Category Archives: Egyptology

A 6th-7th Century Egyptian Pilgrim Flask found at Meols, Wirral

Introduction to the Meols pilgrim flask

The Meols Pilgrim Flask, now in the Grosvenor Museum, Chester (GM 43. M.56). Source of photograph: Pilgrims and Posies blog

Flipping through Peter Carrington’s book Chester when it arrived on my doorstep a year or so ago, I was surprised to see a black and white photograph of something both very familiar and exceedingly unexpected: an Egyptian pilgrim flask originally from the shrine of the Coptic Christian St Menas in Egypt. Only 98mm tall, it was manufactured during the 6th-7th century in northern Egypt. It was almost certainly purchased at the desert shrine of St Mena, 45km to the southwest of Alexandria.

It was found on the Wirral at Meols (pronounced mells) by a local man digging for lugworms in 1955, in a peat layer 61cm (2ft) below the sand 274m (300 yards) off Dove Point. For those unfamiliar with the local geography, there’s a map at the end of the post. The flask was donated to the Grosvenor Museum in Chester. Although the location site consists of nothing but sand dunes today, it was formerly inhabited. Griffiths and his colleagues, in their 2007 monograph on Meols, describe the 19th century investigations of this strip of land:

The eroding sand-dunes not only produced an enormous body of small finds, but also
traces of buildings (the records of which are now unfortunately lost) and stumps of trees from the old ground surface. The numerous artefacts include, as well as many mundane objects, exotic pieces of high quality.

Today, the same team interpret early Meols (from the Norse meaning sand-hills) as a possible “beach market or port.”

Unsurprisingly, given the time that the pilgrim flask must have spent in the sand, the surface of the flask it is badly abraded and is slightly damaged. In the photograph on the left it looks as though it has a handle and spout, but in fact the “spout” was a twin handle, by which the vessel could be held in two hands, or threaded through a belt or chord for carrying. There is also some slight damage to the body of the vessel itself. It was not the most skilfully manufactured item, and was probably one of the less expensive examples on offer to the purchaser, but given its find-site is remarkably well preserved.

Although difficult to make out, the front of the vessel shows a scene consisting of the Roman-Egyptian St Menas flanked by two camels, about which more in a moment. There are photos of better preserved versions of the same scene below. I haven’t found a diagram or photograph of the reverse of the flask, but Griffiths et al describe it as follows: “The righthand part of the circular field has short radiating spokes from the frame. The design is very abraded and unclear, but appears to have a long curving design.”

Thompson’s figure 3, showing a sketch of the Meols flask at the time of its discovery. Source: Journal of the Chester Archaeological Society, volume 53, 1956

Material of the same period (6th-7th century AD) is found in the general area, confined to a short stretch at the top of the Wirral peninsula, producing over 100 artefacts, from both Roman and post-Roman objects, including Late Saxon and Anglo-Scandinavian material. Following its discovery in 1955 the find was reported very briefly by F.H. Thompson in the Miscellanea section of the Journal of the Chester Archaeological Society in 1956, accompanied by a sketch, and a description of the context in which it was found:

Although the coastal site of Meols, near Hoylake, is not now so prolific of antiquities as in the days when the Rev. A. Hume could devote a whole book to cataloguing the Romano-British, Saxon and mediaeval finds made there, single specimens are occasionally recovered.

The pilgrim flask is a well known form of vessel, and examples are found all over Egypt, and in Nubia. Fewer numbers have been found outside Egypt, most of them in the eastern Mediterranean. They are characterized by a lentoid (lens-shaped) body, narrow neck and twin handles, connecting the neck of the vessel to the main body. They seem to have been fitted with stoppers made from mud and other materials. The Meols example is 98mm high from lip to base. The body is 65mm wide, and the neck 35mmwide. The thickness of the pottery never exceeds 18mm. The neck and arms were added to the body after the manufacture of the vessel’s body, and there was not a great deal of skill demonstrated in its production. Much finer examples survive.

St Menas pilgrim flask from Preston on the Hill, Cheshire, now in Norton Priory Museum. Source: Griffiths et al 2007

The Meols pilgrim flask is not unique in England. Norton Priory Museum, near Warrington, has a collection of pilgrim tokens, one of which is a pilgrim flask from the shrine of St Menas, which was found in the Norton Priory area at Preston-on-the-Hill, shown left. It is missing its handles and neck. When the neck and handles are added on afterwards, the joints are a common point of failure. The Preston-on-the-Hill flask has a much clearer image of Menas and the camels and is framed with text, which is a blessing of St Menas. It was found during construction work for a new housing estate, and it is by no means clear how it got there. Other examples with a comparable date have been found elsewhere in England, including Durham, York, Derby, Baldock in Hertfordshire, Faversham and Canterbury. Although they are not unique, they are certainly not common. None, for example, have yet been found in Wales, Ireland or Scotland, although other contemporary Mediterranean objects have.

Who was St Menas?

St Menas was an early Christian saint dating to the Roman period who died in around the year 300AD. Christianity was introduced into Egypt, traditionally by St Mark, and became well established during the 2nd and early 3rd centuries in the multi-ethnic city of Alexandria on the Mediterranean coast. During the 541 Council of Chalcedon differences about theological understanding of the nature of Christ caused the Coptic Church of Egypt to split from Rome, and to establish its own clerical administration with its own pope, which it retains today. St Menas is part o the Coptic Christian tradition.

Pilgrim flask of St Menas at the British Museum, findspot unknown. BM1875,1012.16. Source: British Museum

There are a number of versions of the story of St Menas, and it is likely that the stories of St Menas and St Gordius were conflated into a single story. Probably the most popular version is that Menas was martyred in Phrygia, possibly during the reign of Diocletian in the 3rd Century for wishing to give up service in the Roman army to become a hermit in the service of God. Egypt had a tradition of eremitical worship in the desert, most famously represented by St Paul of Thebes (died c.345) and his follower St Antony (died c.356). The soldiers who killed Menas tried to burn his body but it remained unharmed. Pope Athanasius of Alexandria was visited by an angel who told him to take Menas into the desert for burial. Menas was carried on either one or two camels, and when the camel/s suddenly stopped and refused to go further, it was taken as a sign that he should be buried at the spot. A spring erupted into life where he was buried. The grave was forgotten until the 4th century. The story is that it was rediscovered by a shepherd when a wounded sheep submerged itself in the spring and was cured. As the shepherd continued to heal his sheep in the spring, the story began to spread. According to the legend Constantine the Great sent his daughter, afflicted with leprosy, to be cured. Her recovery endowed the site with even greater acclaim. Not long afterwards the saint’s grave was discovered, and a church was erected at the site in the Mareotis area, now known as Abu Mena, located around 45km southwest of Alexandria. The saint’s remains were transferred to the crypt. It soon became a place of pilgrimage with a settlement around it catering to the expanding number pilgrims from both inside Egypt and beyond as news of the shrine continued to spread. The site became renowned for its responsiveness to prayers, including the delivery of miraculous cures, becoming the largest pilgrimage destination in the eastern Mediterranean, and was considered to be a patron of desert caravans and merchants.

The Arab-Muslim Conquest of Egypt between 639-646AD caused considerable difficulty for the Coptic religion, and the site seems to have been destroyed at this time. It was partially restored in the 8th century but underwent various reversals and seems to have gone out of fashion after the 10th century. Excavations in the early 20th century, and then from the 1960s have uncovered the foundations of the church and the associated monastery.

Pyxis showing St Mena. British Museum 1879,1220.1. Source: British Museum

The saint was often shown on the pilgrim flasks flanked by camels wearing a short long-sleeved tunic, with a wide belt, military cloak, laced boots and raised arms in the “orans” posture, which is a gesture used by the clergy when praying with or on behalf of the congregation. The British Museum has a flask (shown above) that is much less eroded than the Meols example, and depicts the same scene of the saint flanked by two camels. It is more obviously similar to the Preston-on-the-Hill example, but lacks the inscription. Most have a different scene on the reverse side, sometimes another saint, but often a more geometric pattern consisting of motifs, as in the Meols example, .

Just for comparison, the ivory pyxis (cylindrical box) above left, dating to the 6th century, made in Egypt and found in Italy, shows a much clearer and far more elaborate version of the scene. On this side of the box St Menas is shown standing beneath an arch, representing a shrine, with his hands raised, flanked by two recumbent camels, and approached by worshippers. The reverse side shows his martyrdom.

What were the pilgrim flasks used for?

The ruins of the early religious complex at Abu Mena. It included, amongst other things, two churches, a basilica, courts, hostels, baths, a baptistry and colonnades. Photo source: Wikipedia

Above all the Egyptian pilgrim flask was a personal expression of pilgrimage for the purchaser, serving a) as means of carrying a part of the divine with him or her, b) as the memento of a personally important and perhaps very remarkable journey and c) as a mechanism for advertising that the pilgrimage was undertaken.

Pilgrimage is a personal voyage, for reasons known only to the person making the journey. Motivations can vary from an illness or disability afflicting the person making the pilgrimage, or afflicting someone else on whose behalf the pilgrimage is made, to a general need to demonstrate penitence, piety or fulfil another inner need. These little mementos contain more than hope – they contain something precious and beloved, a bridge between a person and his or her God, often via the intercession of a benevolent saint to whom it was perhaps easier to relate. Finds in Alexandria indicate that St Menas had a popular local following, and those further afield attest to his wider importance. A long distance pilgrimage was an investment not only of financial cost, time and energy, but also time away from family, home and the means of making an income, so it involved sacrifice, without which perhaps the pilgrimage was probably much less significant.

The similarity between the flasks, whether poorly- or well made indicates that they were mass-produced. They were not special to the producer, except as a means of making income, but they were immensely special to the pilgrim. Because the flasks were very small, between c.9 and 20cm tall, they were highly portable, and could be carried home even over very long distances without difficulty. Pilgrimage sites today still sell little objects for visitors to take home. Lourdes and Santiago de Compostella are two obvious examples, but at a visit to St Winifred’s well in Holywell, north Wales, I found that it too has a gift shop where you can purchase religiously-themed memorabilia.

Piers Baker-Bates of the Open University talks about the value of his own pilgrimage memento, helping to clarify the personal connection that people have with pilgrimage objects. This is part of the transcript from a short video, which at the time of writing you can find on the OU site here:

This is the pilgrimage medal I had after I went to Santiago [de Compostela] in 1995. It’s just the ordinary cheap, lead model they sell in the tourist shops there, nothing special at all, but it was simply, if you like, my memento mori of the expedition.
It’s a scallop shell. The scallop shell has traditionally been the symbol of St James because it is a native of Galicia, which is the region of Spain where Santiago de Compostela is, and supposedly, according to legend, when his body was found it was surrounded by scallop shells, and this is therefore ever since been the symbol of the saint. So you will not just see the scallop as an individual symbol, but if you look at churches, if you look at hospices, if you look at other buildings connected with St James, they all have somewhere on them the scallop shell because it is the symbol of the saint.

If the chain wasn’t broken I’d still wear it round my neck all the time and it serves to remind me of something I did and I would like to do again eventually. If I was a medieval pilgrim, I’d have worn it in my hat, and you would have seen a wonderful selection of people who’d been to all the major shrines, who had a selection of these in their hats, so you’d have Jerusalem, Santiago de Compostela, Rome – they all had their own symbols. . .

