Harco Willems

Middle Kingdom Tomb Architecture at LishtMiddle Kingdom Tomb Architecture at Lisht. By ARNOLDDIETER, with an Appendix by ALLENJAMES P.. Publications of the Metropolitan Museum of Art egyptian expedition 28. Pp. 99, pls 170 (10 in colour), figs (in text) 18. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2009. ISBN 978 1 58839 194 0. Price £45.

trilingual decrees like the Rosetta Stone. Line 21 records the ownership of land, which goes back to Regnal Year 44 of Amasis (570–526 bc), that is, just before the first Persian invasion. The contract was deposited under Darius I in the temple at Heliopolis. By naming Amasis and Darius, Cambyses is condemned and the other kings, including Ptolemy vIII, and their attitudes to the native temples are praised. Line 22 reports again the euergetism, but also that the king has summoned his scribes in order to announce publicly all the deeds he has undertaken in the form of a decree, and also to validate an ancient right of asylum. Line 23 mentions a gift of money and a silver monument, perhaps a naos. Lines 23 and 24 are quite rudimentary, but a feast and the decree, presumably relating back to the asylum, are mentioned as well as the Ptolemaic ancestors. The rest is lost. The Greek text is so badly destroyed that Thiers dedicates to it only two paragraphs (chapter 4, p. 39). The emphasis of the entire book is thus on the egyptian inscription. In chapter 3 (the continuous commentary) and chapter 5 (the essays of interpretation), the author leads the reader through the context of the hieroglyphic inscription. Because of the gaps, many details remain obscure, but one should congratulate Christophe Thiers on writing such a fine analysis. The stela is monumental evidence of the good deeds of a ruler who showed his care for the native temples and their deities. Ptolemy vIII’s claim to the throne and his rule were legitimised by his visit to Amun-Ra and Khonsu at Herakleion in the year following his coronation, and the stela is further proof of his legitimacy. His support of the indigenous temples is in line with his general attitude to the native population, on whom he based his rule. Granting Herakleion and its temples the income from old land donations, tax benefits, and the right of asylum emphasises this attitude. with the erection of such a monumental stela, the native priests set out their claims unmistakably, recording for eternity in the sacred hieroglyphic script the right of asylum, and their financial benefits. At the same time, the Greek text, probably a translation, was added and inscribed at a height that would have been accessible for reading when standing in front of such a gigantic monument. The hieroglyphic text, which only priests could have read, was located far too high up in order to be legible. The exact original location of the stela is unclear. Obviously it stood in the temple district of Herakleion, and we can only imagine from the size of the monument how huge the temple must have been. This is underlined by the fact that colossal statues of Hapi and a Ptolemaic couple have been found at the site of the temple of Amun of Gereb at Herakleion-Thonis, all between 540 and 490 cm high (see figure 8 on p. xvi of Thiers’ book). Putting this into a wider context, it underscores the fact that the native temples of the north are almost all lost to us, and we therefore base our understanding of the egyptian temples of the Graeco-Roman period on those that are still survive, mainly from Athribis southwards, with edfu and Dendera being the main examples. However, the cultural centre was in the north and the most creative regions were probably in the Delta and the Memphis area. Therefore, one could assume that Graeco-Roman temples there were probably even larger and more richly decorated than those in the south. The fact that almost all surviving buildings of the Ptolemaic and the Roman periods are in Upper egypt presents a bias that gives rise to well-known problems of interpretation. To conclude, Christophe Thiers has produced an important and well-illustrated edition of a highly important monument dating to the reign of Ptolemy vIII euergetes II. As well as contributing to our understanding of the cult topography of the littoral region near Alexandria and Canopus and the Delta in general, this book also further illuminates the royal attitude to the native population and temples. This is mainly due to Thiers’ careful and accurate reading of the inscription and his profound analysis of the entire context, demonstrating his wide knowledge of the Ptolemaic period.

A Note on the Origin of the Toponym al-Barsha

The Ancient Egyptian toponym Pr-šs, ‘Alabaster House’, is argued to be the ancestor of the modern place name al-Barshā. It may have designated a recently discovered industrial site at the mouth of the Wādī Zabayda, close to the al-Shaykh Sa‘īd tombs, where calcite alabaster was worked. This lies about 2 km south of modern al-Barshā. However, the presence of another calcite alabaster quarry even nearer to al-Barshā itself suggests Pr-šs may rather have been the original designation of this village.