S. Quirke, Middle Kingdom Studies

Middle Kingdom Studies

Stephen Quirke

First published in 1991 by SIA Publishing, 31, Maiden Way New Maiden Surrey KT3 6EB

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Middle Kingdon studies.

I. Quirke, Stephen 932

ISBN 1 872561 02 0

© SIA Publishing

C o n t e n t s P r e f a c e J a n i n e B o u r r i a u P a t t e r n s of c h a n g e in burial c u s t o m s d u r i n g t h e M i d d l e K i n g d o m M a r k C o l l i e r C i r c u m s t a n t i a l l y a d v e r b i a l ? t h e c i r c u m s t a n t i a l sdm(.f)lsdm.n(.f) r e c o n s i d e r e d D e t l e f F r a n k e

T h e c a r e e r of K h n u m h o t e p III of B e n i H a s a n and the so-called " d e c l i n e of the n o m a r c h s " J a m e s K . H o f f m e i e r T h e coffins of t h e M i d d l e K i n g d o m : t h e R e s i d e n c e and t h e r e g i o n s K . A . K i t c h e n N o n - E g y p t i a n s r e c o r d e d on M i d d l e - K i n g d o m Stelae in R i o de J a n e i r o R . B . P a r k i n s o n

T e a c h i n g s , d i s c o u r s e s a n d tales from the M i d d l e K i n g d o m

S t e p h e n Q u i r k e

R o y a l p o w e r in the 13th D y n a s t y

P a s c a l V e r n u s

Sur les graphies d e la formule " l ' o f f r a n d e q u e d o n n e le r o i " au M o y e n E m p i r e et a la D e u x i è m e P e r i o d e I n t e r m é d i a i r e

P r e f a c e

In April 1988 Darwin College Cambridge hosted an Egyptological colloquium on Middle Kingdom studies under the title " t h e Residence and the Regions", organised by Janine Bourriau. T h e gathering of specialists provided a forum for discussion of m a n y points highlighted by the exhibition "Pharaohs and M o r t a l s " mounted by Janine at the Fitzwilliam Museum. Since that double triumph three years ago Janine has retired from her position as Keeper of Antiquities at the Fitzwilliam Museum; in a small way the papers that join hers in this volume testify to her energetic role in Egyptology and her untiring assistance to colleagues of whatever station. As editor and as a student who benefited and continues to benefit from her guidance I take the opportunity of this publication to offer on behalf of the others attending the colloquium and contributing to this volume joint best wishes for a long and bright future in promoting our subject and assisting c o l l e a g u e s .

The editor and contributors owe a particular debt of thanks to Arabella Binney and to Alan May for their generous subvention of this v o l u m e .

The contributors to this volume include five of the speakers from the 1988 colloquium as well as the organiser herself. In addition research fellows Dr.Mark Collier of Corpus Christi Cambridge and Dr.Richard Parkinson of University College Oxford have added articles on language and literature, two areas of Middle K i n g d o m studies not covered by the original colloquium. T h e final product forms it is hoped some fitting tribute to the industry of Janine B o u r r i a u .

Stephen Q u i r k e April 1991

Patterns of change in burial customs

during the Middle Kingdom.

by J a n i n e Bourriau

From the Instructions of Prince Harjedef:

"When you prosper, found your household, take a hearty wife, a son will be born to you. It is for the son you build a house. When you make a place for yourself, make good your dwelling in the graveyard. Make worthy your dwelling in the west"1

The twin poles of an ancient Egyptian's ambition, to establish a family and build his tomb, are nowhere more concisely expressed. It is this unchanging and determined preoccupation with provision for the afterlife which allows us to assume that changes in burial customs accurately reflect changes in society, whether social, economic or political. In other words, so much time and so many resources went into the preparation of equipment for the tomb, the arrangements for the burial, and the funerary cult, that changes in them, which we can observe, must reflect and so help us to understand wider changes in society as a whole which are otherwise more difficult to identify.

From specialist studies of particular sites, tombs, or classes of object,2 we can begin to see an evolution in burial customs in the Middle Kingdom. I hope to suggest some ideas and approaches to the subject,without attempting an exhaustive survey of the sources, inappropriate to this volume of short studies.3 I shall concentrate on the material from the Memphis-Fayum region and Middle Egypt and the period from the

1 M. Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature VolJ. The Old and Middle Kingdoms (Los Angeles, 1975), 58.

^ The bibliography is extensive, and the LÄ together with the most recent issues of the PEB provides the most convenient access to iL

3 The starting point for this paper was a lecture delivered at Emory University in Atlanta,at a conference on "A Sense of Place: Regional Art and Archaeology of First Intermediate Period and Middle Kingdom Egypt" in October 1990. It was organised by Dr. Gay Robins and the University Museum of Art and Archaeology in conjunction with a loan exhibition, "Beyond the Pyramids. Egyptian Regional Art from the Museo Egizio, Turin". I should like to take this opportunity to thank Gay Robins for inviting me to give the lecture and to benefit from the discussions which took place.

4 Janine Bourriau beginning of the XII to the early XIII Dynasty, for the practical reason that this has been the focus of the most recent research and therefore provides the fullest and most reliable data.

When considering burial customs we always have to accept that the tangible remains are not the whole story, even in those rare cases where the burial is found intact. The preparation of the body, the procession to the tomb, words spoken, rites carried out at the entrance or inside the burial chamber: all these activities leave little or no trace4 and yet may have been considered essential in ensuring safe passage through death to the afterlife.

Establishing which changes in society may be reflected in changes in burial customs is full of pitfalls. Until recently it was argued, following Moret's classic exposition,5 that the adoption for non-royal burials of Coffin Texts (derived ultimately from the funeral liturgy of the Kings of the Old Kingdom), together with the inclusion of some items of royal regalia among the painted "Frise d'Objets" on rectangular coffins, and the modelling of them on anthropoid ones, should be understood in terms of the growth of the individual's political power at the expense of that of the King.The breakdown of order, combined with the famines of the early First Intermediate Period, had (it was argued) undermined faith in the King's power to maintain the divinely ordered sequence of the seasons and the institutions of public life, and as a consequence undermined also the belief in his control over the afterlife. This led to "democratization" of the afterlife, in which the individual, independent of any King, sought his own deification through identification with Osiris, using rites and prayers previously restricted to Royalty.

A re-dating of Coffin Texts to the Middle Kingdom, rather than the First Intermediate Period, that is to a time when the monarchy was strong, not weak, has prompted a reappraisal.6 These changes are now thought to be an expression only of the private person's desire to claim identity with Osiris after death, rather than an attempt to usurp the privileges of living Kings. It is significant that only images of or for the use of the dead adopt royal attributes: sceptres, crowns, garments, titles and modes of address. They continue to be the exclusive preserve of royalty in sculpture representing the living. Yet if the earlier hypothesis grew out of a preoccupation with the relationship between the individual and the state, there is implicit in the new one a modern assumption about the separation of the spiritual from the political side of life, a division without meaning in Ancient Egypt. There is no doubt that the change in burial customs did occur, that it was very profound, and that it reflects an equally deep change in men's views of their relationship to the King, both in this life and in the afterlife. If this change took place in the Middle Kingdom rather than the First Intermediate Period, then it is in the society of that time that explanations must be sought

4 However, H.O. Willems, Chests of Life (Leiden, 1988), 14Iff; 238-244 and bibliograhy there cited, interprets the ornamentation on "standard class" coffins as an "account of the ceremonies on the day of burial". This paper owes a great deal to Willems' careful analysis of Middle Kingdom coffins, as will be seen from the numerous citations to this work which follow.

