Category: Archeology of Egypt

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The Church of the Holy Virgin of Deir al-Surian

Deir al-Surian is located in the geological depression of Wadi al-Natrun, west of the Nile delta, a region known as Sketis in Late Antiquity. Its church, dedicated to the Holy Virgin, has been in continual use since its construction in the 7th century AD. Between the 9th and 16th centuries, a mixed Syriac-Coptic community celebrated in the church, and its architecture, paintings and inscriptions testify to the cultural exchange between the two groups. 

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Grave Mistakes: Art, Exploitation, and the Legacy of Mummy Brown

 

“A London colourman informs me that one Egyptian mummy furnishes sufficient material to satisfy the demands of his customers for seven years. It is perhaps scarcely necessary to add that some samples of the pigment sold as ‘mummy’ are spurious,” writes Arthur Herbert Church in “The Chemistry of Paints and Painting”, published in 1890. The quote references the artist’s pigment made quite literally from the pulverized remains of Egyptian mummies, commonly known as Mummy Brown or “Egyptian Brown”. The practice of producing the mummy-based pigment dates back as early as the late 16th century. Though adored by many artists, the grisly origins of pigment raise the question of what artists are willing to use in the name of beauty.

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The Girl at the Olive Press. A Vignette of Peasant Life in Roman Egypt

In the year 12 CE, a man named Harthotes submitted a census declaration to the local authorities in Roman Egypt. He was a 55-year-old farmer and local priest living with his elderly mother and young son in a house within the temple precinct of Theadelphia. But from other sources we knew that he also had a daughter named Tahaunes, who was about 12 years old at the time. Where was she? Not married off young, as scholars were quick to assume. The truth is more surprising: she was at work!

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Unpublished documents from Pathyris – the demotic Gebelein temple archive

The Ptolemaic Pathyris Project, funded by the National Science Centre (Polonez Bis 2 program, grant no. 2022/45/P/HS3/01807) and hosted by the Institute of Mediterranean and Oriental Cultures of the Polish Academy of Sciences, aims to reconstruct the urban layout and domestic architecture of Pathyris, a town located approximately 30 km southwest of Luxor in the Gebelein micro-region, using archival, papyrological, and geospatial data.

The site has yielded a vast collection of Greek and Demotic (an ancient Egyptian script used between the 7th century BCE and the 5th century CE) papyri, ostraca, and wooden tablets. To date, around 1,300 documents have been published, and many of the family archives have been extensively studied, providing a unique glimpse into various socio-economic aspects of Ptolemaic society

The lecture by Professor Quack, originally scheduled for February 18, 2025, has been postponed to April 2, 2025, at 1:00 PM.
Place: Maria Skłodowska-Curie Hall (1st floor), Staszic Palace, Nowy Świat 72, 00-330, and online.[Wykł

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Creations of Power: Depicting the Royal Family and Clergy in Medieval Nubia in Louvre!

©Paulina Matusiak & Eddy Wenting

On October 17, the Louvre Museum will host the premiere presentation of the interdisciplinary scientific project “Creations of Power: Depicting the Royal Family and Clergy in Medieval Nubia” on the costumes reconstructed on the basis of Faras paintings from the collection of the National Museum in Warsaw and the Sudanese National Museum in Khartoum. A popularization session at Sorbonne University will also be initiated.

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Ptolemaic Pathyris: Research on an Ancient Egyptian Town

Ptolemaic Pathyris is known for its rich collection of papyri and ostraca, which survive in excellent condition, buried in the ruins of the city. Thousands of texts, describing the everyday life of the ancient Egyptians and belonging to the archives of the local temple and notary’s office, but above all to the archives of the ordinary families living in the town, were discovered here in the late 19th and throughout the 20th centuries. A businesswoman, an inheritance dispute, or an unexplained murder — this is only the beginning of the story.

Although the archaeology of Ancient Egypt is dominated by studies of tombs, temples, and the realm of the elite, The Ptolemaic Pathyris Project wants to change this by showing how much we can learn about ordinary people and their everyday lives.

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‘Poles on the Nile: Polish archaeology in Egypt and Sudan

The ‘Poles on the Nile’ is an event with quite a long tradition. The first conference meeting was held in 2007 and since then, scholars conducting archaeological research in Egypt and Sudan have been meeting annually, always in June, at the University of Warsaw. The conference is attended by archaeologists, as well as specialists in other fields, who work with archaeologists, from the major national universities and research institutes based in Warsaw, Krakow, Poznan, Wroclaw and Gdansk, and abroad.

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Polish computer application in archaeology

From April 2nd to April 6th, 2023, the 50th International Conference on Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology was held in Amsterdam. Polish archaeology was represented by a strong interdisciplinary group, which prepared two sessions and presented 10 presentations and 2 posters.

Photogrammetric model of a barrow during excavation with markings showing the location of various monuments
by J. Stępnik

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Egyptian hieroglyphs discovered in Old Dongola, Sudan

During the current excavation season in Old Dongola (Sudan), an expedition of the Polish Centre of Mediterranean Archaeology, University of Warsaw, headed by Dr. Artur Obłuski, came across an unexpected find: architectural elements from a Pharaonic temple.

Dr Dawid F. Wieczorek with a block from an Egyptian monumental building
© D. F. Wieczorek/PCMA UW

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