I've never excavated any Ancient Egyptian watercraft models - the 585 authentic ones in my dissertation were mostly "excavated" (meaning collected without a whole bunch of documentation at times - but sometimes they were excavated properly) between 1823-1932, with only a very few found after 1932; the most recent was found in 2007 and boy was I excited! The woman who just finished her dissertation on the dig where the boat was found graciously gave me all her research on it and I'm giving her a CD of my work so she can see where her model fits in with all the rest. The models are 95% of the time found in rock-cut tombs and the rest are from pit tombs or from house contexts - they were a common part of funerary practices in the First Intermediate Period and Middle Kingdom, but lesser so in the Predynastic, Old Kingdom, and New Kingdom - the 1 Third Intermediate Period boat I have is from a house. So, all dry contexts as part of the funerary rites - not from the Nile River or anything.
Diving in the Nile would actually be about the same as the Mississippi River or any other river I've dove in while working on my MA in North Carolina - muddy, murky, mucky, and dark. The wrecis found would be radically different of course! Most rivers are low-visibility environments and the diving is similar in them all - except for the currents and the amount of surface traffic you run into. The part of the Mississippi we are currently focused on is very quiet - so that's nice. Our house in St Paul is about 5 blocks from the Mississippi and about a mile from a dam - so very dynamic and busy river here, which we will survey in the future.
As for my icon - yep - that's a great little model is from the Saqqara tomb of Gem-wsr excavated quite well by K. Richard Lepsius in 1843 and dates to All Egypt Dynasty XI of the Middle Kingdom - very unique - it has a sister found with it and both belong to the Egyptian Museum in Berlin. The model was on loan to a weird little museum in Cottbus, Germany when I went to Berlin and made a trek to Cottbus, into the woods to a weirdly palatial house with out-buildings and in one of the buildings was the model in a museum exhibit. Currently the model isn't carrying its canopy and the pilot at the front now faces the other direction - this kind of stuff happens after over 150 years of museum life. The museum was bombed during WWII and they lost 1 model - one of the most fantastic ever excavated, but its sister model survived and I documented that in Berlin. Other museums lost models during bombing, including Griefswald in Germany and Liverpool.
Again, sorry to go on and on - I love the topic and since my defense went to well and my Readers are dying for me to publish, it's nice to know I'm not full of crap about the topic! ;-)
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Date: 2009-05-18 11:21 pm (UTC)Diving in the Nile would actually be about the same as the Mississippi River or any other river I've dove in while working on my MA in North Carolina - muddy, murky, mucky, and dark. The wrecis found would be radically different of course! Most rivers are low-visibility environments and the diving is similar in them all - except for the currents and the amount of surface traffic you run into. The part of the Mississippi we are currently focused on is very quiet - so that's nice. Our house in St Paul is about 5 blocks from the Mississippi and about a mile from a dam - so very dynamic and busy river here, which we will survey in the future.
As for my icon - yep - that's a great little model is from the Saqqara tomb of Gem-wsr excavated quite well by K. Richard Lepsius in 1843 and dates to All Egypt Dynasty XI of the Middle Kingdom - very unique - it has a sister found with it and both belong to the Egyptian Museum in Berlin. The model was on loan to a weird little museum in Cottbus, Germany when I went to Berlin and made a trek to Cottbus, into the woods to a weirdly palatial house with out-buildings and in one of the buildings was the model in a museum exhibit. Currently the model isn't carrying its canopy and the pilot at the front now faces the other direction - this kind of stuff happens after over 150 years of museum life. The museum was bombed during WWII and they lost 1 model - one of the most fantastic ever excavated, but its sister model survived and I documented that in Berlin. Other museums lost models during bombing, including Griefswald in Germany and Liverpool.
Again, sorry to go on and on - I love the topic and since my defense went to well and my Readers are dying for me to publish, it's nice to know I'm not full of crap about the topic! ;-)