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FIRST-EVER ANCIENT EGYPTIAN MAYOR'S HOUSE IS IDENTIFIED AT ABYDOS IN EGYPT Names of Mayors, Glimpse into Power Structure and Highest Elite Lifestyle of 3700 Years Ago SUMMER, 1999 -- Excavating in the desert sands of Abydos, Egypt, Dr. Josef Wegner, Assistant Curator, University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology and Assistant Professor, Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Pennsylvania, and his colleagues have uncovered the largest non-royal house ever found in a Middle Kingdom town (circa 1850-1650 B.C.) -- and it clearly belongs to the Mayor. The discovery of the Middle Kingdom town of "Enduring-are-the-Places-of-Khakaure-maa-kheru-in-Abydos" (one of only about half a dozen Middle Kingdom towns to be excavated in Egypt) and now, the first positively identified Mayor's house, was made by the Penn Museum-led team, part of a large-scale, ongoing joint effort of the University of Pennsylvania-Yale University-Institute of Fine Arts Expedition to Abydos. "Although large non-royal houses have been excavated before in Egypt, none has ever been positively identified as belonging to a town or city mayor," noted Dr. Wegner. "The discovery of a mayoral residence provides a great opportunity to study an ancient mayor's lifestyle and political and economic roles -- and from the evidence thus far, it appears that the Mayor enjoyed both significant affluence and privileged political power." Like many towns in ancient Egypt, "Enduring-are-the-Places-of-Khakaure-maa-kheru-in-Abydos," first discovered by the Penn Museum archaeologists in 1994, was organized around the service of a Pharoah's mortuary temple&endash;in this case, the temple of King Senwosret III (1878-1841 B.C.). It was beside his temple, about 300 meters from the edge of the town, that archaeologists recently unearthed seal impressions, stratified in chronological sequence, clearly identifying the names of four mayors, with possible seals from an additional two mayors (unreadable). From the seals, they determined that Nakht, son of Khentikheti, Nefer-her, Amenysoneb and Sehetepib lived and worked at "Enduring-are-the-Places-of-Khakaure-maa-kheru-in-Abydos" from about 1850 to 1700 B.C., the end of the Middle Kingdom, when political unrest divided Egypt and when, apparently, the service to the mortuary temple -- and the occupation of the town -- ceased. Archaeologists positively identify the elite person as a "mayor" from hieroglyphs found on seal impressions and other objects in his house. Egyptologists recognize the secular title, translated as "foremost one," or "one of the head," and secondary title, "overseer of the temple" found in the house, as those belonging to a town mayor, or government appointed lead official of the town. The Mayor's house, of which about 50% has been excavated, is unusually well-preserved for a structure of this early antiquity. Inside, thousands of broken seal impressions on clay, many with names of people, others purely decorative, attest to a high volume of administration and written correspondence (seals were typically impressed to close notes written on papyrus and other objects). The presence of many seal impressions of Reny- Seneb, probably a 13th dynasty princess, suggests that at least one Mayor may have been married to a Pharaoh's daughter. Numerous toys, in the form of little clay figurines of dolls and animals, and pieces of "Hounds and Jackals," a game similar to "Senet," provide a picture of leisure time and family life in the Mayor's house. Hundreds of artifacts and fragments in the house point to wealth and an affluent lifestyle -- fragments of statuettes and stelae, cosmetic coal pots and jewelry of faience, amethyst and carnelian, as well as mirrors with handles of ebony or ivory, carved as a lotus flower. Discarded pottery pieces run the gamut, from roughware to fine quality bowls. The house measures a substantial 50 meters by 80 meters, comparable in size to a Pharoah's palace and significantly larger than other known non-royal buildings of the period. Extremely well-built of brick and plastered throughout, the house is fronted by a broad 14-columned hall running the entire width of the residence, with a series of rooms, courtyards, and access corridors arrayed around a central room block, with 9 rooms, identified as the Mayor's main residential area. The back part of the house is a granary, capable of storing great quantities of grain rations (wheat has been identified). Such a granary would have put the Mayor squarely in control of the town's food rations -- often the principal payment for peasants and laborers. From the size of the town (estimated to have covered 300 by 300 meters, three-quarters of which is now covered by a modern town and an expanded Nile floodplain), Dr. Wegner estimates that the town might have housed about 1,000 people -- an impressive size for that time. Excavations on "Enduring-are-the-Places-of-Khakaure-maa-kheru-in-Abydos" are planned for several additional seasons, when the archaeologists hope to excavate the remainder of the Mayor's house, and many other buildings, and also use non-invasive subsurface mapping and ground penetrating radar to fill out the picture of this place that has, indeed, endured. The University of Pennsylvania-Yale University-Institute of Fine Arts Expedition to Abydos, originally begun as a joint co-sponsorship between Penn and Yale, co-directed by Dr. David O'Connor and Dr. W. K. Simpson, has been exploring the region in and around Abydos, an ancient cult center of the god Osiris, since 1967. |