The DeMaEL Project
The DeMaEL project is a collaboration between the in the Department of Mediterranean Studies (DMS) at the University of the Aegean and the National Archaeological Museum (NAM) in Athens. The project aims to study the death ideology and material culture of the Egyptians during the Third Intermediate Period (c. 1069–664 BC) by analysing representative unpublished objects from the Museum’s highly important .
Aegean Egyptology Research Group
Aegean Egyptology (AE) is the official Egyptological Research Group of the Department of Mediterranean Studies of the University of the Aegean. It began its mission in 2003 with the establishment of the first Egyptological position in Greek academia. Since then, it has expanded into an active team of researchers and collaborators from Greek and international universities and institutions.
AE promotes Egyptology in Greece through international and interdisciplinary research projects, scientific colloquia, conferences, specialised seminars and workshops, undergraduate and postgraduate courses, e-learning programmes and summer schools.
Its research interests focus on the ancient Egyptian belief system, ritual, magic, demonology, religious language and texts, funerary ideology and practice, Egyptian interconnections and cross-cultural interactions in the southeastern Mediterranean, archaeology and epigraphy.
Egyptian Collection
The Egyptian Collection belongs to the Department of Prehistoric, Egyptian, Cypriot and Near Eastern Antiquities Collections of the National Archaeological Museum. Ancient Egyptian civilisation has been displayed at the Museum since 1890, making it the only other major Mediterranean civilisation, apart from the Greek, represented there from such an early date.
The enriched redisplay of the Collection includes objects from the previous exhibition together with a significant number of artefacts shown to the public for the first time. The exhibits include statues, figurines, stelae, sarcophagi, mummy cases, animal mummies, vases, funerary caskets, Fayum portraits and jewellery, covering all periods of Egyptian civilisation.
The exhibition introduces visitors to the daily life of the ancient Egyptians, while burial practices and religion hold a prominent position. It also emphasises the close ties between Greek and Egyptian civilisation in antiquity.
The project includes photographic documentation and digitisation of unpublished material for inclusion in a digital database, as well as typological classification and iconographical and epigraphic analysis of the funerary material, together with historical and archaeological contextualisation of the evidence.
Three-dimensional visualisation of representative objects will enable a thorough understanding of manufacturing and decorative techniques, as well as the interrelation between figures and texts. The results will be disseminated through publications, conferences, open lectures and the project’s official website.
The originality of the project lies in the detailed study of important Egyptian funerary artefacts from the National Archaeological Museum of Athens as indicators of cultural change.
Objectives and Challenges
Although mortuary ideology and practice have been thoroughly investigated in the past, especially during the New Kingdom, important innovations in funerary concepts and equipment that emerged during the Third Intermediate Period have been overlooked by modern scholarship.
The main objective of this research project is to shed new light on mortuary beliefs and practices during this period by studying unpublished funerary artefacts in the Egyptian Collection at the National Archaeological Museum. Another aim is to highlight the peculiarities and innovations of mortuary artefacts from this period by comparing their morphological, iconographical and epigraphical features with those from the New Kingdom and the Late Period.
Various aspects of mortuary ideology and its connection to ritual and magic will be explored through a detailed study of artefacts related to the preservation of the body and its internal organs, amuletic protection and magical care of the dead. These include coffins, mummy boards, nets and canopic jars, amulets, scarabs and jewellery, as well as shabtis, figurines, furniture, cosmetics, statues and stelae.
Through typological, iconographic and epigraphic analysis, the study will examine the extent to which the choice of specific types and motifs follows the New Kingdom tradition or reflects innovations in the theological thought and magical practices of the Third Intermediate Period.
In order to unravel the complex role of artefacts in funerary ideology, magic and ritual, the project will focus on their association with magical spells or other passages from funerary texts, including the Amduat, the Book of the Dead, the Books of Caverns and the Book of Gates, and on their relationship to the divine world.
Further contextualisation within the wider historical, political, religious, social and clerical contexts of the period will ensure a comprehensive approach. By cataloguing and publishing a wide range of artefacts, the study aims to expand existing scholarship on the material aspects of funerary ideology and its manifestations during the Third Intermediate Period.
Bab el-Gasus
One of the most significant groups of funerary artefacts in the Egyptian Collection at the National Archaeological Museum is the group of coffins and funerary equipment from the tomb of Bab el-Gasus, also known as the “Priests’ Cache” or the “Second Cache”. This cache was discovered outside the city walls, in front of the mortuary temple of Hatshepsut at Deir el-Bahari.
Bab el-Gasus is the largest intact tomb found in Egypt, and its contents are among the most significant discoveries for the study of religion and mortuary practices in the Third Intermediate Period. The tomb contained 153 coffins, including 101 double coffin sets, as well as hundreds of other funerary artefacts.
As there was no room for all the finds from Bab el-Gasus in the Giza Museum storerooms, the Egyptian government sent several sets of coffins to seventeen national museums in Europe and the United States in 1893–94. The National Archaeological Museum holds a significant collection of coffins, inner coffins and mummy boards dating from this period.
The publication of the coffins and other artefacts from Bab el-Gasus will greatly expand the existing corpus of material from this important site, helping to reconstruct the deposit and providing new insights into the social and priestly hierarchy of the period.
The project will study two coffins and one mummy board from the Collection in order to trace developments and changes in coffin typology. The focus, however, will be on the relationship between the coffins, the body of the deceased and the rest of the funerary equipment. This will be achieved by examining one or two representative items from each funerary category, as they all form part of a magical mechanism that facilitates the deceased’s passage to the afterlife.
3D Visualisation
Over the last two decades, 3D visualisation of coffins has become a widely used tool for investigating questions relating to their construction, decoration and epigraphy. Therefore, applying this technology to these objects is essential for the successful completion of the project.
Scanning and visualising the main categories of funerary equipment in 3D, including coffins, shabtis, figurines, amulets, scarabs, jewellery, canopic jars and furniture, will enable the study of decorative motifs and painting techniques, as well as the correlation between texts and images.
In the case of coffins in particular, it will be possible to identify instances of reuse or repair from antiquity by providing evidence of previous surface treatments. At the same time, 3D visualisation will facilitate the dissemination of research results, enabling the academic community and the public to better understand the artefacts’ volume and decoration, as well as the relationship between epigraphic and iconographic elements.