Marleen De Meyer

Fowl for the Governor: the Tomb of Governor Djehutinakht iv or vat Dayr al-BarshA Reinvestigated. Part 2: Pottery, Human Remains, and Faunal Remains

In 2009 the shaft of governor Djehutinakht IV or V at Dayr al-Barshā was re-excavated. This tomb with its well-preserved funerary equipment had been discovered by George Reisner in 1915, and most of its contents are housed at the MFA in Boston. While the primary objective was the documentation of the architecture of the tomb, a deposit was found inside the shaft that had not been touched by Reisner (see Part 1 of this report in JEA 98 (2012), 55–72). Fowl bones, belonging to ducks and cranes, and pottery inside this deposit form the sole surviving remnants of food offerings in the burial of this Middle Kingdom governor. In addition, a number of human remains that had been carefully placed in the eastern side chamber of the shaft may have belonged to the wife of the governor, also named Djehutinakht.

Ancient Egypt, Archaeology of

The civilization of ancient Egypt flourished between 4000 BC and AD 395 along the banks of the River Nile. During the late nineteenth century the archaeology of this region started to take shape, originally focusing mainly on cemetery sites, but since the 1960s settlement sites have been increasingly excavated. Recent developments in the field of archaeometry are opening up new research perspectives for the study of the material culture.