Even though there are millions of these in the world, it still has meaning because it has meaning for me in particular, because it is particular to me, but also if someone else has one of their own, it will mean something to them. But at the same time, as a symbol, it means something to everyone, so when anyone looks at one of these they will recognise the symbol and understand what it means.

The vessel could contain the holy water of the well, the sand surrounding the shrine or liturgical oils. Some vessels were more elaborate than others. The Meols example, even though highly abraded, was probably never a very sophisticated piece of craftwork, meaning that the pilgrim who bought it probably had little spare money to spend. In Egypt, nearly all the complete examples were found in funerary contexts, indicating that they were sufficiently significant to the living that they wished to meet the afterlife with their pilgrim flasks at their sides.

Precursors of the the pilgrim flask

Clay vessel dating to the New Kingdom, painted with concentric rings, now in the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology (UC66492). Source: Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology

The Coptic era pilgrim flasks were not an innovative form of pottery. The form emerged in the earlier New Kingdom (1550-1069BC). These were in their turn were based on vessels imported from the Levant in the 18th Dynasty (1550-1295BC). The form was soon taken up and copied by Egyptian potters who produced them for local demand. They were usually manufactured in clay, like the later pilgrim flasks, and sometimes other materials including glass, faience, stone and even metal. The early clay examples were frequently provided with a coloured slip and decoration that emulated the Near Eastern examples with concentric circles on each face. Kilroe suggests that the concentric circles were equivalent to branding, and that they were indicative of the contents of the flasks. They grew in popularity in the 19th Dynasty (1295-1186BC), and became part of the potter’s repertoire from that point forward. Their function was probably somewhat different from the later pilgrim flasks. One suggestion is that they were used for carrying valuable perfumed oils.

New Year flask from Egypt, now in the Walter’s Museum (48.419)

These were followed by so-called New Year’s flasks, which have the same basic shape, but with handles so small that they are merely decorative rather than functional. The New Year’s flasks are often ornate and are usually made of faience, an expensive material exclusive to the elite. New Year was one of the most important dates in the Egyptian calendar, marking the beginning of the Nile flood, which replenished the soil with fertile silts and saturated the land ready for germinating the seeds retained from the previous year’s harvest. Coinciding with the appearance in the night sky of the star Sirius, and closely associated with it, the new agricultural year was celebrated in an annual New Year festival called wep renpet meaning “opening of the year.” During the Saite 26th Dynasty (c.664-535BC) New Year flasks became a particularly popular celebratory item. They are found both in Egypt and abroad and are often decorated with papyrus and lily capitals. The lug handles on the shoulders are often in the form of the deity Thoth, represented as a baboon, responsible for knowledge, wisdom and the calculation of time. Nands of decoration around the body of the vessels and down the sides are also common. Many have hieroglyphs, often mentioning the wep renpet, together with favoured deities.

How did the Meols flask arrive in England?

Coins found in the northwest, including examples from the Wirral. Source: Philpott 2020, Journal of the Chester Archaeological Society, table V.1, p.53

F.H. Thompson discusses whether the Meols flask had been acquired at the St Menas shrine when it was brought to England or whether it was brought to the area at a much later date. There is no reason to doubt that it was manufactured in the 6th or 7th centuries, and there are arguments in favour of it having been brought to England at that time. As Thompson says, “finds of the late Saxon period from Meols are sufficiently common to suggest that this flask may well be contemporary.” The presence of three mid to late 6th century Byzantine coins in the Meols area are consistent with connections to the southeast Mediterranean at that time. This view is supported by William Anderson who believes that the flask may be associated with other evidence of long-distant contact, “namely amphorae and imported fine wares found at Tintagel in Cornwall, and other sites in Ireland, Wales, England and Scotland,” possibly representing direct trading contacts between the Mediterranean and and the west of Britain. Robert Philpott’s examination of early Byzantine coins from the northwest also supports a Mediterranean connection: “Although we lack diagnostic material to identify the elite with whom Mediterranean trade was conducted, the finds indicate an entry point at the port of Meols.” The Wirral coins, from Leasowe, Moreton,, Seacombe and Landican were issued over a period between 518 – 541 AD.

Susanne Bangert suggests two primary routes by which objects from Alexandria may have reached Britain. The first is an overland route across Europe, along the Rhine corridor or through Italy and via the Alps. Her other proposed route, by ship, would have passed through the Straits of Gibraltar and north up the Atlantic coast, putting into ports along the west cost of Britain, including Cornwall, Wales and perhaps Meols.

Beautiful photograph of Hilbre Island. Source: hilbreisland.info

It is a possibility that the pilgrim flask was connected with early Christian pilgrimage at Hilbre Island, just off the Wirral as part of a global pilgrimage circuit to Christian monasteries and shrines. As unlikely as this sounds, it is not beyond the bounds of probability, as some of the Egyptian pilgrim flasks in England are found in the rough vicinity of former monastic sites (Canterbury, Derby, Durham, Norton, Runcorn and York). Christianity arrived in England during the Roman occupation in the 4th century, after which it existed alongside pagan religions of the Anglo-Saxons until the arrival of Irish Christianity on the one hand, and the arrival of St Augustine’s mission to England from Rome in 597. Monasteries were established in both traditions, but many were destroyed by Viking raids during the 9th century. Only those of the Roman tradition were restored in the 10th century. Pilgrimage was a popular activity in Britain from the early Christian period until the end of the medieval period, and it is possible that the Meols flask was deposited or lost during a pilgrim’s visit to the tidal Hilbre Island. Although a monastic cell was established in the late 11th century by St Werburgh’s Benedictine Abbey in Chester, there was apparently a much earlier shrine to the obscure St Hildeberga, which the St Werburgh charters appear to confirm.

An example from Baldock, Herts., in the Letchworth Museum, no.7421. Source: Fitzpatrick-Matthews 2010

Another possibility is that although originally purchased at the Menas shrine, the Meols (and other English flask finds) were brought not directly from the site, but during near-contemporary or slightly later periods from Alexandria, locations in the Levant and elsewhere in the eastern Mediterranean, where many more Menas flasks have been found. A generation or two on from the original pilgrims who purchased them, they may have entered local markets as devotional curios, sold by their families to contemporary travellers to raise cash. Then too, at a much later date, it could have been acquired as an antiquity by a collector, or as a travel memento by someone on military service in the Near East, or making the Grand Tour. Philpott, in his analysis of coins from northwest England argues against this: “If the coins were modern losses by tourists or soldiers who served in eastern Europe, the Middle East or north Africa, as has often been asserted, the material recovered by metal detectorists should range more widely through the Byzantine era to embrace, for example, the common anonymous bronze issues of the late tenth to eleventh centuries, as well as other coins of Turkish, north African or Near Eastern origin.”

On balance, the available evidence seems to point a to a connection between the port of Meols and the eastern Mediterranean until the 7th century, and it seems likely that the Meols flask was introduced, along with other objects like the coins described by Philpott, at that time.

Final comments

There are four distinct phases that we know of in the life of the Meols pilgrim flask. The first is its production. Raw material sources were acquired, and the flask was manufactured. The raw material was clay, very easy to source in the Nile Delta, and the manufacturing process was mundane. Hundreds of pilgrim flasks have survived, and this is one of the less elaborate examples, produced quickly and without flourishes. The fact that the Menas pilgrim flask left the site of Abu Menas strongly suggests that it was purchased by a pilgrim, who bought one of the less expensive examples, and was probably not particularly well off.

The site of Abu Mena today. Source: Wikimedia Commons

Next, we find the pilgrim flask in Meols, so we know that it travelled. There are a number of possible explanations for how it left the eastern Mediterranean and arrived in Meols, all of them viable. Found in sand dunes, which cover the site of a small port, with a market, the object could have been hidden in a building that decayed, or may have been lost by its owner in or around the settlement.

The discovery of the flask in 1955, another stepping stone in its history, resulted in it being donated to its next port of call, the Grosvenor Museum, in 1956. The museum deemed it of sufficient curiosity value to have replicas made, which were sold in the museum’s shop.

Subsequently, a number of academic papers were written about it. Peter Carrington published a photograph of it in his book on Chester in 1994 (as mentioned at the beginning of this article, bringing us full circle), and it was described in some detail in a monograph about Meols in 2007. This little object has had quite an interesting life.

Although this is the story of an object, its real value lies in its part of a much bigger story – that of early Christian pilgrimage. When considered in the light of other pilgrim sites, and other objects that have travelled from the eastern Mediterranean to other parts of the world, it becomes much more than an object, and part of a fascinating narrative about people, movements and the way in which Christianity was understood and expressed in the 6th and early 7th centuries. The St Menas pilgrim flasks also offer the chance to explore the relationship between Christianity and Egypt’s pagan past, via the survival of some of PHaraonic Egypt’s ideas and traditions in object form. Finally, the presence of the pilgrim flask at Meols raises questions about the development of trade and transport on the Wirral and in Chester in the post-Roman period.

If anyone has anything to add to the story of the Meols pilgrim flask, do get in touch.

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The Wirral, showing Meols and Chester. Source: Google Maps

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Sources:

Books and papers:

Anderson, W. 2004. An archaeology of late antique pilgrim flasks. Anatolian Studies 54, p.79-93.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/3643040

Anderson, W. 2007. Menas flasks in the West: pilgrimage and trade at the end of antiquity. Ancient West and East 6, p.221-43

Bagnall, R.S. 2001. Archaeological Work on Hellenistic and Roman Egypt, 1995–2000. American Journal of Archaeology. Archaeological Institute of America, 105 (2), p.227–243

Bangert, S. 2007 Menas ampullae: a case study of long-distance contacts. In A. Harris (ed) Incipient Globalization? Long-distance contacts in the sixth century. British Archaeological Reports International Series 1644 / Reading Medieval Studies 32. p.27-33.
https://centaur.reading.ac.uk/84537/1/RMS-2006-04_S._Bangert,_Menas_ampullae,_a_case_study_of_long-distance_contacts.pdf

Bourriau, J. 2004. The beginning of amphora production in Egypt, in J. Bourriau and J. Phillips (eds.), Invention and Innovation. The Social Context of Technological Change 2. Egypt, the Aegean and the Near East, 1650-1150 BC, Oxford, 78-95

Brooks Hedstrom, D.L. 2019. Archaeology of Early Christianity in Egypt. In Pettegrew, D.K., Caraher, W.R. and Davis, T.D (eds). The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Archaeology, Oxford Handbooks, Oxford Academic.

Carrington, P. 1994. Chester. Batsford / English Heritage (flask mentioned on page 54, and shown on page 56, figure 33)

Craggs, J.D. 1982. Hilbre: The Cheshire Island: Its History and Natural History. Liverpool University Press

Farmer, David. 2011 (5th edition, revised). The Oxford Dictionary of Saints. Oxford University Press.

Fitzpatrick-Matthews, K.J. 2016. Defining Fifth-century Ceramics in North Hertfordshire. Internet Archaeology, vol. 41.
https://intarch.ac.uk/journal/issue41/4/toc.html

Griffiths, D. and Bangert, S. 2007. Ceramic: The St Menas Ampulla. In Griffiths, D., Philpott, R.A. and Egan, G. 2007 (see below), p.58-9

Griffiths, D., Philpott, R.A. and Egan, G. 2007. Meols. The Archaeology of the North Wirral Coast. Discoveries and observations in the 19th and 20th centuries, with a catalogue of collections. Oxford University School of Archaeology Monograph 68, Institute of Archaeology, University of Oxford
https://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/archiveDS/archiveDownload?t=arch-966-1/dissemination/pdf/Meols_text_2020_complete-lo.pdf

Grossmann, P. 1998. The Pilgrimage Center of Abû Mînâ. in D. Frankfurter (ed.), Pilgrimage & Holy Space in Late Antique Egypt. Leiden-Boston-Köln, Brill. p.282

Harris, A. 2003 Byzantium, Britain and the West: the archaeology of cultural identity AD 400-650. Tempus.

