JNES_62-2-2003

Günter Dreyer, Umm el‐Qaab I: Das prädynastische Königsgrab U‐j und seine frühen Schriftzeugnisse Umm el-Qaab I: Das prädynastische Königsgrab U-j und seine frühen Schriftzeugnisse by Günter Dreyer Review by: Bruce Williams Journal of Near Eastern Studies, Vol. 62, No. 2 (April 2003), pp. 142-147 Published by: The University of Chicago Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/376385 . Accessed: 18/04/2012 10:33 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

The University of Chicago Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Journal of Near Eastern Studies.

http://www.jstor.org

142

JOURNAL OF NEAR EASTERN STUDIES

was simply the delineation of the most characteristic and descriptive view, the underlying reasons for the formation of most images in Egyptian art. The frontal owl face is often encountered in practice works and trial sketches, suggesting the need for repetition of this nonpro˜le image. The collection of what might be considered “aberrant” examples in this book points out the fallacy of broad generalization usually made about two dimensional representation in Egyptian art. The examples included here tend to prove the validity of the rule that favors the pro˜le view and the artists’ dependence on it. The exceptions often lack the coherence of the standard pro˜le images, whatever the rationale for their employment. They are in a less familiar format and were not as eˆortlessly executed by the scribe or artist. This probably explains the large number of practice pieces preserved with frontal faces of humans, birds, and animals, many of which are illustrated in this work. There is little to criticize in this small book. The line-drawing illustrations are well documented and the twenty-page bibliography, probably derived from the original thesis, is extensive. The author has had the opportunity to publish this self-contained material on one aspect of Egyptian art in a convenient format, thus making it available to a wide readership. WILLIAM H. PECK The Detroit Institute of Arts

Umm el-Qaab I: Das prädynastische Königsgrab U-j und seine frühen Schriftzeugnisse. By GÜNTER DREYER. Deutsches Archäologisches Institut, Abteilung Kairo, Archäologische Veröˆentlichungen 86. Mainz: Verlag Philipp von Zabern, 1999. Pp. ix + 121 ˜gs. + 47 pls. + 3 tables. E 101.24. Archaeology oˆers few exciting surprises these days, and few of these are both discoveries of great substance and products of systematic research of the highest caliber. Certainly, the work of Günter Dreyer and his colleagues in the Umm el-Qaab has been patient and systematic, but it has also been rewarded by discoveries that rank with the most important in Egyptology

One Line Long

VOL. 62ıNo. 2

and archaeology. The greatest of these they now present in a volume that is a current culmination of the preeminent publication series in Egyptian archaeology. The study of early Egypt will never be the same. Although worked over since the time of Mariette by archaeologists great and small, dilatory and systematic, Abydos, like Thebes, seems somehow inexhaustible. Even the great royal cemetery, vaguely plundered by Amelineau and painstakingly reassembled by Petrie, is capable of yielding new evidence, and it was there that the “Nachuntersuchung” began almost twenty years ago. The results of this retrospective activity were such that the work expanded northward to explore the relationship between the royal cemetery and Peet’s Cemetery U, many of whose burials were earlier and important. The eˆort was fully justi˜ed, for not only were early materials found, they have included important objects hardly found in context since the early years of the twentieth century. This was not all. Some of the tombs were of extraordinary size, with especially complex structures. Enough remained in them to date them to a period between tombs that Kaiser and Dreyer had identi˜ed as royal in the Naqada period and the well-known tombs of Cemetery B that led to the First Dynasty.1 One of these tombs, U-j, contained not just fragmentary wealth, but some almost undisturbed deposits of pottery that were pregnant shadows of its original opulence. Clearly, this was the tomb of a ruler, and decisive epigraphic evidence showed it belonged to a pharaoh. The luster of the discovery is undimmed by the fact that it was produced by systematic research rather than luck—except, perhaps for the luck of its survival through decades of digging. Nor is its importance diminished by the fact that the tomb itself, its contents, and its location are exactly what we would expect from a partially preserved royal tomb of the Naqada IIIa. It was, from the moment of discovery, instructive and exciting. Fortunately for us, Dreyer followed other precedents at the Deutsches Archäologisches Institut (DAI) by preparing not 1ÛWerner Kaiser and Günter Dreyer, “Nachuntersuchungen im frühzeitlichen Königsfriedhof 2: Vorbericht,” MDAIK 38 (1982): 211–69, especially pp. 212–25.

