Bones
| Gebelein in hieroglyphs | |||||
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Inerty Jnrtjj |
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Gebelein ( Arabic الجبلين, DMG al Jebelīn ) is the modern name of the ancient Egyptian city Inerty ( the two rocks ). A Hathor sanctuary stood in the village . Accordingly, the place was sometimes referred to as the House of Hathor ( pr-Hwt-Hrw , from which the Greek Pathyris developed, but also called Aphroditopolis ). The oldest known tattoos were found on a female and a male mummy made from Gebelein .
Geographical location
The place is in Upper Egypt, about 40 km south of Thebes . At this point, the rocks of the east and west deserts are particularly close to the Nile , so that the place was of particular strategic importance, as the traffic on the Nile was easy to control from here.
history
Remnants from almost all epochs of Egyptian history come from Gebelein . Most of the time, only loose stone fragments were found from the temple of Hathor, which prove a sanctuary for the 2nd dynasty . This was expanded under Mentuhotep II , and other inscribed fragments come mainly from the Second Intermediate Period . From Thutmose III. additions come from foundation pits, which testify to a further expansion of the temple. Finally, numerous papyri originate from the Ptolemaic period .
necropolis
The city's necropolis is in the surrounding mountains. During excavations, burials from the Naqada period were discovered, from which a cloth painted with ships protrudes. A grave with various papyri comes from the Old Kingdom . Especially from the First Intermediate Period there are numerous stelae of Nubians who obviously served as mercenaries here . The pristine prince Ini and the painted tomb of Iti from the 11th dynasty also date from this period . The paintings were removed and are now in the Museo Egizio in Turin . There are hardly any burials in this necropolis from the period after the Middle Kingdom . Where the people of the following periods were buried remains unknown.
exploration
Archaeological digs have been carried out several times in Gebelein , but the results have rarely been sufficiently documented and, above all, have been published. Above all, Ernesto Schiaparelli carried out extensive investigations here, whereby a large part of the finds came to Turin.
The oldest known tattoos
In 2018, a publication by a group of researchers led by museum curator Daniel Antoine in the Journal of Archeological Science announced that Gebelein had the oldest known tattoos . These were found on two mummies, no more than 5351 years old, which are in the British Museum in London. Until this publication, only about a thousand years younger decorations on human skin had been known from Africa.
The female mummy had dark tattoos on her right shoulder and back, a kinked line and four S-shaped marks in a row. Never before had similar old tattoos been found on a woman .
The male mummy carried two horned animals, a large bull and a mighty mane sheep on his right upper arm . Research revealed that the man was killed by a stab from behind when he was around 20 years old.
Since there are no written sources about the two mummies, scientists can only infer the possible meaning of the finds from the context of the finds. It is assumed that the tattoos had a cultural background: The S-lines on the female mummy, which were always arranged in groups, were conspicuous and placed on the shoulder so that they could easily be seen by others, so they should be seen. The second line can be identified as a baton or a clapper, as it was once used in ritual dances. Both line shapes were also found on a clay jar from the so-called predynastic period in Egypt. On a make-up palette from this period, the scientists also found a representation of the mane sheep, as it was tattooed on the male mummy. Bull and sheep also appear on rock carvings, but these are more difficult to classify in time. Daniel Antoine assumes that both animals once stood for masculinity and strength.
Burial form in Gebelein
A total of seven mummies from the British Museum that came from Gebelein were examined by Daniel Antoine's research group . Two of them are almost 6000 years old, but have no skin adornments. All seven mummies were buried in shallow graves with grave goods such as clay bowls or jugs directly in the desert sand. Both the woman and the man were buried in an embryonic position . The hot desert sand quickly dried out the bodies. So they were preserved without the laborious embalming , as it was only later customary in ancient Egypt.
literature
- Anna Maria Donadoni Roveri, Elvira D'Amicone, Enrichetta Leospo: Gebelein: il villaggio e la necropoli (= Quaderni del Museo Egizio. Volume 1). Artema, Torino 1994, ISBN 88-8052-000-8 .
- Anna Maria Donadoni Roveri: Gebelein. In: Kathryn A. Bard (Ed.): Encyclopedia of the Archeology of Ancient Egypt. Routledge, London 1999, ISBN 0-415-18589-0 , pp. 338-40.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ A b Renée Friedman, Daniel Antoine, Sahra Talamo u. a .: Natural mummies from Predynastic Egypt reveal the world's earliest figural tattoos . In: Journal of Archaeological Science . March 1, 2018, doi : 10.1016 / j.jas.2018.02.002 (sciencedirect.com).
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Hubert Filser: The oldest tattoos in the world. Mummies with 5350 old skin ornaments . In: Süddeutsche Zeitung . No. 54 , March 6, 2018, p. 14 ( sueddeutsche.de [accessed June 7, 2018]).
Coordinates: 25 ° 29 ' N , 32 ° 29' E