Dra' Abu el-Naga
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| Dra' Abu el-Naga | |
|---|---|
| Dra Abou el-Naga | |
| Location | |
| Country | Egypt |
| Coordinates | 25.74, 32.62 |
| Site | |
| Type | Cemetery |
| Period | Seventeenth–Eighteenth and Twenty-second Dynasties |
| In use | Middle Kingdom to Roman period (sector 10)[1] |
| Excavated | Since 2002; sector 10 since 2011[1] |
| Excavated by | Spanish mission (Proyecto Djehuty), directed by José Manuel Galán |
| Cannabis finds | |
| Found | Fibre or textile |
| Hemp cloth: two towels, three bands and three inscribed shrouds | |
| Dating | Typology, Inscriptions |
| Identified by | Microscopy |
Dra' Abu el-Naga is a hill of rock-cut tombs and burial shafts on the west bank of the Nile at Thebes, in Egypt. On its northern slope a Spanish archaeological mission found cloth made of hemp among the much larger mass of linen in its tombs. The hemp pieces include small "towels", long bands and burial shrouds inscribed for Osiris. They come from contexts of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Dynasties and of the Twenty-second Dynasty.[1]
Site and excavation
The Spanish mission, also called the Djehuty Project, has worked on the northern hill since January 2002 under José Manuel Galán of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC). It began with the tombs of Djehuty (TT 11), of the reigns of Hatshepsut and Thutmose III and of Hery (TT 12), of the reigns of Ahmose and Amenhotep I. In 2011 the excavation was extended south-west of the forecourt of Djehuty's tomb into an area named sector 10. Its shafts and tombs were cut into the rock, used and reused between the Middle Kingdom and the Roman period.[1]
The shafts and tombs that held the hemp had all been looted. Of the cloth found in them, 97 per cent is linen and the remaining 3 per cent is of other fibres, hemp above all.[1] The linen pieces include tunics, sheets and bandages, many stained with the resins and ointments of mummification. The hemp pieces carry no such stains. Examination showed that they had not been in direct contact with a body.[1]
Identification
Pía Rodríguez Frade, a member of the mission who has studied its textiles, set apart after more than 15 years of work a group of pieces that looked and felt different from the linen. Fibres from them were mounted in polyester resin, cut and polished, then examined in cross-section under a polarised-light microscope at 500 times magnification. A hemp fibre has a polygonal section of four or five sides with a hollow centre (the lumen) filling about 30 per cent of it. A flax fibre has about seven sides and a lumen of about 16 per cent. In lengthwise view the two can be told apart only at the end of an unbroken fibre, which is rounded in hemp and pointed in flax.[1]
The analyses were made on site during the excavation season, which lasts one month a year. Samples could not be taken out of Egypt. Rodríguez Frade writes that electron microscopy or infrared spectroscopy could add support to the identification of hemp. Some pieces are held in the storehouse of the antiquities service at Luxor and could no longer be reached for analysis.[1]
The hemp cloth
Rodríguez Frade identified hemp in eight pieces from four contexts. Three more pieces gave a doubtful result.[1]
| Context | Pieces | Date of the context | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| Shaft 1023, chamber 1022A | Two "towels" (SMDAN 5144, 5145) | Debris mainly of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Dynasties | hemp |
| Shaft 1023, chamber 1022A | Fragment with long fringes (SMDAN 5839) | Debris mainly of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Dynasties | doubtful |
| Shaft 1073, chamber 1073A | Two bands (SMDAN 2729, 2734) | not dated: the finds were too damaged | hemp |
| Shaft 1192 | One band (SMDAN 5719) | pottery of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Dynasties | hemp |
| Tomb 1018 | Three Osiris shrouds with texts (SMDAN 4754, 4756 + 4757, 4791) | reuse in the first half of the Twenty-second Dynasty | hemp |
| Tomb 1030 | Two painted Osiris shrouds (SMDAN 5464, 5465) | Roman, by pigments new in that period | doubtful |
Towels
The two small pieces from shaft 1023 are decorated with rows of small raised knots woven into the cloth, in parallel and zigzag bands. The complete one measures 26.5 by 21.3 centimetres and was wrapped around a group of seven arrows and a linen cloth that held an alabaster pot. Rodríguez Frade reads both as archers' towels, because they belong to a group of finds with bows and arrows.[1]
Bands
The three bands are long and narrow, woven from paired threads of a light and a dark tone that give the cloth a marbled look. They end in knotted and plaited fringes. The complete band from shaft 1073 measures 19 to 28 centimetres across and 800 centimetres long.[1] Rodríguez Frade found no parallel for them. She suggested that they were worn as belts or across the waist and shoulder to carry an instrument.[1]
Shrouds
The three shrouds from tomb 1018 were found with leather stoles, human remains and shabtis in a deposit inside the tomb. The tomb was first used at the end of the Eleventh and the start of the Twelfth Dynasty and reused several times. Leather stoles bearing the cartouche of Osorkon II date its last reuse to the first half of the Twenty-second Dynasty.[1] The first, drawn in red ink, shows a standing mummiform Osiris beside an offering formula naming a person called Nesimen. A second shows the deified king Amenhotep I with the name Padimut beneath him. The third shows a seated Osiris.[1]
Interpretation
The hemp pieces differ from the linen of the site in make and decoration. They were woven singly as complete pieces rather than torn from longer lengths. Several use weaves other than the plain (1/1) weave usual in the linen. They carry knotted relief, long loops of thread and elaborate fringes. Rodríguez Frade argued that the labour this took tells against the idea that hemp was used only because it was cheaper. She left open whether the fibre had a particular meaning.[1]
She compared the pieces with cloth in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, the Museo Egizio in Turin and the British Museum. These are described as linen. Most were never analysed; one, in Turin, was sampled in 2010 and found to be linen. All the comparable pieces come from the Theban west bank, most of them from Deir el-Bahari. She asked whether the use of hemp was tied to that area.[1] She called for the analysis of more ancient Egyptian textiles held in museums, so that the extent of the use of hemp could be measured.[1]
See also
References
- ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 1.10 1.11 1.12 1.13 1.14 1.15 1.16 1.17 Rodríguez Frade, Pía (2022). "Tissus de chanvre trouvés par la mission archéologique espagnole à Dra Abou el-Naga" [Hemp textiles found by the Spanish archaeological mission at Dra Abu el-Naga]. Bulletin de l'Institut français d'archéologie orientale (in français). 122: 493–523.