NUBIA - The Treasures of Queen Amanishaketo

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                     T H E   T R E A S U R E   OF   Q U E E N   A M A N I S H A K E T O

 

Amanishaketo (35 BC-20 BC) was the daughter of a queen and the wife of a brother whom she survived. Her successor was her daughter, Amanitore, who is mentioned in the Bible (Acts 8:27).



Queen Amanishakheto: This remarkable woman must have possessed vast wealth and power, considering the pyramid where she lay buried and the treasures that surrounded her in her death. In 1832 her pyramid at Wad Ban Naqa was leveled to the ground by the explorer Giuseppe Ferlini, then working in Meroe as a treasure hunter. Here was found her residence and several temples. Her mud brick palace is one of the largest identified to date. It measures some 61 meters in length and covers an area of some 3,700 squares meters. The ground floor contained over 60 rooms for various purposes. This palace originally had a second story as the remains of columns found on the ground floor indicate, and this may have contained an atrium, a design feature paralleled elsewhere.


(Egyptologist Richard Lepsius, drawing of Amanishakheto)
Queen Amanishaketo
From Wad Ban Naqa


Daily Life of the Nubians, Robert Steven Bianchi, Oct. 2004The treasure itself is remarkable for the variety of types and materials used. It contained ten bracelets, nine so-called shield rings, sixty-seven signet rings, two armbands, and an extraordinary number of loose amulets and elements belonging to necklaces and other articles. Most of the articles were created especially for Queen Amanishakheto, although a few were heirlooms, and almost all of the jewelry appears to have been created by Nubian artists in the Kingdom of Meroe.


Reference Cited:
Pyramid N6 of Queen Amanishaketo,

Before it was destroyed


Broad collar; shell, stone, carnelian, faience, glass



Armlet: Gold with fused-glass inlays. Worn either on the upper arm or wrist, this ornament was closed by means of a fastening element of leather or linen, thus it did not extend fully around the arm. Over the hinge is a separately worked figure of a four-winged goddess standing on a papyrus umbel. On top of her vulture diadem she wears the Double Crown, and is thus to be identified as the goddess Mut, consort of Amun.


Shield Ring: Gold with fused glass. In addition of two winged figures of the goddess Mut surrounding the ram's head crown.



This representation of the queen, shows the sumptuous jewelry adorning her neck and arms. The entire figure was covered with gold foil, while the background was painted blue, creating the illusion of a faience tile. The queen holds a decorative collar with both hands, and a mirror with one; both objects are intended as offerings for a missing deity standing to the left.




Most photos from the book Sudan Ancient Kingdoms of the Nile, Dietrich Wildung, 1997

Stela of queen Amanishaketo.



"The rear and the sides of the stela have fifteen lines of text in cursive Meroitic, topped on the rear by a line in Egyptian hieroglyphs without specific meaning. In his still unpublished analysis of the Meroitic text egyptologist Claude Rilly (letter of 8 September 2000) states the "feeling of frustration" of the philologist in front of such a well-preserved inscription, but he succeeds at least in defining the character of the text as a religious hymn.


Not only does the text keep its secret, but an important historical question also remains open: why and how was a stela of Queen Amanishakheto, dated about sixty years before Natakamani and Amanitore, donated to the Temple of Amun at Naga, a structure not yet in existence during the lifetime of this queen? Do we have to rethink the sequence of Meroitic rulers?"




Stela of Queen Amanishaketo

(left) Goddess Amesemi (right) Amanishaketo
The Temple of Amon (1st cent. BC/ist cent. AD) Hypostyle Hall


Amesemi - Woman with falcon on head, sometimes also with crescent moon

Amesemi was a Meroitic goddess, who was the wife of Apedemak, lion god of Meroë. The Egyptians never worshiped her. Amesemi wears a crown shaped like a falcon or a falcon standing on a crescent moon. (The falcon is a symbol of kingship and of the god Horus.) The moon was known as the Eye of Horus, as was the cobra on the ruler’s crown. People believed that the moon and the cobra were forms of their ruler’s protective goddess. Because Amesemi wore the falcon and the moon on her crown, many people believe that Amesemi was this protective goddess.

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                  THE DESTRUCTION OF PYRAMID N6 OF THE KANDAKE (RULING QUEEN) AMANISHAKHETO




                               
                                NECROPOLIS OF KURRU, GEBEL BARKAL AND MEROE


1822.   Almost all the royal tombs were plundered.  Those few that have survived provide a dull reflexion of the
original splendour.  One exeption was Pyramid N6.........
                                                                                                                                                          Only twelve years later, it had become a mere pile of stones. The physician Giuseppe Ferlini, who had come to the Sudan with Muhammad All's troops, leveled it, as well as many other pyramids, in the search for treasure. An apparently undisturbed golden treasure came to light, which Ferlini immediately hustled out of the country. In a catalogue published  in Bologna in 1837, followed by a French edition published in Rome in 1838.  He introduced  his treasure to the world and invited buyers.

                         


In 1839 a portion of the finds was acquired by the royal Bavarian art collections; the remaining portion proved difficult to sell, probably because of the unusual style of the jewelry, which cast doubt on the authenticity of the find. This doubt was only removed a decade after Ferlini's discovery, when Richard Lepsius, who in 1842 had recommended acquisition for the Berlin Egyptian Museum, arrived at Meroe.
 
