Academic literature on the topic 'Grave goods – Egypt'

Cemetery 1400–1500 at Armant, excavated by Mond and Myers in the 1930s, is the best-recorded Predynastic cemetery in Egypt. With burials dating to Nagada I, II, and III, the cemetery provides data for a crucial period of social evolution in Egypt. Quantitative methods of analysis show that both mean grave size and mean number of grave goods increase through time. Although clusters of graves show differentiation into two basic hierarchies of grave types, there is a lack of overall complexity in the Armant burials, probably indicative of a society which was not very stratified.

Excavations at the Gebel Ramlah cemetery, in Upper Egypt’s Western Desert, have provided numerous data concerning mortuary practices of the local Final Neolithic period populace. Previous articles have chronicled treatment of disturbed inhumations, in which great care had been taken to recover and rebury all grave goods and skeletal elements including, most notably, dental remains. In several cases, the Neolithic gravediggers apparently went so far as to reinsert, or to in other ways reincorporate, teeth that had fallen from their alveoli during handling. This report describes and interprets a new find, i.e., an anatomically accurate, life-size shell carving of a human incisor, that provides additional insight into the apparent importance of teeth to these desert people.

AbstractA burial chamber on the western necropolis of Chersonesus yielded, among burial goods of the 2nd-3rd c. A.D., a stamped gold medallion depicting Fortuna and Glycon. The cult of Fortuna was widespread in the Roman Empire, especially after the Antonines, and finds of statuettes show it to have been popular on the N. Black Sea coast too. Images of Glycon, the human-headed snake of Alexander the ps.-Prophet, are uncommon outside Egypt, though are known in Asia Minor: they are very rare accompanied by other deities. It is argued that the medallion was struck at Ionopolis near Miletus and its presence at Chersonesus is not improbable given the intensity of trading links between this city and cities of the S. Black Sea coast in the late 2nd-carly 3rd c. A.D. Also discussed is a two-sided indication, made from a 4th c. B.C. silver coin from Heraclea and found in the same complex of grave goods as the medallion.

The article examines four terracotta figurines depicting the ancient Egyptian god Bes and his female counterpart Beset, acquired by Vladimir S. Golenischev in Egypt and kept in the storages of the Department of the Ancient Orient at the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts. The analyzed objects are diverse in their topics, form and functional purposes, testifying to the great popularity of this ‘minor’ deity in Graeco-Roman Egypt; all objects are included in the context of domestic worship of the god Bes. They served as a “link” between temple festivals and domestic worship, and could also be placed in a burial place as grave goods or could be brought to a temple as votive offerings. Bes and Beset guarded and helped a person during periods when he faced the forces of chaos – in a time of sleeping, illness, in childbirth, during the war. Bes and Beset were considered the protectors of childhood and motherhood, promoting conception and successful childbirth. Bes was associated with the different borderline states of human health and the period of a person’s transition to another world. The images of Bes do not come from temple theology, but from the context of domestic, private rituals; Bes remains entirely a “popular” god, the part of a daily life cycle of the population of Graeco-Roman Egypt. These multifaced quality is one of the secrets of the incredible popularity of Bes, whose figurines spread along with the Greeks and Romans throughout the oecumene down to the Black Sea region.

Introduction. The Golden Horde epoch in the East European steppe was marked, among other things, by the emergence of urban culture in the region. The urban centers and, first of all, the Golden Horde capital in the Lower Volga were the seats of the ruling elite, but also the centers of trade and crafts people coming from all over the places. Around the towns, there were cemeteries with hundreds of burials that were opened and examined by specialists. In the steppe, near the bank of the river, the Golden Horde epoch is represented by a limited number of burials scattered among a variety of kurgan groups. The article aims to examine Golden Horde burials which comprise silk items; these Volga-Manych sites have previously been part of the studies of steppe elite burials. Materials and methods. The grave goods of most sites in question comprised weaponry, ceramics, and animal bones, the traces of funeral feasts, while luxury items were few. Of much interest in this respect are a Volga-Manych series of Golden Horde burials that comprised silk items. According to numerous data of the written sources, silk was equaled to gold in the medieval time. The fact that the Volga-Manych nomads had clothes made of silk was not only the evidence of their high social status and wealth but also a mark that they were the subjects of the Mongolian Empire. Results. In the burials under study, the silk finds were exclusively the clothing and headdress items of the buried. The fabric originated from the eastern (China, Egypt) and western (Byzantium) production centers. Remains of silk products were found both in the burials of men and women. These were both latitudinal-oriented graves, in which the buried were laid with their heads to the west, and meridionally-oriented graves, with the person’s head to the north. According to the present authors, the latter type may be interpreted as a feature characteristic of ethnic Mongolians’ funeral practice, while the former type graves were those of the Polovtsy and other Turkic-speaking groups.

