HiddenMysteries: Hungarians among the Pharaohs

Nevine El-Aref celebrates 102 years of Hungarian excavations in Egypt

Hungary's leaning towards Egyptian history was sparked by a dawning interest in all things antiquarian that came with the opening up of foreign travel, and reached full maturity in the wake of the decipherment of hieroglyphs and the unfolding of the science of Egyptology.

During the last decades of the 19th century, displays of artefacts brought home by Fejérvàry and his fellow contemporary amateurs developed from collections of curiosities into aesthetically appreciated exhibitions of the culture that, they deduced, sprang from the "cradle of civilisation".

In 1898 the first actual step in the long process of establishing Egyptology as an academic discipline in Hungary was pushed forward with the foundation of a chair of Ancient Oriental history, and when Egyptologist Ede Mahler was appointed to the University of Budapest as professor of Egyptian studies. However the first Hungarian archaeological mission to Egypt was not until 1907, when Hungarian amateur Fèlöp Back sponsored excavation work led by Polish Egyptologist Tadeusz Samolenski at Sharuna in Middle Egypt. At that time the mission stumbled upon a so-far unknown Pharaonic tomb and relief blocks from a temple of Ptolemy I. They also discovered an intact cemetery at Gamhud in the modern town of Fashn, on the other side of Al-Hibe where the Graeco-Roman of Ankyronpolis is to be found.

According to Gabor Schreiber, assistant professor of Egyptology at the Institute of Classical Studies at Eölvös Lorànd University in Budapest, the cemetery was discovered by a local villager who soon made contact with an antiquities dealer from Bibeh, Farag Tawdros, and offered him a share of the material in exchange for help in looting the site. The two men hired labourers and their pillaging progressed swiftly and efficiently, with their workmen cleaning two or three tombs in just few days, when two of their workmen denounced them to the police for unknown reasons.

Lorànd said it was unclear how Smolenski and his Hungarian mentor, Back, learnt about the discovery. In a report on his work at Sharuna and Gamhud, submitted to the embassy of the Austro- Hungarian monarchy in Cairo, Back claimed to have been informed by local villagers, while Egyptologist Ahmed Kamal, who led the excavation after Smolenski's death, wrote that after being denounced it was Farag Tawdros who approached Smolenski with a plan of collaboration. Immediately afterwards, Back and Smolenski applied for and were granted a concession from Gaston Maspero, director of the then Antiquities Service, to carry out scientific excavation at Gamhud. During that time they discovered 47 coffins, 20 cartonnage masks, four of which were gilded, a vessel with a heretic inscription, an inscribed stela, 70 face masks from coffins, 11 wooden chests, and four Ptah-Sokar-Osiris statues. When Kamal took over his mission unearthed another 23 coffins, a stela, some wooden chests, cartonnages with demotic inscriptions, and other small finds.

During the 1960s Hungary took part in the international for Nubia Salvage Campaign to save important monuments before the construction of the Aswan High Dam. A team of archaeologists and Egyptologists from Budapest excavated the Late Antique settlement of Abdallah Nirqi.

The transfer of the small finds in their entirety, Lorànd said, was granted to Hungary as a special gesture by the precursor of today's Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA). The mission arrived in Lower Nubia in the terminal phase of the great UNESCO Nubia rescue campaign and excavated a small urban settlement inhabited between the fifth and 13th centuries.

The second Hungarian excavation mission was launched in 1983 by scholar Làszló Kàkosy in western Thebes, at the tomb of the 19th-Dynasty nobleman Djehutymes.

Tamàs A Bàcs, associate professor at the Institute of Classical Studies at Eölvös Lorànd University in Budapest, said the mortuary monument of Djehutymes was notable not only because of the outstanding quality of the mural decoration, but also because it dated to the second half of the New Kingdom, a period which had previously been loosely defined in terms of non-royal funerary art. The excavation work, which lasted until 2006, uncovered the entire tomb complex, while the epigraphic study of the mural decoration established a basis for studying the sophisticated icronographic programme of the tomb and outlining the career of its original owner. During the excavation of the forecourts, Bàcs said, the mission found a representative sample of an 18th- Dynasty cemetery consisting of shaft tombs. They also excavated two hypogeum-type tombs of the late Third Intermediate and Saite periods. The inner tomb of the deceased also revealed that the area was reused for interments in the Ptolemaic and Roman periods.