O’Ferrall, R.S.M. 1951. A Pilgrim’s Flask found in Derby. Journal of Derbyshire Archaeology and Natural History Society 71, p.78-9.

Philpott, R.A. 2020. Early Byzantine Copper Coins from Lowland North-West England. New Finds from Wirral, Cheshire and West Lancashire. Journal of the Chester Archaeological Society, volume 90, 2020, p.51-70

Richards, J.D., Naylor, J. and Holas-Clark, C. Anglo-Saxon Landscape and Economy: using portable antiquities to study Anglo-Saxon and Viking Age England. 4.4.5. Meols, Cheshire. Internet Archaeology
https://intarch.ac.uk/journal/issue25/2/4.4.35.html

Stevenson, A. 2015. The Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology: Characters and Collections. Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, p.35

Thompson F.H. 1956. Pilgrim’s flask from Meols. Journal of the Chester Archaeological Society 43, p.48-9

Wyn Griffiths, D. 1991. Anglo-Saxon England and the Irish Sea Region AD 800 – 1100. An Archaeological Study of the Lower Dee and Mersey as a Border Area. A Thesis presented for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Department of Archaeology, the University of Durham
http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/1488/1/1488.pdf

Websites:

Gallorini, C. Innovating through Interactions: A Tale of Three Flasks.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/260495223_Innovation_Through_Interactions_A_Tale_of_Three_’Pilgrim_Flasks’

Kilroe, L. 2014. Biography of an Egyptian Pilgrim Vessel. UCL 28th February 2014
UCL Culture Blog
https://bit.ly/3kBc65O

Medieval London. Ampulla
Fordham University
https://medievallondon.ace.fordham.edu/collections/show/90

St George Orthodox Ministry. The Coptic Pilgrims of the Wirral, 4th November 2020
http://www.stgeorgeministry.com/the-coptic-pilgrims-of-the-wirral/

100 years ago today: Finding Tutankhamen

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Detail of an ivory box lid, showing Tutankhamen receiving flowers from his wife Ankhesenamun. Source: Wikipedia

Today in 1922, 26th November, Howard Carter broke the seals that protected the door to the tomb of a king called Tutankhamen, whose name had, until 1922, been known from only a handful of small, relatively insignificant objects. When he discovered the entrance to the tomb, Carter was full of hope that this was the longed-for culmination of his quest to find the only intact royal tomb in the Valley of the Kings in the religious centre of Egypt, now known as Luxor.

Peering through a small hole that he had broken through the door into the first chamber, and fearing that he would find yet another empty tomb robbed out in antiquity, the shimmering light of his candle picked out strange, shifting shapes, and the unmistakeable glitter of gold. Carter spent the next decade cataloguing and conserving the fabulous, the fascinating and the downright staggering. The king called Tutankhamen, little more than a name without a clearly understood identity, exploded into early 20th century consciousness and became an instant sensation.

In celebration of the centenary of this extraordinary find, the Royal Mint has released a Tutankhamen centenary £5.00 coin, and I am glad to see that Egyptologist and excellent author Joyce Tyldesley has published produced a new book about the king for 2022. Otherwise the celebration of what was, for better or worse, a very British discovery seems to have confined itself to a few magazine articles and some largely recycled television shows. Even in the wake of a somewhat lacklustre response to the annivrsary, it has been a good time to sit back and contemplate those heady days of the discovery 100 years ago, and to wonder why the entirety of the tomb’s contents remains unpublished today.

Although the intention with the posts on this blog is to confine myself mainly to local subjects, this time there is no connection with the Chester-Wrexham area, but as I retain a personal interest in Egypt’s archaeology I decided to throw caution to the winds and go off-topic. I started my working life as an archaeologist, but starvation forced me to find more predictable work. It was many years later that a trip to the Eastern and Western Deserts of Egypt made up my mind to return to university to do a PhD on Egyptian prehistory. I was based at UCL, where I formed a long and ongoing relationship with the wonderful Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology in London. These, then, are my excuses for pure self-indulgence. The Tutankhamen story is a great one and continues to be a marvellous and constantly emerging insight both into the history, archaeology and art of Egypt, and into how research is done and how history is written.

Biban el-Muluk (“Gates of the Kings”)

Frontpiece of Volume 1 of Description de l’Egypt. Source: Wikipedia

The discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamen tomb by Howard Carter in 1922 begins with Napoleon Bonaparte’s invasion of Egypt in 1798. Along with his army, Napoleon sent his extraordinary team of “savants,” some 150 intellectuals and scientists who recorded everything they found about Egypt’s present and past. The books produced by Napoleon’s savants, complete with beautiful illustrations of Egypt’s Pharaonic heritage, were now circulating in western Europe and America and being received with rapture. Jumping on the bandwagon of this enthusiasm, museums started to send representatives to Egypt to secure items for their collections. Some of these agents were little better than treasure hunters. The objective was the discovery of beautiful objects to furnish museums, not the participation in historical research.

Less than a quarter of a century after Napoleon’s arrival in Egypt, the French scholar and polymath Jean François Champollion (1790-1832) used the trilingual text on the Rosetta Stone to crack the translation of the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic script, unlocking the door to Egyptian religious beliefs, social organization, political dealings and wars. The year was 1822, a full century before the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamen. Many more decades of research were required to build up a body of translated texts, from which ancient Egyptian history might begin to be articulated and understood.

Although the man who eventually discovered the tomb of Tutankhamen was Howard Carter (1874-1939), who was a very different proposition from the run-of-the-mill glory hunters who had so often preceded him, it was not Carter but the retired American lawyer Theodore Davis (1838-1915) who had first stab at finding an intact tomb in Biban el-Muluk, Gateway of the Kings, more popularly known today as the Valley of the Kings.

Panorama of the Valley of the Kings. Photograph by Nikola Smolenski. Source: Wikipedia

The Valley of the Kings is located on the east bank of the Nile at Luxor. It had been the burial place of many New Kingdom (c.1550-1099BC) kings of Egypt since about 1490BC when Thutomse I selected it as his burial place. The last king to be buried there was probably Ramesses X in around 1099BC. Between these two burial events, some 390 years apart, around 65 royal and noble individuals were entombed in the Valley, but all of the known royal tombs had been robbed for their treasures, an activity that began during the ancient Egyptian period. In spite of policing of the valley throughout the New Kingdom, and the promise of the death penalty for thieves, tomb robbery was endemic. Although some tombs were robbed via their entrances, other robbers had ignored the front doors, and instead tunnelled in from above or from the side to avoid detection.

Tomb robbery reached such a crisis point that In the 21st Dynasty (1070–945 BC, some 800 years after the death of Tutankhamen) the High Priests of the god Amen gathered together the mummified remains of the kings who had survived the tomb robbers, rewrapped them, provided them with labels and stored them safely in hidden tombs known today as caches. The bodies were, themselves, rarely of little interest to tomb robbers, who were seeking the rich, valuable and easily accessible treasures that accompanied the dead, particularly precious metals that could be melted down and sold on, or jewellery incorporating precious gems, that could be broken up and re-used.

The East Valley. Source: Wikipedia

Robbing tombs was not, unfortunately, confined to antiquity, and as western interest in Egyptian art developed, new objects began to appear in the antiquities markets of Cairo and Alexandria. Sir William Flinders Petrie, one of the pioneers of serious archaeological investigation in Egypt, was amongst those purchasing for research purposes, but others were hoovering up artefacts in much greater numbers to sell to both museums and private collectors. The sudden appearance on the market of all these objects, some of them truly remarkable, raised obvious questions about who was delivering them and where they were coming from. The burial grounds of the kings and nobles were all on the east bank of the Nile at Luxor, and nearby was a sprawling village. It emerged that some local families had become expert at locating tombs, mainly of the nobility, some of which lay beneath their homes, and when there became a demand for ancient Egyptian objects, began to empty tomb contents piece by piece to earn a living from the sales. By trickle-feeding objects into the antiquities market, they hoped to divert suspicion.

The possibility that there might remain an intact tomb was receding all the time. Those royal tombs that had been opened by the early 20th century revealed splendid architectural achievements and stunning decorative schemes, capturing complex religious ideas, but relatively few objects had been found. They hinted at former treasure troves, and that raised hopes in the minds of explorers. This was the specific dream of Theodore Davis when he began his excavations in the Valley of the Kings in 1902. Davis, a retired American lawyer, was granted the concession for the Valley of the Kings, in spite of his lack of archaeological training. A concession is a type of license to excavate, and the system still operates in Egypt today. When it is granted to an individual or institution, no-one else is permitted to excavate within the zone covered by the concession.

Funerary mask of Thuya. Source: Wikipedia

Davis was churning through the Valley of the Kings like a human bulldozer. In 1905, three years after he was awarded the concession, the dream of an intact royal tomb suddenly became a realistic proposition when Davis found the tomb of Yuya and his wife Thuya, numbered KV46 (KV standing for King’s Valley). Yuya and his wife Thuya were non-royal nobles who were allocated a burial space within the Valley of the Kings because they were parents of Tiye. Tiye became the wife of Amenhotep III, mother of Akhenaten and grandmother of Tutankhamen. The burial chamber of KV46 was was stuffed full of fabulous artefacts, an unambiguous but tantalizing indication that an intact royal tomb might yet be discovered. In total, Davis is credited with discovering 30 tombs between 1902 and 1914. He also found three items bearing the name of Tutankhamen, who appeared to be a missing king. One of these was found in 1907 in the unpromisingly named Pit 54, which contained abandoned objects relating directly to the burial of the king, including embalming materials and storage jars.

Howard Carter (1874 –1939). Source: Wikipedia

In the meantime, Howard Carter could merely watch the work in the Valley unfold and keep himself busy elsewhere. Carter was well respected in Egyptology circles both as an archaeologist and as a member of the Antiquities Service. He had gone to Egypt as an illustrator and watercolour painter and excelled at both. As an archaeologist he had trained under the most notable pioneer of archaeological techniques at that time, Sir William Flinders Petrie (1853–1942). He had moved on to become Inspector-General of Monuments of Upper Egypt, as a much-valued member of the Egyptian Antiquities Service from from 1900 to 1904, when he resigned on a point of principal over an argument with a French tourist. Carter remained in Egypt hoping for the right job to come along, hiring himself out in the interim for various projects, nibbling around the edges of ancient Egyptian exploration in Luxor. One of the more useful short-term appointments that he picked up was the recording the objects from the tomb of Yuya and Thuya, which gave him an intimate understanding of both the contents of the tomb, and the potential of the valley.

George Herbert, 5th Earl of Carnarvon. Source: Wikimedia Commons

In 1906 Carter began excavating for the Earl of Carnarvon, who was in Luxor for his health, Carnarvon had been digging on an amateur basis but had caught the archaeological bug and wanted to ally himself to a credible archaeologist who could help him to take his new interest on to a more viable and formal footing. Carter and Carnarvon watched the discoveries being made in the Valley of the Kings with envious eyes. After 12 years of excavation and discovery, Davis feared that the valley was exhausted. It was only on his death in 1915 that the concession came up for grabs, and Lord Carnarvon moved fast to secure it for himself and Carter.

