Hieroglyph palimpsest

[Wepwawet]

12 minutes ago, Aldebaran said:

Well, I have page 92 where Dodson says this about the coffin:  ",,,There are no gross signs of names being changed, but the cartouches could easily have been switched in their entirety..."    So no more actual proof than that on page 93, either.  Could have, might have, should have doesn't amount to anything real, does it?

Though he also says that they, the second coffin and coffinettes, and with my bold "May have been made with undecorated interiors and inscribed within only when taken over by Neferneferuaten. Externally, usurpation only required excision and replacement of one gold and glass inlaid cartouche: while it is clear that this has been done, it is impossible to judge how many times".

Edited December 14, 2020 by Wepwawet

[Wepwawet]

5 hours ago, Aldebaran said:

A little Amarna princess, whose name began with Nefer [can't now recall which of the two whose name started with that it was] was styled "Hmt nsw" [royal wife] as well as "sAt nsw" [king;s daughter] and nobody can imagine why--so probably just a careless addition by a sculptor who did not actually know how to read but copied the wrong part of a text made for him by a scribe.

Would that likely be Neferneferuaten ta-sherit being the older of the two "nefers". It would be stretching it a bit to have Neferure named as royal wife, even in error, as she may had died barely older than four or five. But, if they can mangle an easy name like Nebkheperure, they can mangle anything. But I make the same mistake very often when writing that name and miss out the "u", and sometimes an "r" or a "K" or a "H", or put too many in. Neferneferneferakhankhrureru something something something

[Kenemet]

1 hour ago, Aldebaran said:

I couldn't disagree more that the style of art during the reign of Tutankhamun was stylized or inaccurate.  It's not to be confused with the reign of Akhenaten and that art.  I, myself, did a reconstruction from the face of the mummy of Tutankhamun, know what he looked like and recognize him easily from the art of his day.  The mask is NOT stylized at all.  Look at the portraits of the current Queen Elizabeth in her younger days and how much they vary..  Same lady, different artists.  Should be an easy concept to grasp.

https://www.academia.edu/20049111/Reconstruction_of_Face_of_Mummy_of_Tutankhamun

I have seen many reconstructions of Tut's face by various forensic artists.  I rather favor the 3-D model though I still think some assumptions are made and I'm not entirely convinced by it.

The journals I've read indicates that the mask appears to have been made for another, based on a number of things (including an erased cartouche) -- see Reeves (Reeves, Nicholas. "The Gold Mask of Ankhkheperure Neferneferuaten." Journal of Ancient Egyptian Interconnections 7.4 (2015): 77-79.) and Uda et al for details of the construction (Uda, M., et al. "Tutankhamun's golden mask investigated with XRDF." International Journal of PIXE 17.01n02 (2007): 65-76.)

(nb: I think Reeves goes too far in assuming that it's for Nefertiti although the issue of the pierced ears signifying a woman is interesting)

I would also add that although (culturally speaking) a young man's first major purchase after a household was a tomb, Tut didn't seem to have done much to start his own funerary equipment and his death was apparently unanticipated (based on all the borrowed items and borrowed tomb.)  Creating a tomb would have been the first step in preparation... not making funerary equipment.  And we know that funerary equipment was not something he commissioned ... because of the coffins.

A mask like that would have taken a very long time to produce even in a royal workshop -- while we could crank one out like that in 70 days it is less likely that the ancient Egyptians could have made one from scratch so quickly.  

The bland features are pretty typical of many other examples post-Armana.  They're similar to the faces of the statues of Ramesses II (as a particularly good and convenient example) -- same proportions, etc.

[Kenemet]

3 hours ago, Wepwawet said:

It seems as if you are basing, to an extent, your opinion that the KV55 coffin was always Akhenaten's because he was "poor" and could not afford the riches of Tutankhamun's burial.