Refshøjgård. An extraordinary burial-find from the Single Grave Culture Towards the end of 2000, Moesgård Museum excavated a grave mound at Refshøjgård in Folby parish, approx. 15 km NW of Århus in Eastern Jutland (Fig. 1). After the topsoil was removed, it became obvious that the original grave mound had been destroyed completely by ploughing. The mound had been placed on a natural circular elevation consisting of clay. In the periphery of this elevation, seven secondary burials from the Late Roman Iron Age were discovered, while the centre of the mound contained two superimposed burials of the Single Grave Culture (SGC) (Figs. 2-3). These burials are described in the following.The plough had already destroyed most traces of the upper grave. Due to the collapse of the coffin in the grave underneath, part of the fill of the burial mound had sunk down into the resulting depression. Due to this, the grave goods – a typical thick-butted flint axe of SGC type (Fig. 9) and a battle axe of Glob’s type B1 (Fig. 8) – had been preserved in the depression (Figs. 4-5). The remnants of the original mound fill also held eight small pieces of SGC settlement ceramics (Fig. 14), all undecorated belly sherds. Twenty centimetres below, the primary burial showed up. It consisted of a coffin that was open in the eastern end. It was approx. 2 metres long, 85 centimetres wide, orientated E-W and built of planks approx. seven centimetres wide. In the southern side, an upper plank had fallen down and now rested next to a lower plank. The whole construction was obviously made in a provisional way. It was supported by a foundation made from stones up to the size of a human head, which had survived to a height of approx. 30 centimetres (Fig. 6-7). One of the stones turned out to be a quern stone, which had been deliberately placed in the southeastern corner (Fig. 13). There were no supporting stones in the open eastern side of the coffin. Within the coffin, traces of the deceased were clearly visible as dark marks in the earth. It was possible to recognize feet, legs, stomach, back, and part of the head, whereas the arms could not be determined with certainty. The legs were strongly bent under the dead, who was thus resting in a hocker-position. The body was lying on its right side, with the head towards the west and facing south – the typical position of men in burials from the SGC. It was closely surrounded by a thin line of greasy material, probably the remains of a cow hide or the likes. The dead therefore seemed to have been buried in some sort of leather bag. At the back and top of the head, the form of the greasy line suggested that the deceased was buried with some kind of hat. The grave goods consisted of a thick-butted flint axe placed front of the face (Fig. 10), a beaker in the southwest corner of the coffin (Fig. 11) and a rather large, symmetrically formed object of organic material, probably wood, that had only survived as a dark trace in the earth between the beaker and the head of the dead. Both grave finds can be dated to the very early SGC. In the upper grave, this dating is further indicated by the battle axe of type B1, which is characteristic of the very early SGC. It is unusual to find an SGC grave in a stratigraphic position underneath a battle-axe of this type. The lower grave must therefore be considered one of the very earliest finds known from the SGC. Two 14C-dates, obtained from charcoal, confirm this assumption (AAR- 7028, 4140 ± 50 BP = 2855-2680 BC cal and AAR-7029, 4175 ± 50 BP = 2865- 2705 BC cal).The flint axe from the lower burial is of a special nature as it shows typological traits similar to both the A-axes of the Late Funnel Beaker Culture (FBC) and the thick-butted flint axes of the SGC. It thus confirms the dating of the grave to the very early SGC. The beaker from the lower grave is clearly of local origin. It does, however, have some unusual traits, especially regarding the neck, which is higher and more cylindrical than usual. Parallels are known from the Corded Ware Culture south of the Harz in Eastern Germany. The person who manufactured the beaker in Jutland had probably seen beakers in this area of central Europe. Maybe it was someone who had traveled there, or a woman from that region who had moved up north. A thin brown crust was preserved inside the beaker (Fig. 12). It was investigated using both pollen analysis and microscopy. The crust turned out to not contain any pollen, although a pollen analysis of the sand contained in the beaker when it was found (mound fill that fell down) showed pollen in abundance and thus revealed good preservation conditions. The contents of the beaker thus probably did not consist of any drink made of honey (mead) as known from several Late Neolithic/Bronze Age finds in Scotland and Denmark. Investigation in a microscope with polarized light revealed that the crust contained large amounts of starch grains – a strong indicator of some form of beer. An attempt was made to confirm this theory by investigating the starch grains with a scanning electron microscope. Under good preservation conditions, starch grains from beer remnants can be shown to be affected by amylacous pitting due to the malting of cereal grains. This was done successfully with finds from ancient Egypt, but unfortunately the starch grains from Refshøjgård were too badly preserved (Fig. 15). However, in the best-preserved examples, form and size corresponded to starch grains from barley, which was almost the only type of cereal grown in the SGC. It is therefore concluded that the beaker from the lower grave at Refshøjgård once contained a form of beer brewed from barley. It may well be the oldest beer demonstrated in Europe so far. No traces of possible additives survived due to the insufficient preservation conditions.The pollen analysis of the sand from the beaker showed numerous pollen grains from barley (Table 1). The amount is several times higher than what is normal for barley fields, and it is therefore possibly the result of threshing, rather than of natural pollen dispersal. A review of other pollen analyses from barrows of the SGC and FBC showed that in both cultures, the threshing of cereals may have been part of the rituals performed during the building of the mounds or the burials. This phenomenon might then constitute an example of ritual continuity between the two cultures, which are otherwise clearly different in all aspects of material culture, settlement structure, economic strategy, etc. Another example is constituted by the sherds of settlement ceramic found in the remains of the mound fill. Comparable finds are often noted in the literature on the excavation of SGC mounds. This is even the case with the old excavations, which merely consisted of shafts dug in the center of the mounds. It appears that the sherds were deposited just above the graves. This is unlikely to have been the case if the finds merely represented ordi- nary settlement debris, which would normally include other types of materials, such as flint artifacts, charcoal, etc. Another aspect indicating deliberate deposition is the small size of the sherds, which are obviously fragmented as a result of deliberate destruction. The observed practice thus constitutes an apparent parallel to the deposition and smashing of pots that took place by the megalithic graves of the FBC.Several other finds from the earliest SGC are known from the area surrounding Refshøjgård. A distribution map shows that the Refshøjgård area constitutes an isolated settlement region and the easternmost closed distribution area of the SGC in Jutland (Fig. 16). The classical distribution area of the early SGC, Central and West Jutland, is characterized by poor sandy soils. The subsoil in the Refshøjgård area is also of a rather poor type, especially compared with the heavy clayey soils along the east coast of Jutland, where the settlements of the late FBC are found. The subsoil conditions thus may explain why the Refshøjgård area was settled by the early SGC. The emergence of Neolithic settlements in areas of poor soil indicates a remarkable intensification of farming, probably mainly herding, in South Scandinavia during the Neolithic.The flint axe from the earliest burial at Refshøjgård indicates that the deceased was originally related to the late FBC settlement on the coast. He then moved westward and may have been one of the first settlers in the Refshøjgård region. The agricultural symbolism (quern stone, threshing) connected to his burial may in fact indicate that he was the founder of the new settlement. It is interesting to note that quern stones appear in two other graves of the Corded Ware Culture (one from Jutland, and one from Poland) and that all graves are male burials with the quern stone always placed in the eastern end of the grave. This custom may well indicate founders’ graves, as all the known examples mark the earliest burials in the respective micro regions.The foreign typological traits of the Refshøjgård beaker are an important observation, as influences on the SGC from the area south of the Harz have been noted several times before. The origin of the SGC may in some way be connected to that area. According to older theories, the SGC were the result of massive ethnic migration. However, more recent research, including the study of the Refshøjgård burials, indicates that the local population constituted an important component in the transition from FBC to SGC. Migration from Central Europe may nevertheless have been part of the process, perhaps only in the form of translocation of single individuals or small groups.Lutz KlassenInstitut for Antropologi, Arkæologi ogLingvistik, Aarhus UniversitetTranslated by Annette Lerche Trolle