The First World War interrupted all archaeological activity in Egypt, and Carter himself was employed as a diplomatic courier. However, by 1917 life had settled down sufficiently for him to resume full time archaeological work in Luxor. By the time that Carnarvon’s Valley of the Kings concession could be acted upon, Carter had a strategy. He suspected that the fugitive references on objects to a king called Tutankhamen found by Davis, were far more important than anyone had yet understood. Although various royal mummies had been identified in the 21st Dynasty caches, Tutankhamen was not amongst them. Carter believed that the objects represented an as yet undiscovered tomb, one that might have escaped the attention of the ancient Egyptian tomb robbers, and he was sure that he could find it by digging down to the bedrock of the valley.

KV62

Isometric diagram showing the tomb of Tutankhamen, by R.F. Morgan. Source: Wikipedia

Carter’s first years of excavation in the valley were profoundly disappointing, both to himself as an archaeologist with hopes of making the ultimate discovery, and to Lord Carnarvon who was footing the bill. Carter was taking no chances, and wherever he started a new excavation, worked down to the bedrock, but the untouched tomb remained elusive. As Nick Reeves writes in The Complete Tutankhamun

Countless boys and men laboured to move thousands upon thousands of tones of limestone rubble by basked and hand-propelled Decauville railway. But finds were few.

In 1922, after five years of fruitless investment in Carter’s hunt for an intact tomb, Lord Carnarvon was wearied of failure but Carter was able to convince him to fund one last season. For Carter, knowing that he was the only person left believing that an intact tomb remained to be found, it was his last chance. Carnarvon did not bother travelling to Egypt for the excavation season, so when Carter found a partially concealed tomb entrance on found 4th November 1922, Carnarvon was at home at Highclere Castle in Hampshire.

Stephen Cross’s water flow diagram showing how flash floods cascaded into the central area where KV62, black dot on the far left, is located. Source: Stephen Cross (reference in Sources)

In the event, the tomb’s doorway had been hidden not by some devious ancient Egyptian method of concealment but by the prosaic deposition of layers of liquid mud carrying loose stone and other debris. Although it rains rarely in Luxor, when it does it, it does it properly, and the loose, dry sand, bits of stone and other surface materials dislodge instantly in the flash floods to become a thick, debris-bearing liquid that cascades down flood channels towards the floodplain below. At the end of the 18th Dynasty (c.1292 BC), a particularly fierce flash flood is thought to have plunged into the central area from different directions to where tombs KV55, KV62 (Tutankhamen) and KV63 are located. Where the channels met, in a less steeply inclined part of the valley, it slowed, depositing some of its muddy load, 1m (3ft) thick, whilst the rest continued downhill, flooding KV7 (Ramesses II) and the enormous KV5 (the sons of Ramesses II). The deposits then baked solid in the heat of the sun and looked very much like the surrounding natural bedrock. Another royal tomb, dating to the 19th Dynasty, had subsequently been excavated over the top of Tutankhamen’s tomb, but had not breached it. Huts dating to a later pharaoh were built over the top of both tombs, keeping the entrance of KV62 safe for centuries.

Carter’s policy of digging down through anything that stood in his way to reach the underlying bedrock was labour-intensive but rewarded him with the entrance to the tomb. The seals that Carter could see on the partially uncovered doorway to the tomb were badly worn and there was nothing on the visible section to identify who the owner might have been. Even though those seals were unbroken, there was absolutely no guarantee that the tomb was intact, because robbers might have tunnelled directly into the chambers. Frustratingly, Carter needed to notify Lord Carnarvon of the discovery, and await his arrival from England. He sent the following telegram to Carnarvon:

At last have made wonderful discovery in Valley; a magnificent tomb with seals intact; re-covered for your arrival; congratulations.

That night Carter wrote prosaically in his diary “Discovered tomb under tomb of Ramsses VI investigated same & found seals intact.” The following day, he began to put in place some basic infrastructure to prepare for the opening of the tomb. It must have been a period of terrible anxiety, but even with the limitations of travel in the early 1900s, Carnarvon and his daughter managed to arrive in Luxor less than three weeks later, on 23rd November 1922. Work resumed immediately.

Once the door was fully cleared, the names framed in cartouches announced that this was the tomb of Tutankhamen, vindication for Carter, who had searched for the king for 5 years. He must have been on Schrödinger-type tenterhooks, full of hope that he was about to make the biggest find in Egyptian archaeological history, but fearing that this was yet another robbed tomb. The passage on the other side of the door had been blocked with rubble by its builders to protect it from potential tomb robbers, and this had to be cleared. Another door was revealed.

Inner coffin of Tutankhamen in the Egyptian Museum, Cairo. Source: Wikipedia

On 26th November 1922, the second door was breached with a hole large to act as an inspection hatch. Carter was probably expecting to find another corridor on the other side, a long slender pathway with wide shallow steps, sloping gently downwards and possibly flanked by one or two side chambers until it eventually reached a burial chamber. These long, slender passage tombs, often with a dog-leg turn midway, were typical of a number of previous 18th Dynasty tombs. Carter made the small hole in the new door, and pushed his candle through:

At first I could see nothing, the hot air escaping from the chamber causing the candle to flicker, but presently, as my eyes grew accustomed to the light, details of the room within emerged slowly from the mist, strange animals, statues and gold – everywhere the glint of gold. For the moment – an eternity it must have seemed to the others standing by – I was struck dumb with amazement, and when Lord Carnarvon, unable to stand the suspense any longer, inquired anxiously, “can you see anything?” it was all I could do so get out the words, “Yes, wonderful things.”

Howard Carter with one of his team examining the remains of Tutankhamen. Photograph by Harry Burton. Source: Wikipedia

Electric light was soon installed, a metal gate replaced the wooden grille in front of the door and a small but illustrious team of specialists was assembled to carry out the long, slow work. Carter and his team continued to work in the tomb for six years, supervising the recording of the objects in situ, followed by their removal and accessioning into the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.

Now that he had found the tomb, Howard Carter was in no hurry. He was organized and conscientious, taking years to empty the tomb, maintaining detailed visual and written records as he proceeded. His diaries, notes and record cards are still available, digitized for online use by the Griffiths Institute. Perhaps the most immediately powerful record of the tomb content was provided by the photographer Harry Burton, who did a sublime job of capturing images of all that was found. His photographs are works of documentary art, forming a superlative record of how the objects in the tomb were deposited. Although the objects in glass cabinets in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo are beautiful, there is nothing like Burton’s photographs for understanding what the tomb looked like when it was found.

The antechamber of KV62 as it was found, photographed by Harry Burton. Source: Wikipedia

The tomb was emptied section by section. It would take Carter another decade before the job of recording, removing and conserving the objects in the tomb was complete. The sheer immensity of the task is hinted at by the photographs, but the simple fact that over 5000 objects had been crammed into that small set of rooms gives a better indication of the task facing Carter and his team. The sheer richness of the just the smaller objects found in the tomb are indicated by this list in the book The Complete Tutankhamun by Nicholas Reeves, on the contents page for Chapter 5:

Guardian Statues; Ritual Figures and Magical Objects; the shabtis; Little Golden Shrine; Wooden Funerary Models; Ritual Couches; Jewellery, amulets and regalia; Clothing and Textiles; Cosmetic Objects; Games and Game Boxes; Musical instruments; Writing materials and equipment; ‘Heirlooms’; Chariots and chariot equipment; weaponry; Sticks, staves and fans; Bends and headrests; Chairs and thrones; Boxes and chests; Tools and lamps; Metal and stone vessels.; Faïence and glass; Wine jars and other pottery; baskets; foodstuffs.

Pectoral with a translucent Libyan Desert Glass scarab at its centre. Source: Archaeology Wiki

Some of the objects were more unexpected than others. An iron dagger made of meteoric material that had presumably been found in the desert was included in the mummy bindings. A huge piece of Libyan Desert Glass, probably created during meteorite impacts on the desert sand, was incorporated into a stunning “pectoral,” a type of elaborate necklace that sat on the chest. These materials are very rare, and clearly had a unique intrinsic value in the 18th Dynasty.

That all of this remained in the tomb, with an awful lot more besides, is very surprising given that the tomb had been robbed twice during the period that the valley remained in use, probably not long after the tomb was first sealed, and certainly before the flash food at the end of the 18th Dynasty. Both incursions left evidence. The first robbery accessed the tomb via the entrance, after which the corridor between the entrance and the first internal door was blocked with rubble and the door re-sealed. The second robbers accessed the tomb via a tunnel excavated through the surrounding rock. Carter’s description of the scene resulting in the Annexe is evocative:

One [tomb robber] – there would probably not have been room for more than one – had crept into the chamber, and had then hastily but systematically ransacked its entire contents, emptying boxes, throwing things aside, piling them one upon another, and occasionally passing objects through the hole to his companions for closer examination in the outer chamber. He had done is work just about as thoroughly as an earthquake.

Carter estimated that some 60% of the jewellery was stolen, based on dockets made by the priests at the time of the burial which, when assembled, made up a form of inventory. It makes sense that the robbers would have focused only on the objects that were both very valuable and most easily portable. Items that could be easily sold on or melted down would have been prioritized. Gold might be chipped off larger objects, but the bigger the object, the more likely it was to be left behind. Still, a lot of small items and gold were left behind, so why did the robbers not return to complete the job? It seems most likely that they were discovered and then dealt with as usual, being subjected to torture before being put to death, both as punishment for desecrating a royal religious site, and as a warning to others. Once the tomb’s entrance was certainly resealed, the act of the muddy flood waters completed the job of disguising the entrance, until Carter came along.

A political time-bomb

Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon at the door of the burial chamber. Source: Wikimedia Commons

As the tomb’s fame gathered a momentum all of its own, it also became a ticking bomb. Lord Carnarvon, in a bid to simplify dealings with the media, made the colossal diplomatic error of signing a contract with The Times newspaper to grant them exclusive rights to the news emerging from the tomb, offending both Egyptian and international media outlets. Worse, it endowed the enterprise an unlooked for and very undesirable air of colonialist arrogance that gave the governing Egyptian nationalists all the ammunition they needed to draw attention to unwelcome foreign interference in Egyptian state affairs. To all intents and purposes, Carnarvon and Carter were hijacking access to Egypt’s own heritage. The tension was corrosive, and impacted the relationship between Carnarvon and Carter, who were deeply divided on how to deal with the situation.

When Lord Carnarvon died on 5th April 1923, aged 57, from an infected insect bite, Carter found himself without a buffer zone between himself and the various interested and aggrieved parties. He was no diplomat, and contrived to alienate all the key government and administrative officials whose support he should have been seeking. In a remarkable act of pique, Carter downed tools, stopped work, citing “the impossible restrictions and discourtesies of the Egyptian Public Works Department and its antiquity service.” It was a foolish move that not only infuriated the Egyptian authorities but gave them the leverage they needed to oust him. Carter had infringed the terms of the concession, and was now banned from the tomb. Legal action failed, and Carter left the country, leaving the Egyptian government to declare that it intended to continue the work itself.

