3,300 Year Old Leather Chariot Trappings Rediscovered (!)

Unbelievable - the Cairo Museum doesn't even know what the hell it has in its own collections!

As reported at nature.com:
Ancient Egyptian chariot trappings rediscovered

Forgotten drawers in Egyptian museum yield 'astonishing' leather find.

Jo Marchant

23 November 2011

 

The beautifully preserved leather trappings of an ancient Egyptian chariot have been rediscovered in a storeroom of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. Researchers say that the find, which includes intact harnesses, gauntlets and a bow case, is unique, and will help them to reconstruct how such chariots were made and used.

A painted box from Tutankhamun's tomb depicts the Pharaoh on a chariot chasing Nubians.

Kenneth Garrett/National Geographic/Getty Images

The ancient Egyptians used chariots — typically with one or two riders and pulled by two horses — for hunting and warfare as well as in processions. They are frequently shown in ancient Egyptian art, and several examples of the wooden frames survive, including six dismantled chariots found in King Tutankhamun’s tomb, dating to around 3,300 years ago.

But researchers knew little about the leather trappings and harnesses used with such chariots, as leather decomposes quickly if any moisture is present. Barely any leather survives on the chariots from Tutankhamun’s tomb, though some fragments are known from chariots found in other tombs, such as that of Yuya and Thuya, Tutankhamun’s great-grandparents.

Accidental treasures
Then in 2008, André Veldmeijer of the Netherlands-Flemish Institute in Cairo, who specializes in the study of ancient leather, saw a black-and-white photograph of some intact chariot trappings in a 1950s book on ancient technology¹.

They were labelled as being held in the Egyptian Museum, but when Veldmeijer asked the curator, Ibrahim El Gawad, he knew nothing about them. But a few months later, El Gawad came across the trappings by accident, lying forgotten in a series of drawers in a back room of the museum.

Veldmejier says that El Gawad called him to the museum and showed him “layer upon layer” of leather. “It’s a gorgeous find,” he says. “What was in the picture, that’s not even half of what’s in the museum. It was astonishing.”

The trappings are 90–95% complete, according to Veldmeijer, and include the leather casing that would have covered the wooden chariot, as well as harnesses, gauntlets, and a bow case and quiver. Wear marks and details of the stitching are still visible, and the intricate red, green and white design — the only known example of its type — is still bright after more than three millennia.

Chariot ride

Veldmeijer is now working with Salima Ikram, an Egyptologist at the American University in Cairo, to conserve, catalogue and study the trappings as part of the Egyptian Museum Chariot Project. That includes attempting to open out the fragile pieces — which had been folded to fit into the museum drawers — and protecting them with acid-free packing material. They will report their first results at a dedicated conference to be held in Cairo next year.

“The trappings should help us to understand more about chariot construction and use, which in turn will be important for our knowledge of ancient Egyptian warfare and elite display,” says Susanna Harris, an expert in ancient textiles and animal skins at University College London. She adds that the results may also have implications for the study of chariots in other societies for which there are no surviving examples. “For example there are chariots in the wall paintings and iconography of Crete (Minoans) and mainland Greece (Mycenaeans) dating to this period but no preserved chariot leather there,” she says.

The Egyptian Museum project is in its early stages but the researchers are already gaining new insights into how the chariot was used. For example, Ikram has identified a leather strap that she thinks acted as a safety belt. “It would have fitted around the driver’s bum to stabilize him, and to stop him from falling out,” she says.

Veldmeijer also hopes to identify the type of leather used, as well as studying the stitching and skin-processing methods and how the leather was cut and assembled.

One mystery yet to be solved is where the chariot trappings come from originally. Museum records state that they were bought from a Greek antiquities dealer called Georges Tano in 1932, but it isn’t known where he found them. To have survived in such good condition they were presumably discovered in a tomb, and the style suggest a time around that of Tutankhamun. [The fact that we don't know and probably won't ever know clouds our knowledge.  This is the type of destruction of history that is the legacy of antiquities looters and smugglers.]