Thomas Christiansen: The Engineer and the Egyptian Mummies: A Scoop from the 1910s The article contains a wealth of new and valuable information on important ancient Egyptian objects that are today housed and on display in the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek in Copenhagen and the Museum of Ancient Art (Antikmuseet) in Aarhus. Using Mediestream – a service provided by the Royal Library that allows you to access and search more than 35 million digitised Danish newspaper pages – it tells the curious story of a Danish engineer, Jacob Kjeldsen (1873‑1914), and three ancient Egyptian mummiesand coffins from the 21st Dynasty (c. 1070‑950 BCE). From the study of these newspapers it emerges that, during a trip to Egypt in 1910, Kjeldsen had acquired three mummies and coffins in Luxor from Mohammed Abd er-Rasul – a son of the infamous antiquities dealer Mohammed Ahmed Abd er-Rasul – who had discovered them in a tomb in Deir el-Bahari. Shortly after Kjeldsen’s return to Copenhagen, descriptions of the objects began to circulate in the press, and ValdemarSchmidt (1836‑1925), the first Danish Egyptologist, acquired the coffin and mummy of a priest of Amun by the name of Khonshotep for the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek (inv. ÆIN 1069). During the autumn of the same year, Kjeldsen tried to sell his two remaining mummies, both female priestesses of Amun, and their coffins to the Museum of Aarhus (Aarhus Museum), but without success. Instead, they were impounded and auctioned off by the town magistrate in 1912, because Kjeldsen owed money to a patent office inCopenhagen. This is the last reference to the two mummies in the newspapers, until one of them cropped up out of the blue in Aarhus. In 1950 the newspapers reported that an industrialist, Ivan Lystager (1904‑1985), had donated an Egyptian mummy and coffin to the newly founded Museum of Ancient Art in Aarhus. The name, Taubasti, and titles, ‘Lady of the House’ and ‘Chantress of Amun’, inscribed on the coffin (inv. O 303) leave no room for doubt that it and the accompanying mummy once belonged to Kjeldsen. A letter in the archives of the museum informs us that Lystager had bought them in an antiquities shop in Copenhagen in 1939. The fate of Kjeldsen’s last mummy and coffin and their current whereabouts are still unknown. From the newspapers it can be deduced that the coffin stems from the same period (the 21st Dynasty) and was made for a woman, who also bore the titles ‘Lady of the House’ and ‘Chantress of Amun’, and probably answered to the name of Tamit. Because of onomastics and the fact that the three coffins all derive from the same period and were made for members of clergy of Amun in Thebes, it is likely that Mohammed Abd er-Rasul found the three mummies interred together in an unknown family tomb in Deir el-Bahari in 1910. The article is therefore supplemented with an appendix, which provides a catalogue of the names and titles inscribed in hieroglyphs on the two coffins in the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek and the Museum of Ancient Art. Hopefully, it can assist researchers in the search for the now lost coffin and mummy (and potentially other grave goods from the same tomb) in state and private ancient Egyptian collections around the world.

