F. Hagen, Ostraca from the Temple of a Million Years of Thutmose III (Culture and History of the Ancient Near East 120, Brill, 2021). (original) (raw)
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has been excavating the site ofTèll IbrahimAwad in a remote corner of the central part of the eastern Nile Delta since 1988. The Field Director.\V.illern M van Haarlern summarises the results of recent work. Tell Ibrahim Arvad is situated just outside the vrllage of Umn'r Àgram, not far from the torvn of Faqus in the eastern Delta.The ancient rell (i,vhich would once have been much hieher) norv rises only 2 nr above the surrouncling fie1ds.In 1986 a prelirninary sounding r:e-vealed, at a depth oí onlv 10 cm, the tnassivc brick for-rndations of lvl'rat later proved to be a templc of the Middle Kingdor-n. lJnaltered temples oí this period and eariier at:e rarely preserved in Egypt, as-'vhen a temple rvas built on a sacred location any pre-existing earlier strLlctlrres rvere usually either levelled or incorporated into the ner'v bui.ldings. Beneath the Middle Kingdorn ternple a sequence of buildings was found, one with sr-na11 brick-built rooms cor-rtaining rnany cultic vessels and votive objects which had been ritually buried.These had beconre sacrosànct by being in the presence of the god, so when they became obsolete or the ternple r:In. ollt of storage space they could not simply be thror.vn arv:ry, instead, thev rvere buried rvithin the temple compound.The votive objects discoverecl included figures of hunrans and a variety of faience ancl ivorv animals, such as baboons, crococliles and hippopotami. There lvere also tnace heads, ganilng pieces, jervellery and abandoned con-structiorr rnaterials such as faience rvall tiles. Or-re di.stinctive categorv consi.sted of natural stones in bizarre forms, r,vhich were apparently considered to be fetishes and cleemed lvort\ of pteservation.The con-servatiorr of the ivory objects, r'vhich r'vere badly afTected by the humid soil, proved to be a very time-consuming ancl diÍïcult task rvhich took for,rr seasons to complete.Anaiysis of these ivory objects by Salirna Ikrarn, lvho has been investigating the anintal bone rnaterial gathered cl-rring rccent yerrs, revealed that c. 90 per cent are Íronr hippopotalrlts with only c. 10 per ceilt frorn elephant.This is not sttrpr)sing, as h)p-Tht: tentple layout o;f thc ()l.d Kingdom, utith thc niche .for tln' cult sttttue an.d tht deposit chanbcrs indicttted popotar.nus bones proved to be a str:iking feature o1 the bone corpus and hippopotattli were fairly common in the region in the O1d Kingdorn.The presence in the tenrple of tire bones of pig and fish, apparently only in later: tinres corrsidered to be ritually unclean, i's itlso of interest. In tl-Le tentple area, a power{ul puntpíng systent, kíndly loaled ro r"rs by the nerghbouringAustrian nrission at Të11 el-Dab'a, enabled excavations to continue below' the subsoil rvater table and to reach Predynastic layers, as shor,vn by pottery of the period (such as sherds of rvavy-handled and impressed pottery). I)rogress lvas Ojects ;t'ron the dcposits. Ab ou e :-fitit n ct y Ltti y e cr o to d ilc LeJt: ivory-lenLa\c-ligurinc, bad|y alJected by the humitl soil : t # #) ll ;il ,r'ictl oÍ'thc rooms ruhere the tleposits wtrt:Jitund ín thr: ternple 33