Jochem Kahl

Ancient Asyut
The First Synthesis
after 300 Years of Research

2007
Harrassowitz Verlag . Wiesbaden

ISSN 1865-6250
ISBN 978-3-447-05666-3
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Contents

Preface ...................................................................................................................... IX

Introduction: Why write a book about ancient Asyut?............................................... 1

Chapter One: Asyut: a wounded city.......................................................................... 3

Chapter Two: History of research ............................................................................ 21

Chapter Three: Asyut: its sacred landscape.............................................................. 35

Chapter Four: The mountain at the desert edge: functions and changes ................. 59

Chapter Five: Living and dying at Asyut ............................................................... 107

Chapter Six: Men of influence and power ............................................................. 129

Chapter Seven: Popular religion in Asyut (Meike Becker) ................................... 141

Chapter Eight: Ateliers, school, and knowledge .................................................... 151

Map 1: Gebel Asyut al-gharbi ................................................................................ 155

Chronology of Ancient Egypt ....................................................................................... 157

Bibliography ........................................................................................................... 159

Indices .................................................................................................................... 177

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PREFACE

This book would not have been completed without the support of many a people. The
commitment of Prof. Dr. Ursula Verhoeven (Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz)
and assoc. Prof. Dr. Mahmoud El-Khadragy (University of Sohag) was and still is
invaluable. Together with the author, they have directed the Asyut Project and have
contributed considerably to the revival of the extensive fieldwork done in Asyut after
more than eighty years of interruption. Furthermore, thanks are due to Prof. Dr. Wolfgang
Schenkel and Dr. Mahmoud el-Hamrawi. I owe it to them and their good offices that
the German-Egyptian cooperation was able to work out as well as it did.
I am also very much indebted to the Supreme Council of Antiquities, particularly to
Dr. Zahi Hawass, Dr. Sabri Abd el-Aziz, and Mr. Magdy el-Ghandour; the General
Director of Middle Egypt, Mr. Samir Anis Salib; the Inspector General at Asyut, Mr.
Ahmed el-Khatib and his predecessors, Mr. Hani Sadek Metri and the late Mr.
Mohamed Abd el-Aziz; the inspector of the magazine at Shutb, Mrs. Nadia Naguib,
the accompanying inspectors Emad Bostan Ata, Rageh Darwish Khalaf, Magdy Shaker,
and Mohamed Mustafa Al-Shafey; as well as the restorers Ahmed Abd el-Dayem
Mohamed, Khalid Gomaa Sayed, Gamal Abd el-Malik Abd el-Moneam, Naglaa Abd
el-Motty Fathy, Helal Qeli Attalaa, Mahmoud Hasan Mohamed Sallam.
I am equally indebted to Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz (2004), the
Fachbereich 9 Philologie of the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster (2004)
and the German Research Foundation (2005 up to the present). Fieldwork to this
extent would not have been possible without their financial backing.
Fieldwork would have never succeeded so well without the genuine support of the
local ghafirs, especially the Urgestein Quraim (Mohamed Saad Moursi), as well as the
police, the military, and reis Ahmed Atitou and reis Zekry supervising the numerous
workmen—not to mention the driving skills of Sobhi, who all participants in many
ways owe their safety and well-being to.
I cannot thank all of them enough.

In the same fashion, the following colleagues and assistants in the field also deserve
to be mentioned. For the last four years, through their own indefatiguable efforts, they
have contributed to expanding our knowledge of ancient Asyut and the surrounding
area. Participants of the previous four seasons were (in chronological order):

Mahmoud El-Khadragy, Egyptologist (2003-2006)

Eva-Maria Engel, archaeologist (2003-2005)
Ursula Verhoeven, Egyptologist (2004-2006)
Ulrike Fauerbach, surveyor (2004-2006)
Monika Zöller, Egyptologist (2004-2006)
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X Preface

Yasser Mahmoud Hussein, Egyptologist (2004-2006)