Objective: To evaluate the accuracy of ultrasound findings as compared to operative findings and positive predictive value of ultrasonography in the diagnosis of acute appendicitis. Study Design: Cross sectional study. Place and Duration of Study: Pak Field Hospital – 7 (Level III) United Nations African Union Mission in Darfur (UNAMID) Darfur, Sudan, from Mar 2015 to Mar 2016. Methodology: All patients presenting with clinically suspected acute appendicitis (Alvarado’s score >4) were referred for right lower quadrant sonography. Three point scale was used to grade sonographic findings ranging from grade 1 to grade 3. Fifty One patients with persistent symptoms and/or positive sonographic findings were operated. Operative findings were also graded on a 3 point scale. Subsequently, sonographic and operative findings were compared. Surgical findings were considered gold standard to assess diagnostic accuracy of sonography. Results: Out of 51 patients 46 (90.2%) were males and 5 (9.8%) were females. Mean age of the patients was 32.3 ± 7.3 years. Among the study subjects, 15 (29.4%) patients were from Nigeria followed by 12 (23.5%) from Pakistan, 7 (13.7%) from Egypt and 17 (33.5%) from other countries.The sonographic findings were detected positive for acute appendicitis in 40 (78.4%) and negative in 11 (21.6%) out of 51. All Fifty-one patients underwent surgery. The surgical findings were positive for appendicitis in 43 patients (84.3%). Four patients with negative sonographic findings did have acute appendicitis according to surgical findings. The positive predictive value was 90.9%. There was good agreement between sonographicfindings and surgical findings..........