5 A. Moret, "L'Accession de la Plèbe Egyptienne aux droits Religieux et Politiques sous le Moyen Empire" in Recueil d'études égyptologiques 8 (1922), 331-360; also H.Kees, Totenglauben und

Jenseitsvorstellungen der alten Ägypter (Leipzig, 1926), 164-9.

6 Willems op.cit., passim but especially 244-249. Not all scholars would agree to this redating, see J. Hoffmeier and bibliography cited in this volume.

Patterns of change in burial customs 5

The evolution of burial customs can be visualised as forming three interlocking patterns which relate to geography, chronology, and status and number of people being buried or commemorated.

First, we can examine the geographical pattern. All the important Middle Kingdom sites had their only, or major period of excavation early in the history of Egyptology and, sadly, in the history of archaeology, between 1890 and 1914. Significant exceptions are Aswan, the Delta, and the Memphis region, but the recent excavations in these regions still await completion and/or full publication. During this initial period of excavation, and right up until the 1960's, the traditional view was that Egypt was culturally unified after the political unification by Nebhepetre Mentuhotep in Dynasty XI, and continued to be so until the end of Dynasty XII. It followed from this that graves at Qau in Upper Egypt could be compared with graves from Harageh in the Fayum and differences between them interpreted in terms of chronology rather than of regional variation.

Specialist studies of individual regions or classes of object, particularly tomb biographies, stelae, coffins and pottery, have changed this view, and most scholars would now agree that Egypt's material culture in the Middle Kingdom can be observed only in terms of the cultures of the Delta, the Memphis-Fayum region, Middle Egypt (to Asyut), Upper Egypt and Aswan. From the end of the Old Kingdom onwards each of these regions - and in some cases even smaller districts within them - evolved its own craft traditions in the manufacture of funerary monuments and equipment; for each region, a separate sequence must be established. The gaps in our knowledge are such that we can often identify a coffin or stela as belonging to a particular provincial workshop but be unable to assign it to a precise date within that workshop's history. Coffins, being difficult to transport and yet not requiring, like tomb reliefs or sculpture, the special skills of masons or sculptors who could travel from one commission to another,7 are most striking expressions of local workshop traditions.8 Furthermore, if the coffin is interpreted as a "ritual machine"9 i.e. as a medium through which what was spoken or acted out once could continue to be efficacious for eternity, then the evolution of its inscriptions should directly reflect changes in the rites of burial. Pottery, on the other hand, suffers from the complication that while much of it may have been made locally, some specialist vessels, containers for traded commodities, were transported widely. It is not always possible to distinguish the local product from

7 Willems opxit., 161, suggests that coffin painters did occasionally travel and cites a coffin from Beni Hasan whose decoration matches very closely coffins from Bersheh. The art historical analysis such as W.K.Simpson has begun for stelae in Terrace of the Great God at Abydos: The Offering Chapels of

Dynasties 12 and 13 (New Haven and Philadelphia, 1974) has not yet been embarked upon for coffin

decoration.

8 See for example the fragments of an unprovenanced coffin in the Fitzwilliam Museum, E.W.66a,b. J.Bourriau, Pharaohs and Mortals. Egyptian Art in the Middle Kingdom (Cambridge, 1988) Cat.no.67. It has been assigned to Asyut and to the reign of Amenemhet II on the evidence of the owner's name, Wepwawetemhet, and the pattern of three vertical text columns between the panels and four vertical text columns at each end of the long sides. The design is unique to Asyut. The alignment in the published photograph should be corrected. The two pieces belong side by side with a gap the width of one panel and two vertical text columns between them.

6 Janine Bourriau the import on shape alone, and many excavation reports provide no other information.1 0

Centres within these regions - places like Asyut, Aswan, Bersheh, Beni Hasan, and Gebelein - were immemorially ancient Nome capitals or cult centres, inheritors of local traditions going backiperhaps even beyond the Unification under Menés. In addition to these places there were three significant urban centres: the Residence, Ii-t3wy, probably to be identified with Lisht; Thebes, the centre of the administration of the Southern part of Egypt and the heartland of the XI and XII Dynasties; and finally Abydos, centre of pilgrimage, the burial place of Osiris. Much of the history of the first part of the Middle Kingdom, up till the end of the reign of Senwosret HI, can be seen in terms of the interplay between on the one hand these three cities, dominated by the activities of the King and his officials, and on the other the provincial centres controlled by dynasties of Nomarchs and their dependents.

Why did Amenemhat I choose to establish what was in effect a new capital city, a new royal Residence at It-t3wy, between Memphis and the Fayum, ignoring Memphis itself? It may have been because his own reign was not secure, if we accept at face value the Instructions he left for his son Senwosret I, which tell him:

"Trust not a brother, know not a friend, make no intimates, it is worthless. When you lie down, guard your heart yourself for no man has adherents on the day of woe."1 1

The text goes on to describe an assassination attempt, recalling perhaps the event which precipitated Sinuhe's flight to Syria in his famous narrative.

However, an additional reason may have been that Amenemhet I, like many founders of new Dynasties before and since, wanted a new capital.He called it, significantly, It-t3wy, "Seizer of the Two Lands". (Nearby Heracleopolis, close to the mouth of the Fayum, had been the capital of a rival Dynasty during the First Intermediate Period, thereby emphasising the importance of this region for the control of Northern Egypt). In contemporary Egyptian texts, It-t3wy is often called simply "The Residence", a phrase sufficient to designate the royal palace, the residence of the King being inevitably the seat of central government. All the officials and institutions set up there were dependent on the new King, inheritors of no ancient traditions (Memphis), or rival loyalties (Heracleopolis). The site of this capital has not been identified for certain but must lie in the cultivation near the modern village of el Lisht, close to the place chosen for the Pyramid complexes of Amenemhet I and Senwosret I, which remained an important necropolis for the rest of the Middle Kingdom. The significance of the Residence, its total identification with the State, is illustrated by the fact that the Middle Kingdom may be considered to end with the abandonment of the Residence and the withdrawal of the King southwards to Thebes. This event took place some time after the middle of the XIII Dynasty,1 2 in response (we surmise) to the increasing power of local rulers, more particularly the Hyksos based at Avaris (Tell Dab'a) in the Eastern Delta.

1 0 This is a problem encountered in establishing the distribution of storage vessels of Marl C fabric, made of a clay from the Memphis-Fayum region, into Middle Egypt, Nubia and the Delta, bypassing Upper Egypt; see J.Bourriau, "Nubians in Egypt during the Middle and New Kingdoms" to be published by the British Museum.

1 1 Lichtheim opxit., 136; S. Quirke in Bourriau, Pharaohs and Mortals, Cat.no.60. 1 2 W.CHayes, "Horemkha'uef of Nekhen and his Trip to It-towe" in JEA 33 (1947), 3-11.