APRIL 2003

BOOK REVIEWS

just the substantial professional preliminary reports on the work we have come to expect, but a large-scale ˜nal publication on U-j alone. For this, we are surely grateful, for the excavations are far from ˜nished, and our desire for a complete presentation of this spectacular ˜nd badly wants slaking. This is no bare-bones report of ˜nds and contexts; it is also an analytical work of considerable importance. The objects and documents all want to be associated and compared with their contemporary and nearly contemporary counterparts to interpret, and possibly even to decipher, some of the many puzzling documents of the late Naqada period. This has not been a neglected activity in recent years, but Dreyer’s discussion contains a signi˜cant new departure that must be weighed carefully. Tomb U-j was a rectangular, multiroom brick structure built at the southern edge of Cemetery U in two stages. The ˜rst is a core measuring some 10.2 x 5.20 m, the second an addition of two long chambers on the south, bringing the size to roughly 10.6 x 8.25 m. Although there are a number of other brick structures in Cemetery U, U-j is by far the largest and most complex. It is, in fact, much larger and more complex than the tombs attributed to Narmer and his predecessors. It was not surpassed in size or complexity by any tombs in this cemetery before Aha, although Aha’s neighbor B40/ 50 certainly looks interesting. U-j was also accompanied by deposits, mostly of pottery, made to its south and west. To the northeast, the core of the tomb consists of a central chamber with eight chambers surrounding it and one chamber along the western edge. In the second stage, two rooms were built along the south side. A system of narrow, arched passages connects the rooms of the complex. Although these are far too narrow to be considered anything but symbolic, they connected the central room with others in the corner complex in a way that suggests an apartment with a monumental approach to the west. Other rooms were connected separately to the large western chambers. All of this suggested to Dreyer the layout of a dummy palace with a throne room, antechamber, various retiring rooms, and o¯ces. From this, he reconstructed, using the proportions of a building in the Khasekhemwy enclosure, a palace of some

143

30 x 24 m. This is modest enough, surely, although some of the later temple-palaces are not overlarge. Some of the archaic tombs also suggested features of dwellings but so did the great substructure tomb-houses of the Third Dynasty and the palace built in the Djoser Complex. U-j had been thoroughly plundered in ancient times, which left it generally without coherent valuables, although most of the chambers contained fragments of their ancient wealth. There were pieces of stone vessels, including a spectacular obsidian platter shaped like a pair of cupped hands; some scraps of gold; beads; an ivory scepter; vessels; gaming pieces, many elaborately decorated; and a large cedar chest, as identi˜ed in the appendix on botanical samples. The contents of U-j that make history can be placed into two groups: (1) Syro-Palestinian imported vessels; (2) inscriptions on pottery vessels, label-tags, and seal impressions. Nothing in Syria-Palestine competes in scale and depth with this large body of vessels from one deposit in Egypt. The documents are the stuˆ of history itself, hundreds of painted marks and carved labels that extend the level of detail available to historical research in the early First Dynasty backwards in time several generations. When found, two chambers in U-j contained large collections of pots, while indentations in the ˘oors of three more indicated that they, too, had been magazines for containers. These had been arranged in layers, so that the best preserved, chamber 10, had four layers of about 7 x 7 vessels (about 50) vessels each. Dreyer estimated some 700 were originally deposited in chambers 7, 10, and 12, of which 350 remained. The elaborate painted designs of Naqada II type were no longer found by the time of U-j, but some 95 of the jars had painted marks on the sides. These comprise small groups of one, two, or three elements, grouped according to the one most dominant. By far the most common of these were the scorpion, the pteroceras shell (Fingerschnecke), ˜sh (shown tail pointing upwards), and boucranium on a staˆ, although the falcon and the boat also occur, along with fragments of various sizes. The scorpion sometimes rests on a crisscrossed rectangle, and it sometimes has a tree to the right, in front of its pincers, as do the shell, the ˜sh, and probably the boucranium. Their simplicity and repetition ˜x

