The 40 tombs Peterson was able to uncover in his five week's excavation at Terenouthis yielded over 5000 objects, now housed in the Kelsey Museum. This collection of grave gifts and funerary equipment provides a vivid picture of Graeco-Egyptian burial practices and ritual.The ongoing exchange and modification of native and foreign artistic styles and symbolic systems observable in the Terenouthis material is a dramatic illustration of the reciprocal nature of cultural influence in a provincial setting.
Map I: The Nile Valley
Map II: General vicinity of Kom Abou Billou
Terenouthis, once a thriving commercial center on the central western edge of the Nile delta (about 70 km northwest of Cairo) lies today below 1800 years of debris from Nile floods and successive human occupations. As early as the 1870's, tantalizing fragments of the Ptolemaic temple of Hathor Mafkat (literally, "Hather-of-the-turquoise-mines") and a temple of the same period of Apollo were reported. By the end of the last century numerous artifacts attributed to Terenouthis and its nearby necropolis at Kom Abou Billou began to turn up at the Cairo Museum, giving further indications of the importance of the site.
Based on Edouard Naville's report to the Egypt Exploration Society in London in 1888 and the artifacts in the Cairo Museum, Enoch E. Peterson (Director of the Kelsey Museum 1950-1971) initiated a surface exploration of the site, 1 km southwest of the modern town of El-Tarrana, in October 1934. Encouraged both by the initial indications and the encouragement of the noted English archaeologist R. Engelbach, Peterson set about securing the necessary permissions from the University of Michigan's Near East Research Committee and from the Egyptian Antiquities Services.
Fig. 1. VIEW OF TOMBS 5-11 just after excavation
In due course Peterson secured the required permissions to excavate and by March of 1935 he quit the Univerity of Michigan's completed excavations at Karanis in the northern Fayoum and arrived at Kom Abou Billou. The name of this desert cemetery is an Arabic corruption of the Coptic name: "the hill (kom) of father (cf. Coptic apa) Apollos (Billou)." Peterson set up his base camp near the edge of the tomb field.
For the next thirty-five days the Michigan archaeological team supervised hundreds of local workers trenching and clearing three key areas of the cemetery. From the outset it was apparent to Peterson that the site had suffered pillaging at the hands of both antiqua hunters and the sebakhin or "compost hunters."
In the course of these investigations the third test trench ended up on the southeastern edge of the tomb field. There, Peterson uncovered some forty tombs, at depths of up to five meters below the surface. Among the thousands of small finds were two hundred and fifty decorated grave stones, many figurines of terra cotta and faience, mummy amulets, jewelry, pottery, metal objects and some four hundred and eighty Ptolemaic Roman and Islamic coins.
Fig. 2. EXCAVATED CORPSE below the base of a tomb, with his funerary stele standing on end at the tomb's edge
Peterson's meticulous field notes and remarkable photographs of the site serve as the primary documents for this exhibition. Additionally, a black and white motion picture film of ten minutes' length shows the actual excavating in progress and the results of those extensive clearing efforts in the tomb field. The use of the motion picture camera at an archaeological excavation was an innovative development in Egyptian archaeology.
Fig. 3. HORNED INCENSE ALTAR with solar cobras crowned with sun disk crowns representing the protection of the solar deity. Ptolemaic period. Limestone.
Fig. 4. UNINSCRIBED STELE showing two registers: above, the deceased makes offering to the seated figure of Osiris; below this paradigm is repeated by the daughters (?) of the deceased and by his wife (seated to far left). 5th to 4th century BC. Limestone.
Fig. 5. OSTRACON/ARTIST'S TRIAL PIECE: front shows engraved sketches of a prince or Pharaoh, with hieroglyphs of the protocols of the royal titulary; reverse is covered by a freehand sketch of a seated harpist. Late Ramesside period c. 1100 BC. Limestone.
Finds of several earlier Pharaonic periods were made, despite the limited area ot the necropolis Peterson exposed. The scatterings of much earlier artifactual material among the forty tombs suggests that the Graeco-Roman period cemetery itself disturbed previous occupation layers. Peterson's Pharaonic discoveries included artifacts of the Ptolemaic Period (330-30 BC), the Late Period (750-332 BC), as well as the Late New Kingdom Period (c. 1305-1050 BC).
Recently, the Egyptian excavators have reported evidence of burials at this site in the Middle Kingdom (c. 2040-1715 BC), specifically from several aristocratic tombs on the northwest edge of the kom. The record of the Pharaonic occupations is completed by the discovery of datable Old Kingdom tombs, in one of which an alabaster vase inscribed with the name of Pharaoh Pepy Ist Mery-Re (c. 2300 BC) was discovered. To date, all the accumulated evidence indicates that Terenouthis and its neighboring "city of the dead" at Kom Abou Billou number among the most ancient of Egypt's habitation and burial sites.
