Hatshepsut - Online Documentation - Jane Akshar

Essential to the future of this blog are the available resources i am able to find around the Internet. These resources are work of others. Although i am on a learning curve- i have a duty to provide factually correct resources so that the information i provide can be used for serious study.

Any researcher of Hatshepsut will therefore be interested in Jane's Document Store. Here you will find the following work:

Fate of Seth in the Temple of Hatshepsut at Deir el Bahri by Andrzej Cweik

The Scene of “Going round the wall” on the North Wall of the Portico of the Birth (Deir el Bahri) by Andrzej Cweik and Marta Sankiewicz

Red, yellow and pink. Ideology of skin hues at Deir el-Bahri by Andrzej Cweik


Explanation of “Red Yellow and Pink” by Andrzej Cweik (in MS Word format)

Cryptogram Uraeus Frieze in the Hatshepsut Temple at Deir el-Bahari by Marta Sankiewicz

My thanks to Jane Askshar (author of Luxor News) for this fantastic assortment of highly valuable information. The authors of the above work are those who are directly involved in work at Deir el Bahri.

I will pass on my thanks to Andrzej and Marta for producing this work. There are other documents available online and i will share all of these. Due to the high concentration of information on Jane's Document Store, i will hold off for a while.


If anyone else comes across similar work then please be sure to let me know.


Thank you Jane, Andrzej and Marta.

Stuart

Deir el Bahri - the work continues

I will follow up this short post in the next few days.

Whilst some of the Deir el Bahri team have returned home, work continues at the temple of Hatshepsut.

This wonderful news comes from one of the members of the team, Andrzej Cwiek who says:

But in fact only eight members of the Deir el-Bahari mission landed yesterday in Warsaw, five of them are still at the site and the mission is being continued.

Every day at Deir el Bahri could bring fresh information and insight to those us of who crave it. Let's wish the team a very successful season, however limited resources may be.

As i mentioned earlier, i will follow up this post shortly - with some exciting news....(i love cliff-hangers and i hope you do to).

Regards,
Stuart

A morning with Dr Andrzej Cwiek by Jane Akshar

I have been meaning to post this for ages:

http://luxor-news.blogspot.com/2010/03/morning-with-dr-andrzej-cwiek.html

In March 2010, Jane Akshar of Luxor News visited Deir el Bahri and met up with Dr Andrzej Cwiek, who is "the Assistant director of the Polish Mission" - restoring and studying the temple complex.

Jane and Dr Cwiek walked to various spots around the temple complex and discussed erasures, head cloths, Senenmut and much more. Permission for Jane to go "back-of-house" was obtained through the correct methods (see article for details), so rather than just walking where the tourists are allowed, some VIP access was granted.

The article also contains some wonderful photographs, which i had not seen before, which i found to be very useful.

As an end note, Deir el Bahri is on the West Bank of Luxor. Events over the past week have not affected tourism in this area as it has in Lower (Northern) Egypt. As for the excavations/ restorations i do not know for sue, so I've emailed Dr Cwiek to try to obtain some information on the safety of his team at Deir el Bahri. I will let you know if/when i receive a response.

Regards,
Stuart

Hatshepsut(?) - The Cleveland Museum of Art

The Cleveland Museum of Art - Cleveland, Ohio.

Amongst their collections we have this item:

Hatshepsut(?)

Do we have a problem here? Maybe. You will see that the description of the fragment says "Said to be from Thebes, Deir el Bahari". I will inevitably come across many items that have no exact origin and i can see this being an issue. Although here, we have a fragment which could easily have come from Deir el Bahri- we do not know for sure that this fragment shows Hatshepsut. Again in the description, we have a less-than-definite "Hatshepsut or Thutmose III".

What makes it harder to determine who this fragment is for sure is that Hatshepsut showed herself as a male (upon becoming Pharaoh), had herself depicted as such and therefore we cannot say that as the skin pigment shows brown skin- it must be male. That would be too easy.

Despite the above this fragment is a great example of the New Kingdom Art before the Amarna Period, when art changed somewhat. I will go as far as to say that the person depicted does appear (to my eye) to be from the Thutmoside Period of the early New Kingdom. With that said, this is my interpretation only, not fact.

Update: This fragment is of Thutmose III and does indeed originate from Deir el Bahri.

Thank you to Andrzej Cwiek (from the Deir el Bahri Polish Team) for supplying the information by email. Also to IUFAA for the advice (see comments).

" This fragment (Cleveland 1920.1995), representing the head of a king wearing an atef crown, comes indeed from the temple of Hatshepsut at Deir el-Bahari. It has been published in L. M. Berman (ed.), The Cleveland Museum of Art. Catalogue of Egyptian Art, New York 1999, p. 215, fig. 159 as 'Hatshepsut or Tuthmosis III'. Now we have been able to identify its exact position within the original decoration of the temple"

The above quotation is a small part of the email. Further publications of Porter and Moss will provide substantial information on this fragment and MANY more which are from Deir el Bahri, but housed in museums and sites the world over It will also show their (original) locations within the walls of Deir el Bahri.

Regards,
Stuart