BACKGROUND: Since the declaration of the World Health Organization of the coronavirus (SARS-COV-2) as a pandemic, several countries have locked down and quarantined their residents with restrictive procedures to control spread of the disease. Due to pandemic related stressors, concerns and worries have developed regarding negative psychological impact on the mental well-being of the general population, particularly those known to have higher levels of psychological impairment with high vulnerability to mental health diseases such as medical students. AIM: The objectives of the study were to assess the prevalence of self-reported depression and to explore its predictors during the period of Coronavirus Disease 2019 first lock down among medical students. METHODS: This was a cross-sectional study design. The study was conducted at Kasr Alainy Medical School, Faculty of Medicine, Cairo University, Egypt, in June 2020. A simple random sample was picked of one subgroup of 4th year medical students (No. = 300) at faculty of medicine during the academic year 2019–2020. Self-administered questionnaires including Beck’s Depression Inventory scoring were distributed using Google form through communication social media such as WhatsApp. RESULTS: Out of the 300 participants, 238 responses were received with response rate 79.3%. Results indicated that 38.2% of the respondents were experiencing depression with different degrees with Beck’s Depression Inventory mean scores was 19.4 ± 11.6. Multiple logistic regression analysis point out that gender (odds ratio [OR] = 2.4 and p = 0.022) and “Good” grade level of academic performance (OR = 7.2 and p = 0.045) are significant predictors for developing depression among the participating medical students. CONCLUSION: A significantly high prevalence of depression is detected among medical students during the first wave of the SARS-COV-2 pandemic. The prevalence of depression is more among females than males and more with medical students achieving “Good” grade level.

The article discusses the development of wheat export, which is the main grain crop in the structure of production and export of Russia. The record crop of grain crops in 2017 provided a good basis for the activation of Russian grain exporters in the world market. An analysis of geographical areas by source of grain export showed that crop growth allowed Russia to become a leader, as the main North American and European competitors experienced certain difficulties that led to a reduction in their export potential. The main geographical areas in which there is an increase in demand for wheat are the countries of Africa and Asia, whose population needs a more affordable form of food, which have become the main importers for Russian wheat along with Egypt and Turkey. Russia mainly exports low-grade wheat of the 4th and 5th grade; therefore, such wheat at a lower price and relatively high level of protein content is competitive in a number of foreign markets. The key problems for the export of Russian wheat are unstable gross grain harvests in Russia, which determine the search for innovative-intensive methods of increasing the yield and its stability, and the development of transport and logistics infrastructure. It is necessary to increase port capacities due to the Baltic and Far East directions in the context of political contradictions between Russia and Turkey and expanding the geography of wheat supplies to Africa and Southeast Asia for Russia makes sense. This will not only increase the competitiveness of exports, but also create additional incentives to increase grain production in a number of regions of the country remote from the Azov-Black Sea ports.

This study aims to determine whether current and past research on the Badarian culture of early Egypt accurately reflects the evidence uncovered in the past and the evaluation of the excavation reports by the early excavators. An archaeological re-evaluation of the Badarian culture and relevant sites is presented in the introduction. Inter-regional development of the Badarian is crucial to placing the Badarian in the temporal ladder of the predynastic cultures, leading up the formation of the dynastic era of Ancient Egypt. The following thesis is not meant to be a definitive answer on the origins and placement of the Badarian people in the Predynastic hierarchy of ancient Egypt, but one of its aims is to stimulate discussion and offer alternatives to the narrative of the Badarian culture. A set of outcomes is presented to test all hypotheses. Research questions are discussed to determine whether the Badarian culture is a regional phenomenon restricted to a small area around the Badari-Mostagedda-Matmar region, or as a wider inter-regional variable carrying on into the later Nagada cultures. To reach a hypothesis, the chronology of the Badarian is analysed, in-depth study of the original excavation reports and later research on the Badarian question. An important facet of this study is a literature review of the Badarian culture, past and present. The Badarian culture had always been a subject of speculation, especially in terms of its chronology and regional development. There is no consensus on the chronology of dispersion out of the desert to the Nile Valley, as well as areas north and south of the Nile Valley. It is important to establish the concept of an agronomic sedentary lifestyle by the Badarian, and to re-evaluate the evidence for the long-standing idea that the Badarian was in fact the first farmers of the Nile Valley, also in terms of their perceived exchange and trade networks.
Biblical and Ancient Studies
D. Litt. et Phil. (Ancient Near Eastern Studies)