Patterns of change in burial customs 7 The region around the Residence, from Dahshur in the North to and including the Fayum, was a focus for royal activity throughout the XII and XIII Dynasties. Here the kings were buried: there are Pyramids of Amenemhet II, Amenemhet III and Senwosret III at Dahshur, Senwosret I and Amenemhet I at Lisht, Senwosret II at Lahun, and Amenemhet III again at Hawara. To the cemeteries around the Pyramid complexes came the great officials of the state, the vizirs and treasurers, desiring to be buried close to the King they served. In this way they had access, by favour of the King, to all the resources of the royal workshops. Sinuhe describes the favours showered on him by Senwosret I, "A stone Pyramid was built for me in the midst of the Pyramids. The masons who build tombs constructed it. A master draughtsman designed it. A master sculptor carved in it. The overseers of construction in the Necropolis busied themselves with it. All the equipment that is placed in a tomb shaft was supplied. Mortuary priests were given me. A funerary domain was made for me. It had fields and a garden in the right place as is done for a Companion of the first rank."1 3 The attraction of such patronage in this world and the next must have been great: it was sufficient to cause the successor of Khnumhotep II to abandon his unfinished tomb at Beni Hasan in favour of a mastaba at Dahshur, close to the Pyramid of Amenemhet III.1 4

We can perhaps assume that such burials of the highest officials and their families, i.e. of those people closest to the King, would have been the first to respond to change. In the early XII Dynasty each King moved his mortuary complex to a new site, and whilst retaining the Royal Pyramid as centrepiece, rearranged the elements of Mortuary Temple, Valley Temple, subsidiary Pyramids and private mastabas. Such architectural innovation and experiment would have provided a climate encouraging to changes in burial rites and equipment It is significant that the two most popular design-layouts for the external decoration of "standard class" coffins, Willems' design-layouts of types IV and VI, may originate in the cemeteries around the Residence. Two Lisht coffins1 5 are among his earliest sources for type IVaa, and type VI is thought to derive from the decoration on the royal sarcophagi of Senwosret II and III and Amenemhet HI at Lahun and Dahshur.1 6

Similarly, in pottery studies Dorothea Arnold has recently shown that the Riqqeh-Lahun-Harageh corpus thought to be characteristic of Dynasty X I I1 7 originated at Lisht in the second half of the reign of Senwosret I .1 8 Given the different ceramic traditions prevailing in Egypt in the early XII Dynasty, it is possible to chart the spread of this "Residence" pottery tradition as it reached the rest of Egypt and Nubia. It is significant that it arrives in Nubia before it appears at Thebes and becomes dominant throughout the country only in the late XTJ Dynasty. Until then the degree to which it is present on a provincial site can be used as one indication of the strength of contacts between that site and the Residence.

Thebes had a different history in the Middle Kingdom, in so far as we know it. It is rich in private and royal funerary monuments from the XI dynasty until the reign of Senwosret I; thereafter, fewer monuments survive. The obvious interpretation is that

*3 Lichtheim op.cit., 233.

*4 The evidence, which is frustratingly incomplete, is summarised in Willems op.cit., 61-2, n.19. 1 5 Willems op.cit., 160, n.138..

1 6 Ibid., 162, n.147.

1 7 B J. Kemp and R.S. Merrillees, Minoan Pottery in Second Millennium Egypt (Mainz, 1980), 23. 1 8 Dorothea Arnold in Dieter Arnold, The Pyramid of Senwosret I (New York, 1988), 143-146.

8 Janine Bourriau private cemeteries become more modest, earlier cliff tombs are re-used and simple shafts without superstructures dug, until the mid-XIII Dynasty when the centre of royal power shifts southwards again. However, there is an exceptional amount of unpublished evidence of this date, especially from the Metropolitan Museum of Art excavations at Thebes, which may change this picture radically.

Abydos was the sacred city, home of Osiris and the site of his tomb, identified in the Middle Kingdom with the tomb of King Djer of the First Dynasty.1 9 The Abydos necropolis was continuously used for the burials of people who lived locally or who were attached to the site's numerous shrines, but in the course of the XU Dynasty it became increasingly important to be commemorated there, regardless of where you were buried. People wished to dwell near the god in the same way as they might wish to be buried or commemorated close to the royal tomb enclosure. Statues, offering tables and stelae were set up in small chapels. These might belong to families, or to groups of people whose work drew them together, and as officials passed up and down the river secure in the stability of a unified country,2 0 we may imagine them calling in at Abydos to arrange for a commemoration to be left for them and their families, patrons or proteges at the Terrace of the Great God.

Hundreds of stelae were the product of this piety; publication and analysis of this rich documentation is one of the most important recent advances in Egyptology, giving us all the more reason to regret that so few of these stelae can be restored to the monument from which they were extracted and so related to others of the same date or family group.2 1 Nor, with very few exceptions, can they be related to the contents of the extensive cemeteries of shaft tombs at Abydos. If we could relate burial equipment and stelae as we can begin to relate sculpture and stelae,2 2 Egyptian archaeology would be immensely enriched.2 3

The regional styles that can be observed in the early Middle Kingdom were not static, either in themselves or in their relationship to each other. As the XII Dynasty progresses, a general increase in wealth is apparent, judging simply by the quality of the raw materials used in private and royal monuments. Wood gives way to stone in sculpture in the round, and modest burials contain gold and hard stone jewellery and amulets.2 4 With this wealth comes a shift of resources away from the provinces towards the Fayum region, around the Residence. This is most clearly seen in Middle Egypt, at sites like Meir, Beni Hasan, Bersheh and AsyuL They had all ceased to exist by the reign of Amenemhet III, whereas the main period of use of the Harageh, Lisht North and Dahshur cemeteries came in the late XII to XÏÏI Dynasties.

1 9 A. Leahy, "The "Osiris' Bed Reconsidered" in Orientalia 46 (1977), 424-434.

20 There is a great increase in private stelae at Abydos during the reign of Senwosret I and again in the late XII-early XIII Dynasties; Simpson op.cit., passim.

21 Simpson op.cit., passim; D. Franke, Personendaten aus dem Mittleren Reich (Wiesbaden, 1984), passim.

22 For example at Elephantine, L. Habachi, The Sanctuary of Heqaib (Mainz, 1985).

23 it could be argued that coffins provide similar dating criteria to stelae: names, titles, funerary formulae, religious texts and motifs and design of decoration. However, the number of deposits where coffins and grave goods may be associated is suprisingly small.with the important exception of the shaft tombs at Beni Hasan. Nevertheless it is noteworthy that Willems hardly ever appeals to associated objects for dating coffins. He does not provide tomb numbers in his documentation of them and this emphasises that his approach isolates the coffin from the physical context of burial. This is inconsistent, perhaps, with his aim of understanding the texts on coffins in terms of the rites of burial. 2 4 Bourriau op.cit., 127, Cat.no. 159, a gold catfish from Harageh Cemetery A 72.

Patterns of change in burial customs 9 The process is twofold. There is a growing cultural homogeneity expressed in the style of coffins and pottery and the selection of grave goods, and there is a movement of people, either to a different part of the cemetery or away from the cemetery altogether. What happened is not easy to understand. Why did Asyut cease to function before Beni Hasan did, for example? Despite the uneven pace of this change, there are obvious phases in the transitional period. A lesser change is marked by the end of the reign of Senwosret I, a greater one by the end of the reign of Senwosret III and the final phase ends with the abandonment of the Residence in the XHI Dynasty.

It is the cultural homogeneity of the late Middle Kingdom which contrasts so strongly with the First Intermediate Period or the first phase of the Middle Kingdom, ending with the reign of Senwosret I. At the end of this first phase, local traditions in funerary equipment and sculpture begin to give way to artefacts without such a strong local character.2 5 Asyut exhibits the trend most clearly, as Diana Magee has shown in her unpublished thesis.2 6 The burial of Djefaiha'py, who served King Senwosret I, contains the latest known example of a coffin type unique to Asyut, part of a tradition of coffin decoration, defined by motifs, inscriptions and their arrangement, going back to the early Heracleopolitan era.