Tourists gathered around the entrance of KV62 in 1923, the year after the discovery. Source: Wikipedia

Carter was only permitted to return after a national emergency was triggered by the murder of a British diplomat, followed by the downfall of the nationalist government and the renewal of firmer greater British control over Egypt. A new concession was granted in January 1925, but this time there was to be no exclusive deal with The Times, and there was to be no attempt to remove any of the tomb’s contents from Egypt. Carter died in 1939, only seven years after completing his work on the objects found in the tomb. He had been planning a six-volume publication of the tomb, but it never happened.

Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon had found the tomb of Tutankhamen, and a well-chosen team of specialists examined and emptied it, but there was still considerable research required to learn about the king himself, and to learn more about what the objects in the tomb could impart to researchers about 18th Dynasty Egypt itself. Today, although many individual academic papers have been written by specialists in certain particular fields, like leather or jewellery, and dozens of coffee table books have been written, no single, centralized co-ordinated project based on the tomb has been masterminded. Although Tutankhamen the tourist attraction and work of art are very familiar, Tutankhamen the ultimate resource for primary research has somehow fallen between the gaps.

There are seriously strong arguments for getting to grips with the entire collection as a single co-ordinated project, leveraging worldwide specializations and skills, with research underpinned by a strong theoretical and methodological approach. Storing and exhibiting items is not the same as understanding them, and digging without publishing leads to dead ends. Carter died before he could publish is planned 6-volume treatise, and although subsequent researchers have published piecemeal research papers according to their research interests, no centralized project has been attempted. At the very least, an online relational database of the objects in the Tutankhamen inventory, listing all the existing publications based on it, would be a valuable resource, to complement the Griffith Institute’s excellent online databases of the original records made by Howard Carter, Harry Burton and others.

Final Comments

Howard Carter’s discovery of Tutankhamen, sponsored by Lord Carnarvon, remains a great story, well worth re-telling 100 years later. Carter died before he could publish his 6-part planned treatise on the tomb, which remains a gap that has yet to be filled. Even so, the discovery remains a sensational find, with works of art that even Carter could not have imagined finding, filling gallery after gallery at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. Flipping through a book of pictures of the tomb, I continue to be amazed at how it could all have fitted into such a tiny set of spaces. Each piece is magnificent in its own right, and together the collection provides material confirmation of the story of the afterlife told in the hieroglyphic texts on tomb walls, building a vivid impression of the hopes and ambitions of ancient Egyptian royalty and nobility. In so many ways, Carter gave Tutankhamen an afterlife that the young king could never have imagined.

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Note: Tutankhamen versus Tutankhamun

The name of Tutankhamen. Source: pharaoh.se

Up until relatively recently the anglicized name of the king’s name was written as “Tutankhamun,” although Howard Carter spelled the name with an “e” instead of the more familiar “u” in his books about the tomb. Ancient Egyptian script omitted vowels, and a series of conventions were therefore used to make ancient Egyptian words pronounceable today. As standardization has become increasingly desirable, the new system of dealing with the problem of missing vowels is to use the letter “e” where no other clues are available.

To explain a little further for anyone interested in how this works, the process of anglicizing hieroglyphs goes through two steps. The first step, which you can see in the above image from the pharoah.se website, shows a line in italics, and this is called transliteration. A formalized set of characters and symbols are used to capture a writing system that may include elements not used in English (or German, French etc) but are recognizable to anyone studying ancient Egyptian texts. As you can see in the italicized line of transliteration above, as well as familiar alphabet characters there is an apostrophe and an “h” with a curved line under it. For publication and general chat, these are simplified into something that can be expressed using the English alphabet.

Alabaster vase from Gurob showing cartouches (name frames) of Tutankhamen. UC16021. Source: Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology

In the case of Tutankhamen this breaks down as follows (keep looking back at the hieroglyphic name shown above, with transliteration and translation).

Tutankhamen’s name is composed of three separate words, which Carter wrote as Tut-Ankh-Amen but are today run together as Tutankhamun (older convention) or Tutankhamen (newer convention). The middle hieroglyph in “Tut” (the little bird) is transliterated as a “w”, and the “a” in ankh is a hieroglyph that has no real equivalent in English and is transliterated with the apostrophe symbol. The third element of his name, which is the name of the great god Amen, is actually transliterated “imn,” the “a” of Amen being a hieroglyph usually transliterated as an “i.” In older books that tradition was to add a “u” between the “m” an “n” to make Amun, which made it easy to pronounce, but an “e” is the new standard. As this one name illustrates, the business of transliterating ancient Egyptian names into modern equivalents has a long way to go before real standardization is achieved.

You may be puzzled because the name Amen is written first. The name of the king is always written in his cartouches in the order Amen-Tut-Ankh. This is because the name of the god always takes precedence over the name of the king. This is termed “honorific transposition.” But his name was Tut-Ankh-Amen. Go figure 🙂

Finally, Tutankhamen was actually born Tutankhaten, and changed his name on the death of his father Akhenaten. But that’s another story.

Sources

This was written for fun, so I wrote most of it off the top of my head. I have, however, checked important details, dates and quotes in the books below. Any errors are of course my own.

Books and papers:

Carter, Howard 1927, republished 2007. The Tomb of Tutankhamen. Max Press (with an introduction by John Romer)
Carter, Howard and Mace, Arthur 1923, republished 2004. The Tomb of Tut Ankh Amen: Volume 1: Search Discovery and the Clearance of the Antechamber. Duckworth Egyptology
Cross, Stephen. W., 2008. The hydrology of the Valley of the Kings. The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, 94(1), 303–310.
Frayling, Christopher 1993. Protecting Tutankhamun. Conservation Journal. July 1993, Issue 08
Reeves, Nicholas 1990. The Complete Tutankhamun. The King, the tomb and the royal treasure. Thames and Hudson
Tyldesley, Joyce 2013. Tutankhamen’s Curse: The developing history of an Egyptian king. Profile Books
Tyldesley, Joyce 2022. Tutankhamun. Pharaoh-Icon-Enigma. Headline.

Websites:

Griffith Institute
http://www.griffith.ox.ac.uk

Harry Burton photographs
http://www.griffith.ox.ac.uk/gri/carter/gallery/

Excavation journals and diaries made by Howard Carter and Arthur Mace
http://www.griffith.ox.ac.uk/discoveringtut/journals-and-diaries/season-4/journal.html

Howard Carter watercolours, prior to the discovery of Tutankhamen. Griffith Institute.
http://www.griffith.ox.ac.uk/gri/Carter_birds.html

Mummy Bandage from Tutankhamun’s Embalming Cache (Pit 54) ca. 1336–1327 B.C.
https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/548838

The Amarna Project
https://www.amarnaproject.com/

The Theban Mapping Project
https://thebanmappingproject.com/

The Getty Conservation Institute: Conservation and Management of the Tomb of Tutankhamen (2009–2019)
https://www.getty.edu/conservation/our_projects/field_projects/tut/

Royal Mint Tutankhamun Centenary £5.00 coin
https://www.royalmint.com/shop/limited-editions/discovery-of-tutankhamuns-tomb/the-100th-anniversary-of-the-discovery-of-tutankhamuns-tomb-2022-5-brilliant-uncirculated-coin/

Egyptological
Libyan Desert Glass and the Breast Ornament of Tutankhamen
By Andie Byrnes. Published on Egyptological, September 9th 2011, Magazine Edition 2
http://lancastrian.net/kemet/2011/09/09/libyan-desert-glass-and-the-breast-ornament-of-tutankhamen-4291

An impressive exhibit of decorated Roman tombstones in Chester’s Grosvenor Museum

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Introduction

Chester’s role as an important Roman military headquarters surrounded by a growing settlement, known as Deva, is very well understood, but there is not a great deal to see on the ground. This means that Chester’s Roman legacy is largely preserved in excavated archaeological remains, some of which are on display in local museum spaces. There is a small gallery of Roman objects in the Grosvenor Museum in Chester showing a wide variety of artefact types, from elite pottery to drainage pipes, but to display some of the large number of Chester tombstones, a special exhibition space was was created for them in a dedicated room in the museum, showing them off to great effect.

The display opens with a Roman style couch under a canopy, setting the scene for a walk down a path between the tombstones, emulating one of the Roman roads heading out of Deva. The walls behind the tombstones capture the sense of the surrounding landscape, part military installation, part civilian settlement, and part rural vistas. The tombstones are organized either side of the “road,” each one facing out towards the visitor. Low level information boards, great for wheelchair users and children, show useful illustrations of key examples, together with translations of the texts.

In the discussion of tombstones below, each example is accompanied by an RIB (Roman Inscriptions of Britain) number. Each inscription in Britain has been given a unique number. When I was at university studying the Antonine Wall, the Roman Inscriptions In Britain were recorded in print, but this was obviously the sort of content that was best suited to a database, and one of the best online resources for Roman Britain is Roman Inscriptions in Britain online. As a resource it has been developed and expanded, and the user interface is excellent. If you want to know more about any of the tomb stones mentioned below, this is a great place to start, with translations, illustrations and further references all available.

Burials and memorials

Altar RIB 3149, found at the Chester amphitheatre

The Romans disposed of their dead in a variety of ways that included both inhumation (deposition in the ground) and cremation. Wealthier Roman inhumation burials in Britain were traditionally accompanied by this sort of memorial, and might include tomb stones and commemorative slabs. In terms of how they were used, tombstones are much like the grave stones and chest-like tombs found in Christian churchyard cemeteries today, but dedicated to different deities and with far more elaborate scenes depicting the owners of the graves engaged in activities that showed them in activities that they enjoyed, or which highlighted particular qualities.

Collectively, these memorials are a useful source of information about Roman life and death in Britain, but individual memorials also have the potential to tell their own stories about the owners, the way in which the owners wanted to be remembered and the ideas with which they wanted to be associated. Although the Grosvenor Museum’s display primarily features tombstones, there are some altars too. Altars could be found in similar contexts, but might also be found in homes, public buildings and at religious sites. The above example from the museum’s exhibit, RIB 3149, was found in a room behind the amphitheatre arena’s wall during excavations in 1966, and reads, in translation, “To the goddess Nemesis, (from) Sextius Marcianus, centurion, in consequence of a vision.”

Roman cemeteries

Roman Chester with modern roads superimposed (click to enlarge). Source: British History Online

The area around the fortress was under military control and the location of the cemeteries was decided by the Praefectus castorum (camp prefect), who decided where civilian quarters and various facilities were to be located. Roman law was very strict on the matter of refusing burial with in urban and residential areas. Roman cemeteries were built outside towns and cities, and depending on the size of the urban centre there might be a number of them. The earliest tombstones and altars were erected along the sides of roads, but more formal cemeteries would have been established over time. These will have been destroyed as Chester spread out in all directions during subsequent centuries. Most of the stones in the museum, sculpted or inscribed, or both, had therefore originally come from one or more Roman cemeteries, and were probably dumped somewhere together to make space for urban spread.

Plan of part of the Infirmary Field excavation. Source: Chester ShoutWiki

One cemetery was revealed during rescue excavations carried out between 1912 and 1917 by Professor Robert Newstead. It was located at Infirmary Field to the west of the fortress, the site of a planned new wing for Chester Royal Infirmary. The presence of a possible cemetery had been known since the mid 19th century due to the discovery of burials adjacent to the Infirmary in 1858 and 1863. During his excavations Newstead found that the cemetery contained men, women and children who, judging from the objects in graves, were both military and civilian.

The tombstones in the walls

Section of the Chester City walls thought to be Roman, sitting on bedrock above the canal.

