From The Fitzwilliam Museum, E.GA.4300.1943
New Kingdom limestone ostracon
|
(from Wikipedia) "In Egypt, anything with a smooth surface could be used as a writing surface. Generally discarded material, ostraca were cheap, readily available and therefore frequently used for writings of an ephemeral nature such as messages, receipts, students exercises and notes: pottery shards, limestone flakes,[1] thin fragments of other stone types, etc., but limestone sherds, being flaky and of a lighter color, were most common. Ostraca were typically small, covered with just a few words or a small picture drawn in ink;[2]but the tomb of the craftsman Sennedjem at Deir el Medina contained an enormous ostracon inscribed with the Story of Sinuhe.[3] The importance of ostraca for Egyptology is immense. The combination of their physical nature and the Egyptian climate have preserved texts which in other cultures were lost, texts of a mundane nature,[4] which are often better witnesses of everyday life than literary treatises preserved in libraries." The Brunner-Traut note at the museum website says this particular ostracon is an artist's sketch. I didn't have much info about the following piece, except that it was photographed at the Cairo museum, until I read Eugene Cruz-Uribe's "Seth, God of Power and Might", in the Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt , issue 45. From the style of the drawing, it is very likely from the New Kingdom:
|
Photo taken by 'Tutincommon', uploaded on August 26, 2007
From Cruz-Uribe's article, we learn it is JE43659, from Deir el Medina
"The figure is labeled 'Seth' written with a Seth-animal followed by the god-sign and a seated divine figure." (page 213)