From a period contemporary with Djefaiha'py's coffin, and a little later, coffins of Willems' type IVaa2 7 occur at Asyut itself, at Bersheh, Beni Hasan, and Lisht. This trend towards standardisation in the exterior decoration of "standard class" coffins, which seems to me to begin at this time,2 8 is reinforced by a change which also occurred a little later, in the reign of Amenemhet II, in their interior decoration. Willems' type 1 is replaced by his type 2, and in the new type the similarities between coffins from different sites is so strong that Willems suggests that it can be accounted for only by contact between coffin workshops.2 9

Willems' documentation has to be used with care because he analyses only what he calls the "standard class" coffin,3 0 and not coffin types whose occurrence is confined to a single site. His purpose is to establish dating criteria for coffins with Coffin Texts by comparing coffins from different sites,3 1 and such "deviant" types as he calls them, (or"Siutian" for those from Asyut) are a dead end in this respect. These are, however, all-important in showing the strength of local traditions in funerary ritual and coffin craft.3 2

What the sources, uneven though they are, do show in respect of coffin decoration, is that the "standard class" coffin with interior decoration was more popular

25 Bourriau op.cit., 10-12.

26 Diana Magee, Asyut to the end of the Middle Kingdom: an historical and cultural study. University of Oxford, 1990. Donald Spanel's unpublished thesis, which I have not seen, should also be consulted, see J.Hoffmeier, this volume.

27 Willems op.cit., 136-7, with fig.10. The earliest examples are listed on p.160, n.l38.See also above n.16.

281 have already suggested above, that Lisht may be the source of the layout design. 2 9 Willems op.cit., 190.

30 Ibid., 49-50. This is G .Lapp's Lower Egyptian type in LÄ,V, 430-434. Lapp's account is more comprehensive in scope though necessarily less detailed than Willems' work. See also J.Hoffmeier, this volume.

3* As a consequence he lists all coffins with interior decoration, List 1, p.19-34, but only a limited number of those without, List 2, p.35-40.

10 Janine Bourriau at Saqqara, Bersheh, Meir, Beni Hasan and Lisht than at Asyut and (not suprisingly, given the distance involved and the strength of local craft traditions) Thebes. Too little has survived from other Upper Egyptian sites for comparisons to be useful. Nevertheless it would seem that local traditions in coffin decoration were more tenacious at some places than at others. The relationship of the site to the Residence may be a factor, not just in terms of distance but also in terms of the degree of contact with the King and his officials. However, until the early XII Dynasty coffin types used in the cemeteries at Lisht are published and can be compared with those from the great cemeteries in Middle Egypt, the situation cannot be completely understood.3 3

The strength of local styles also varied from craft to craft: compare for example, the evolution of pottery style with coffin typology. Dorothea Arnold has shown how the classic Middle Kingdom pottery repertoire was a creation of the Lisht potters in the second half of the reign of Senwosret I .3 4 She has also shown how types-of the First Intermediate period continued to circulate longer at Asyut and Beni Hasan than at Sedment or Gurob.3 5 This phenomenon may explain why Seidlmayer, in his seriation of the Beni Hasan tombs, placed those groups with classic XII Dynasty pottery in his latest level, Level HI, dated by him to the reigns of Amenemhet II-Senwosret I I .3 6 The pottery from Beni Hasan has a character all its own, and moreover, includes shapes circulating in Upper Egypt as well as examples of the "Residence style". The potters whose workshops were immortalised in the Beni Hasan tomb paintings produced a funerary pottery altogether more idiosyncratic in style and technology than the products of the coffin makers.3 7 This may also have been true at Bersheh and Meir,but the evidence for the first site is unpublished and for the second lost. The evidence suggests at present that the new pottery style contemporary with the type IVaa coffins, introduced at the end of the reign of Senwosret I, was, unlike the coffins, confined at first to the cemeteries in the immediate vicinity of the Residence, i.e. Lisht itself and Riqqeh.3 8

It is the reign of Senwosret III which introduces the final phase of the Middle Kingdom. We can see changes in that reign which go far beyond burial customs and touch all aspects of the material culture, language and institutions of society.

Such a profound cultural change did not come about simply through the King's political will, as the culmination of Senwosret Ill's policy of centralisation of power, but seems to be more deep seated and unselfconscious. Stephen Quirke has argued that Senwosret Ill's concern to re-define the boundaries of Egypt may have been the catalyst for this profound social change. He fixed the southern border at Semna, and cut a channel through the rocks of the First Cataract so that, for the first time, the Nile was navigable even at low water from the Second Cataract to the Mediterranean. The effect of this on communications with Nubia is easy to see. Two examples may suffice: the soldiers of the garrison of the late XTJ Dynasty at Buhen were buried with

3 3 The coffins from Lisht South and Lisht North are currently being prepared for publication by James Allen of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

3 4 See note 18 above. 3 5 Willems op.cit., 144, n.333.

16 SJ.Seidlmayer, Gräberfelder aus dem Obergang vom Alten zum Mittleren Reich, (Heidelberg,

1990), 233. This book reached me too late to be fully incorporated into the present paper.

37 LBourriau, Umm el Ga'ab. Pottery from the Nile Valley before the Arab Conquest (Cambridge, 1981), 60-63.

Patterns of change in burial customs 11 grave goods indistinguishable in appearance from those of their contemporaries buried at Lisht or Dahshur over a thousand miles to the north.3 9 Marl clay storage jars typical of the Memphis-Fayum region4 0 can be found all over Nubia, as far south as Kerma.4 1 Since these jars are never found in Upper Egypt, they are evidence of direct trade between the region around the Residence and Nubia.

In terms of burial customs, the changes manifested themselves in two ways, both in a movement away from the provincial cemeteries which had evolved after the Old Kingdom and in changes in the type and class of object placed in the burial. After the reign of Senwosret III no evidence is forthcoming from Beni Hasan, Meir, Bersheh, and Asyut.4 2 Provincial cemeteries of people at a lower level of society -those at Diospolis Parva, Qau cemetery 7000, El Kab, and Rifeh, for example - show continuity of use throughout the Middle Kingdom, in the locality if not always in exactly the same spot; those of the Nomarchs and their dependents do not. Inscriptions, scarabs and coffins, however, are relatively rare and the names and titles of few individuals survive.4 3 It seems that the majority of the people buried in these graves were not members of the official classes. By every available criterion they were of lower status than, for example, most of those buried in the cemeteries of comparable date in the Memphis-Fayum region, or at Abydos or Thebes.

There are also changes to be seen in the actual contents of non-royal burial groups of the late XII to XIII Dynasty. The most characteristic product of the funerary workshops of the early XII Dynasty, apart from coffins, was wooden tomb models. They ceased to appear in the Memphis-Fayum region after the reign of Senwosret n , with the occasional exception of boat models, which continued until the mid- XII Dynasty. Brunton's original observation during his excavations at el-Lahun4 4 has been amply confirmed by Angela Tooley's comprehensive study.4 5

Like the classic XII Dynasty pottery style, this change in burial practices did not reach some provincial cemeteries like Meir and Beni Hasan until later. As a consequence we find in Beni Hasan tomb 500 - an intact burial - a coffin with outer decoration of Willems' type VI, introduced between the end of the reign of Amenemhet II and early in the reign of Senwosret HI, and inner decoration of type 2, together with pottery of similar date, two model boats and a model granary. Beni Hasan tombs 75 and 886 also contained coffins with outer decoration of type VI together with boat models.4 6

Coincidentally with the disappearance of models a new range of ritual objects begins to appear in burials: funerary figurines, developing into shabtis; magic wands and rods, accompanied by figurines which are 3-dimensional versions of the subjects

39 Bourriau, Pharaohs and Mortals, Cat.no. 136.

40 Do. Arnold, "Kerarnikbearbeitung in Dahschur 1976-1981" in MDA1K 38 (1982), fig.8, nos.3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 12; fig.9, no.15; fig.19, no.2.

4 1 See note 10 above.

4 2 The evidence is reviewed conveniently in Willems, op.cit., 62-104.

43 Some evidence has been lost through poor preservation. Mace's notebooks recording his work in Cemetery W at Diospolis Parva occasionally note the presence of painted coffins; see also the quotation from Hilda Petrie's diary in Bourriau, op.cit., 99.

4 4 W.MJ\Petrie, G.Brunton and M.A.Murray, Lahun II (London, 1923), 34.