144

JOURNAL OF NEAR EASTERN STUDIES

them ˜rmly as inscriptions. They frequently coincided with images on labels so that the two bodies of epigraphic evidence can be considered complementary. Dreyer points out continuity between the inscriptions on these jars with cylinder jars from the later tombs of Cemetery B. Since many of these have the name or serekh of a king with what is probably a commodity inscribed beside the name, Dreyer considers these labels also to indicate a ruler, possibly with a commodity. An overwhelming majority of the 192 bone, ivory, and stone labels were found in chamber 11, the corner room that also contained the cedar chest, although a few came from chamber 1 and from places around the tomb or were occasionally scattered elsewhere. Although simpler than the label of Narmer found after U-j,2 and far simpler than any First Dynasty label, these clearly had the same function, and their inscriptions served the same purpose. They are more complex than the painted inscriptions, and they have a wider variety of signs. A common category is numbers, indicated by vertical strokes, horizontal strokes, or a spiral, with or without a stroke. Human ˜gures are uncommon, a pair wrestling for a ring,3 a bowman, or a smiting man with a falcon on a rectangle above. An elephant appears, standing or striding, sometimes on mountain peaks. Occasionally, it appears with a crane above or in front, or a tree, also above or in front, and it is sometimes shown with the horned shrine of Upper Egypt, standing above and behind it or recumbent below. There are canids, once accompanied by inverted arms, several times with fronds or, less often, trees. Single examples of the rabbit and hedgehog appear and the hyena twice, with a falcon on a triangle. Frequently, the head of a caprid is set on a staˆ and once an oryx, with a stork standing 2ÛThis gives strong support to the historicity of the Narmer Palette, and with it, other monumental objects. Günter Dreyer et al., “Umm el Qaab: Nachuntersuchungen im frühzeitlichen Königsfriedhof 9./10. Vorbericht,” MDAIK 54 (1998): 138–39, ˜g. 29. 3ÛAs in one of the enclosures on the Libyan Booty Palette. See ˜g. 103 and Henri Asselberghs, Chaos en Beheersing: Documenten uit aeneolithisch Egypte, Documenta et Monumenta Oriens Antiqui, vol. 8 (Leiden, 1961), ˜g. 164, second from upper left.

VOL. 62ıNo. 2

beside it. This stork is the main subject several times, as is the falcon. The stork’s companions are sometimes a throne (?), a tree (?), or a Minsign, but three times a roundel above two horizontal lines, which occurs also with the mounted caprid head. The falcon, on the other hand, is perched on a line, or a triangle, or directly on a large rectangle ˜lled with vertical lines. It is sometimes accompanied by a roundel, two horizontal lines, or both the roundel and the lines. Three times, herons are perched on the roof of a building seen face-front with niches that closely resembles a serekh. The crested ibis stands alone, on the mountains, or beside mountains from which a serpent standard protrudes. This serpent above the mountains also appears in front of a zigzag hanging from an inverted crescent. In addition to these major types and combinations, possible granaries, a circle with grain, an article of clothing, a boat, a town, and a domain appear, as well as inverted arms, the reed leaf, and the scorpion. Both the dipinti and the labels are highly repetitive, and enough of them appear in later documents that both must be considered epigraphic documents in the same sense. The foundation for their study is laid by an analytical presentation that groups paintings and labels by major sign. Most of these signs and motifs occur elsewhere, so Dreyer had the opportunity to interpret a body of material very much larger than that found in U-j. The label-tags were clearly antecedents of the First Dynasty labels that Kaplony had divided into four categories, elaborate annalistic labels, royal festival labels, abbreviated annalistic labels without royal names, and simple labels that give only the product and the donor or circumstances of donation, the category that most closely resembles the U-j labels. The single largest group of U-j labels, numbers, could be compared with later ones that gave simple quantities; he hypothesizes that some of these were for grain and others for textiles.4 Of the other labels, many seem to indicate place of origin, 4ÛExamples

drawn from Naqada and Abydos (p. 139) give Neithhotep and other royal names, respectively, on the reverse, the “royal residence,” or are blank.

