Traveling through Egypt 2024: Sohag, Akhmim, and Athribis
Welcome back! As promised, I’m going to take you on a tour of some sites I got to visit during my trip that have eluded me in past visits. As you’ll see, I’ve made the decision to split what I assumed would be the final newsletter into two separate weeks. This was partially done to separate the more ancient sites from the Islamic and Christian ones for cohesiveness - and partially done out of selfishness so that I don’t have to say goodbye to this season just yet.
Looking forward, I will be buckling down to finish my dissertation, which likely means silence on the newsletter front for a little while. I will be dropping in to announce lectures and any other exciting news (spoiler alert, I’ll be in OC and Berkeley come September to give public lectures), but I expect any additional news from the field will be paused until post-May of next year. I find a lot of joy in this newsletter, so I will continue it as I progress in my career. As long as you stay subscribed, you’ll also be privy to those future seasons! Speaking of my career - I realized that I never mentioned my promotion. As of May of this year, I am officially the Associate Director of the ASP project. This is a huge step towards my eventual inheriting of the project (or at least, the Ahmose Cemetery portion of it) as Director and I’m really honored to have been promoted so early in my tenure. That’s enough housekeeping though, let’s get onto the ancient history!
Most people who visit Egypt will never see Abydos - it’s out of the way for many, and the primary tourists are people who truly believe that there is a Stargate at the site, or that the waters of the Osirion (see last year’s post from June for more info!) can cure everything from COVID-19 to terminal cancer (spoiler alert, I’m pretty sure the water would kill you if you drank it).
Even fewer people will ever journey north of Abydos to sites like Qau el Kebir, Amarna, or Akhmim - rich tourism sites, but without any draw for the “cuckoo bananas” people (as the locals in Abydos call them). This, combined with the lack of easy access, and the continued belief that Middle Egypt is dangerous (overblown by the media, in my opinion) means that these sites are rarely seen by the general touring public. So who visits them? Well, archaeologists, of course!
Keeping with the theme of “not spending Fridays at the dig house,” the ASP and UPenn team packed up on the second Friday of our season and shipped north to visit Sohag, Akhmim, and Athribis. We started off at the site of Akhmim, which was thought to have been the hometown of Yuya (the father of Queen Tiye, married to Amenhotep III). The site’s significance, however, likely began as early as the proto-dynastic period when the site served as an important place of worship for the god Min. Min is a fertility god, and a favorite of undergrad students. I’ll let you guess why.
The worship of Min continued into the Roman Period Period and while some scholars will tell you that the temple dates to the Ptolemaic period - I think that’s a major simplification of the site’s history. While a huge investment was made in the area in the Greco-Roman Period, many of the colossal statues (and the ones you will see standing on site) date to the New Kingdom. The statue that serves as the centerpiece of the tourist site is the statue of Meret-Amun, daughter of the prolific Rameses II and wife of Amenhotep. Meret-Amun, whose name means beloved of Amun, was actually a priestess of Min (who, to be fair, is often fused with Amun), making her appearance here significant. This is also one of the largest statues in Egypt of a woman.
Little else survives of the temple in the archaeological park (the temple was described by Arabic scholars as being a wonder of the world so imagine how much is missing), however, if you continue across the street you can see a massive statue of Ramses II whose head is in the Sohag museum. This is just one of a million pieces of evidence that much of the temple foundation lies beneath the modern city yet to be examined.
Akhmim is also known for its textiles, rumour has it that the weavers still use the same methods used by their ancestors during the Pharonic period. There’s a lovely little weaving factory next to the Rameses statue that is a must-visit - or so I’m told. We arrived too early and the workers were still sleeping! Malesh, I couldn’t blame them, it was a Friday morning and it was already 102 degrees. Instead, we made our way to the Sohag Museum to see a museum exhibit that was being put together by the Michigan team about Weni the Elder (see info about Weni here - https://lsa.umich.edu/kelsey/publications/newsletters/spring-2000/weni-the-elder-and-his-mortuary-neighborhood-at-abydos--egypt.html). Also, fun fact that I learned - his brother, Weni the middle, was also known as Weni the favorite - wonder how that was decided. No photos were allowed so I cannot share, but it was a fantastic exhibit.
We had originally planned to cap the day there and be back to Abydos before lunch, however, our colleague Yazid met us at the museum and convinced us all to go with him to visit the site of Athribis. This was a particular treat because Yazid studied a tomb at the site for his dissertation, which (in addition to being an inspector) meant he had all the info.
Athribis was occupied by settlement sites as early as the Old Kingdom and appears periodically in significant documents relating to the history of Egypt (the Palermo Stone, the biography of Amenhotep son of Hapu). Although temples were built at the site throughout its history, the primary investment and growth appear to have occurred during the Ptolemaic period when it became a significant site for industry. The remains visible today in the valley are primarily the temples dating to this period (Min, again!), although some of the earlier and later remains are still visible in the landscape. If you would like to take a virtual tour of the temple of Ptolemy XII you can do it at this link: https://uni-tuebingen.de/en/faculties/faculty-of-humanities/departments/ancient-studies-and-art-history/institute-for-ancient-near-eastern-studies/research/egyptology/research-projects/project-athribis-dfg/ .
An interesting facet of this site is the layering of historical periods that is visible in the temple remains themselves. The site was occupied throughout the Medieval period and became a site of large-scale textile dying operations. The dying vats were built into the floors of the temples, where they remain today. While there was some talk of removing them, Yazid was actually the advocate who convinced everyone to keep them in situ, since they represent a significant period in the site’s history.
Other alterations are visible along some of the walls, where Coptic Christians applied mud/sand cement to cover the hieroglyphs. It was generally agreed that the text under the cement should be translated, however, the cement was another important facet of the site’s deep history, so it was only lightly removed in places to allow for transliteration and translation.
We only spent about an hour at the site, but I feel like there is still so much to see that we didn’t get a chance to peek at - I personally would love to see the remainder of what Petrie called “the Zodiac tomb,” but I’m unsure of the state of preservation. At the same time, none of us had dressed for an outdoor adventure, so our very dirty, very hot, sandal-laden feet thanked us for skipping some of it (cough cough, the MASSIVE hike to the tombs in the mountains). Some people didn’t bring water either, which was probably a bigger problem (no, I don’t understand that choice), but at least we all survived.
That’s all for this week but before I go I wanted to say, that I really appreciate everyone who reaches out with questions, and if there’s anything I glaze over that you would like more information on just let me know, I can always do a mini-newsletter covering the topic. In the meantime stay cool and talk soon!
All my best,
Emily