Roccati A. A Ghost Tomb and a Torn Papyrus with Coffin Texts at Turin

THE WORLD OF THE COFFIN TEXTS PROCEEDINGS OF THE SYMPOSIUM HELD ON THE OCCASION OF THE 1OOTH BIRTHDAY OF ADRIAAN DE BUCK Leiden, December 17-I9, 1992

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A GHOST TOMB AND A TORN PAPYRUS WITH COFFIN TEXTS AT TURIN Alessandro Roccati

A ghost tomb, which had been almost lost, has turned up unexpectedly in a museum. It was Prof. J.J. Clère who once called my attention to two old photographs in the collection of the Turin Museum. They showed scarcely readable texts about which he knew nothing. On their back the provenance "Qaw" was recorded, but nothing else was on file in the museum. Meanwhile a few unlabelled plaster fragments inscribed with remains of cursive texts (i.e. neither hieroglyphic nor hieratic) had long been on display in a room on the upper floor, but about twenty years ago they were withdrawn from the exhibit as they did not make much sense to the public. An unforeseen event has brought new evidence for our understanding of the whole. During the clearance of the museum's basement a few cloths carrying fragments

of

what

of a wall decoration came to light. Unfortunately they were covered with dirt and the upper face of the decorated plaster was glued on to the cloth. Onè they were properly restored, the traces of inscription could not only be recognized as Coffin Texts, but they moreover proved to be the originals still shown attached to the plastered wall in the photographs mentioned above. A detailed study of these (the negatives could not be found) showed the inner aspect of a chamber, so that the location of the originals on the walls or on the ceiling could be ascertained, and they have recently been restored accordingly.r Certain though the shape of the original burial chamber may appear, the search for it on the ground has remained unsuccessful until now. The provenance from Qaw, where a mission of the museum was active under the guidance of E. Schiaparelli in 1905, is confirmed by several similarities between the reconstructed burial chamber and the imposing remains of two coffins, recorded to have been dug out in Qaw, which are likely to belong to an outer and an inner cofhn. Some Coffin Texts written on them have been included in de Buck's edition as KlT. The owner's name was, however, misread,2 and its correct rendering as "Henib" suggests that the owner was identical with the occupant of the burial chamber. De Buck in his edition only speaks of "coffin fragments," without giving the owner's name, which is however written in bold hieroglyphs on the outer face. Moreover there are characteristic spell sequences of Coffin Texts3 which appear only on these coffins and on the tomb walls, so that their unity can be considered as being definitely proved: 390-351-307-...-369 (uniform with B2L, BlC and B2P) are on a coffin (inner short side). We shall see in a moment that a similar sequence occurs on the walls of the burial chamber. It may be noted that the parallel coffins from Bersheh are all datable to the reigns of Sesostris II or Sesostris III,a a dating convenient also for the Qaw texts. On the left wall of the chamber we notice spells 75-390-351-307-... On the ceiling there are 335 (left) and ... 154-155 (right); these latter are in retrograde writing. The right wall of the appeared to be part

'

A. Roccati, in'. Dal Museo al Museo. Passato e futuro del museo egizio di Toino, ed. A.M. Donadoni Roveri (Turin,

2

H. Steckeweh, Die Filrstengrdber von Qaw (teipzig, 1936), 48, n. 8. A. Roccati, Oriens Antiquus 13 (1974), 16l-197 and G. Lapp,

3

îologenkongresses Miinchen IlI, ed. S. Schoske (Hamburg, 1989),269'2'19. o E. Doret, BSEG 13 (1989), 50.

in: Akten des v.ierten Internationalen Agyp'

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THE WORLD OF THE COFRN TEXTS

chamber was unfinished. On palaeographical grounds there is scarcely a doubt that the plaster fragments also belong to these walls, and that they were picked up from the floor. Finally, some bumt

timber pieces inscribed with a version of spell 335, but without any excavator's indications, are likely to be all that survives of the lid of the inner coffin. The witness of spell 335 gives again some indication of a provenance from eaw.s Due to the lack of externàl evidence, all elements, e.g. relating to dating, must be drawn from internal criteria, such as orrhographic devices: notice rhe writing -FlN+, w;.r, a

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"f with the stroke, #. Hr "Horus," the frequency of * wn,6 and the writing ;|N, of wnmi following rather a strange spelling found only in T3Be,8 datable likewise to'itout-ttre middle of Dynasty XII. The use of orthography as a dating method reminds me of another Turin coffin which was excavated at Gebelein and has been extensively published in de Buck's Egyptian Cffin Texts. From this edition there appear to be many similarities with T3C, princess Aashayt's coffin from Deir el-Bahari. The archaic shape of G1T has, in general, suggested an early date, and its appearance is indeed rather different from the Qaw Coffin Texts. But, in the light of internal evidence, we are obliged to admit their contemporaneity. Some thirty years ago I had the opportunity to study the behaviour of the spellings of the fw-passive conjugation in the literary manuscripts of the XIIth Dynasty and in the Coffin Texts.e On account of CT II, 394c 116àl (not dealt within Jtirgens' recent treatment of spell 162'0), the copy of GIT could not be placed earlier than the middle of the XIIth Dynasty. Supplementary evidence is given by the spelling íw for prothetic l.rl These observations are confirmed by a further study of the orthographs of the word !ìwt,altar,, namely in CT III, 322h [239].t2 Thus we must admit a discrepancy not in the dating of the actual coffins, but in the age of their archetypes (or Vorlagen). The basic prototype of GlT might well be ancient,r3 but the actual copy of GIT cannot be so ancient. Even Júrgens' "stemmakonstruktionen" seem to me without much weight for a precise dating of the sources, for individual manuscripts might have been in use throughout different periods. While the Turin cofhn from Gebelein appears to draw on an ancient tradition - as its similarity with T3C bears out - the Qaw material seems, in general, to belong to a more recent, probably XIIth Dynasty tradition similar to that of some Bersheh coffins. This does not mean that the textual corpus available in Middle Egypt was newly created: against this view it would be enough to recall spells found by a Spanish mission.ra But the material from Middle Egypt seems more susceptible to change. It frequently includes spells which were later favoured, e.g. spells 335 or 75, both found at Qaw but unequally attestsd in several places and periods.

***

5

A. Roccati, BiOr 34 (1977), l'14-175.

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See H. Kees, in: Gi)ttinger Totenbuchstudien

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(Berlin, 1954),4.

t3691.

129h; l36d

12031.

A. Roccati, RSO 39 (1964), 173-179 idem, Oriens Antiquus 6 (1967), 169-180. 'o P. Júrgens, GM 132 (1993), 49-65. rr A. Roccati, Oriens Anîiquus 6 (1967),172; to the instances quoted there, add CT II, 30f t80yB2L (íw|!w) and CT V,

338a

[464]/8lL (lwgrw), two more coffìns of the late range. A. Roccati, in: Drinking in Ancient Societies. History and Culture of Drínl