He reports in his correspondence: "Several pyramids have been completely destroyed, others only partially. None had its top preserved. Our kavass, who was here with Ferlini, showed us the spot beneath a now leveled pyramid where he supposedly found his golden treasure." Lepsius continues: "Osman Bey (who camped with his troops in the vicinity) wanted to make treasure hunters out of his pioneers, and ordered his battalions here in order to rip a number of pyramids apart. Ferlini's discovery sticks in 
everyone's mind here and has since brought several pyramids to ruin . . . I was able to dissuade him from this idea and so for now at least the few remaining pyramids saved. The soldiers have left, without declaring war on the pyramids" (R. Lepsius, Briefe aus Aegypten Aethiopien und der Halbinsel Sinai, [Berlin, 1852, p. 206). The remaining portion of Ferlini's treasure was purchased for Berlin at Lepsius's recommendation in 1844.



The quality of craftsmanship of the jewelry cannot be compared with the work of Hellenistic goldsmiths. The unique significance of the find lies in the combination of Egyptian, Meroitic, and isolated Hellenistic elements into an original composition. The rich iconography of the shield and seal rings, armlets and necklace significantly expands the repertoire of relief's from Meroitic temples  and the offering chapels of Meroitic pyramids. They also provide the original evidence of royal costume as represented in the relief's.



Reference:
Sudan: Ancient Kingdoms of the Nile, Dietrich Wildung

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                                                   THE TOMB TREASURE   



                                 


All the burial chambers in the tombs of the kings of Kush and their relatives have been plundered. Surviving finds nevertheless suggest that the dead were buried with large quantities of precious jewelry. No fewer than nineteen silver seal rings had been placed on the fingers of one king from the first century A.D., for example, and on each of his wrists,he wore a bracelet of gold. Once the tomb chamber of Amanishakheto's pyramid was exposed, there were still four gold seal rings

 left from the original funerary gifts. Ferlini's find is altogether unusual in two respects: it came to light in a spot that had been undisturbed since the queen's burial, and the presence of such a chamber in the upper part of the mass of the pyramid continues to be unique. Lepsius attributed it to a "whim" on the part the pyramid's builder. Treasures of this kind are only to be expected in the actual burial chambers, and it is therefore pointless to search for them in a tomb's superstructure.

There is doubtless, however, some connection between this "hiding place" and the niches--at the same height and shaped like temple portals--that can still be seen on the east sides of a number of other pyramids. To me these niches were "entrances" into inner chambers--imaginary for the most part, though real in the pyramid of Amanishakheto--intended as dwelling places for the soul of the deceased, for his or her ba. Unfortunately, the "bed" (cataletto o barn di legno) Ferlini writes of, in the French edition of his report an "spece de table ou autel" (roeusa sacra ou ara dornestica), with its "balustrade" of Hathor columns alternating with smaller uraeus serpents, is inadequately described. It may have been a chapel for the ba, possibly in the form of late Egyptian funerary biers, or possibly in the form of station chapels, the most beautiful example of which is the "kiosk" on the island of Philae. The latter was also a common form in Meroitic temple architecture.

According to the ancient Egyptian belief, a person's ba is his immortal "essence," which continues to exist after death though unattached to any particular spot. It sojourns in the heavenly spheres in the proximity of the gods, but it also likes to visit the resting place of the body and provide it with all the necessities of life. The Meroites adopted this idea, but instead of depicting the ba in the Egyptian manner as a bird with a human head, they portrayed it in statuettes combining either a complete female figure or a male one clothed as a dignitary, depending on the nature of the deceased, with a bird's body. 

These are found in Meroitic tomb structures of Lower Nubia, placed in niches in the tomb's superstructure above the votive chamber. We find such a combination of a god's body and the ba bird in late Egypt. Given such an individualized notion of the form of the ba, it would have been appropriate to lay out Amanishakheto's jewelry for the ba's use in its own dwelling place. Just what purpose the two bronze vessels that were placed in the hidden chamber in the center of the pyramid might have served must remain an open question. The small openings in the center of the vessels' tops indicate they were used as containers for cosmetic eye paint.
The saw and mallet found in the chamber were probably only stonecutters' tools left there by accident. Aside from the two vessels, a spoon, and a few other objects, the queen's treasure was composed of body ornaments that the queen might have worn, and doubtless actually did. Numerous small abrasions and traces of wear preclude the jewelry having been created especially for the burial. Moreover, none of the pieces reveal any connection, either in their function or decor, to funerary beliefs or burial rites. The jewelry was also not part of the queen's official regalia, which we know from many relief depictions. There are no crowns and diadems, scepters, staffs, or appropriate necklaces, and even the armlets have different pictorial motifs than those depicted on the arms of Meroitic rulers. The queen's adornments must be assumed to be the work of Meroitic goldsmiths, except for those few pieces clearly imported from the Hellenistic world and the scarabs and glazed ceramic figures that possibly never belonged to the cache in the first place. Stylistically, the pieces of jewelry are typical examples of the Meroitic art of the period.
Egypt's encounter with the kingdom of Kush in the Twenty-Fifth Dynasty brought a new inspiration to Egyptian art, to be sure, but above all it lent to the art of the Kushites a profoundly Egyptian flavor. With the beginning of the Meroitic period after 300 B.C., works appear that are just as fine as the art of contemporary Egypt, but that increasingly betray a divergence from it. Many of the characteristics of Meroitic art differ from those of Egyptian art because of disparities between the two cultures.