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The Tomb of Maket and its Mycenaean Import1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 September 2013

Extract

In 1889 Petrie discovered and cleared a tomb at Kahun in the Fayum, Egypt. It contained a succession of burials in coffins and boxes which had not been disturbed after the final interment. Principally on the evidence of a large collection of beads, Petrie dated the use of the tomb to the Nineteenth-Twentieth Dynasties. This was queried by von Bissing, and after reconsidering the finds, Petrie decided that the tomb has been used during the reign of Tuthmosis III (1504– 1450 B.C.). Since then the tomb has usually been referred to as approximately or possibly of the reign of Tuthmosis III, and in his study of the sixteen Cypriote pots from the tomb Merrillees says there can be no doubt that all the interments were made during the reign ofthat pharaoh.

The aim of this paper is to establish as closely as possible the period of the use of the tomb, and to place in its context a small Mycenaean IIB squat jar, the only Aegean object found in the tomb.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Council, British School at Athens 1973

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References

2 ZÄS xxxv (1897) 94 ff.

3 W. M. F. Petrie, Hyksos and Israelite Cities, 16; Seventy Years in Archaeology no; PM iv. 273 n. 1.

4 AJA li (1947) 35 and n. 38; lxxiv (1970) 227; J. Vercoutter, L'Égypte et le monde égéen préhellénique 399.

5 R. S. Merrillees, The Cypriot Bronze Age Pottery found in Egypt 46.

INNERMOST CHAMBER. About 1·90 × 1·20 m., height not recorded.

Coffin 1. Bodies, three scarabs, a bird- and a frog-backed seal, clay figurine, beads.

Coffin 2, in front of i. Bodies.

On the lid of coffin 2. Basket, calcite jar, bowl and model horn in faience, wooden kohl-pot, glass bead.

Coffin 3, on i. Bodies.

6 W. M. F. Petrie, G. Brunton, and Murray, M., Lahun ii. 35Google Scholar; Petrie, and Brunton, , Sedment ii. 23.Google Scholar The tomb is called ‘K 1–5’.

7 W. M. F. Petrie, Seventy Tears in Archaeology 110 ff.

8 Ranke, W., Die Ägyptischen Personennamen i. 166 nos. 17 ff.Google Scholar, gives examples of the name from the Middle and New Kingdoms. Maket-Aten was the name of one of the daughters of Akhnaten.

9 The Keeper of the Ashmolean Museum and the Director of the Institute of Geological Sciences kindly agreed to allow an analysis of this pumice: see Appendix.

10 The chronology on which this paper is based is taken from CAH 2nd edn., fase. 4 (1964) 17 fr. For further discussion see H. L. Thomas, Near Eastern, Mediterranean and European Chronology 84 f.; AJA lxxiv (1970) 226 ff.; lxxvi (1972) 281 ff.

11 The scarabs and seals from the Tomb of Maket will be republished in full in O. Tufnell and W. Ward, Studies on Scarab-seals, 2 vols, (forthcoming).

12 Levant v forthcoming, (1973) 69–82.

13 Lachish iv pls. 34.173, 38.281–6, 298–9, 301.

14 Petrie, W. M. F., Qurneh 7 pl. 25Google Scholar; Culican, W., The First Merchant Venturers 44 ill. 40.Google Scholar

15 W. M. F. Petrie, Funerary Furniture and Stone Vases pl. 30.

16 A. Wilkinson, Ancient Egyptian Jewellery 121–8. A welldated pair like the Maket ear-rings came from the burial of Queen Ahhotpe, mother of Amosis, founder of the Eighteenth Dynasty (op. cit. 220 n. 11). The same shape occurred in graves at Tell el-'Ajjul. The first pair was found with three pots, one of them a drop-shaped vessel of the same general character as those in the Tomb of Maket (Petrie, W. M. F., Ancient Gaza iii pl. 14.23Google Scholar; iv pl. 16.72–3).

17 W. M. F. Petrie, Objects of Daily Use 30.

18 See Petrie, , Ancient Gaza iii pl. 43.61.Google Scholar Maket Tomb no. 45 is decorated with wavy lines between bands outside, and a design of dots and bands inside. The fact that the bowl was found in the south-west corner of the middle chamber suggests that it belongs to the second phase of Bichrome Wares, or an even later phase when decoration was carried out in red paint only. See C. Epstein, Bichrome Wares in Palestine.

19 R. Amiran, Ancient Pottery of the Holy Land 166 ff.

20 MP 32 n. 2; Tzedakis, Y., BSA lxvi (1971) 363 ff.Google Scholar, studies the later development of the flask in Crete.

21 RB lvi (1949) in fig. 4.5; 131 fig. 10.2.

22 Kenyon, K., Jericho i. 296, 427, 518Google Scholar; figs. 181.8, 216. 4, 224.17.

23 Amiran, R., Ancient Pottery of the Holy Land 166 pl. 51.1.Google Scholar

24 Lachish iv pl. 26.47.

25 R. S. Merrillees, The Cypriote Bronze Age Pottery found in Egypt 43 ff.

26 MP 42.

27 See Addenda to FS 87, p. 111 below.

28 Lachish ii. 83, 211 f.; BSA lxii (1967) 144.

29 JEA lii (1966) 176 ff.