The high sandstone walls that surround the city of Chester were originally established in the Roman period, but were built upon in subsequent periods to repair damage and to raise the overall height of the walls. There are only a few places where Roman phases can be clearly identified with confidence, such as that shown on the right. The repair of the walls over time incorporated both newly quarried stone, and whatever stone was lying around from earlier collapses.

Although tombstones and altars are known from various locations around Chester, most of the Chester tomb stones in the Grosvenor display are from a cache found incorporated into the Chester city walls, completely divorced from their original funerary context, but would once have come from one or more cemeteries. The re-use of ancient building materials is common the world over. In ancient Egypt, the Pharaoh Horemheb re-used painted blocks from palace buildings of the heretic Pharaoh Akhenaten as rubble fill to create the thick walls of his monumental gateway at the temple of Karnak on the Nile. In both the Chester and Karnak cases, these items used as building materials have enormous historical value to us today as information about the past, but were simply unwanted rubbish when they were employed as building materials.

Plate A from Cox’s publication of his excavations in 1891

In 1883 the Chester City Surveyor Mr Matthew Jones was overseeing repairs to a section of the lower courses of stonework in the walls and the fill behind them near to Morgan’s Mount. As they prepared the site for the work he realized that he was looking at pieces of Roman stonework and that one was clearly part of a tomb stone, and he retrieved what he could see. Although no further investigations were carried out in1883, further repair work was required in 1887 between Northgate and the King Charles Tower, this time rather more extensive, and more Roman funerary pieces were found. Again, they had been used to repair the lower courses of the wall. So many were found this time that it was decided to extend the work and locate more of Chester’s Roman heritage. The Chester Archaeological Society, founded in 1849 (and still going strong today), was brought in to supervise the investigation of the wall to the west of the Northgate between 1890 and 1892. Taking all the finds from 1883, 1887 and the 1890-92 excavations, more than 150 stones were found, of which the Grosvenor exhibit is a tiny sample showing some of the best of the examples.

Key features of tombstones

Tombstone of Flavius Callimorphus and Serapion. RIB 558

The earliest tombstones and altars known from Chester date to the 1st century. For example, the tombstone of Flavius Callimorphus showing him with his son or nephew Serapion (aged 42 and 3 ½ years old respectively) was discovered at the Roodee in 1874, in situ over a grave, and was erected by Flavius’s brother Thesaeus (RIB 558). These are Greek names which may indicate that they were freedman and/or traders who had settled in Chester. Flavius is shown reclining on a funeral couch, and the elaborate nature of the decoration indicates that this was a wealthy family. Within the grave were two skeletons accompanied by a gold ring and a coin of the emperor Domition, dating to the latter half of the 1st Century A.D. Callimorphus and Serapion, the former lying on a couch with the latter in his arms, shown in the photograph to the left. On a small table in the foreground is a bird, which is a metaphor for the journey into the afterlife. Next to the table is an amphora that may or may not suggest that Callimorphus was an importer of wine. Although it is speculation that he was a wine importer, the family names indicate that they were of eastern Mediterranean origin, where Greek was preferred to Latin, and could well have been traders who settled locally. The name Serapion is of particular interest, as it refers to the god Serapis, who was venerated during the Ptolemaic (Greek) and subsequent Roman occupation of ancient Egypt.

Altar from Watergate Street. RIB 445. Source: British Museum BM 1836,0805.1.

Amongst other Roman finds, a 2nd Century A.D. stone altar was found in lower Watergate Street when Georgian terraces were built in 1778. It was dedicated to Fortuna Redux (Fortune, who brings travellers home safely, including soldiers and traders) and gods of healing and health Aesculapius and Salus. It was raised by freedmen and slaves of a Roman imperial legate, perhaps a provincial governor, who has the longest recorded name in Roman Britain: Titus Pomponius Mamilianus Rufus Antistianus Funisulanus Vettonianus. This is the only example shown here not on display in the Grosvenor Museum. It is now in the British Museum (BM 1836,0805.1; RIB 445)

Nearly all the memorials on display in the Grosvenor are made of red sandstone. The quality of the stone chosen was important, both for engraving scenes and text, and for durability. The raw material selected was not the most locally available sandstone, but according to Wilding was sourced some 8 miles away where better quality red sandstone was available.

The tombstone of Caecilius Avitus, RIB 492. On the left is the original as it was found. On the right is the replica with its bright paint, both on display in the museum.

The stones would originally have been brightly painted, which is a strange thought. A cemetery would have been a colourful place, new memorials brighter than older ones, creating a dazzling visual spectacle. At the entrance to the Grosvenor Museum exhibit there is a facsimile of one of the Chester grave stones showing how it might have looked in full colour, and when compared with the original unpainted version that is also on display, it is a completely different entity. It shows an optio (junior officer who was an accountant-adminstrator, second in command to a centurion) called Caecilius Avitus, wearing a cloak, a staff of office, a legionary sword and a writing tablet (RIB 492). It is like seeing the Lady Chapel in Chester Cathedral, painted to show how it would have looked in the Medieval period, or the glorious 17th century decoration of Rug Chapel at Corwen, near Llangollen, both of which are similar eye-openers, revising how we look at past objects and architecture. To modern eyes, so accustomed to seeing the past in subtle monochrome, the bright paintwork of Caecilius’s tombstone is almost shocking, but Roman life was anything but dull, either at work or at play, and the colours of the stones reflected this multi-hued existence.

Between the moment of death and the burial itself there were ceremonies, rituals and processions that marked the transition from this world to the next. For the very rich, this could be ostentatious and elaborate, involving music and theatrical performances, but for the poor it was a much more mundane affair. Often a Roman might provide for their funeral in his or her will, but if not the responsibility fell to the person who inherited the rest of the property of the deceased. When the deceased was buried, graves could be visited by the living, and at the end of February during the Feralia festival offerings were made to dead ancestors at their graves.

Tombstone of Curatia Dinysia. RIB 562, described below

Popular themes on the Chester tombstones are dedications to certain deities, symbolism surrounding the afterlife and depictions of the deceased lying along a banqueting couch. Reclining on a couch was a popular eating position used by wealthy Romans, and the couch represents a banquet in the afterlife, indicating eternal wellbeing. Some objects in scenes may hint at the profession of the deceased. Where an inscription is included, in Latin, the names can give an indication of the origins of the individual.

Text on tombstones is always highly abbreviated, which would not have been a problem for literate contemporaries (or for researchers today) because the abbreviations were standardized and the texts were highly formulaic. Many of the inscriptions begin DM, standing for Dis Manibus (To the spirits of the departed), and finish HFC, standing for Heres Faciendum Curavit (the heir had the stone made). The heir often adds his or her name and relationship to the deceased. Between these topping and tailing devices there may be additional information about who died including, for example, the name of the deceased, the age at which they died, who erected the stone in their honour, the place from which the person originated, the role that the person performed, a legion or auxiliary unit in which a soldier served and the number of years for which he served.

The Grosvenor Museum tombstones

Showing some of these features is a woman reclining on a couch, framed within two columns and an arch. She is shown in the photograph immediately above. Her name is Curatia Dinysia (perhaps a mason’s error for the name Dionysia), holding a drinking cup, with a three-legged table in the foreground (RIB 562). Sadly the head and face are damaged. She sits between two garlands or swags of ivy leaves, sacred to the deity Bacchus, each of which supports a dove, signifying the release of the soul. Above this scene, incorporated into the architecture of the arch, are two tritons (half men, half fish, like male mermaids, but sometimes shown with horse forelegs) blowing trumpets, representing the journey to the Isles of the Blessed where Bacchus resided. The drinking cup, probably filled with wine, may also reference Bacchus. As with Calimporphus and Serapion, the name Dinysia/Dionysia is thought to be Greek. The inscription reads, in translation, “To the spirits of the departed, Curatia Dinysia lived 40 years; her heir had this erected.”

The illustration on the right is by Dai Owen (Grosvenor Museum 2010)

Another woman is shown on a very worn tombstone, also cleverly recreated by illustrator Dai Owen (RIB 568). The woman’s name is damaged, but ends “-mina” She reclines on the banqueting couch with the familiar three-legged table in the foreground, a drinking cup in hand and a ring on the little finger of her left hand. Most remarkably, behind her, on the the high-backed couch, is a giant sea shell flanked by dolphins, again a reference to her journey to the Isles of the Blessed. Only part of the inscription has survived, with the DM of Dis Manibus (to the spirits of the departed) legend just beneath the three-legged table, and the end of the lady’s name just below that at far right.

Tombstones featuring women are usually found in this sort of military context, where many were wives, (more rarely mothers or daughters) of soldiers, and could communicate their own status alongside their husband’s, making statements about their own identity. It is good to have these as they are a distinct minority. Allason-Jones, for example, estimates that inscriptions dedicated to women make up only around 10% of the total inscriptions found in Roman Britain. These represent only the middle and upper echelons of those living in Roman areas. As with low status men, those women who could not afford any form of memorial have been lost.

The auxiliary cavalryman (equitis) Aurelius Lucius, who has a Latin name, but was probably not of pure Roman origins is an interesting case (RIB 552). Aurelius is shown with a moustache, beard and big hair. Again, he is reclining on a couch, and like Curatia Dionysia, he holds a drinking cup in one hand, whilst in the other he holds a scroll of paper that represents his will. Behind his legs are his plumed helmet and the top of his sword, and in the foreground is a small three-legged table and a boy holding a detached head. Auxiliaries were often recruited from conquered lands and were not Roman citizens. After 25 years in service they could apply for Roman citizenship. The uncharacteristic hair and the severed head, perhaps a war trophy, may refer to a background from one of these conquered regions, but Aurelius also chose to depict himself in a traditional Roman pose, with a traditional Latin inscription. Perhaps he had become a citizen, incorporating his career as a foreign cavalryman but opting for a Roman afterlife.

One of the most remarkable of the Grosvenor’s tombstones is this rider on a horse carrying a flying standard. It is thought to represent a a Sarmatian from an area now occupied by southern Ukraine and northern Romania. The Sarmatians were nomadic hunters and pastoralists, excellent horse breeders and riders and formidable warriors. No inscription survives, but he was almost certainly an auxiliary, as the Sarmatians were conquered in AD 175, and some are known to have been present in Britain. Although none are known from Chester, there were Sarmatians in a regiment deployed at Ribchester in Lancashire, and it is not unlikely that a detachment of that regiment was present in Chester when this individual died. The tall helmet is distinctive, and he holds a standard which he holds in both hands. If he was indeed Sarmatian, this would have been topped with a fearsome dragon’s head with brightly coloured fabric flying to its rear. When wind ran through the dragon’s jaws at speed, it made a terrifying noise to put fear into the hearts of the enemy. His sword is in its scabbard at his side.

Another cavalryman is depicted on a scene that has lost its inscription, other than the letters DM (Dis Manibus) (RIB 550). It is very worn, and the top of the head and the hand (and whatever it is holding) are missing but the scene is full of energy. The horse, with its bridle and a blanket serving as a saddle clearly visible, is galloping with its mane blown back, and the rider’s legs hold tightly to its flanks. The rider’s right arm is raised above his head, probably holding a spear, whilst his left hand, hidden from view, holds the rein or the bridle. Trodden beneath the hooves of the horse is a naked victim who lies gripping a six-sided shield that has demonstrably failed to protect him.

