The discovery is accidental, funny and at the same time sensational: not very many portraits of the female pharaoh Hatshepsut have survived. One of them, as it turned out, had been gathering dust for years in the vault of Swansea University (Wales, England).
The author of the discovery can be called Ken Griffin, who lectures students on Egyptology. Swansea University is very proud of its Egyptian Center and the ability to train future Egyptologists on authentic artifacts. For one of the classes, Griffin just chose an interesting subject, ordering it from a photograph from a university store.
“I was selecting artifacts for the practice and saw an old black and white photograph of the relief, which seemed more interesting to me than the others. When we realized what it really was, our jaw dropped to the ground - what I have, what my students have,”Griffin says emotionally.
Later, the professor recalled that the opening took place on March 8, International Women's Day, and added: "Hatshepsut knows exactly how to decorate his appearance beautifully."
There are not so many specialists who can determine the value of two relief fragments by eye - since the artifact first appeared in the university collection in 1971, no one has seen anything outstanding in it. But Griffin, a scientist with vast experience in Egypt, immediately noticed the similarity of the relief with the images from the funeral temple of Hatshepsut in Deir el-Bahri, built in the 15th century BC, during the era of the New Kingdom.
Memorial Temple of Hatshepsut in Deir el-Bahri. Photo from orangesmile.com
Fragments of a slab, about 5 cm thick, were apparently removed from the wall of a temple or tomb, as evidenced by the traces of tools on the back surface of the relief.
On the frontal surface, the image of a human head, devoid of the lower part of the face, is preserved, and the upper part of the fan is visible on the left. But the available details were enough for identification: hairstyle, uray ("cobra", part of the headdress of the pharaohs with a stylized image of the cobra goddess Wajit), the design of the fan - Griffin has seen such a style more than once in Deir el-Bahri. However, the main argument was the hieroglyphs above the royal head: this is a fragment of the title (ceremonial naming of the pharaoh), found everywhere in the temple of Hatshepsut: it uses feminine pronouns.
Promotional video:
Ken Griffin and the Hatshepsut relief. Photo: Swansea University.
Pharaoh + woman + decorative style of the temple in Deir el-Bahri = Hatshepsut. "The first great woman in world history", according to many Egyptologists, Hatshepsut was the fifth pharaoh of the XVIII dynasty (to which, by the way, Tutankhamun belongs), one of the five famous women rulers of Egypt. Judging by the available information, Hatshepsut remained in power for more than 20 years (≈ 1478 - 1458 BC) and the time of her reign is considered the era of peace and prosperity for the country.
However, it is still unclear why her stepson and successor Thutmose III began to destroy the images of her stepmother. Personal enmity, which previously seemed the most likely reason, is no longer so obvious: for example, the campaign of destruction did not touch all the images of the queen and began quite late, several decades after the death of Hatshepsut, when Thutmose no longer had visible reasons to take revenge on his long-deceased stepmother: he himself became a successful ruler, a kind of "Napoleon of the ancient world."
Be that as it may, few images of the mysterious Hatshepsut have survived, and each such find is considered unique. Even if the portrait had a "jaw dropped", as in the case of the Swansea relief.
There is a face, however, on the relief, but it is carved on the reverse side of the upper fragment of the slab. And this is the face of a man with a short beard. Hatshepsut also had an overhead "beard" - one of the symbols of royal power - but scientists were confused by the location of the portrait on the back surface of the wall relief: this is complete nonsense.
The most likely explanation is that the image of the face appeared much later, perhaps in the 19th or early 20th century: the artifact, apparently, was taken out of Egypt before the official excavations and restoration of the temple in Deir el-Bahri began in 1902, according to the Smithsonian Institution. citing a Swansea University press release. An antiquities dealer or an auction house could "supplement" the absent face of the pharaoh for mercantile reasons, in order to increase the value of the artifact. To do this, they took the upper fragment, processed its edge so that it coincided with the edge of the lower fragment, and cut out the face of a male pharaoh on the clean side - because a hundred years ago they simply did not know about the existence of a female pharaoh.
Combined fragments with the original face of Hatshepsut and the fake face of the male pharaoh. Photo: Swansea University.
This is a reasonable, but still an assumption: in the records of the Egyptian University Center, there is no mention of the origin and place of the finding of the relief. It is only known that the valuable artifact was in the collection of the university in 1971 as part of the donated collection of the London pharmacist Sir Henry Wellcome, who died in 1936.
Since 1961, a Polish archaeological mission has been working in the funeral temple of Hatshepsut. Ken Griffin has already given Polish archaeologists all the information about the unexpected discovery - he hopes that the Poles will be able to find in the temple galleries the exact place where the relief from Swansea once was.
The precious artifact is awaiting the continuation of its history, but it will never return to the dark vault - now it occupies a place of honor in one of the showcases of the House of Life in the Egyptian University Center.
Maria Myasnikova