll notice glass lids on the three sarcophagi whose original stone lids either were lost to history or, in the case of the Late Period sarcophagus, are in storage. When I first started at the Field Museum ten years ago, these modern glass lids were not on them, They had to be installed because people kept climbing into them—or were tossing litter into them. People do the weirdest things at museums. The Greek one with the lid is spotted with very old gum all around the lip where the lid joins the coffer. I try to keep kids from touching that area, but also carry a little bottle of hand sanitizer in case they do touch some of the gum. I don't care how old and hard the gum is—it's just gross. A good reminder for those of you visiting museums: throw your gum (or your kids' gum) in the trash! The ancient artifacts are not garbage cans. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scorpiosonic Posted September 12, 2014 #29 Share Posted September 12, 2014 (edited) Thanks for the pics. Yes, very strange that they carved symbols only on the ends of black granite sarcophagus. (A beautiful block of stone.) Any other Egyptian examples of this? I agree, the last one does look like limestone. Info on Egypt's quarries and mines:http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/minesandquarries2.htm Maybe post some European carved stone sarcophagi for comparison.....some have incredible stone carving work. Edited September 12, 2014 by scorpiosonic Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scorpiosonic Posted September 12, 2014 #30 Share Posted September 12, 2014 Here's a link to help identify different types of stone: http://www.eeescience.utoledo.edu/faculty/harrell/egypt/quarries/Hardst_Quar.html Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kmt_sesh Posted September 13, 2014 Author #31 Share Posted September 13, 2014 Thanks for the pics. Yes, very strange that they carved symbols only on the ends of black granite sarcophagus. (A beautiful block of stone.) Any other Egyptian examples of this? I agree, the last one does look like limestone. Info on Egypt's quarries and mines:http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/minesandquarries2.htm Maybe post some European carved stone sarcophagi for comparison.....some have incredible stone carving work. If you see one sarcophagus with no inscriptions in some portion, you'll see more. The craftsmanship of our Late Period sarcophagus makes it notable, but not necessarily rare, comparatively speaking. As with mummies or coffins or canopic chests or stelae, no two sarcophagi are identical but they all share commonalities from period to period. The Late Period has very distinctive funerary equipment in a number of ways. A notable example is the squat, stone, anthropoid sarcophagus known from this period (see example here; not in Chicago). LOL Instantly recognizable for the Late Period but, in my fussy opinion, not terribly attractive. As for European sarcophagi, I imagine you're thinking of the elaborately carved medieval type (example). These are true works of art. They serve the same fundamental purpose as ancient Egyptian sarcophagi—storing and protecting a corpse—but I have little background in medieval studies and can't comment authoritatively on them. In fact, the one book I remember the best on the subject isn't even a history book but is Michael Crichton's masterful novel Timeline. LOL That's just sad. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
S2art Posted July 30, 2016 #32 Share Posted July 30, 2016 Hello, I was reviewing pictures from my trip to the Field Museum last year and was struck by the beauty and elaboration of Chenet-aa's coffin. I was wondering if you could identify what deity is the focal point in my picture (below). Thanks for all the great info about Chenet-aa. Are there any other resources (beyond going into the Field Museum) you could recommend for learning more about her and perhaps her husband? Thanks, Stew Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kmt_sesh Posted July 30, 2016 Author #33 Share Posted July 30, 2016 HI, S2art. The deity on the chest is Re in his nighttime form: a winged ram with horns and sun disk. This was often how Re was depicted in later periods during his nightly journey through the netherworld, before being reborn in the east. I dare say you're not going to find much info about this woman and her family. For that matter what I posted at the start of this thread about Chenet-aa, is more than you would learn from the signage in her display case. Because I'm so fond of this coffin I've spent a lot of time learning what I can about it and its two outer coffins. The only other places I've come across mention of her in the literature is in a book from the British Museum and in another book containing a chapter on coffin types from her time and later. I imagine there's more out there somewhere, but I've never encountered it. Chenet-aa and her husband, a Libyan named Pasenhor, were of upper-crust society for that time but were not ruling class, so it's not as though they were famous. But the literature contains a wealth of diverse information about her coffin type (cartonnage) and her time period (Dynasty 22, Third Intermediate Period), so there are opportunities to learn about her time and place. She most likely lived in Thebes in Dynasty 22 and was buried in the vast Theban necropolis, although I have no information on the location of her family's tomb there. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Frank Merton Posted July 31, 2016 #34 Share Posted July 31, 2016 Someone please educate me on the aesthetic of that coffin. I find it unlike most Egyptian art, simple and elegant, but, instead, confused and noisy and garish (although the motifs are still present, they seem amateurishly executed). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
S2art Posted July 31, 2016 #35 Share Posted July 31, 2016 Hello kmt_sesh, Thank you for the information! After reading your entry, I was curious to see what Chenet-aa's husband's coffin might look like. The British Museum website shows a Pasenhor coffin online: http://culturalinstitute.britishmuseum.org/asset-viewer/wooden-coffin-of-pasenhor/CAE6kOrDv8Aq4Q?hl=en I find that it, too, is a beautiful style, although I can understand why some might find it noisy. It's very exciting to learn new things! Best of luck to you! Stewart Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kmt_sesh Posted August 1, 2016 Author #36 Share Posted August 1, 2016 On July 30, 2016 at 8:09 PM, Frank Merton said: Someone please educate me on the aesthetic of that coffin. I find it unlike most Egyptian art, simple and elegant, but, instead, confused and noisy and garish (although the motifs are still present, they seem amateurishly executed). There's nothing amateurish about the decoration plan of this coffin. The plain and simple coffins to which you refer generally date to earlier periods, especially prior to the New Kingdom (or in other cases, a plain coffin might have belonged to someone who couldn't afford much or any elaboration of decoration). I've seen many cartonnage coffins but Chenet-aa's is not only better preserved than most but better executed. The decoration plan is highly balanced and painstakingly planned. Everything on there means something to the ancient mind and to the betterment of Chenet-aa's afterlife. Use Google Images to look at Egyptian coffins from the Third Intermediate and Late periods. You'll see that the more time went on, the more complex the decoration plans became on coffins and other burial equipment. This might well have a lot to do with the fact that the private tombs of commoners were becoming simpler and smaller, and people often resorted to using tombs from prior ages—so more attention was applied to the equipment that stored and serviced the mummy. 23 hours ago, S2art said: Hello kmt_sesh, Thank you for the information! After reading your entry, I was curious to see what Chenet-aa's husband's coffin might look like. The British Museum website shows a Pasenhor coffin online: http://culturalinstitute.britishmuseum.org/asset-viewer/wooden-coffin-of-pasenhor/CAE6kOrDv8Aq4Q?hl=en I find that it, too, is a beautiful style, although I can understand why some might find it noisy. It's very exciting to learn new things! Best of luck to you! Stewart Thanks for the reminder. I'd forgotten about it but that coffin you found in the BM is in fact Chenet-aa's husband's. As I understand it his mummy is lost and potential inner or outer coffins no longer survive, but this one is beautiful. Yet as elaborate as it is, most of the written material on Pasenhor's coffin is religious and funerary in nature and doesn't really provide us with much information at all about the man and his life. I don't recall even the mention of titles he may have possessed in life. Too bad, because that would've surely helped us to understand Chenet-aa's social status, too. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Frank Merton Posted August 1, 2016 #37 Share Posted August 1, 2016 I was of course speaking from my aesthetic, and reserve my view. You are more interested in its historical and cultural place, and these approaches are of course certainly valid. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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