Given the tone (and demands) in the Amarna letters, I seriously doubt he was poor... see Letter 19 which says in part "May my brother grant me more than he did by father and send it to me. You sent my father much gold. You sent him large gold jars and gold jugs. You se[nt him] gold bricks as if they 'were (just) the equivalent of' copper." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amarna_letter_EA_19#EA_19:_Love_and_gold

[Aldebaran]

1 hour ago, Kenemet said:

Given the tone (and demands) in the Amarna letters, I seriously doubt he was poor... see Letter 19 which says in part "May my brother grant me more than he did by father and send it to me. You sent my father much gold. You sent him large gold jars and gold jugs. You se[nt him] gold bricks as if they 'were (just) the equivalent of' copper." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amarna_letter_EA_19#EA_19:_Love_and_gold

That letter you made a link to was written to Amenhotep III.  Don't I recall a letter from Tushratta of Mitanni, Akjenaten's father-in-law, complaining to Queen Tiye [or maybe Akhenatan, himself] that Akhenaten had only sent him some gold-covered statues when he had expect some solid gold ones.  I'll have to find it.  Yes, the foreign rulers certainly thought the pharaohs were rich--but how much gold any of them had access to or were willing to part with at any given time--who really knows?  It seems to me the foreigners were seldom satisfied.  That KV55 coffin doesn't strike me as having been such a poor one.  It contained plenty of gold.  Maybe nobody prior to and after Tutankhamun had a solid gold coffin.  If looting of KV62 had proved more successful, we wouldn't even know about the vast amount of gold in there.

Okay--here are the letters.  Read from EA26 down.

https://ancientegyptonline.co.uk/ea17/

 

Edited December 15, 2020 by Aldebaran

[Wistman]

4 hours ago, Aldebaran said:

I couldn't disagree more that the style of art during the reign of Tutankhamun was stylized or inaccurate.  It's not to be confused with the reign of Akhenaten and that art.  I, myself, did a reconstruction from the face of the mummy of Tutankhamun, know what he looked like and recognize him easily from the art of his day.  The mask is NOT stylized at all.  Look at the portraits of the current Queen Elizabeth in her younger days and how much they vary..  Same lady, different artists.  Should be an easy concept to grasp.

https://www.academia.edu/20049111/Reconstruction_of_Face_of_Mummy_of_Tutankhamun

I'm very much enjoying your contributions to this thread, Aldebaran.  As to stylized images during Tut's reign, the faces in Tut's tomb are quite similar, even old Ay's face...that can't be accurate.  No?

He and Tut look like brothers to me (subjectively I grant you) but conforming to a canon of the day.  The figures are all proportionally juvenile and cartoonish as well (compared with other pharaonic tomb interiors), which is their style.  There really wasn't any attempt at portraiture or individuality here, inside Tut's own tomb.  Granted, it's not 3D imagery as the mask and coffins are.

Edited December 15, 2020 by The Wistman

[Wepwawet]

8 hours ago, Kenemet said:

I have seen many reconstructions of Tut's face by various forensic artists.  I rather favor the 3-D model though I still think some assumptions are made and I'm not entirely convinced by it.

The journals I've read indicates that the mask appears to have been made for another, based on a number of things (including an erased cartouche) -- see Reeves (Reeves, Nicholas. "The Gold Mask of Ankhkheperure Neferneferuaten." Journal of Ancient Egyptian Interconnections 7.4 (2015): 77-79.) and Uda et al for details of the construction (Uda, M., et al. "Tutankhamun's golden mask investigated with XRDF." International Journal of PIXE 17.01n02 (2007): 65-76.)

(nb: I think Reeves goes too far in assuming that it's for Nefertiti although the issue of the pierced ears signifying a woman is interesting)

I would also add that although (culturally speaking) a young man's first major purchase after a household was a tomb, Tut didn't seem to have done much to start his own funerary equipment and his death was apparently unanticipated (based on all the borrowed items and borrowed tomb.)  Creating a tomb would have been the first step in preparation... not making funerary equipment.  And we know that funerary equipment was not something he commissioned ... because of the coffins.

