Cairo Museum

The rising sun in Egyptology

Forty years of Japanese excavations in Egypt

are illustrated in a special exhibition at the Egyptian Museum

Nevine El-Aref
reports for
Al-Ahram Weekly
July 30 2009 Issue

For the forthcoming couple of months the Egyptian Museum is hosting an exhibition of five dozen ancient Egyptian artefacts unearthed at three archaeological sites by the mission from Waseda University over the past 40 years.

These unique objects have never before been exhibited. They derive from Abusir, the site of 11 pyramids south of Giza; Dahshour, the site of King Senefru's pyramids; and Malkata on Luxor's west bank, where the grandfather of Pharaoh Tutankhamun, Amenhotep III, dug a lake and built a palace for his beautiful and powerful wife, Queen Tiye.

Among the objects on show are fragments of Pharaoh Amenhotep III's faience bracelet; a stele showing Pharaoh Tuthmosis IV making an offering to Horus; a faience sistrum with the name of Pharaoh Amasis; a terracotta statue of a recumbent lion with the name of King Khufu; two faience rings bearing the names of Tutankhamun and his wife, Ankhesenamun; a gold Amarna ring with a carnelian wedjat eye; and the cartonnage mask of the Middle-Kingdom commander Senu. Foundation deposits; painted clay pots; ceramic ushabti boxes; wooden naked female statues; inscribed scarabs and jewellery are also exhibited.

Perhaps the most curious item on display is a limestone New Kingdom ostracon with enigmatic text markings similar to hieroglyphs and drawn in red and black, but not signifying any sentences. Parallels from the workmen's village at Deir Al-Medina suggest that these marks represented individual workmen, and the black and red dots were check marks. It is likely that this ostracon was used for recording the attendance of the workmen who built the royal tomb.

"This is a unique exhibition relating stories from the sand," Zahi Hawass, secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) told Al-Ahram Weekly. He said the objects in "this wonderful exhibition" came from excavation carried out by Egyptologist Sakuji Yoshimura, who has worked in Egypt for many years and has dedicated his life to searching for the secrets of ancient Egypt. Among his magnificent discoveries is the rest house built by Ramses II's son prince Khaemwaset, who had an interest in restoring the monuments of his ancestors and so built a rest house on the top of a cliff at Abusir so he could view the pyramids of Abusir and Giza in the north and the pyramids of Saqqara and Dahshour in the south.

"Visiting this exhibition is not just an adventure through ancient Egypt, but an exploration of archaeology as well," Hawass said.