El Gawad thinks that they belonged to Tutankhamun's father, the rebel pharaoh Akhenaten, but Veldmeijer believes them to date from slightly later, possibly belonging to one of Tutankhamun’s successors.

(Journal citation and references at nature.com)

Was Armenia the Cradle of Civilization?

Well, I've always thought so :)  Regardless of whether you believe the biblical account of a great flood that wiped out nearly everyone except a chosen few who took to a large vessel with animals and supplies and survived to land somewhere in the mountains of Ararat (the biblical account does NOT say that the vessel landed on Mount Ararat), there is plenty of archaeological evidence to show that agriculture got it's start in the highlands of that borderland region between Turkey and Armenia and that grapes were first grown there, about 11,500 years ago or so.  The pattern of the spread of agriculture, and civilization, shows a steady southwards progression, eventually creating a great arc called the Fertile Crescent.  That Crescent, which is what most people concentrate on when they think of ancient civilizations, ignores evidence of other equally ancient civilizations northwest of the Caucusus Mountains and those areas settled to the West, in the area called "old Europe." 

Armenia was the site of development of the first spoke-wheel and light-weight but sturdy chariot chasse. The people were expert horse-breeders and horse-trainers, who were in demand all across the Fertile Crescent to staff the fledgling calvary corps of potentates in Anatolia, Egypt and Mesopotamia with the spread of this new technology beginning about 1850 BCE. If I remember my linguistics correctly, the Armenian language, along with ancient Sanskrit, are the 'purest' remaining examples of the ancient proto-Indo-European language. So, I found this article interesting.

From panarmenian.net
Mesopotamia’s civilization originated in Armenia
July 2, 2010 - 15:43 AMT 10:43 GMTPanARMENIAN.Net - Unique discoveries revealed as a result of excavations at Shengavit (4000-3000 B.C.) confirm that Armenia is the motherland of metallurgy, jeweler’s art, wine-making and horse breeding.

A group of archaeologists studying the ancient city concluded that 4000-3000 B.C. Armenia was a highly developed state with exclusive culture. The excavations are carried out by an Armenian-American archaeological expedition.

Director of the Scientific and Research Institute of Historical and Cultural Heritage of the RA Ministry of Culture Simonyan said that for example, the glass beads discovered at the territory of Shengavit are of a higher quality than the Egypt samples.

Meanwhile, the amount of revealed horse bones at the territory has exceeded all expectations of the researchers. With respect to this, German paleozoologist Hans Peter Wertman stated that he has not observed such a quantity of horses in the entire Ancient East.

A great number of stone tools have been found in workrooms. While the discovered evidences of copper production prove that a systematized iron production was established in Armenia, said Simonyan, adding that many surprises are still awaiting us.

For his part, Mitchell S. Rothman, a Professor of Anthropology and Archaeology and founder of the Anthropology Department at Widener University in Chester, Pennsylvania, said that all the discoveries prove that around 6,000 years ago the culture of Shengavit has spread over the ancient world. “All that was known in Mesopotamia came from Armenia. Armenia is the absent fragment in the entire mosaics of the ancient world’s civilizations construction. Shengavit has supplemented the lacking chains, that we had been facing while studying the ancient culture of Mesopotamia,” concluded Rothman.

So who is the woman on the linchpin of a Bronze Age chariot?

From the Universit of Haifa
Archaeological mystery solved
Published by Editor at 10:49 am under Press Releases
July 1, 2010

A 3,200-year-old round bronze tablet with a carved face of a woman, found at the El-ahwat excavation site near Katzir in central Israel, is part of a linchpin that held the wheel of a battle chariot in place. This was revealed by scientist Oren Cohen of the Zinman Institute of Archaeology at the University of Haifa. “Such an identification reinforces the claim that a high-ranking Egyptian or local ruler was based at this location, and is likely to support the theory that the site is Harosheth Haggoyim, the home town of Sisera, as mentioned in Judges 4-5,” says Prof. Zertal.