A mask like that would have taken a very long time to produce even in a royal workshop -- while we could crank one out like that in 70 days it is less likely that the ancient Egyptians could have made one from scratch so quickly.  

The bland features are pretty typical of many other examples post-Armana.  They're similar to the faces of the statues of Ramesses II (as a particularly good and convenient example) -- same proportions, etc.

I'ts noteworthy that none of the forensic and professional artistic reconstructions look alike, the BBC reconstruction being a grotesque bloated rendering of the French version, and none of them having the features we see in the two "guardian" statues. I suspect that those statues show best how he looked at the end of his life, with the "mannequin" being a good representation of him about five years or so younger, and the bust of Nefertem how he looked as an infant. Luban's drawing is perhaps the closest as it appears to be based on the "guardian" statues. The better quality shabtis should also be a good likeness, and some replicate the features of the "guardian" statues, but most show features too young or of a woman, and there's another pool of tar to get stuck in.

When I saw the documentary Reeves made on the mask I thought he had nailed it, then a few years after it seems he had mistaken solder on a join for a cartouche of Neferneferuaten, oh well, but there is still the issue of the ears which make this all so contradictory and confusing, which leads to the north wall of KV62.

The public visage of Ramesses II is a good example as not a single representation of him bears his actual features. Certainly they will not, and did not show a king as an old man, with one exception being AIII as a fat despot. Apart from Amarna, from Hatshepsut to Ramesses II they are all pretty much cookie cutter people whether in public statues or their tombs. A pity they did not continue the reality, as much as can be gauged, of the 12th Dynasty statues

[Aldebaran]

They look like individuals to me--but in some cases not very consistently.  The worst is Hatshepsut.  She never looks alike on any statue.  Amenhotep II is also odd.  Looks like himself sometimes and at other times like a different man.  The face of his mummy is well-preserved so we can get some idea of his features.  Also, he doesn't have very many nobles with statues.  These usually are not beautified, except in the cases of the women, and give the best idea of what their sovereign really looked like.  The ancient Egyptians were the first to practice plastic surgery--except they used a chisel.  If the pharaoh's nose was too prominent, the sculptors tended to whittle that down.  The images of Thutmose III show the most honesty.  Ramesses II almost never.  Tut and Aye looked nothing like the same in KV62.  Please!  Having said this, I am not going to argue further with subjective conclusions.  See whatever you want to see.  It's people like me who actually do the work.

[Wepwawet]

7 hours ago, The Wistman said:

I'm very much enjoying your contributions to this thread, Aldebaran.  As to stylized images during Tut's reign, the faces in Tut's tomb are quite similar, even old Ay's face...that can't be accurate.  No?

He and Tut look like brothers to me (subjectively I grant you) but conforming to a canon of the day.  The figures are all proportionally juvenile and cartoonish as well (compared with other pharaonic tomb interiors), which is their style.  There really wasn't any attempt at portraiture or individuality here, inside Tut's own tomb.  Granted, it's not 3D imagery as the mask and coffins are.

If you've not already read it, this new paper by Reeves is very interesting Reeves expands on his KV62 hidden tomb hypothesis

It is best read online as there are a number of links to videos he has had made for him by a graphic artist which make it much easier to follow his reasoning, a picture paints a thousand words, a moving picture paints a million. I don't think there is anything particularly new, but it's a much better presentation than before.

There are issues though. He going by Watanabe's scans and ignores the follow ups. In fact he claims that the only scan he says was made after Watanabe's can be dismissed. That's a silly thing to claim as the NatGeo scans were far more exhaustive than Watanabe's, and you could actually see the physical exhaustion on the faces of the scanning team who found nothing, but clearly wanted to, as did we all. He makes no reference at all to the two sets of scans made by the Italian team, which also found nothing within the tomb, or, oddly, to the above ground scans they made that do in fact show a largish void running alongside KV62, but not joined to it.

