Academia.eduAcademia.edu

Figure 1 – uploaded by Hussein Bassir

See full PDFdownloadDownload figure
Based on Wittmack (1912); Brunton and Caton-Thompson (1928); Lucas and Harris (1962); Nibbi (1981, 1990); Killen (1994a, 1994b, 1996); Davies (1995); Ward (2000, 2006); Arnold (2001); Harvey (2001); Gale et al. (2009); Sowada (2009); Ward and Zazzaro (2010); Deglin (2012); El Gabry (2014). Table 1. Uses of wood in ancient Egypt.

Table 1 Based on Wittmack (1912); Brunton and Caton-Thompson (1928); Lucas and Harris (1962); Nibbi (1981, 1990); Killen (1994a, 1994b, 1996); Davies (1995); Ward (2000, 2006); Arnold (2001); Harvey (2001); Gale et al. (2009); Sowada (2009); Ward and Zazzaro (2010); Deglin (2012); El Gabry (2014). Table 1. Uses of wood in ancient Egypt.

Related Figures (6)

Figure 1. A plaque (capital face) of the goddess Hathor, Dynasty XXX (just before Alexander), in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Inv. 89.2.214, dimensions: 44.8 x 26.7 cm. Gift, MMA, Egyptian Collection, 1898, no. 36. Cedrus sp. See MMA Guide (1983) p. 106, fig. 48. On the right, Maryanne Newton measures the 129 rings without doing damage to Hathor’s complexion. No 4th century BC cedar chronology yet exists against which to try to date her. Photograph P. I. Kuniholm.
Figure 1. A plaque (capital face) of the goddess Hathor, Dynasty XXX (just before Alexander), in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Inv. 89.2.214, dimensions: 44.8 x 26.7 cm. Gift, MMA, Egyptian Collection, 1898, no. 36. Cedrus sp. See MMA Guide (1983) p. 106, fig. 48. On the right, Maryanne Newton measures the 129 rings without doing damage to Hathor’s complexion. No 4th century BC cedar chronology yet exists against which to try to date her. Photograph P. I. Kuniholm.
Figure 2. Early half of a 2009-year tree-ring chronology from juniper, cedar, and pine, almost all of it constructed from carbonized timbers that were preserved after violent conflagrations.
Figure 2. Early half of a 2009-year tree-ring chronology from juniper, cedar, and pine, almost all of it constructed from carbonized timbers that were preserved after violent conflagrations.
Figure 4. The map above of juniper and cedar forests (after Newton 2004) shows how far apart some of these trees grew. Maximum distances are over 1000 km. That there is any fit at all among the data sets is highly satisfying. Observe that cedar is the most difficult of all (and has weaker statistics), partly because of the way cedars grow. In a worst-case scenario, on a piece of cedar from the forest at Bcharré in Leba- non, where multiple interventions by the villagers have damaged the trees heavily, one ring was present as two rows of six cells on a single radius (discovered by R. Touchan), and then nothing at all on the rest of the cross-section. Cedars and junipers are often found growing together in the same forest, and we often use the less-erratic junipers as a corrective to look for and identify absent or partially absent rings on the cedars. What we seem to have here is a regional climate signal rather than just a species signal (Hughes et al. 2001).
Figure 4. The map above of juniper and cedar forests (after Newton 2004) shows how far apart some of these trees grew. Maximum distances are over 1000 km. That there is any fit at all among the data sets is highly satisfying. Observe that cedar is the most difficult of all (and has weaker statistics), partly because of the way cedars grow. In a worst-case scenario, on a piece of cedar from the forest at Bcharré in Leba- non, where multiple interventions by the villagers have damaged the trees heavily, one ring was present as two rows of six cells on a single radius (discovered by R. Touchan), and then nothing at all on the rest of the cross-section. Cedars and junipers are often found growing together in the same forest, and we often use the less-erratic junipers as a corrective to look for and identify absent or partially absent rings on the cedars. What we seem to have here is a regional climate signal rather than just a species signal (Hughes et al. 2001).