Omar Nour el-Din, Egyptologist (2004)
Sameh Shafik, epigrapher (2005-2006)
Meike Becker, Egyptologist (2005-2006)
Dietrich Klemm, geologist (2005)
Rosemarie Klemm, Egyptologist (2005)
Christiane Dorstewitz, Egyptology student (2005)
Diana Kleiber, Egyptology student (2005)
John Moussa Iskander, Egyptologist (2005)
Ilona Regulski, epigrapher (2006)
Ammar Abu Bakr, draftsman (2006)
Fritz Barthel, photographer (2006)
Hazim Saleh Abdallah, Egyptologist (2006)
Eva Gervers, anthropology student (2006)
Andrea Kilian, Egyptology student (2006)
Mohamed Naguib Reda, Egyptologist (2006)
Laura Sanhueza-Pino, Egyptology student (2006)

For permission to reproduce photographs I am grateful to Bodo von Dewitz (Museum

Ludwig, Köln), James Ede (London), Regina Hölzl (Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien),
Christian Leitz (Eberhard Karls-Universität Tübingen), Gertrud Platz (Antiken-
sammlung Staatliche Museen zu Berlin), Christiane Ziegler (Musée du Louvre, Paris),
and the Museum of Fine Arts Boston.

This book owes its final form to the invaluable support of my wife, Eva-Maria Engel.
Christoph Engel produced the layout, the English correction was in good hands with
James Goff, Terence DuQuesne, Troy Sagrillo, John Daly, and the Flying Fish Theatre.
I feel much obliged to all of them. Finally I am indebted to the Verlag Otto Harrasso-
witz for publishing this manuscript.

Vienna, May 2007 Jochem Kahl

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INTRODUCTION

WHY WRITE A BOOK ABOUT ANCIENT ASYUT?

In pharaonic times Asyut never played a central role in the ancient state. It was never
the capital of the splendid empire of those kings who made history for nearly three
thousand years from 3200-332 BC.
Asyut was often an important support for the royal court, but sometimes even the
opposite. It seems always to have had its own and original creative power. Sometimes
in accordance with the canon of the royal court, but more often by seeking and deve-
loping its own concepts of art, architecture, and religious beliefs, ancient Asyut as far
as modern researches concern is today well known for its own school, a school of
craftsmanship and theology, which produced many unique pieces of art and texts,
which were highly valued in ancient times and that also have today a permanent place
in the scientific discipline of Egyptology.
Not only did Asyut have a relatively distant position with respect to the high cul-
ture of the court, but it also provided important impulses to the court and other towns.
Often it is mentioned in religious texts as being one of the most important towns in
Middle and Upper Egypt. This special role of Asyut, i.e. its position between residenti-
al influence and regional traditions, deserves to be examined as an example for high
culture outside the royal court.
Due to a poor history of research and the deprival of many of its monuments,
Asyut had been forgotten for a long time. Only some of its most beautiful objects,
today found in museums and collections all over the world, receive any attention at
all. The ancient site, its town, its temples, and its necropolis had not been the focus of
any interest since the 1920s. In the 1980s and the beginning 1990s some attempts to
start scientific work in Asyut failed due to the danger of terrorism. Only in 2003 a new
field-project began: The Asyut Project. A joint mission of the Westfälische Wilhelms-
Universität Münster (Germany) and of the Universitiy of Sohag (Egypt) surveyed the
ancient necropolis, and in 2004 members of these Universities, as well as members of
the Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz (Germany), conducted the first archaeolo-
gical fieldwork there in more than eighty years. According to modern understanding
of archaeology, the goals of this fieldwork are not the discovery of single objects, but
the reconstruction of the history of the ancient necropolis, and thereby of the ancient
town and its different fortunes as a city of culture, as a border town, and as a woun-
ded city, as well as the determination of various phases and functions concerning the
use of the western mountain at Asyut. Goals are also safeguarding and restoring
ancient monuments in the necropolis, which have suffered much through stone quar-
rying, tomb robberies, and climatic influences.
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2 Why write a book about Ancient Asyut?

This book is intended to contribute to establishing ancient Asyut’s place in the

memory of modern mankind. It will provide an overview on our present knowledge
about the history, the art, and the people of ancient Asyut—an overview, which will
hopefully be enlarged by further studies and ongoing fieldwork activities in the near
future.