Marcus Aurelius Nepos and his wife. RIB 491

A rather more domestic scene is provided by Marcus Aurelius Nepos and his wife. The stone is right at the rear of the exhibit, and the inscription is difficult to see (it was not particularly clearly engraved in the first place) and is confined to the left, beneath the figure of Marcus Aurelius, centurion of the XXth Legion Valera Victrix, who died aged 50 years old. There is a space beneath the figure of his wife for an inscription, but for reasons unknown this was never added. As it was she who commissioned the stone, she was clearly still alive when the carving was made and may have left the space for an inscription of her own when she herself died, but perhaps she died elsewhere. Marcus Aurelius is bearded, carrying a staff and has a prominent belt, a cloak over his shoulders with a small brooch attached. His wife is holding a cup, and lefts the hem of her dress with one hand to reveal the skirt beneath. Not visible in the photograph is an engraving on the side that shows a mason’s hammer and set square and the words SVB ASCIA D[edicatum], meaning “dedicated under the axe,” perhaps a formula to deter vandals. The tombstone dates to the 3rd century AD.

RIB 560. Tombstone of the child slaves Atilianus, Antiatilianus and Protus

The tombstones with elaborate or contained scenes are plentiful, but are still a minority in the context of British funerary memorials, representing only the most wealthy purchasers. Some tombstones merely showed a little decorative work to accompany the text. This example (RIB 560), although still very fine, was provided with ornamental features but no elaborate scene. It was dedicated by a master to three young slaves. It reads, in translation, “To the spirits of the departed, Atilianus and Antiatilianus, 10 years old; and Protus, 12 years old. Pompeius Optatus their master had this made.” It is possible that the 10 year olds were twins. Although the thought of slavery always sits uncomfortably in today’s world, it should not be forgotten that in a period when slavery was the norm, it was by no means uncommon for masters and slaves to develop relationships of mutual affection and respect. Perhaps that is what we are seeing here.

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Final Comments

Architectural detail showing a male gorgon, with four snakes emanating from each side of his head.

The tombstones described above represent only a a small sample of the total number of engraved stones preserved from Chester. Of those that were not tombstones, some were pieces of altars and others were fragments of bigger pieces of architecture, many of which also came out the 19th century excavations in the Chester walls, some showing Roman deities. They are out of the scope of this post but, do watch out for those too in the display if you visit the museum.

The tombstones are particularly evocative and hopefully the small sample provided here gives an idea of what sort of themes were common, and how people like to have themselves depicted. Death in the Roman empire was an integral part of a soldier’s life, and in the military life of Chester, death had its own role and its own places, with its own objects and iconography. Most of the individuals represented here were of relatively high status, except for the slaves of their master Pompeius Optatus, but they came from a variety of backgrounds, all either stationed here or drawn here for commercial reasons by the military stronghold, and it is good to be able to see some of the variety that made up Deva society.

19th century illustrations from Chester Archaeological Society reports of the tombstones and other engraved stones excavated from the walls (click image to enlarge). Sources, left to right: de Gray Birch 1887, Watkin 1887, de Gray Birch 1888, Jones 1887, all in the Journal of the Chester Archaeological Society volume 2 (references below).

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For those who are interested in seeing something of Rome under foot in Chester, to supplement what can be found in museums, there are a number of guided tours available (some lead by Roman Centurions!). If you prefer a self-guided tour, the Royal Geographic Society’s “Discovering Britain” website provides one, which can be downloaded as a a PDF or as an app for your mobile device: https://www.discoveringbritain.org/activities/north-west-england/trails/chester-trail.html.

Sources:

Those that were of particular use for this post are shown in bold

Books and papers

Allason-Jones, L. 2012. Chapter 34, Women in Roman Britain. In (eds.) James, S.L. and Dillon, S. A Companion to Women in the Ancient World. Wiley

Bell, C.E. 2020. Investigating the Autonomy of Power: Epigraphy of Women in Roman Britain. Dissertation Submitted for the Master’s Degree in Archaeology, University of Liverpool
https://www.academia.edu/44879704/Investigating_the_Autonomy_of_Power_Epigraphy_of_Women_in_Roman_Britain

Brock, E. P Loftus. 1888) The age of the walls of Chester, with references to recent discussions; The discussion on the above paper; Mr Brock’s reply to the various speakers. Journal of the Chester Archaeological Society 2. Vol 2, p. 40-97.
https://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/archiveDS/archiveDownload?t=arch-2910-1/dissemination/pdf/JCAS_ns_002/JCAS_ns_002_040-097.pdf

Cox, E.W. 1891. Notes on the sculptures of the Roman monuments recently found in Chester. The Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, vols.43044, 1891-92, p.91-102

Eckardt, H. 2014. Objects and Identities. Roman Britain and the North-Western Provinces. Oxford University Press

de Gray Birch, W. 1888. Notes on a sculptured stone recently found in the North Wall of the city of Chester. Journal of the Chester Archaeological Society 2. Vol 2, p. 25-39.
https://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/archiveDS/archiveDownload?t=arch-2910-1/dissemination/pdf/JCAS_ns_002/JCAS_ns_002_025-039.pdf

de Grey Birch, W. 1888. The inscribed Roman stones recently found at Chester, during the second series of repairs to the North Wall. Journal of the Chester Archaeological Society, vol.2, p. 98-131.
https://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/archiveDS/archiveDownload?t=arch-2910-1/dissemination/pdf/JCAS_ns_002/JCAS_ns_002_098-131.pdf

Grosvenor Museum 2010. A Guide to Roman Stones at the Grosvenor Museum Chester. Illustrations by Dai Owen.

Henig, M. 2002. Tales from the Tomb. In (ed.) Carrington, P. Deva Victrix; Roman Chester Re-Assessed papers from a weekend conference held at Chester College 3-5 September 1999. Chester Archaeology
https://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/archiveDS/archiveDownload?t=arch-2910-1/dissemination/pdf/CAS_DevaVictrix/CAS_DevaVictrix_075-078.pdf

Jones, I. Matthews. 1888. Official report on the discoveries of Roman remains at Chester, during the first repairs to the North Wall, in 1887. Journal of the Chester Archaeological Society 2. Vol 2, p. 1-10.
https://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/archiveDS/archiveDownload?t=arch-2910-1/dissemination/pdf/JCAS_ns_002/JCAS_ns_002_001-010.pdf

Mason, D.J.P. 2007 (2nd edition). Roman Chester. City of the Eagles. Tempus

Thompson Watkin, W. T. 1888. The Roman inscriptions discovered at Chester, during the first repairs to the North Wall, in 1887. Journal of the Chester Archaeological Society 2. Vol 2, p.11-24.
https://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/archiveDS/archiveDownload?t=arch-2910-1/dissemination/pdf/JCAS_ns_002/JCAS_ns_002_011-024.pdf

Wilding, R. 2006. Graham Webster Gallery of Roman Stones at the Grosvenor Museum, Chester: Explore the Hidden Mysteries of the ‘lost’ Roman Gravestones.

Websites

Roman Inscriptions of Britain (RIB)
https://romaninscriptionsofbritain.org/

Chester Archaeological Society
Professor Robert Newstead F. R. S. Lecture given to Chester Archaeological Society, 5th December 2009. By Elizabeth Royles, Keeper of Early History, Grosvenor Museum
http://chesterarchaeolsoc.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/LRoyles-NewsteadLecture_05-12-09.pdf

Roman Baths
You can decode tombstones at the Roman Baths, Bath
https://www.romanbaths.co.uk/sites/roman_baths/files/heritage/SECONDARY%20SCHOOL%20Decoding%20Roman%20tombstone%20leaflet_0.pdf

Encylopedia Britannica
“Sarmatian.” The Editors of Encyclopaedia, 29 Mar. 2018. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Sarmatian

The 1858 Barnston Memorial, incorporating more than a hint of ancient Egypt

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There is a lot of information about the Barnston Memorial, both in print and online, and writing about it here might have been redundant given that every historical fact has already been squeezed out of it, but I haven’t yet seen anything that tackles the ancient Egyptian component that defines the memorial.

Before exploring the ancient Egyptian aspect, I should mention that I have a long-standing affection for the memorial, and would consider the blog incomplete without giving it a post to itself. I first saw it a couple of decades ago. I was living in London, but my parents lived not far away and we must have passed it on the way to somewhere else. That first sight remains with me. I was struck then, and still am whenever I pass it, by the sense of grief and loss that this soaring, lonely monument imparts in its isolated position on the edge of the empty field that stretches behind it.

The monument was erected in 1858 as a memorial to Lieutenant Colonel Roger Barnston Esq (1826-1857) who was just 31 He was one of Roger Harry Barnston’s seven children, three of of whom went into the army. He was brought up at Crewe Hall in Crewe-by-Farndon. He served in the 90th Light Infantry and was fatally injured in one of the sieges of Lucknow during the Indian Mutiny in 1857, a horror story, and he died of his injuries at the garrison town of Cawnpore (Kanpur). Kanpur, on the River Ganges, was a major crossing point on which a number of important roads converged. It was defended by sepoys (Indian soldiers employed by the army to reinforce garrisons) but in June 1857 the sepoys rebelled and attacked the British garrison. It was carnage. By then, Roger Barnston had already survived the Crimean War, seeing action at Sebastapol. He must have seen some appalling horrors during his short life. He was recognized as a Knight of the Legion of Honour and was awarded the Order of Medjidie. He was buried at Kanpur.

The memorial stands just outside Farndon on the Churton Road, overlooking the Welsh foothills to the west. It is on the edge of a field that still belongs to the Barnston Estate. A competition was organized to attract design ideas, and the memorial was paid for by public subscription, a common way of securing public monuments and buildings. The competiton was won by Edward Arthur Heffer (1836-1914) at a cost of £400. This equates to around £32,074 today according to the National Archive currency convertor, a sum that could also buy you 26 horses, 74 heads of cattle or 2000 days of wages for a skilled tradesman.

The memorial consists of an obelisk (tall tapering four-sided column terminating in a pyramid-shaped top called a pyramidion) that stands on a plinth, surrounded by four recumbent lions. A plaque on the south face of the obelisk commemorates Roger Barnston. The corresponding panel on the east, facing the road, consists of an ornamental swag and blank medallions. The other two faces are plain. The wall once had iron railings, which have since been removed, set into a short kerb that surrounds the base. The memorial is made of yellow sandstone, which Latham says was from Cefn, presumably Cefn Mawr. Although usually vulnerable to erosion, the Cefn Mawr sandstone is fine-grained and well cemented and has proved to be very resilient. Much of the monumental architecture in Wrexham and its environs are built of yellow sandstone quarried from Cefn Mawr, including Wrexham’s Catholic cathedral. The Barnston Memorial is still in excellent condition as a result, its edges still clearly defined. It is rather greyed due to traffic emissions, but would have been a clean and attractive pale yellow when first erected.

Front page of Description de l’Egypte. Source: Wikimedia

A few years ago I visited the memorial to take photographs when writing an article for an Egyptology magazine about the use of ancient Egyptian themes in Victorian monuments and buildings. Following Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt in 1798, 19th Century Britain became obelisk-obsessed. Driving past Toxteth Park Cemetery in Liverpool not long ago, hopelessly lost as it happens, I was absolutely staggered at the number of obelisks that dotted the place, rising well above the level of the other memorials. They combine to provide something of a memorial to the British Egyptian Revival, which manifested itself in a variety of interesting ways, some more successful than others, but became dominant in cemeteries and as memorials.