This chapter summarizes key discussions in chapters 1 to 3. Writing was developed in Egypt at the end of the fourth millennium BCE. Therefore, it is not surprising to find representations of numbers among the earliest evidence of written material from Egypt. The evidence from the tomb U-j reflects the administrative function of script and numbers, which by then had been taken over into the funerary context (in form of the “administration,” i.e., the recording of grave goods). The number system was fully developed even before the First Dynasty. It used a set of seven distinct hieroglyphic signs to represent powers of 10 in a decimal, nonpositional number system. The evidence presented indicates the close connection between literacy and numeracy, which will resurface again at later times in the history of Egyptian mathematics.

The purpose of the article is to examine the surprisingly extensive and varied evidence of Cretan finds in the archaeological record of the PCMA UW excavations at the site of the ancient Graeco-Roman harbor in Marina el-Alamein on the Mediterranean coast of Egypt and to propose an interpretation going beyond the usual and obvious, for this period and place, trade exchange. The evidence includes pottery, mainly amphorae, a numerous group of so-called Cretan or Ivy-leaf terracotta oil lamps, a tentative Cretan-sourced custom of using gold plaques with Orphic symbolism placed into the mouths of initiates in preparation for burial, as well as a female name in Doric Greek carved on one of the pillar tombs, which could have belonged to a woman of Cretan origin. The distribution of the Cretan amphora in Egypt, as reviewed by Majcherek, merits attention in the light of what it says about consumers and their individual and collective preferences. In turn, the Cretan lamps, which are otherwise not found in Egypt and the bulk of which were found as grave goods in burials, were most probably valued possessions of a specific group, a mark of cultural belonging, a memento of home, perhaps even a religious attribute. The finds from Marina el-Alamein must be considered in the context of Crete's bilateral relations with Egypt—political, cultural and commercial—and the integration of Crete in the pan-Mediterranean economic system of Roman times. The conclusion is that the assemblage in question rests well within the frame of this overall picture of mutual contacts, but one could go further and propose to view the finds as proof of tentative Cretan colony, whether mercenaries/veterans with their families or merchants and their agents.

The aim of the present study is to numerically investigate the combustion characteristics of Heavy Fuel Oil (HFO) and NOx emissions inside a calciner used in cement industry. The calciner is a furnace placed before the rotary Kiln its main objectives are the reduction of CO2 emissions and air pollutions while enhancing the cement quality through separating the calcination and clinkering processes. In order to conduct the present investigations the calciner at CEMEX Egypt Cement Company was considered and real dimensions and operating conditions were applied. The combustion model was based on the conserved scalar (mixture fraction) and prescribed Probability Density Function (PDF) approach. The (RNG) k-ε turbulence model has been used. The HFO droplet trajectories were predicted by solving the momentum equations for the droplets using Lagrangian treatment. The radiation heat transfer equation was solved using P1 method. The formation of thermal NOx from molecular nitrogen was modeled according to the extended Zeldovich mechanism. The effects of varying the burner’s swirl number and viscosity grade on the combustion performance of HFO and the resulting NOx emissions were considered. The burner’s swirl number influences the mixing rate of air and fuel. A small swirl number ≤ 0.6 is not desired as it elongates the flame; increases flue gases temperatures and increases the NOx emissions inside the calciner. A swirl number ≥ 0.6 is found optimal for good combustion characteristics and NOx emissions concentration. Meanwhile, it was found that the HFO viscosity has a significant effect on the injection velocity and must be considered as a function of temperature during the analysis as this will significantly affects the combustion characteristics.