4^ Angela Tooley, Middle Kingdom Burial Customs. A Study of Wooden Models and Related Materials. University of Liverpool, Ph.D.thesis, 1990.

46 J.Garstang, The Burial Customs of Ancient Egypt (London, 1907), 214, 226, 243. ^«àexlands Insfctum

12 Janine Bourriau depicted on them; faience model offerings of food and pottery; female figurines. At the same time we begin to find a style of writing of funerary inscriptions which uses mutilated hieroglyphs.

There is evidence that at least some of these changes spread out to the rest of Egypt from the cemeteries close to the Residence and the royal funerary complexes nearby. At the end of the XII Dynasty, the multiplicity of temples dedicated to the mortuary cults of Middle Kingdom Kings was sufficient to ensure the presence in this area of large staffs of priests, funerary scribes, and their dependent officials; here was the perfect setting for new rites of burial to appear and to spread.

If we use the refinements in pottery dating now available from Lisht and apply them to a few key groups from the region, where the association of pottery, objects and (sometimes) coffin is reasonably secure, we may be able to establish when this change took place. I am aware of the great danger in extracting individual groups from a mass of archaeological material in this way, which is to generalise from a small and possibly unrepresentative sample of data. I have, however, chosen either groups which have already been used by others to establish the character of Middle Kingdom burials4 7 or well dated groups from the most recent work at Dahshur and Lisht by Dorothea and Dieter Arnold.4 8 (A list and brief discussion of the groups is given at the end of the paper). What they show is that a change in the selection of objects for burial coincides with the evolution of pottery types dateable to the late XH" to early XHI Dynasties. The starting point jeems to be the reign of Amenemhet in and the end, in this region, the advanced XÏII Dynasty. If we add three well dated groups from Abydos and Thebes4 9 the chronological picture is similar, but there is also some evidence to suggest that the changes occurred a little later at these centres.

Most cemeteries of the mid-late XII Dynasty produced funerary statuettes in hard stones, representing the deceased as a wrapped mummy or wearing a long cloak. The name and title may be given, with or without the offering formula and other prayers, or the figure may be uninscribed.5 0 Such figures are sometimes placed in model coffins, and are found in offering chapels at Abydos5 1 as well as in tombs generally. It is consistent with what we know of Ancient Egyptians to assume a multiplicity of purposes for these figures. The statuette could function as an additional representation of the wrapped body of the deceased in funeral rites, and as a stand-in for it in the offering cult, or in the afterlife if the real body were destroyed. The statuettes seem to have evolved from the mummy figures placed in model funerary boats, illustrating belief in the posthumous pilgrimage to Abydos.

The next step in the development of these statuettes is the application to them of the shabti text, and this seems to have happened first in the Memphis-Fayum area. The

4 7 Kemp and Merrillees op.cit., passim; B. Williams in Sarapis 3 (1975-6), 41-55; C. Liliquist in Sarapis 5 (1979), 27-8.

4 8 See above, notes 18 and 40.

4^ Abydos B13; the burial of Renseneb in Carter's tomb 25 in the Asasif at Thebes; and the objects from the Ramesseum tomb no.5. See tomb list.

50 W.M.F. Pétrie, G.A. Wainwright and E. Mackay, The Labyrinth, Gerzeh and Mazguneh (London, 1912), pl.xxx, two examples from Hawara dating from the reign of Amenemhet III; Bourriau op.cit., Cat.no.82, from Diospolis Parva, W38.

Patterns of change in burial customs 13 earliest examples are from Lisht.5 2 The text is an old spell, first known amongst Coffin Texts from Meir and El Bersheh.5 3 It is in the form of a legal contract, and sets out to provide the deceased with exemption from his duty to help maintain the irrigation system in the afterlife, by appointing the shabti as his substitute. This undoubtedly reflects the practice of a society in which the great division lay, as it still does in Egypt, between those who carry out manual work and those who do not. With the addition of this text the shabti figure has acquired a very specific function, but it did not thereby lose any of its earlier significance. Shabtis are still found, sometimes in miniature coffins,5 4 in offering deposits, or they may be represented in relief sculpture on stelae or in shrines.5 5

When it appears on the statuettes, the text uses mutilated hieroglyphs in which the legs of the signs representing birds, human beings, animals and reptiles have been r e m o v e d .5 6 The reason for this we know, since the practice also occurs in earlier compilations, such as the Pyramid Texts: it is to prevent the power of the beings represented by the hieroglyphs from doing harm to the newly dead, as vulnerable (in Egyptian thinking) as the newly born to malign influence. The earliest burial group known to me to contain the script is the burial of the princess Neferu-ptah, daughter of Amenemhet III.5 7 From the late XII Dynasty onward, at Lisht, Dahshur and Hawara, this mutilated script was used for objects placed close to the body in burial. The tradition spread to Abydos5 8 and Thebes,5 9 the latest known example being the coffin of one of the most important kings of the Theban seventeenth Dynasty, Nubkheperre-Inyotef.6 0

The wands and rods with their associated collections of magical figures, which appear in late Middle Kingdom burials anywhere in Egypt, can be paralleled by objects from domestic contexts at Kahun, a town dating from the reign of Senwosret II to the XIII Dynasty.6 1 Unfortunately the archaeological sequence at Kahun is unknown, so for most of the finds precise dates cannot be given.6 2 Nevertheless, the context is interesting in providing general support for the date of these objects and illustrating

52 H.D. Schneider, Shabtis I (Leiden, 1977), 182. For Lisht 453 in which the shabti of Ameny was found, see tomb list below.

53 Ibid., 46-7. To this discussion should be added Willems' comments on the dating of the relevant coffins, B2L, BIP, p.75-7 and M47C, p.97.

54 See shabtis of Bener and Wahneferhotep from Lisht, in tomb list.

55 P.Vernus,"Une Formule des shaouabtis sur un pseudo-naos de la XHIe Dynastie" in Revue

d'Egyptologie 26 (1974), 101-114.

56 P.Lacau,"Suppressions et modifications de signes dans les textes funéraires" in ZÄS 51 (1914), 1-64.

57 N. Farag and Z. Iskander, The Discovery ofNeferwptah (Cairo, 1971), 48-58. 58 Abydos B13,dateable to Dynasty XIII, see tomb list.

59 Carter and Carnarvon tomb 25, which has a terminus post quern of the reign of Amenemhet IV; see tomb list.

60 in the British Museum, see H.E.Winlock,"The Tombs of the Kings of the Seventeenth Dynasty at Thebes" in JEA X (1924), pl.XIV.

6 1 W.M.F.Petrie, Kahun, Gurob and Hawara (London, 1890), pLVHI.

62 The meagre information in the reports has been painstakingly examined in Kemp and Merrillees,

14 Janine Bourriau how devices perhaps long used to protect the living,6 3 were being adopted into burial practices.6 4 The idea that the newly born and the newly dead required the same magical protection against the natural forces of disease and decay, the supernatural powers of the night and of the desert and the unquiet dead was hardly an innovation.6 5 The kinship between some spells among the Coffin Texts and the medico-magical papyri, such as those in the Ramesseum find, shows this very well.6 6 Nevertheless the notion seems to have found new expression at this time in the Memphis-Fayum region.

The female figurines which also appear at this time cannot on present evidence be thought to originate in a particular region; sundry types were in circulation and represent local variants.6 7 The model food offerings and miniature cups made of faience, perhaps in origin a replacement for wooden tomb models, do seem to be more popular in the Memphis-Fayum region than in Upper Egypt but that may be a distortion due to an imbalance in the sources available to us.