Fig. 6. STELE OF THE MATRON SEOSOUTHIS reclining on her funerary couch (kline) and making libation. She is protected by two jackals of Anubis, and to the far left a rampant cobra deity, likely Meret-Seger ("She-who-loves-silence"), in her role as guardianess of the necropolis. Late 2nd centuty AD. Limestone.
Fig. 7. MUMMY MASK OF AN EGYPTIAN and the skull-cap of an Egyptian priest. Hadrianic c. 2nd quarter of the 2nd century AD. Moulded and painted plaster.
Fig. 8. STELE OF APIA, a nineteen-year-old woman, shown standing within a Graeco-Egyptian style portal. She is flanked by two protective deities sitting atop Egyptian kiosks: at right the solar falcon of Horus; at left the familiar Anubis animal. AD 160/161. Limestone.
Today the stretch of desert plain where the necropolis once existed is bisected by the El Nasseri irrigation canal and lies close to or under the cultivation. In 1935, according to Peterson's description, as preserved for us in his journals and correspondence, the site possessed a rolling terrain punctuated here and there by hillocks -- hence its Arabic name kom.
Originally, the cemetery sloped gently to the South and to the East, and its western perimeter bordered the higher level of the Libyan Desert. Unfortunately, the exact location of Peterson's forty tombs is lost, due to the agencies of the dune-scarping wind and the episodic pillaging of the site by antiqua hunters.
Fig. 9. VIEW TO THE NORTHWEST OF THE EXCAVATED TOMB FIELD showing pyramid-roofed tombs
Fig. 10. LINE DRAWING OF 14 TYPES OF BARREL- AND PYRAMID-ROOFED TOMBS after Bulletin de l'Institut Français d'Archéologie Orientale 78 (1978) fig. 2.
Fig. 11. LINE DRAWING OF SEVERAL VARIATIONS OF THE "SLIPPER-TOMB" for in-ground burials of individual corpses, after Bulletin de l'Institut Français d'Archéologie Orientale 78 (1978) fig. 2.
In contrast to the in-ground "slipper tombs," the roofed tomb structures were placed on mudbrick podiums. Attached to their eastern facades were projecting altar tables or simple platforms. The surfaces of the mudbrick tombs and their attached altars were stuccoed and became fields for fresco paintings of festive "peopled" garlands (Fig. 12), accoutrements and personnel of the cult and linear framing bands (Fig. 17). It seems that the fresco decorations were intended to convey the impression that a perpetual festival for the dead was in progress in front of and presumably beyond the tomb structure's symbolic entrance.
Fig. 12. REMAINS OF BARREL-VAULTED TOMB WITH ITS STELE IN SITU, which belonged to a fourteen-year-old girl, "Isidora, the daughter of Hermaios." Dated by the stele to the 2nd quarter of the 2nd century AD.
Archival photographs of Peterson's well-documented excavation reveal that the tomb facades generally faced eastwards towards the rising sun, an arrangement that is traced back to Pharaonic times. The tomb's mudbrick podiums were built into the rolling terrain in conformity with the topography. This random pattern of building resulted in winding alleys -- possibly a dim reflection of the now alluvium-buried townscape of Terenouthis.
Apparently the size of the tomb and its degree of decoration were determined in part by the owner's wealth. Similarly, a tombs position relative to the center of the cemetery correlated with the owner's resources as the larger and more lavishly decorated tombs are located there. It is ironic that lesser tombs on the periphery of the cemetery survived as a rule relatively well, as they tended to be covered earlier and their presence was less apparent next to the desert's discontinuous edges. The larger tombs in the central area of the necropolis, on the other hand, were more easily detected by the grave robbers.
In regard to the interment practices of the Graeco-Roman period it is to be noted that no burial discovered either by Peterson or the Egyptian excavators was actually situated either within or directly beneath a podium tomb's structure. Rather, the corpse was placed in prone position with the arms naturally at rest across the lower body, and at varying depths and angles around the tomb's podium (supra Fig. 2). Occasionally, the individual's personal funerary stele is placed against the podium's base, just above the deceased's head. It is concluded from the available evidence that most if not all the early imperial tombs at Kom Abou Billou were cenotaphs, i.e. "empty tombs," dedicated to a particular family, or possibly a clan.
In later centuries the narrow alleys among all the tombs became sand-engulphed and forgotten. By or just before the fourth century AD the pattern of inhumation changed, becoming more random and in the nature of simple depositions wherever there was space and depth. In the accumulated layers of debris and sand later burials in their hundreds took place. Some were merely covered by sand; some were encased with a bodycast of plaster (Fig. 13). This burial pattern of Late Antiquity left a chaotic stratigraphy, hopelessly complicated by the mining operations of the tomb robbers.