APRIL 2003

BOOK REVIEWS

such as Buto (heron on niched façade), Basta (stork beside throne), and Abydos (elephant on mountains). He concluded that there were three major groups, economic foundations (the royal estates, royal residence, harim, and predecessors’ households), departments with speci˜c competence, either regional or functional (˜shery, granary, textile store, etc.), and places (Buto, Basta, etc.). This simplicity is deceptive because estates could commemorate persons and events in their names and several signs that were identi˜ed as royal names in the painted gra¯ti that appear among them. Some of the places—or signs used in their names—are label enclosures on the Libyan Booty Palette, and some of the royal names are shown attacking these enclosures from above with hoes. This initiated the reconstruction of a dynasty. As Dreyer notes, the forti˜ed enclosures on the Libyan Booty and other palettes need not be towns but may be citadels, as at Elephantine. I depart from his remarks to say that parallels from the reign of Djer5 and the later Old Kingdom,6 as well as the Narmer Palette7 clearly indicate they are actually being destroyed and that the small squares in the enclosures are falling bricks. The palette’s enclosures all contain signs generally considered names or euphemisms for real places, and Dreyer points out two: wrestlers and a heron (Buto?) from the Abydos labels. I add a third, the arms-like structure in the lower right enclosure, which is probably to be identi˜ed with the sign in the enclosure smashed by Narmer’s bull, and a fourth, the hut in the enclosure to the left, which is likely the sign that labels a bound prisoner on the Gebel Sheikh Suleiman Monument.8 The towns’ conquerors,

5ÛThe town of çAn is hacked by a hoe in the time of Djer, with a large portion of the wall removed. See Jacques Vandier, Manuel d ’archéologie égyptienne, vol. 1, Les époques de formation, vol. 2, Les trois premières dynasties (Paris, 1952), ˜g. 570. 6ÛJ. E. Quibell and A. G. K. Hayter, Teti Pyramid, North Side, Excavations at Saqqara, vol. 8 (Cairo, 1927), frontispiece. 7ÛHere, the bull tramples a slain enemy and batters down a wall (Asselberghs, Chaos en Beheersing, ˜g. 169, below). 8ÛSee William J. Murnane, “Appendix C. The Gebel Sheikh Suleiman Monument: Epigraphic Re-

145

falcon, [broken], falcon, [broken], lion, scorpion, and double-falcon Dreyer connects to his growing king-list, although not in that order. At this point, there is nothing to disprove the possibility that these conquerors represent the same person(s), as Schott thought, in a kind of litany, or the enclosures represent the same place. Enter the Coptos Colossi with a signi˜cant point for consideration. On their sides they have several of the royal names or epithets found in U-j. The Cairo statue also has Narmer, whose name was carved on the statue after the other major inscriptions. These also were not carved at the same time and can be subdivided by style and type of cutting into phases that diˆer markedly from each other.9 There are de˜nite superpositions and erasures that help to determine the order in which some parts of the inscription were carved. Logically, the signs that appear on the colossi were not contemporary alternate epithets for the same ruler. For this reason, Dreyer reconstructed a king-list from the colossi, expanded by rulers from U-j; the Libyan Booty Palette; and other documents. Dreyer found some nine rulers on the colossi, each of them a sign or sign group, beginning with the oryx head on a pole and ending with Narmer. Although the Colossi do not have all the rulers, the Cairo statue has names from the beginning to the end of his reconstructed dynasty. To this list, he added the Fish, Scorpion, and Falcon from U-j, the boucranium on a pole possibly being equated with the Bull on the Cairo statue. The rulers found in U-j documents de˜ne a logical group for the ˜rst half of the dynasty. The Libyan Booty Palette de˜nes a second group, adding Double Falcon and Scorpion II, with possibly Falcon II and III. For Upper Egypt, other Abydos documents add Iry-Hor and “Ka” to make the following list: Oryx-standard (Coptos and U-j), Shell (Coptos marks,” in Bruce Williams and Thomas J. Logan, “The Metropolitan Museum Knife Handle and Aspects of Pharaonic Imagery before Narmer,” JNES 46 (1987): 283–85, ˜g. 1. See also Vandier, Manuel d ’archéologie égyptienne, vol. 1, pt. 2, ˜g. 561:11, for another occurrence of these structures at Abydos. 9ÛThis combination of features I checked directly with the Cairo statue with the positive conclusion that the sign groups he distinguished were not carved at the same time.