There are other issues, severe anomalies actually, with the painting of the north wall. Reeves claims that where we see Tutankhamun it was originally Nefertiti, and that were we see Ay it was Tutankhaten. So while what he presents is very convincing, it should be seen in the light of Factum Arte scans designed to look into the paintwork over 2018/19, that show, as far as limited results seen in public go, that all that we see is original, nothing has been overpainted, including a cartouche for the figure of Tutankhamun being greeted by Nut, which Reeves says was originally Nefertiti. On the other hand, he sees traces of the name Tutankhaten under that of Ay. Unfortunately the full results of those scans do not seem to have been published yet. Palimpsests, how interesting...

[Wepwawet]

2 hours ago, Wepwawet said:

He makes no reference at all to the two sets of scans made by the Italian team, which also found nothing within the tomb, or, oddly, to the above ground scans they made that do in fact show a largish void running alongside KV62, but not joined to it

My mistake, Reeves does mention the above ground scans, but not the internal scans which found no trace of any voids behind any of the walls.

[Kenemet]

11 hours ago, Wepwawet said:

I'ts noteworthy that none of the forensic and professional artistic reconstructions look alike, the BBC reconstruction being a grotesque bloated rendering of the French version, and none of them having the features we see in the two "guardian" statues. I suspect that those statues show best how he looked at the end of his life, with the "mannequin" being a good representation of him about five years or so younger, and the bust of Nefertem how he looked as an infant. Luban's drawing is perhaps the closest as it appears to be based on the "guardian" statues. The better quality shabtis should also be a good likeness, and some replicate the features of the "guardian" statues, but most show features too young or of a woman, and there's another pool of tar to get stuck in.

When I saw the documentary Reeves made on the mask I thought he had nailed it, then a few years after it seems he had mistaken solder on a join for a cartouche of Neferneferuaten, oh well, but there is still the issue of the ears which make this all so contradictory and confusing, which leads to the north wall of KV62.

The public visage of Ramesses II is a good example as not a single representation of him bears his actual features. Certainly they will not, and did not show a king as an old man, with one exception being AIII as a fat despot. Apart from Amarna, from Hatshepsut to Ramesses II they are all pretty much cookie cutter people whether in public statues or their tombs. A pity they did not continue the reality, as much as can be gauged, of the 12th Dynasty statues

I think of them as being consistent with what the ruler WANTED the public to think he looked like.  None of Tut's art, for example, shows him with an overbite although his skull clearly shows it.  

Come to think of it, this "what I'm supposed to look like" is pervasive throughout art and statuary designed to 'represent' notable people and rulers.  I would bet that if we could travel back in time and stand Akhenaten or Tutankhamun next to their representations that they wouldn't really be a match... except in a very general way.

Like any political cartoon, for example.

Also.. the mask was made in pieces -- adding another dimension to the construction.  The workshop(s) showed a lot of skill in fitting everything together. 

[Wepwawet]

13 minutes ago, Kenemet said:

I think of them as being consistent with what the ruler WANTED the public to think he looked like.  None of Tut's art, for example, shows him with an overbite although his skull clearly shows it.  

Come to think of it, this "what I'm supposed to look like" is pervasive throughout art and statuary designed to 'represent' notable people and rulers.  I would bet that if we could travel back in time and stand Akhenaten or Tutankhamun next to their representations that they wouldn't really be a match... except in a very general way.

Like any political cartoon, for example.

Also.. the mask was made in pieces -- adding another dimension to the construction.  The workshop(s) showed a lot of skill in fitting everything together. 

And with rare exceptions they never age beyond about thirty, if even that old. Permanently young and healthy, even past 90....

[Kenemet]

19 hours ago, Wepwawet said:

And with rare exceptions they never age beyond about thirty, if even that old. Permanently young and healthy, even past 90....

I'd sure like it if my body hadn't aged beyond age 30!

[Harte]

6 hours ago, Kenemet said:

I'd sure like it if my body hadn't aged beyond age 30!

Don't wish for that.

You will have died at 30.

Monkey's Paw, et al.

Harte