Figure 5. The end grain of part of the lid of Ipy’s coffin (left) as seen in the vitrine in Chicago and the Dahshur boat during reassembly (right below) in Pittsburgh and after reassembly (right above). The hull timbers of the latter were carved to shape rather than bent. One of the deck-planks amidship with 400+ rings showed cuttings from reuse. Years ago, we measured two Egyptian cedarwood objects of some mild interest: one was the Oriental Institute’s coffin of a certain Ipy-ha-Ishutef, the Army clerk (Egyptological colleagues tell us that “clerk” was perhaps something more like the Minister of Defense), and the second was the “Dahshur boat” in the Car- negie Mellon Museum in Pittsburgh, both recently “C dated and discussed in some detail by Manning et al. (2014). Subsequently—that very year—we went back to the drawing board (literally: we were using paper graphs) to try the exercise all
Figure 5. The end grain of part of the lid of Ipy’s coffin (left) as seen in the vitrine in Chicago and the Dahshur boat during reassembly (right below) in Pittsburgh and after reassembly (right above). The hull timbers of the latter were carved to shape rather than bent. One of the deck-planks amidship with 400+ rings showed cuttings from reuse. Years ago, we measured two Egyptian cedarwood objects of some mild interest: one was the Oriental Institute’s coffin of a certain Ipy-ha-Ishutef, the Army clerk (Egyptological colleagues tell us that “clerk” was perhaps something more like the Minister of Defense), and the second was the “Dahshur boat” in the Car- negie Mellon Museum in Pittsburgh, both recently “C dated and discussed in some detail by Manning et al. (2014). Subsequently—that very year—we went back to the drawing board (literally: we were using paper graphs) to try the exercise all
Figure 7. Screen shot of CH14&5.14C (Ipy, in blue) date-stamped 10/18/05 ver- sus PITS55.mwn (Dahshur, in red) date-stamped 06/02/04 with the last ring of the former at 2076 BC and the last ring of the latter at 1884 BC plus one unmeasured ring, thus 1883 BC. The t-score is 3.09, n = 61 years, r-score is 0.38, but the trend coefficient is poor. We suspected at the time a missing-ring problem but could not prove it with the then available material. Figure 6. Screen shot of the visual fit between Kiiltepe 85 (in blue) and Chica- go 4&5 (Ipy, in red) as we placed them 10 years ago with the latter ending at 2076 BC. Although the t-score is 4.12 and the r-score is 0.41, the overlap is only 86 years, and the trend coefficient is poor, so we held off announcing anything un- til something better came along. We believe the source of these timbers is probably different from the rest of the KUL material.
Figure 7. Screen shot of CH14&5.14C (Ipy, in blue) date-stamped 10/18/05 ver- sus PITS55.mwn (Dahshur, in red) date-stamped 06/02/04 with the last ring of the former at 2076 BC and the last ring of the latter at 1884 BC plus one unmeasured ring, thus 1883 BC. The t-score is 3.09, n = 61 years, r-score is 0.38, but the trend coefficient is poor. We suspected at the time a missing-ring problem but could not prove it with the then available material. Figure 6. Screen shot of the visual fit between Kiiltepe 85 (in blue) and Chica- go 4&5 (Ipy, in red) as we placed them 10 years ago with the latter ending at 2076 BC. Although the t-score is 4.12 and the r-score is 0.41, the overlap is only 86 years, and the trend coefficient is poor, so we held off announcing anything un- til something better came along. We believe the source of these timbers is probably different from the rest of the KUL material.
What the confirmed dates (dendrochronology plus *C) show is that crossdating between cedars and junipers from a variety of forests in the Taurus Mountains (as represented by the tim- bers excavated at Ktiltepe/Acemh6yiik/Karahéyiik-Konya) and imported cedarwood and juniper found in Egypt is sometimes possible, although not always straightforward or easy. Thus, the Anatolian sequences can be used to date the imports as Lorentzen
What the confirmed dates (dendrochronology plus *C) show is that crossdating between cedars and junipers from a variety of forests in the Taurus Mountains (as represented by the tim- bers excavated at Ktiltepe/Acemh6yiik/Karahéyiik-Konya) and imported cedarwood and juniper found in Egypt is sometimes possible, although not always straightforward or easy. Thus, the Anatolian sequences can be used to date the imports as Lorentzen
Related topics:
Ancient HistoryArchaeologyEgyptologyNear Eastern ArchaeologyRemote SensingAnatolian StudiesAnatolian ArchaeologyAncient Near EastAncient Egyptian HistoryAncient Egyptian Art and Archaeology
580 California St., Suite 400
San Francisco, CA, 94104
© 2025 Academia. All rights reserved