146

JOURNAL OF NEAR EASTERN STUDIES

and U-j), Fish (U-j), Elephant (Coptos, U-j), Bull (Coptos, jar painting), Stork (Coptos, U-j doubtful, probably doubtful altogether), Canid (Coptos, U-j), Bull-head standard (U-j, same as Bull?), Scorpion I (U-j, possibly other objects), Falcon (U-j, Libyan Booty Palette, Metropolitan Museum Palette), Min-standard and Frond (Coptos, painted jar; see below and n. 11), an uncertain king’s name (Libyan Booty Palette), Falcon II (Libyan Booty Palette?), Lion (Coptos, Libyan Booty Palette, seal, Lion Palette?), Doublefalcon (Libyan Booty Palette, potmarks), Iry-Hor (Cemetery B inscriptions), Ka (Cemetery B inscriptions), Scorpion II (Libyan Booty Palette, Scorpion Macehead, where he is Scorpion-standard), and, ˜nally, Narmer. Despite the scheme’s simplicity and elegance, as well as its congruence of the ideas it represents with a list found on a First Dynasty seal (see n. 18 below), Dreyer himself considers it incomplete and subject to correction. He points out a number of serekhs in the deserts and from Northern Egypt that he did not include; there is one name analogous to Iry-Hor from Nubia.10 A few notes should be added: his min-standard and plant king occurs on a cylinder seal from Helwan, with an unnamed serekh.11 The scorpion on the macehead (Scorpion II) is not a normal animal—it is also on a pole,12 like his Oryx-standard and Bull-standard. A number of these rulers have names that come from fraught symbols or divine standards that had been a part of Egyptian culture for centuries, notably the falcon,13 the double falcon,14

10ÛSee my The A-Group Royal Cemetery at Qustul: Cemetery L, Excavations between Abu Simbel and the Sudan Frontier, pt. 1, Oriental Institute Nubian Expedition, vol. 3 (Chicago, 1986), p. 76, probably read Pe-Hor (Throne of Horus). 11ÛChristiana Kohler, “Reassessment of a Cylinder Seal from Helwan,” Göttinger Miszellen 168 (1999): 49–56, ˜g. 1. 12ÛSee, for example, Nicholas Millet, “The Narmer Macehead and Related Objects,” JARCE 27 (1990): ˜g. 2 (reversed). 13ÛW. M. F. Petrie, Prehistoric Egypt, BSAE, vol. 31 (London, 1920), pl. xxiii: standard 3, Naqada II. 14ÛSee my article “An Early Pottery Jar with Incised Decoration from Egypt,” in Albert E. Leonard and Bruce Williams, eds., Studies in Ancient Civilization Presented to Helene J. Kantor, SAOC, no. 47 (Chicago, 1989), ˜g. 41, from a Naqada I incised jar.

VOL. 62ıNo. 2

the elephant,15 and the scorpion.16 Others, such as the canid, bull, and lion, appear signi˜cantly but are not singled out as symbolic apart from their context. Still others, such as the shell, the stork, the vertical ˜sh, and the oryx were not special earlier or later. The branches or plant parts discussed by Dreyer I would like to see as connected with the life of the ruler more completely in a temporal mode, as hinted by Bénédite in his comments on the rosette. The rosette, I believe, is the palm shown from above, and all these trees, palms, and fronds relate to the life of the ruler, ˜nally broken down into the trimmed frond for year.17 This would modify, but not entirely overturn, Dreyer’s opinion on the dipinti and labels with trees, but it would broaden their meaning and make them part of the progress toward annals. Dreyer’s consolidation of the evidence the DAI has recovered from U-j with some of early Egypt’s greatest monuments raises the one point where I must take direct issue with this work. Dreyer refers to “Predynastic” rulers, even where he is trying to show that there were not only rulers in Egypt, but ones that fully recognized the dynastic concept. This was attested slightly later in the sealing that lists royal cults from Narmer to Den.18 Events were clearly recognized, as also shown by the Narmer label that connects his palette ˜rmly to the kind of event recorded on First Dynasty labels and ultimately the annals. In the light of this and many previous studies, the contrast of dynastic versus predynastic needs badly to be abandoned as an obsolete construct of pioneer, but tentative, nineteenthcentury assumptions. U-j is far more than a unique trove of historical documents; it is equally a unique deliberate deposit of pottery, much of it imported from the Levant, and small objects that make it a snap-

15ÛPetrie, Diospolis Parva, EEF, vol. 20 (London, 1901), pl. xii:43, on a Naqada I Palette. 16ÛIdem, Prehistoric Egypt, pl. xxiii:2, on a whitepainted bowl. 17ÛSee my Decorated Pottery and the Art of Naqada III, MÄS 45 (Munich, 1988), pp. 31–37. 18ÛGünter Dreyer, “Ein Siegel der frühzeitlichen Königsnekropole von Abydos,” MDAIK 43 (1986): ˜gs. 2–3.