From the mid-XII Dynasty onwards, after the reign of Senwosret IU, changes in the decoration of coffins also occurred, coinciding with this change in the burial goods. Firstly the trend towards standardisation in exterior decoration becomes even more marked, as the local workshops of Bersheh, Beni Hasan, Asyut and Meir cease to operate. Willems shows clearly how his type VI coffin becomes the most common type throughout Egypt after the reign of Senwosret III. Secondly the frequency of interior decoration with Frise d'Objets and Coffin Texts shows a corresponding steep decline after the end of his reign.6 8 Isolated examples appear until well into the Xffl Dynasty but they are special cases: burials of the royal family and their household;6 9 ofSsnb-nf, a chief lector priest at Lisht;7 0 and of officials close to the King.7 1 Moreover, the coffins are not "standard class" coffins, but either "court" types or "deviants".7 2 The few examples imply that access to the texts was much more restricted in the late Middle Kingdom and this contrasts sharply with the situation in the early XII Dynasty, when coffins from Aswan, Abusir, Bersheh, Beni Hasan, Gebelein, Sedment, Saqqara, and Thebes, all carry Coffin Texts.7 3

6 3 Altenmüller, see note 74 below, makes their primary function to protect living women and children clear.

°4 Evidence to confirm this from other settlements in the region is lacking so far. The earliest levels above water at Kom Rabi'a at Memphis, currenüy being excavated by the Egypt Exploration Society, are late XII Dynasty (personal observation). It is doubtful that any site in the valley, such as Kom Rabi'a, can produce the range of objects in organic materials that have come from Kahun.

6 5 Bourriau opxit., 110-127.

66 Stephen Quirke, personal communication.

67 CPinch, "Childbirth and Female Figurines at Deir el-Medina and el-Amarna" in Orientalia 52 (1983), 405-414.

6^ Willems lists three exterior decoration layout types, IVaa, IVba and VI, which occur during, and (in the case of IVba and VI) begin shortly before, the reign of Senwosret III and continue later. 20 coffins with these types of exterior decoration also carry the latest type of interior decoration, Willems' type 2, which includes Coffin Texts. Of these, none is certainly later than the reign of Senwosret III. 6 9 At Dahshur, see coffins DalC-Da8x in Willems op.cit., 22-3.

7 0 LiLi.Willems op.cit.,2A,\05; G. Lapp in SAK 13 (1986), 135-147. 7 1 T6C and TlOC.Willems op.cit.,\\l\ Berlev in JEA 60 (1974), 106-113. 72 Willems op.cit., List 1, for definitions of these terms.

73 Examples from these sites all carry Willems' type I layout of exterior decoration, which dies out after the reign of Amenemhet I; p.127 with chronological table p.121.

Patterns of change in burial customs 15 We can, I think, see a chronological correlation in the late XII Dynasty, between the decline in the occurrence of coffins with interior decoration and the appearance in burials of magical figurines, rods and wands. Is it possible that these objects are replacing some of the spells previously represented in the Coffin Texts? The basic study of the procession of animals, hieroglyphs and gods shown on the wands is by Altenmüller.7 4 The background myth is the battle of the sun god against his enemies. The sun god's helpers are shown carrying knives, and it is the protective powers represented by these beings which are called up to aid the dead. Represented on the wands in the Ramesseum group7 5 are deities: Seth, Re, Nekhbet, Thueris, and both male and female forms of Aha; mythical beasts: griffin with human head between its wings, snake-headed leopard, triple-headed serpent; real animals: frog, cat, baboon, turtle, hon; hieroglyphs: the wsr sign and the brazier sign for fire, ht. Spells referring to the myth of the sun god travelling through the caverns of the night are a major theme of the Coffin Texts. Willems has argued that the texts relate to episodes in the funerary rites themselves. If he is right, the relatively sudden disappearance of these texts from non-royal coffins would imply a dramatic change in private funerary ritual. Could the figures and the wands have come to replace, in a cheaper and more easily obtainable form, the solar spells in the Coffin Texts? The objects were, after all, in current use for a similar purpose in everyday life. This suggestion need not be invalidated by the fact that examples of Coffin Texts, and of Coffin Texts and Pyramid Texts together, continue to appear sporadically, painted or carved on the walls of the burial chambers of private tombs.

I have so far discussed patterns of change in relation to the funerary geography of Egypt and the chronological phases of the Middle Kingdom. Finally I should like to suggest a change which I think can be seen in the social pattern of burial. This again relates to the last phase of the Middle Kingdom, the late XII - XIII Dynasties.

Opportunities for burial and/or commemoration in a sanctified place close to a royal mortuary temple, or at Abydos at the "Terrace of the Great God", were open to more people than ever before. Statues and stelae were increasingly deposited in temples, both inside near the doors and in the outer courts, so that they might "dwell near the god" and benefit from the rites and offerings made there. Moreover, the texts of funerary stelae themselves change. The autobiographical texts of the early Middle Kingdom are replaced by religious ones, hymns to Osiris or Min (a change which may be related to a need to find another medium for texts relating to the Osiris myth previously provided by the Coffin Texts), and/or simple offering formulae with family genealogies and endless lists of names.

A limestone stela from Abydos with a simple painted text is an example of the most modest category of memorial.7 6 Seventeen men and women are listed; only two of the men are given titles, and they are simply "steward". There is no reference to master or mistress, so we may assume their status was above that of the serving classes. Here we see, as Quirke has said, individuals from among the elusive middle ranks, between literate official and illiterate farmer.

I shall both speculate and generalise to suggest that the late Middle Kingdom saw a simplification in burial customs, which made burials and/or commemorations

7 4 H.AItenmiiller, Die Apotropaia und die Götter Mittelägyptens, Diss. Munich, 1965. vols.I, U; id., in SAK 13 (1986), 1-27.

75 See tomb list below.

16 Janine Bourriau less costly, and so a "goodly burial in the west", with its promise of eternal life, available to many more individuals. Fewer burials were furnished with both inner and outer coffins and fewer coffins had interior as well as exterior decoration; instead of specially made tomb models, what was placed in the tomb was amulets and magical figurines used in daily life, together with standard pottery vessels and food offerings. It is noticeable at Lisht North, for example, that there were many more burials of the late Xll-Xm Dynasties than of the early XII Dynasty and to judge by their inscriptions, these were not individuals of high rank; such people had moved away to set up their "dwelling" close to the King they served or, more often, his successor.

The political process which marked the end of the Middle Kingdom was the reduction in the area controlled by the Pharaoh from the Residence at It-t3wy, culminating in the removal of the royal household to Thebes. This event must have been traumatic when it took place; nevertheless the evidence does not show, to date, that a correspondingly sudden or even very profound cultural change followed it. In Northern Egypt, the burial traditions of the late Middle Kingdom continue; the separate culture of the Eastern Delta flourishes until the period of the Hyksos wars. At the great mortuary temples of the XII Dynasty Kings at Lisht and Dahshur, one can observe, from the mid-XIII Dynasty onwards, an invasion of first, tomb shafts, then houses and grain silos into the sacred precincts. However, the contents of those houses and shafts show a steady evolution, not an abrupt change from the familiar types of the XII Dynasty itself. It is the advent of the XVIII Dynasty which introduces the next major cultural phase.

T O M B LIST Lisht South 7 7

Wahneferhotep Group. Shabti7 8 and model coffin7 9, both inscribed using the mutilated script, associated with pottery of the late XIII Dynasty.8 0

Closed group. Date: Advanced XJJJ Dynasty or later.

Bener Group. Shabti8 1 and model coffin8 2, both inscribed using the mutilated script, associated with pottery of the late XH-early XIII Dynasty.8 3

Closed group. Date: Late XII - early XÏÏI Dynasty.