Any wealthy traveller and his mentors undertaking the Grand Tour in the 18th Century might have seen the obelisks imported into Rome and elsewhere by Roman emoerirs following their invasion of Egypt, but Egypt first fully imprinted itself on western European imagination following the publication of Baron Dominique Vivant-Denon’s 1802 “Voyage dans la Basse et Haute-Egypte” (Travels in Lower and Upper Egypt), translated into English in 1803, and Napoleon Bonaparte’s infinitely more remarkable “Description de l’Egypte” of 1809-1829. Universally referred to today as “Description“, it was published in several volumes. One has to hand it to Napoleon for having had such a classy attitude to war. When he took an invasion force to Egypt, he also equipped it with 178 scholars, scientists, engineers and artists and called “savants,” who were given the job of capturing every aspect of Egypt in word and illustration.

“Vue de Obélisque dite de Cléopatre à Alexandrie,” by Vivant-Denon 1798. The upright obelisk is now in New York’s Central Park. The fallen obelisk at its feet was transported to England and now stands on the Thames Embankment, where it was installed in 1878. Generally known as Cleopatra’s Needle, it was actually erected by Thutmose III. Source: V&A Museum.

Vivant-Denon was one of those savants sent by Napoleon to Egypt, employed as an artist for the expedition, and pipped Napoleon to the post with a much shorter, punchier and very popular book of his own story about the campaign and his experiences in Egypt, published seven years before Napoleon’s first volume, first in French in 1802 and then translated into English in 1803. Between them, these two publications spread widely, and found a particular following in Britain, where numerous Egyptian motifs found their way into art and architecture.

European scholars began to arrive in Egypt as soon as Napoleon departed in 1801, but it was not until 1922 in the reign of King George V that archaeologist Howard Carter found the tomb of Tutankhamun, 65 years after the erection of the Barnston Memorial.

Of course, Napoleon’s savants and troops also ransacked the art works of the countries occupied by Napoleon for French museums and universities. In 1803, the Louvre in Paris, the main recipient of this policy, was renamed the Napoleon Museum. Britain was not innocent of this practice either, as a trip around the British Museum would confirm. The British Museum was perfectly happy to purchase objects from men who were very little better than legitimized tomb robbers, such as former circus strongman Giovanni Belzoni. One of the British Museum’s prizes, the Rosetta Stone, was transferred from Napoleon’s cache of Egyptian heritage to British possession when Nelson triumphed at the Battle of the Nile. This transfer of big chunks of Egypt’s heritage was formalized in articles of the Treaty of Alexandria, 1801. Amongst the confiscated pieces now at the British Museum were also two obelisks dating to the reign of Nectanebo II.

Obelisks at the New Kingdom temple of Karnak in Luxor, Egypt.

Certain motifs seemed to resonate with Victorian sentiments, and obelisks became particularly popular, especially in cemeteries. This is perhaps because they were so easy to replicate, but I suspect that it also had a lot to do with the sense that obelisks reached for the heavens, something to which the ancient Egyptians also aspired. Although the term “obelisk” derives from Greek and unimaginatively means “pointed implement or pillar,” the ancient Egyptian word was “tekhen,” meaning “sunbeam.” In ancient Egypt, the whole thing was quarried out of fine southern Egyptian granite as a single piece . The tip of the obelisk, the pyramidion, was often encased in gold or the gold-silver alloy “electrum” to capture and reflect the early morning sunrays. Each face was carved with hieroglyphic inscriptions giving the name and titles of the king who had erected it within a temple precinct, and was often dedicated to a particular deity, usually the state deity Amen (or Amun). None of these characteristics were translated into the Victorian version of the obelisk, which was usually made of soft stone, in this case yellow sandstone, and was unadorned with either hieroglyphs or gold. Larger obelisks like the Barnston Memorial were composed of blocks, not made of a single piece, and the pyramidion was unadorned with any form of metal casing.

Very few Victorians were able to resist the impulse to provide decorative settings for obelisks, even original ones imported from Egypt, because they are otherwise rather plain. The Barnston Memorial is no exception. The result is a cornucopia of different cultural motifs. The lions that surround the base of the Barnston Memorial are nothing to do with Egypt. Lions, as a traditional symbol of England first adopted by royalty in the Middle Ages, became associated with ideals of courage, strength, loyalty, military domination, patriotism and justice. It is a powerful emblem. In the setting of this and other funerary memorials, the lion also suggests protection.

The Victorians were enthusiastic appropriators of other motifs from other periods. Other themes, mainly derived from Classical contexts that had become standard features of English architecture, are the oak leaf swag with decorative ribbons and the oval motif on the east side. A simplified version of egg-and-dart moulding and a twisted rope effect (with acanthus leaves at each corner) circle the base of the obelisk. Oak has much in common with lions as a symbol, incorporating ideas of strength, and endurance. Acanthus was a dominant and powerful theme in Classical architecture, symbolizing healing, long life and long life, immortality and rebirth. It was popular for Victorian tomb decoration, where it is directly associated with mourning. Each lion rests on a false chest-type tomb that was particularly in vogue in cemeteries during the Victorian period. The memorial is a characteristic Victorian combination of motifs from ancient cultures with traditional British themes.

There is something inevitably colonial about the memorial. It is a grandiose statement, a chaotic mix of poorly understood imagery from different cultures all plonked with considerable ceremony into a rural context for which it is really rather ill-suited, and carried out with the solidly unassailable self-confidence and sense of entitlement of the era. It carries with it echoes of the chutzpah that drove the East India Company’s systematic annexation of India. But it still pulls firmly at the heart strings, and those lions are absolutely wonderful.

The inscription of the memorial reads:

Erected in memory of
ROGER BARNSTON ESQ
of Crewe Hill, Major and Brevet Lieut. Colonel
of Her Majesty’s 90th Light Infantry C.D.
and Knight of the Legion of Honor and of the Order of the Medjidie:
by his tenants and friends.
He served in the Crimean War from the 5th December 1854,
and was present at the siege and fall of Sebastopol,
and also in the Indian Mutiny Campaign in 1857
in which he received a severe wound whilst gallantly leading an assault
at the relief of Lucknow on the 16th November 1857
from the effects of which he died at Cawnpore on the 23rd December 1857
aged 31 years.
and was interred in the military cemetery at that station.

In ancient Egypt, commemorative inscriptions were important because it was believed that as long as the name of the dead continued to be spoken by the living, they would live on in eternity. Memorials serve a similar function, preserving the memory of the dead amongst the living. The memorial to Roger Barnston has secured him a place in the communal heritage of the area.

Latham gives its vital statistics as follows: “Greatest diameter, 23 ft.; length of needle, 40 ft.; width at top, 2 ft. 3 ins.; at bottom next pedestal, 3 ft. 9 ins. The width of the base for pedestal is 9 ft. The lions are 6 ft. long, and the total height of the memorial from the ground is 55 ft.” It has been Grade II listed since 1984, list number 1279425. It bears a bears an Ordnance Survey bench-mark, 96 ft above sea level, and a white lightning conductor runs up the west face. The view over the Welsh foothills to the west was probably uninterrupted when the memorial was built.

Work has now begun on a “natural burial ground” on the land immediately to the south of the memorial, Monument Meadow, which belongs to the Barnston Estate:

Design of the natural burial ground by Land Studio. Source: Chester Standard

“Monument Meadow Natural Burial Ground, which will be built on one of the estate’s fields, will replace the burial ground at St Chad’s in Farndon village. It will also be made available for residents of surrounding villages. Designed by Chester-based Land Studio, a specialist landscape architect, the Barnston Estate says the environment will be kept as natural as possible with a wildflower meadow and ornamental trees. With its timber framed pavilion, circular layout and views stretching across the Clwydian Range, it has been designed to be a peaceful and beautiful place to visit, they add. . . . the burial ground is intended to be a natural one with caskets made of natural materials with no formal markers.” (Chester Standard).

It seems a very suitable use for a field that might, otherwise, have been used for housing development. The timber pavilion has been erected and the car park laid out, surrounded by saplings, at the time of writing.

Details of the lion stonework

SOURCES

Books

Curl, J.S. 1982. The Egyptian Revival. George, Allen and Unwin.

Elliott, C. 2012. Egypt in England. English Heritage

Latham, F.A. 1981. Farndon. The History of a Cheshire Village. Local History Group

Morris, E. and Roberts, E. 2012, Public Sculpture of Cheshire and Merseyside (excluding Liverpool). Public Sculpture of Britain. Liverpool University Press, p.112–113

Taylor, R.2004. How to Read a Church. Random House.

Websites

BuildingConservation.com
Churchyard chest tombs by John Taylor
https://www.buildingconservation.com/articles/chesttombs/chesttombs.htm

Chester Standard
Barnston Estate near Farndon to build burial ground
https://www.chesterstandard.co.uk/news/18611529.barnston-estate-near-farndon-build-burial-ground/

Historic England
Barnston Memorial
https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1279425

Landed Families of Britain and Ireland
Barnston of Churton Hall and Crewe Hill
https://landedfamilies.blogspot.com/2020/01/403-barnston-of-churton-hall-and-crewe.html

National Army Museum
‘The Chamber of Blood’, Cawnpore, 1857
https://collection.nam.ac.uk/detail.php?acc=1992-10-18-1

Royden History
Farndon Local History
http://www.roydenhistory.co.uk/farndon/buildings/barnston/barnston.htm

Vivant-Denon, D. 1803 (in translation and without the illustrations from the French editions)
Travels in Upper and Lower Egypt: During the Campaigns of General Bonaparte in that Country; and Published Under His Immediate Patronage
Volume 1
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=M2kTAAAAYAAJ&pg=PR71&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false
Volume 2
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=imUTAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA131&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false

Wrexham County Borough Council
Cefn Mawr
http://old.wrexham.gov.uk/assets/pdfs/planning/landmap/7b.pdf

Based in Churton

A Londoner living in West Cheshire

Category Archives: Egyptology

A 6th-7th Century Egyptian Pilgrim Flask found at Meols, Wirral

Introduction to the Meols pilgrim flask

Who was St Menas?

What were the pilgrim flasks used for?

Precursors of the the pilgrim flask

How did the Meols flask arrive in England?

Final comments

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Sources:

100 years ago today: Finding Tutankhamen

Biban el-Muluk (“Gates of the Kings”)

KV62

A political time-bomb

Final Comments

Note: Tutankhamen versus Tutankhamun

Sources

Websites:

An impressive exhibit of decorated Roman tombstones in Chester’s Grosvenor Museum

Introduction

Burials and memorials

Roman cemeteries

The tombstones in the walls

Key features of tombstones

The Grosvenor Museum tombstones

Final Comments

Sources:

The 1858 Barnston Memorial, incorporating more than a hint of ancient Egypt

Introduction to the Meols pilgrim flask

Who was St Menas?

What were the pilgrim flasks used for?

Precursors of the the pilgrim flask

How did the Meols flask arrive in England?

Final comments

—- Sources:

Share this:

Biban el-Muluk (“Gates of the Kings”)

KV62

A political time-bomb

Final Comments

Note: Tutankhamen versus Tutankhamun

Sources

Websites:

Share this:

Introduction

Burials and memorials

Roman cemeteries

The tombstones in the walls

Key features of tombstones

The Grosvenor Museum tombstones

Final Comments

Sources:

Share this:

Share this:

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Sources: