Carnegie Museum of Natural History

One of the Four Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh

anthropology

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Ancient Egyptian Column Shafts

by Erin Peters

Here at Antinoupolis, the Italian mission has been excavating since the 1930s and has a long and productive residence at
the site. There are a number of publications resulting from the mission’s work and two recent volumes that include scientific publications of the team’s work since 2000–for these resources and more, see The Antinoupolis Foundation’s bibliography. For this 2017 season, the mission has three active excavation areas open, and today I write about one that is in the east of the ancient city near what was once a monumental gate facing the Via Hadriana. Hadrian built this impressive road through the desert as a new trade route, which ran through Antinoupolis to the Nile for river transport.

The east gate was monumentalized by huge red granite columns, of which fragments are extant. Two column bases (one upright and one overturned) and three column shaft fragments were known before this season and are an impressive sight to see.

Ancient Egyptian column shafts partially uncovered in an archeology dig
Monumental fragments of red granite column bases and shafts at the east edge of the city

 

Under supervision of the mission’s architect, Peter Grossman, another section of a column shaft was unearthed this season. This shaft indicates there could be more fragments nearby, possibly under the 4-5th century CE church that Peter’s team is currently excavating, the remains of which you can see above.

 

Ancient columns being excavated in an archeology dig
View of column shaft fragment excavated this season

Hopefully some of these shafts will be more visible in the near future and draw visitors to the site as recorded in The Antinoupolis Foundation’s February 10 blog post. The mission’s director, Rosario Pintaudi, has put in an application to the Ministry of Antiquities to re-erect the column. If approved, perhaps the column shaft will be soaring at the east edge of the city by the time I return next year!

Partially burried columns in a row
Fallen column shaft fragments that may be re-erected in the near future

Erin Peters is an assistant curator of science and research at Carnegie Museum of Natural History. She recently traveled to Egypt for an archaeological research study. This is a series of blog posts she wrote while in the field. Check back for more!

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The Unseen Museum

vibrant blue and orange tukaniwar necklace

The Unseen Museum: Ka’apor Necklace

This necklace (tukaniwar) was worn by women of the Ka’apor tribe of eastern Brazil for the Ta’i Rupi Taha
name-giving ceremony. The museum’s collections include beautiful feather work from the Amazon Basin of South America. The Ka’apor are particularly adept at working with small feathers.

The yellow feathers on the cord are from the breast of the channel-billed toucan (Ramphastos vitellinus ariel); they are twined to a tiny thread, which is lashed to the larger cord. The pendants are made of turquoise blue breast feathers and purple throat feathers from the spangled cotinga (Cotinga cayana) and black feathers from the white-tailed cotinga (Xipholena lamellipennis). The cotinga feathers are stuck to cut scarlet macaw (Ara macao) tail feathers with sap from the macarandua tree (Manilkara huberi).

Deb Harding is a collection manager in Carnegie Museum of Natural History’s Section of Anthropology. She frequently blogs and shares pieces of the museum’s hidden anthropology collection, which is home to over 100,000 ethnological and historical specimens and 1.5 million archaeological artifacts.

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Ancient Egyptian stela

painted Egyptian limestone

The inscription on this ancient Egyptian stela, or painted limestone, says that this offering was made by
Wennefer, son of Paiwenhor, and dedicated to Osiris. It’s now on display at Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh.

(Photo by Hayley Pontia)