Fig. 13. PLASTER-COATED CORPSE OF A WOMAN with pieces of worked glass set into the plaster as ornaments. Dated by associated coin-finds to the early 4th century AD.
Pagan burials cease after the Islamic Conquest and no ritual Christian burials have turned up.
The festive fresco paintings and the offering altar tables of the tombs were complemented by formally carved and painted funerary stones. Recessed in niches either in the tomb wall or the vertical screen wall (tympanum) of the gabled roof, they align at eye level with the tomb facade's central axis (Fig. 12). Also, the funerary stele and its images were undoubtedly intended to focus the viewer's attention, for it was in front of and to the stele and its images of the departed that the rituals of the ancestor cult were performed, including sacrificing, cooking, feasting, music making, chanting and possibly dancing (deduced from the discovery of several finger cymbals or zills among the tombs).
The existence of such an elaborate funerary cult at this site is almost predictable, since ancestor worship is attested in Egypt from as early as the third millenium BC. Since prehistoric times the tribes inhabiting the Nile Valley believed that the dead required physical sustenance for their afterlife activities. In practical terms the spirit-food was provided by the deceased's family. The inducement to the living was threefold: to lessen the individual and collective grief; to propitiate, i.e. "to satisfy," the ancestor's imagined needs; to invoke helpful intervention of the satisfied loved-one from the "land of the dead." Over generations there evolved a family-based popular cult of the immortal ancestor involving complex networks of mutual -- even third-party -- arrangements for the provisioning of food and the carrying out of specified rites, especially on the festival days of the Egyptian and later the Greek and Roman calendars.
Fig. 17. VIEW OF THE REMAINS OF A BARREL-ROOFED TOMB WITH THE PAINTED PLASTER "STELE" OF ISIDORA, who is shown as a feaster raising her cup (kantharos) in a libation to the Underworld deities. The central niche is flanked on the left by Hermes, who holds forth the cadeucas or magical, snake-entwined wand, by which the dead are led forth to the Underworld; on the right by the remains of a man reclining in a Nile boat, a survival of the ancient Egyptian conception of the "river journey" to the "city-of-the-dead," pictured in countless tombs and papyri. Plaster painted in the fresco technique, i.e. tempera pigments applied while the plaster was half-dried. C. AD 150.
Essential to the functioning of the ancient cult of the venerated immortal ancestor was the traditional tomb stele, found in many hundreds of Kom Abou Billou. The stelae, as a rule, are framed by some form of architectural structure, the forms and components of which can be directly traced back to the traditional Egyptian temple's columnar entrances.
Often found within the columnar porches is an arching, black, ribbon-like motif, centered directly over the head of the figure within the entrance.
Since the religious rites performed in front of the tomb involved the preparation and presentation of food stuffs to the ancestor's spirit, these stelae, with images of the deceased framed by a portal to the Underworld, were entirely appropriate. Here was a meeting place, a zone of transition, between the upper and lower worlds, where the living and dead might commune.
Traditional superstitions concerning the potential malevolence of the dead dictated that he or she be approached cautiously, i.e. ritually and at a neutral spot, readily identifiable as such. There, the descendants might draw near but at the same time be magically separated from them, for in Pharaonic as in Graeco-Roman times the dead were thought to fear and respect the living as much as the living respected and feared the dead. The tomb's threshold, guarded by the "Lord of the necropolis" Anubis, contained the summoned spirit in a defined place. In this way the threshold of the tomb's porch was a neutral meeting ground within which the dead were consigned to the spirit world while at the same time the living might respectfully approach.
Fig. 20. STELE OF THE BOATMAN APION, shown standing in orans-pose within a papyrus skiff, of the type found in illustrated papyri. C. 2nd quarter of the 2nd century AD.
Fig. 22. STELE OF THE LADY HERAKLEA AND HER BROTHER(?) ARES, the former shown as a serene eternal banqueter; the latter as an incense-sacrificer before a horned altar (thymiaterion). AD 164/165. Painted limestone.
Fig. 23. HALF OF STONE MOULD WITH IMAGE OF A RECUMBENT ANUBIS ANIMAL, with extended human hands versus paws. The background is divided into a grid of squares in the canonic Egyptian fashion and the muscular depiction of this necropolis god is also fully in the traditional style of Pharaonic Egypt. Used for making metal amulets. C. 1100 BC. Basalt (?).
Fig. 25. UNINSCRIBED STELE OF A BOATMAN, reclining in a papyrus skiff of the dynastic type, propelled by the wind in the square sail, placed amidship. C. mid-3rd century AD. Weathered limestone.
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