7 7 There are undoubtedly many other relevant groups from Lisht, but they must await full publication of the cemeteries around the North and South Pyramids. I have selected groups referred to in Kemp and Merrillees (see note 16 above), two recently published closed groups from Lisht South, and Senebtisi, because her burial is a constant source of reference.

7 8 Schneider, opxit., 183. Type HIB, text version IIIA, fig.6. 79 P.Dorman in Arnold op.cit., 147-149.

8 0 Arnold op.cit., 37-40.

8 1 Schneider opxit., 183.Type HIA, text version ITIA, fig.6. 8 2 Dorman in Arnold op.cit., 147-149.

Patterns of change in burial customs 17 Lisht North

Tomb 315.94 Faience hippopotamus; lion from a magic rod; squatting man holding an offering table8 5; with pottery of Amenemhet III or a little later.8 6 The pottery included carinated cups,8 7 which do not occur in the early XII Dynasty corpus at Lisht South8 8 but do appear at Dahshur in the cemetery around the Pyramid of Amenemhet UP3 9 and in late XII Dynasty stratified levels at Memphis, Kom Rabi'a.9 0

No information on number of burials. Date: Late XII Dynasty

Tomb 453.91 An elaborate shaft tomb which contained remains of two burials, judging by the presence of two skulls and of 3 inlaid eyes from coffins.9 2 There were fragments of an anthropoid coffin; faience figurines of women; model food; magical figurines of a cat and a jerboa; a scarab9 3 and shabti of the same man, Ameny9 4 written using the mutilated script; and pottery, including hemispherical cups with an index of 150, fragments of Tell el-Yahudiyeh ware, and the neck of a wine j a r9 5 of Lisht South type shown on fig.70, no.67.9 6

The pottery is not consistent with a single period of use but nothing is earlier than the late XII Dynasty.

Date: Late XU Dynasty onwards.

Senebtisi.91 This burial does not contain any of the grave goods whose date of introduction I am seeking to establish but it is a key burial for the period. Now dated by the pottery to the reign of Amenemhet III or a little later.9 8 The coffins9 9 support this date.lt is a point insufficiently stressed in the discussion of the date of the burial of Senebtisi that her coffins do not employ the mutilated scriptThis sets it apart from that of Neferu-ptah which it otherwise closely resembles.

E.Riefstahl, "An enigmatic faience figure" in Miscellanea Wilbouriana I (New York, 1972), 137-143.

85 pace Riefstahl.

86 Information from tomb card, by courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. 8 7 R.Engelbach, Harageh (London, 1923), pLXXXIV, 10B-10P.

8 8 Arnold op.cit., 125-134.

89 Arnold, "Keramikbearbeitung", see note 39 above, fig.6,no.l2. 90 Personal observation.

91 Kemp and Merillees op.cit., 167. 92 See note 86 above.

93 G.T.Martin, Egyptian administrative and private name seals, principally of the Middle Kingdom and

Second Intermediate Period (Oxford, 1971), 21, nos. 195,196.

94 Schneider op.cit, 182, type IIIA, text version IIC, fig.6. 95 Shown clearly in a photograph.

96 Arnold op.cit. At Lisht South this type comes in cluster 3, on fig.76, from a deposit dated to Senwosret Ill-early Amenemhet HI.

9 7 B. Williams in Sarapis 3 (1975-1976), 41-55; C. Liliquist in Sarapis 5 (1979), 27-8; A. Mace and H.E. Winlock, The Tomb of Senebtisi at Lisht (New York, 1916), passim.

98 Arnold op.cit., 37, n.114. Her observation is confirmed by comparison made by the author, of a new drawing of the Senebtisi marl C jar, now in the Oriental Institute in Chicago, with the Dahshur example of the late XÜ" Dynasty cited by Dorothea Arnold.

18 Janine Bourriau Closed Deposit. Date: Late Amenemhet DI.

H a r a g e h1 0 0

Cemetery A No.77.m Contained 3 burials in 2 chambers. Listed in Kemp's seriation in a cluster around tomb 91, which has a terminus post quern of Senwosret III. It contained a faience hippopotamus and a faience vase, pLXIV, 10,12.

Date: Late XTJ Dynasty or later.

Cemetery A No.55.102 2 burials in 1 chamber. Pottery includes a wine jar of type 4 If with an aperture index which places it in Arnold's cluster 3 ,1 0 3 belonging to the period between the reign of Senwosret II and the end of the XII Dynasty .The tomb also contained a faience dwarf, pl.XIV,9 and "ivory hands", not illustrated. These are presumably ivory clappers such as those found in the Ramesseum tomb, see below. Date: Dynasty XII, Senwosret II or later.

Cemetery A NoS6.104 Contained 10 burials in 3 chambers. In addition to pottery, the group included a faience dog figurine, pl.XIV,8; a "rough" hippopotamus and fragments of a headrest. If we can consider a deposit with so many burials as a single g r o u p ,1 0 5 the pottery includes a hemispherical cup of approx.index 140, dated by Arnold to the advanced XIII Dynasty,1 0 6 and a carinated cup, a type which does not occur before the reign of Amenemhet

in.

Date: Advanced XIII Dynasty.

Cemetery A No. 73.108 One burial in a single chamber. In addition to pottery it contained a faience dwarf,cf.pl.XIV, 11.The pottery included a carinated c u p1 0 9 and a hemispherical cup with index of 130, which belongs to the advanced XLU Dynasty.1 1 0 Closed Deposit. Date: Advanced XÏÏI Dynasty.

1 U U I am selecting those groups listed in Kemp and Merrillees, 175. It is not possible to discuss Kemp's seriation here, but in my view problems lie in his reliance on the accuracy of the typing of pottery by Engelbach and in the assumptions made in reducing the original corpus to a size suitable for the seriation technique.

1 0 1 Engelbach, op.cit., pLLVIII. ™2Ibid.

1 0 3 Arnold op.cit., fig.76, p.143. 1 0 4 Engelbach op.cit., pLLVIII.

105 Kemp in Kemp and Merrillees, opxit., 31, seriated the pottery in tombs with single chambers not known to contain more than one body, and found that the results compared well enough with the seriation from multi-burial groups to suggest there was no significant distortion. This surprising observation needs further testing on other cemeteries.

Arnold op.cit., 141. It is dangerous, of course, to use a type drawing rather than a drawing of the actual vessel to measure the vessel index, because the validity of any conclusions depends on the accuracy of the typing which cannot, in this case, be checked since the whereabouts of this cup are unknown. It is also dangerous to place too much weight on the evidence of a single cup, Arnold

opxit., 141. All that can be done is to suggest probabilities in the light of the evidence which remains. 1 0 7 See notes 89 and 90 above.

1 0 8 Engelbach opxit., pl.LVIII. 1 0 9 See notes 89,90 above. 1 1 0 Arnold opxit., 141.

Patterns of change in burial customs 19 Cemetery A No.ll2.ul A single burial in one chamber. Group of faience figurines on pl.XIV.l. Among the pottery is a wine jar, 41m, which belongs to Arnold's cluster 3, of the period from the reign of Senwosret II to the end of the XII Dynasty.1 1 2

Closed Deposit. Date: Late XU Dynasty.

Cemetery B No.353.11* No information on number of burials. In addition to pottery,the deposit contained faience figurines of a cow and a frog, pl.XIV,6,7. The pottery included a hemispherical cup with an index of 163 and Arnold has shown that at Lisht South only the pottery deposit in the South East dump, dated to Senwosret HI to early Amenemhet m, contained cups with indices below 1 7 0 .1 1 4

Date: Late XII Dynasty.

Cemetery S No.644.115 Shaft with two chambers; no bodies recorded. A full list of contents is provided by Kemp and Merrillees. Assuming this is a homogeneous deposit, they argue in favour of placing it at the late end of the Harageh sequence. The pottery includes two hemispherical cups with indices of 163 and 130 respectively, suggesting an advanced XIII Dynasty d a t e ,1 1 6 with which the Tell el-Yahudiyeh ware and kohl pots agree.