APRIL 2003

BOOK REVIEWS

shot, albeit aspective, of its time. The Egyptian pottery, con˜ned largely to “W-jars”; ovoid or long storage jars; tall, tapered rough jars; and oˆering vessels, is remarkably simple and consistent, and it will prove a valuable chronological marker for the Naqada IIIa. The roughly 375 Palestinian EB Ib jars are even more dramatic. The report on these vessels is preliminary, Hartung having prepared a dissertation on them to be published as Umm el-Qaab II. He was able to discern six major groups, which he describes in detail, the vessels shown at 1:10 in numerical order by chamber and catalogue number. This will provide valuable comparisons in lieu of his larger volume. A number of these were sealed using Nile mud, with the sealings, like everything else from this tomb, providing a new standard for the study of Egyptian glyptic in the Naqada period. Their distinct style, with ˘oating ˜gures and fragments or signs incised in a panel surrounded by textilelike geometric patterns, has been described elsewhere.19 The other objects from U-j are presented as a catalogue of fragments of the furnishings that remained after plundering, ancient and recent. High points are an ivory scepter (heqa ?); carved ivory bowls, one as cupped, presenting hands, the other with ˜gures; and an inlay. Some ivory gaming staves are decorated with geometric pat-

19ÛUlrich Hartung, “Prädynastische Siegelabrollungen aus dem Friedhof U in Abydos (Umm elQaab),” MDAIK 54 (1998): 187–217, gives sealings from other tombs of Naqada IId and IIIa. Although most other examples of the period are complete bands of representations and ˜ller, the crowded patterning is close to that seen on the sealings of çAin Besor in Palestine as well as on seals from Nubia. See Alan Schulman, “The Egyptian Seal Impressions from çEn Besor,” çAtiqot (English Series) 11 (1976): ˜g. 1; idem, “More Egyptian Seal Impressions from çEn Besor,” çAtiqot 14 (1980): ˜gs. 1–2; and idem, “Still More Seal Impressions from çEn Besor,” pp. 395– 418 in E. C. M. van den Brink, ed., The Nile Delta in Transition: 4th–3rd Millennium B.C. (Tel Aviv, 1992), ˜gs. 1– 4. See my A-Group Royal Cemetery at Qustul: Cemetery L, ˜g. 58, and the Qustul Incense Burner cited by Hartung (pl. 37). The Nubian seals are roughly contemporary with U-j, while the Palestinian examples date to the Naqada IIIb. The style of seals from Upper Egypt, especially cemetery U and particularly U-j, is distinctive within the larger group of Naqada IId–IIIb glyptic.

147

terns, and some of these are painted. Long (ca. 38 cm) staves with a round or plano-convex section have three raised ribs distributed along the length, one or two of them with loops that Dreyer believes were modeled on reeds. As expected, these were accompanied by other gaming pieces, domical and granary(?)-shaped, and blocks. Stone bowls and jars are quite simple, except for an obsidian bowl shaped as two hands cupped to present a platter. A collaborative eˆort, detailed in description, thorough in illustration, and uncompromising in discussion, this is a mature product of the DAI, and it is Dreyer’s crowning achievement to date. Although a ˜nal report on tomb U-j, it is not the last word on all of its features, as Hartung’s dissertation promises, so we can expect more details on subjects that need more elaboration, especially the Palestinian pottery. U-j is by far the most complex and best-de˜ned archaeological and historical context available from Naqada IIIa Upper Egypt. It is also part of a series of contexts from Abydos that gives much the same chronological clarity to this period as the First Dynasty tombs did for their era, and we have a great deal to anticipate. BRUCE WILLIAMS The University of Chicago

Gold of Praise: Studies on Ancient Egypt in Honor of Edward F. Wente. Edited by EMILY TEETER and JOHN A. LARSON. Studies in Ancient Oriental Civilization, no. 58. Chicago: The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, 2000. Pp. xxxi + 494 + 140 ˜gs. + 7 tables. $75 (paperback). This volume contains 42 studies written in honor of Edward F. Wente, Professor Emeritus of Egyptology at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago since his retirement in 1996. More than half of the essays are by students and dissertation advisees now active in the forefront of Egyptology all over the United States. American Egyptology began shortly after the University of Chicago was founded at the end of the nineteenth century and, in 1919, found a