The El-ahwat site, near Nahal ‘Iron, was exposed by a cooperative delegation excavating there during 1993-2000 from the Universities of Haifa and Cagliari (Sardinia), headed by Prof. Zertal. The excavated city has been dated back to the end of the Bronze Age and early Iron Age (13th-12th centuries B.C.E.). The city’s uniqueness - its fortifications, passageways in the walls, and rounded huts - made it foreign amidst the Canaanite landscape. Prof. Zertal has proposed that based on these unusual features, the site may have been home to the Shardana tribe of the Sea-Peoples, who, according to some researchers, lived in Harosheth Haggoyim, Sisera’s capital city. The city is mentioned in the Bible’s narratives as Sisera’s capital, and it was from there that the army of chariots set out to fight the Israelites, who were being led by Deborah the prophetess and Barak, son of Avinoam. The full excavation and its conclusions have been summarized in Prof. Zertal’s book “Sisera’s Secret, A Journey following the Sea-Peoples and the Song of Deborah” (Dvir, Tel Aviv, 2010 [Hebrew]).

One of the objects uncovered at the site remained masked in mystery. The round, bronze tablet, about 2 cm. in diameter and 5 mm. thick, was found in a structure identified as the “Governor’s House”. The object features a carved face of a woman wearing a cap and earrings shaped as chariot wheels. When uncovered in 1997, it was already clear that the tablet was the broken end of an elongated object, but Mr. Cohen, who included the tablet in the final report of the excavations, did not manage to find its parallel in any other archaeological discoveries.

Now, 13 years later, the mystery has been solved. When carrying out a scrutinizing study of ancient Egyptian reliefs depicting chariot battles, Mr. Cohen discerned a unique decoration: the bronze linchpins fastening the chariot wheels were decorated with people’s faces - of captives, foreigners and enemies of Egypt. He also noticed that these decorations characterized those chariots that were used by royalty and distinguished people.

“This identification enhances the historical and archaeological value of the site and proves that chariots belonging to high-ranking individuals were found there. It provides support for the possibility, which has not yet been definitively established, that this was Sisera’s city of residence and that it was from there that the chariots set out on their way to the battle against the Israelite tribes, located between the ancient sites of Taanach and Megiddo,” Prof. Zertal concludes.

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Okay, darlings, I'm tired tonight and I'm in a real bitchy mood.  First of all, I'm not at all sure this is a depiction of a female.  I do not, frankly, see "earrings in the shape of chariot wheels" on this figure.  I see big ears, which are usually the domain of males.  I also see crossed arms under the chin and closed fists, rather like the classic figure of a deceased Egyptian depicted on the outside of a cartonnage or an outer coffin in richer and older burials.  Did the Sea Peoples bury their dead in an identical fashion to the ancient Egyptians?

If this is a female head, how do we know that it is Egyptian and not "Sea Peoples?"  What history tells us at present is that the Egptians were plagued by invasives waves of "Sea Peoples" the same as everyone else in the area!  If this linchpin is Egyptian, what the hell was it doing there in what, I believe, the article suggests was a scene of a battle between Sea Peoples and Caananites?  What is the author suggesting? 

A separate inquiry: What evidence is there that this linchpin depicts "captives, foreigners and enemies of Egypt?"  I don't know much about the Sea Peoples, but if this linchpin was from an Egyptian chariot of the period, how does the author know for sure that it was not depicting the head of an Egyptian female diety? 

Think about it - if you were going into battle in a fragile battle chariot bouncing over rocky desert terrain pulled by a team of horses at full gallop, the bain of eight-spoked wheels and designed-for-speed chariot chassies, would you rather have a figurative head of an "enemy" holding your wheels together, or the figurative head of a favored goddess or god holding your wheels together?