A New Look at the pds.t-n.t-nbw of Zauberspru?che fu?r Mutter und Kind, Spell P /
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Since Erman’s rst edition of the Zauberspru?che fu?r Mutter und Kind, translators have never adequately explained the meaning behind the phrase pds.t-n.t-nbw, appearing in Spell P. Understanding the form of this amulet, meant to protect a child from sickness brought about by poison, is integral to a new interpretation of the Zauberspru?che fu?r Mutter und Kind Spell P. This paper begins with an analysis of the various attestations of the term pds.t, and then offers a new translation of Spell P. The main focus then shifts to a detailed examination of the archaeological and textual sources connected with the Spell P ritual, in order to understand the form of the pds.t-n.tnbw amulet, and how it, and the other amulets mentioned in Spell P, all served to remove poison from the body.
A Family of Thirteenth Dynasty High Officials: New Evidence from South Abydos /
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During recent University of Pennsylvania excavations in the tomb of Woseribre Senebkay at South Abydos, we discovered that the burial chamber incorporated a number of limestone blocks deriving from earlier monuments. Three of these inscribed blocks in particular still retain the images and offering texts belonging to a small group of high officials, including the Overseer of Fields, Dedtu. Analysis of the texts upon the blocks demonstrates that the named individuals probably all belonged to the same family, and that their careers spanned the mid-Thirteenth Dynasty. This paper examines the texts and images upon the reused blocks from the tomb of Senebkay in detail, along with other contemporary evidence, in order to ascertain the identities of the people pictured upon them, where the reused blocks originally came from, and of what types of buildings they may once have been part.
King Seneb-Kay's tomb and the necropolis of a lost dynasty at Abydos
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This volume is the publication and analysis of the tomb of pharaoh Seneb-Kay (ca. 1650-1600 BCE), and a cemetery of associated tombs at Abydos, all attributable to a group of kings of Egypt's Second Intermediate Period. The tomb of Seneb-Kay has provided the first known king's tomb of pharaonic Egypt that included decorated imagery in the burial chamber. That evidence, discussed in detail in the volume, allows us to identify this previously unknown ruler along with a group of seven similar tombs that can be attributed to an Upper Egyptian Dynasty that survived for approximately half a century during a period of pronounced territorial fragmentation in the Nile Valley. The book examines the architecture and artifacts associated with these tombs, as well as presents an osteological analysis of the bodies of Seneb-Kay and the other anonymous individuals buried at South Abydos. Seneb-Kay's skeletonized mummy was recovered inside his tomb and provides a rare opportunity to examine the body of a king of this era. He is the earliest substantially preserved body of an Egyptian king to survive in the archaeological record, and the first known Egyptian pharaoh whose skeletal remains show that he died in battle. The analysis of his death in a military encounter, along with insights from the other skeletal remains indicates a line of kings whose rise to power was associated with their social background as members of the military elite. The book examines the wider implications of these bodies in terms of the pronounced militarization of society in the Second Intermediate Period. Seneb-Kay's tomb has also provided extensive evidence through its use of reused blocks bearing decoration, of earlier elite and royal monuments at Abydos. The combination of evidence provides a new archaeological and historical window into the political situation that defined Egypt's Second Intermediate Period
Royal Funerary Equipment of a King Sobekhotep at South Abydos: Evidence for the Tombs of Sobekhotep IV and Neferhotep I? /
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Recent excavations at South Abydos have produced evidence for the date and ownership of a group of royal tombs adjacent to the tomb enclosure of Senwosret III. Tombs S9 and S10, two structures investigated initially by Arthur Weigall, are late Middle Kingdom royal tombs constructed using the distinctive format of the late Middle Kingdom royal pyramid interiors known primarily from the Memphite region. Excavations during 2013–2015 in and around tomb S10 now permit its attribution to one of the Thirteenth Dynasty Sobekhotep kings. Evidence includes a monumental funerary stela bearing the nomen Sobekhotep that appears to derive from a now-destroyed chapel associated with S10. The stela was likely reused in an adjacent intrusive tomb: that of the Second Intermediate period king, Woseribre-Senebkay. In Senebkay’s tomb, excavation revealed that king’s canopic chest, constructed from reused planks that had originally belonged to the cofn of a king Sobekhotep. The original painted texts include a distinctive set of Cofn Texts (Spells 777–785), examples of which date to the middle–late Thirteenth Dynasty. The probable chronological range of these spells, paired with additional lines of evidence suggest that S10 is the burial place of one of the longer-reigning Sobekhotep kings of the middle Thirteenth Dynasty, likely Sobekhotep IV. The proximity of S10 to the similarly designed tomb S9 implies royal burials at South Abydos of two closely connected kings, the brother kings Neferhotep I and Sobekhotep IV, who were unusually active at Abydos and may have chosen to associate their tombs with the mortuary complex of Senwosret III. During the later Second Intermediate period, Senebkay (ca. 1650–1600 BCE) and associated kings reused both funerary equipment and materials from these late Middle Kingdom tombs.