Date: Advanced XIU Dynasty. H a w a r a1 1 7

Tomb 58.118 Intact burial in a pit containing the coffin of a woman, Sitrenenutet. There was a female figurine in wood with a model bed; a scarab; a model storage jar of wood; and a faience model of a pigeon. The pottery consisted of a water jar and two hemispherical cups with indices of 165 and 175, dateable to the end of the reign of Amenemhet I I I .1 1 9

Closed Deposit. Date : End of the reign of Amenemhet HI. T h e b e s

Tomb 25 in the Asasif.Burial of Renseneb,"Great one of the Southern T e n s " .1 2 0 From a shaft with two chambers containing at least 5 burials. The coffin had been dragged out of one of the chambers, but the burial was intact. The coffin's inscriptions are in mutilated hieroglyphs, but only fragments of the text giving the man's name and title were recorded before the coffin disintegrated. Within the body wrappings, against the back, was a faience hippopotamus. Underneath the coffin were fragments of a toilet

11 1 Engelbach opxit., pl.LIX. H2 Arnold op.cit., 143.

11^ Engelbach op.cit., pl.LXI; Bourriau op.cit., Cat.no.88b. ! *4 Arnold op.cit., fig.75.

1 1 5 Engelbach op.cit., pllXII; Kemp and Merrillees op.cit., 23,34, 36, 39,163,223, fig. 15. 116 Arnold op.cit., 141.

1 17 The cemetery began in conjunction with the building of the Pyramid of Amenemhet in.

118 W.M.F. Pétrie, G.A. Wainwright and E. Mackay, The Labyrinth, Gerzeh and Mazguneh (London, 1912), 36, pLXXX; Bourriau op.cit., Cat.no.88a.

119 Arnold op.cit., 141.

20 Janine Bourriau box with the name of Amenemhet IV, and in the south chamber were a magic wand and an ivory crocodile. The pottery, shown in the publication on pl.LII, appears entirely consistent with the date of the box. The hemispherical cup has an index of approx.162. The pottery group as a whole shows how the classic XII Dynasty style which originated at Lisht had by now reached Thebes. Except for one Upper Egyptian type, pl.Ln,2 J5, all the pottery can be paralleled in the Harageh/Lisht/Dahshur corpus. Date: Late XH-early XIII Dynasty, after reign of Amenemhet IV.

Ramesseum group.121 Shaft with three chambers. At the bottom of the shaft a group of objects was found scattered around a box of papyri, within an area of 2 square feet. The papyri had suffered only natural decay and had not been disturbed beyond their original displacement into the shaft, and this suggests that the objects had undergone a similar fate. There are strong links between the objects in style, function and date, all of which suggests that we are dealing with a homogeneous g r o u p .1 2 2 This consists of 3 female figurines of faience and limestone; a paddle doll of painted wood;1 2 3 a wooden statuette of a woman wearing a Bes-Aha mask and carrying snake wands; model cups of faience; a model cucumber, a fragment of a large magic rod in ivory;1 2 4 fragments of 3 ivory wands; a pair of clappers; an ivory object of unknown use; faience figurines of two baboons and a standing lion; an ivory djed pillar, and a cobra wand.1 2 5 The papyri have been dated to the mid-Xni Dynasty and the objects are entirely consistent with that date. It is worth stressing that with the exception of the cobra wand and the statuette of the woman carrying wands.the objects are typical of a late Middle Kingdom burial. They have been considered to be an exceptional group, composed of instruments of magic used with the magical texts among the papyri. Their function within the rites of protective magic, with the exception of the model food and vases, is unquestioned but they are unremarkable within the general context of burial groups of the late XII to Xni Dynasties.

Date: Mid-XUJ Dynasty. Abydos

Cemetery B No.13.126 The deposit contained the two shabtis of Renseneb1 2 7 with a text inscribed in the mutilated script, and pottery of advanced XHI Dynasty date. Date: Advanced XUJ Dynasty.

1 2 1 iE. Quibell, The Ramesseum (London, 1898) 3, pl.III; Kemp and Merrillees, op.cit., 166.

12 2 The detailed list given in Kemp and Merrillees, op.cit., 166, is not repeated here.

*2^ This class of figurine is to be dated to the late Middle Kingdom according to information provided by Dorothea Arnold.

1 2 4 Wrongly identified by Kemp and Merillees as a handle. 1 2 5 Bourriau op.cit., 110-111, Cat.nos.62, 100.

1 2 6 T.Peet, Cemeteries of Abydos II (London, 1914), 57-8, 113, pl.XIII,3; Bourriau op.cit., Cat.no.83, 135a.

Circumstantially adverbial?

the circumstantial sdm(.f)lsdm.n(.f) reconsidered*

by M a r k C o l l i e r

0. I n t r o d u c t i o n

The work of Professor H.J. Polotsky has had a profound impact on the study

of Middle Egyptian grammar, particularly the study of the syntax of the verb1. It is now

over a quarter of a century since Polotsky published his discovery of the circumstantial

sdm(.f)/sdm.n(.f) in Middle Egyptian2. Based on their ability to occur in environments

where simple adverbial expressions such as prepositional phrases are to be found, Polotsky developed a syntactic analysis of the circumstantial sdm(.f)/sdjn.n(.f) as

adverbial forms of the verb3 - an analysis which has become widely accepted.

However, in recent work I have put forward the case that, at least in certain environments where the circumstantial sdjn(.f)lsdjn.n(.f) occur, such an analysis leads to serious difficulties which do not arise if the circumstantial sdm(.f)lsdtn.n(.f) are

analysed simply as verbal verb-forms4. In this paper, it is argued that the verbal

analysis of the circumstantial s(hn(.f)lsdjn.n(.f) can account satisfactorily for the overall

syntactic distribution of these forms in Middle Egyptian5 in the following seven

* I am grateful to Janine Bourriau and Stephen Quirke for inviting me to contribute to this volume, even though I was not able to attend the 1988 Colloquium, and to Harry Smith for comments on a draft of this paper. The research was supported by Research Fellowships from The British Academy and Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. For reasons of space, philological and grammatical notes and references have been kept to a minimum.

1 For Middle Egyptian, see particularly: Etudes de syntaxe copte (Cairo, 1944), part III; 'Egyptian tenses', conveniently in Collected papers (Jerusalem, 1971), 71-96; 'Les transpositions du verbe en égyptien classique', Israel Oriental Studies 6 (1976), 1-50 (Transpositions').

2 Polotsky, 'Egyptian tenses', originally published in The Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, Vol. II.5 (1965), 1-25. As Polotsky notes (§41), Erman had earlier proposed a circumstantial form of the sdm(.f) restricted to the iwf sdm.f pattern (Äg. Gr? §343).

3 The fully developed position is to be found in Transpositions', section 3. In this paper Polotsky also proposed a circumstantial form of the prospective sdßi(.f) (3.6). However, this form does not share the particular distribution of the circumstantial sdjn(.f)/sd/n.n(.f) and is not discussed here.

4 M.A. Collier, 'The circumstantial sdm(.f)/sdjn.n(.f) as verbal verb-forms in Middle Egyptian', JEA 76 (1990) 73-85; id. A grammatical analysis of sentences with iw in Middle Egyptian (University of London PhD thesis, 1989), revised version forthcoming as Verbal syntax in Middle Egyptian . 5 This analysis is intended to cover the occurrence of the circumstantial sdjn(f)/sdm.n(.f) in all Middle Egyptian source genres. However, the exemplification focuses primarily on literary Middle Egyptian.