While the summer break is approaching, I am delighted to announce the next DiverseNile Online Seminar next Tuesday. Dr. Mohamed Osman will give a talk with the title „Tracks on the sand, ancient Egyptian mobility in the desert“.
Mohamed is the Director of the Coptite and Theban Desert Eastern Hinterlands survey project, Visiting Scholar at Humboldt University Berlin and Visiting Scholar at New York University. He is an expert about trade routes in ancient Egypt and Sudan. His book published in 2022 (Osman 2022) highlights the possibilities to trace Old and Middle Kingdom (3000 to about 1700 BCE) trade routes using textual evidence, archaeology but also satellite images.
His DiverseNile talk will be about the approaches and methods used when researching about travelling routes. Starting from the theoretical backgrounds and the GIS spatial analysis and how it can be useful, Mohamed will also outline how we can detect the errors in this analysis.
The upcoming DiverseNile Seminar will present case studies from both the Western and Eastern Desert. One particular example will be Mohamed’s discussion about the route between Aswan and Kerma.
I am very much looking forward to this talk presenting fresh research about patterns of ancient mobility in the desert!
Reference:
Osman Abdollah, Mohamed 2022. Trade centers and trade routes in Upper Egypt, during the Old and Middle Kingdoms. GHP Egyptology 36. London: Golden House.
In my own presentation, „The International Age in pharaonic Egypt: aspects of trade, exchange and marking systems“, I focused on the distribution of marked Oases amphorae as well as on the question of pot mark traditions in Nubia.
For me, it is striking that there are no pre-firing marking practices on Nubian ceramics – but a new trend for post-fired marks attested in the Middle Bronze Age on Egyptian imported Marl clay vessels (in C-Group and Kerma contexts). This is for example well illustrated by the upper part of a storage vessel we found last year in the Kerma cemetery GiE 003 at Ginis East: a large post-fired mark was scratched into the Marl clay surface – presumably in Nubia and for sure intended to transmit a code (as well as decorative aspects?).
Upper part of an Egyptian Marl clay vessel from GiE 003 with a post-fired pot mark.
There is still much research to be conducted on these post-firing pot marks on Egyptian jars found in Nubian contexts – aspects of agency (by whom, where and how was the scratching done) as well as sensory facets (the Egyptian jars have a totally different hardness, colour, and texture than Nubian Nile clay vessels) need to be considered.
Another important aspect of my presentation was the comparison between the pot mark tradition on New Kingdom Sai, Elephantine and in the rural hinterland of Sai, in the MUAFS concession. Here, I got much inspiration from a splendid chapter in an edited volume by Juan Carlos Moreno García with the title “Markets, transactions, and ancient Egypt: new venues for research in a comparative perspective” (Moreno García 2021).
I completely agree with Moreno García (2021) that New Kingdom temple towns in Nubia like Sai were “multifunction centres used, among other purposes, to facilitate contacts between different peoples arrived there to trade, and that some kind of divine sanction at a sacred environment was considered indispensable to formalize the transactions that occurred there.” The last aspect is especially interesting, placing the temples within the towns into a new context – the conversion of the religious landscape of New Kingdom Nubia has already received much attention, but not yet within the framework of trade and transactions. The general role of the temple towns as multifunctional and as trade hubs is well established and was already discussed by several scholars (see Budka 2020, 401, 407 with references as well as passim).
Within New Kingdom Nubia, it is especially relevant to look beyond the colonial towns with their temples, harbours and large-scale storage facilities. This is where the DiverseNile Project steps in and adds much food for thought based on the evidence in the MUAFS concession which is the hinterland of Sai in the 18th Dynasty and of Amara West in the Ramesside era.
Inspired by reading Moreno García’s 2021 chapter, I think it is possible to view the intriguing site AtW 001 from a new perspective. Since 2022, I was convinced that this rural site has something to do with the exchange of goods, especially the distribution of ceramics in 18th Dynasty Nubia (see Budka 2022, as “control posts for trade, gold transport and possibly the communication between hinterland communities and the newly established Egyptian centre on Sai Island”).
Based on the results from the 2023, we could go a bit further and suggest that the “site might well have been linked to seasonal traffic/routes into the desert, possibly in connection with the provision of transport animals and livestock for gold working expeditions” (Budka et al. 2023, 29). In this context, we observed that “The lack of significant architectural remains suggests that AtW 001 was linked to a nearby settlement or temporary, possibly seasonal structures” (Budka et al. 2023, 30). Following ideas by Moreno García, I would now like to add that the lack of substantial architectural remains at AtW 001 could also be explained in a way that the open spaces of the sites were intended to serve travellers and to supervise trade. This would also allow to justify the large number of simple storage pits on the site. With its mix of material culture, including large amounts of Nubian ceramics as well as in-between vessels (see https://www.sudansurvey.gwi.uni-muenchen.de/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/IMG_9979-2048×1536.jpg), the site at Attab West could indeed have functioned as a seasonal market and a meeting place for various groups, including mobile communities.
All in all, New Kingdom Nubia seems to be an excellent case study for state-built meeting points and trade centres like Sai and other temple towns, but also for seasonal and occasional markets as illustrated by AtW 001 – the latter stressing the importance of semi-nomadic and nomadic groups when we talk about the exchange of commodities. These various types of markets and most importantly the diverse communities being involved are likely to be the keys for understanding the multiple use of marking systems we find in New Kingdom Egypt and Nubia.
References Budka 2020 = J. Budka, AcrossBorders 2. Living in New Kingdom Sai. Archaeology of Egypt, Sudan and the Levant 1. Vienna: Austrian Academy of Sciences Press, 2020.
Budka 2022 = J. Budka, Early New Kingdom settlement activities in the periphery of Sai Island: towards a contextualisation of fresh evidence from Attab West, MittSAG – Der Antike Sudan 33, 2022, 45‒61.
Budka et al. 2023 = J. Budka, K. Rose & C. Ward, Cultural diversity in the Bronze Age in the Attab to Ferka region: new results based on excavations in 2023, MittSAG – Der Antike Sudan 34, 2023, 19−35.
Moreno García 2021 = J.C. Moreno García, Markets, transactions, and ancient Egypt: new venues for research in a comparative perspective. In Moreno García, Juan Carlos (ed.), Markets and exchanges in pre-modern and traditional societies, 189−229. Oxford; Philadelphia: Oxbow Books, 2021.
In the framework of the DiverseNile project, I have introduced the application of ‘contact space biographies’ as a new concept in the study of intercultural encounters in the Middle Nile. We will specify the question of cultural encounters through the distribution of the sites and their duration, settlement infrastructures, building techniques, production activities and technologies, trade, diet, material culture, burial customs, religious practices and social structures. The importance of peripheral areas, like the Attab to Ferka region, for our understanding of cultural formations will be stressed. In line with this, the DiverseNile Seminar Series 2021 focuses on cultural diversity in Northeast Africa, giving several case studies from various perspectives.
Our next presentation, to be held tomorrow by Loretta Kilroe, will introduce an exciting example of so-called ‘provincial’ Kerma remains in the Northern Dongola Reach.
Site H25 was partly excavated in the last years and yielded settlement remains and evidence from the Kerma, New Kingdom and Napatan eras (Ross 2014; Porter 2019; Kilroe 2019). The site is, among others, shedding new light onto trade networks in New Kingdom Nubia. Because Loretta is an expert on ancient Egyptian and Sudanese pottery, she will focus tomorrow on ceramics and what they can tell us about frontier economics.
I am personally very much looking forward to this exciting presentation about an as yet little known but very important site! As usual, last minute registrations are still possible and highly welcome!