In 1995 the large scale of excavations was expended to reach the cemetery of Sheikh Abdel-Gourna, where a tomb from the reign of Pharaoh Ramses IV was excavated and documented. Three years later another 20th-Dynasty tomb was excavated at Al-Khokha. From 2004 to 2008, large-scale excavation was carried out in the streets of the upper necropolis at Al-Khokha by Zoltàn Fàbiàn, associate professor in the ancient history department at Kàroli Gàspàr University, which is affiliated to the Reformed Church in Budapest.

To highlight such a great contribution to the research and preservation of ancient Egyptian history over the past century, a gala evening was held last month in the exquisite garden of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, where Hungarian and Egyptian archaeologists gathered along with guests including the Hungarian and Egyptian ministers of culture, Istvàn Hillerand and Farouk Hosni, respectively, and Zahi Hawass, secretary- general of the SCA, to celebrate "102 years of Hungarian archaeology in Egypt". The event was accompanied by an archaeological exhibition displaying objects unearthed by various Hungarian missions in the Theben Necropolis since the early 20th century.

Hosni described the event as a further demonstration of the close friendship between Egypt and Hungary. He pointed out that Hungarian archaeological missions had participated with passion in the effort to interpret the ancient civilisation of Egypt, not only through excavations, in which they had accelerated the progress of Egyptology, but also in preserving its precious relics.

"We know that cooperation between our two countries in the field of archaeology will continue to grow and flourish," Hosni said.

The exhibition shines a spotlight on the course of the painstaking field work and interpretations on the basis of a knowledge of ancient Egyptian culture amassed by experts from all nations, among them many Egyptians and Hungarians. Hiller said the objects displayed in the venerated halls of the Egyptian museum and presented in the catalogue not only enriched Egyptology but also contributed to the friendly and fruitful connections between Egypt and Hungary.

Hawass said that such an occasion was an opportunity to look back on the achievements of Hungarian colleagues and scholars, and at the same time to look forward to many more years of fruitful archaeological cooperation between Egypt and Hungary. "The exhibition is showing the world how Egypt has cooperated with countries worldwide to preserve these monuments and display them to the public," Hawass said, adding that the objects had captured his heart, especially the canopic jar of Penre from Theban tomb 65.

The director of the Egyptian Museum, Wafaa El-Saddik, said the exhibition highlighted the efforts of several archaeological missions all over Egypt. It includes objects that have never been put on display, and have thus far been known only to specialists. They come from excavations of the Eolvos Lorànd University in two distinct areas of the Theban necropolis, and range in time from the Middle Kingdom to Late Antiquity, spanning more than two millennia. Although there has been a special focus -- also emphasised in the present exhibition -- on the Ramesside tomb, ever since the Theban research programme began in 1982, the main goal was always and still is to gain a full understanding of the areas investigated from the first phase of occupation down to modern times.

Among the objects on display are the Tasenet coffin found by Smolenski, which represents the so-called swollen type. It was made for a woman called Tasenet, daughter of the mistress of the house of Tadiiset. It has a gilded face, a cartonnage mask, and text panels on its pectoral and apron. The text on the coffin is taken from age-old funerary formula, and label texts are corrupted with several mistakes and inconsistencies in orthography. There are also pseudo inscriptions, especially on the right side panels of the lid. These features suggest that the artist producing the decoration did not understand what he was copying.

A number of ushabti (votive servant) figures are also exhibited along with wooden figurine models, canopic jars, pottery vessels, marble statuettes, amulets and scarabs.

http://ahram.org.eg
© Copyright Al-Ahram Weekly

From Top: the gilded coffin of Tasenet; Egyptologist Dobrovits at the opening of the Gamhud; restoration work at the tomb of Djehutymes; the site of Gamhud photos courtesy of the Hungarian Archaeological Institute

Hungarians among the Pharaohs

Monday, December 14 2009 @ 07:21 PM CST