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Ancient Egypt Magazine Volume Three Issue One -- July/August 2002 Netfishing
by Hapy The Louvre is currently hosting an exhibition on the
lives of the people of the town of Deir el Medina, where the skilled workmen of
ancient Egypt plied their various trades. The glories of the New Kingdom tombs
in the Valley of the Kings are the results of their labour. They were highly
specialised craftsmen working to a set plan within formal guidelines which
applied to both their art and the way they practised it. All their needs were
met by the state but they found time and space to do some of the things they
wanted to do. We know a great deal about the lives of the workmen
from the items they made for themselves as well as for royalty. Deir el Medina
was a literate society, with at least some of its members able to exchange
letters and record some of their events and feelings. This was not the case for the workers of the Middle
Kingdom (12th dynasty) town of Kahun, which was abandoned, quite suddenly and
mysteriously, in the 13th dynasty. This is known from houses excavated by
William Flinders Petrie in which quantities of daily life objects, all of them
of value to their owners, were found as though the inhabitants had simply upped
sticks (leaving some of the sticks) and departed. Two of the principal
recipients of these fascinating and revealing items were the Manchester Museum
and the Petrie Museum in London. Now you can take a virtual tour of Kahun, eerily as
it was at the time, of abandonment, by visiting 'Virtual Kahuri'via the web site
of either of these two museums (www.petrie.uci.ac.uk
and www.museum.man.ac.uk). The housing at Kahun was laid out to a town plan,
with basic 'terraced' streets and more élite dwellings. There was also an
'acropolis' and a temple. Thanks to the work of the Virtual Experience Company
using maps provided by members of a Royal Ontario Museum research team, it is
possible to walk the streets and explore the temple and dwellings of a deserted
Kahun. It is absorbing; Kahun has been described as the 'Marie Celeste' of
ancient Egypt and wandering round the town, in and out of dwellings where hearth
fires still bum and daily life items lie untouched, does evoke the same air of
mystery. Regular readers will be aware of the Petrie
Museum's online project giving access to the 80,000 items in the collection.
Visit this via the Petrie site, as above, and build up your own gallery of
favourite pieces by using the simple steps provided. The project really has made
it exceptionally easy to access the database but there is a lot of work still to
be done. It's suggested that you simply get in touch and offer to help with the
'mighty editorial task', as it was described by Stephen Quirke in a recent issue
of AE. From one mighty editorial task to another, due to
be revealed later this year. The Theban Mapping Project has now become a rather
modest title for what has grown into one of the most significant archaeological
projects ever. Many readers will be familiar with the principles of the project
through the web site KV5.com. As Kent Weeks told audiences on his recent UK
lecture tour, it is inevitable that a number of sites of known archaeological
interest on the West Bank at Luxor will be lost. Even with the best methods
possible, perhaps only 60% of the enormous quantity of sites could be saved. The
project wanted to map as many sites as possible for future reference. It could
hardly have realised at the outset that within a few years incredibly high speed
cameras would make it possible to scan the walls of an entire temple within
hours, but that is the case; a new Theban Mapping Project web site will make it
possible for browsers to make good use of this material. Look out for more
information soon. Finally, for recent news from Egypt itself, visit
the web sites www.guardians.net and
www.touregypt.net
which Netfishing has visited before. The former site provides a way to
access both the pages of Zabi Hawass, n w Secretary-General of the Supreme
Council of Antiquities in Egypt www.guardians.net/hawass), and the SCA web site itself There’s a lot more to
explore on the 'Guardians' site and that will be done in a future issue of AE
magazine. Back to Ancient Egypt Magazine - Volume 3 Issue 1 contents
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