Contexts and Objects of the Second Intermediate Period
Contexts and Objects of the Second Intermediate Period: Pulling the information together and prospects for further work
This conference marks the end of the FWF START Project »Beyond Politics: Material Culture in Second Intermediate Period Egypt and Nubia«.
It is devoted to presenting research results of previous years. Key areas were the regionalisation of material culture in this time span, new co-operations that will continue beyond the end of the project and several new projects of colleagues focusing on the Nile valley. The conference provides a ‘snap-shot’ of the current state of knowledge and highlights directions for future research specifically on various types of material culture. The knowledge gain from combining re-recording of objects from old excavations with newly excavated material will be shown.
Keynote Lecture
»The Royal Cache Wadi. An Earlier Scenario?«
José-Ramón Pérez-Accino | Universidad Complutense de Madrid
Since 2017 a Spanish-Egyptian research team is working in the Royal Cache Wadi, in Luxor, Egypt (C2 Project). The site is well known as the provenance of the mummified bodies of some of the most important pharaohs and members of the royal families in ancient Egypt, exhibited nowadays at the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization in Cairo. Some of these bodies date back from the late XVII dynasty. The actual project has unearthed evidences of activity in the wadi prior to the date of transportation of the royal bodies from their original burials during the XXI dynasty. The remains of a nowadays destroyed monumental statue connected with the rising Sun during winter solstice and other finds in the area point to the existence of a hitherto unknown worship and possibly funerary area, perhaps holding some of the answers for the reasons behind the transportation of the mummies of the pharaohs to this area. Some of these elements could point to a moment of activity in the early XVIII or very late XVII dynasty.