GUROB.
1889-90.
At the mouth of the Fayum, on the opposite side to Illahun, stood in
later times another town, founded by Tahutmes III, and ruined under
Merenptah; thus its history falls within about two-and-a-half centuries.
While I was working at Hawara some beads and ornaments were brought to
me from this place; I soon went to see it, and found that it was an
early site unmixed with any later remains. In the beginning of 1889 I
worked out part of the town, and the rest of it was cleared by Mr.
Hughes-Hughes in the end of that year, while I worked at Illahun. The
general arrangement of it was a large walled enclosure, within which
were two other enclosures side by side, one containing the temple, the
other a small town. The temple had been founded by Tahutmes III, and had
lasted through Khuenaten’s changes only to be destroyed soon after,
probably by Ramessu II, when he carried away the temples of Illahun.
That the town was ruined early in the reign of Merenptah is indicated by
the sudden end of the previous abundance of scarabs and rings with the
kings’ names at this point; of later times only one or two objects of
Ramessu III have been found.
[Illustration: 97. BRONZE INTERLOCKING HINGES.]
[Illustration: 98. BRONZE TOOLS. 1: 6.]
Of purely Egyptian objects many were discovered, but the main interest
of the place is in the remains of foreigners from the Mediterranean who
lived here. Of Egyptian work we may mention two funeral tablets (one
now at Gizeh); a lion’s head, probably the terminal to the side of a
staircase; two splendid bronze pans (Group 96), still bright and fresh
and elastic, most skilfully wrought (now at Gizeh); a beautiful wooden
statuette of a lady named Res, clad in the ribbed drapery of the
Ramesside age (also at Gizeh); a statuette of a priestess, and a figure
of a girl swimming holding a duck, carved in wood (at Gizeh); a wooden
box for papyri, inscribed (at Gizeh); and some necklaces found in the
town. Some bronze hinges, hatchets, chisels, and knives were also found,
one by one, in different rooms.
[Illustration: 99. COFFIN HEAD OF ANEN THE TURSHA OFFICIAL. 1: 16.]
The foreign inhabitants, although conforming to Egyptian ways in some
respects, have left many
[Illustration: 100. WOODEN STATUETTES OF A PRIESTESS, AND THE LADY
RES.]
[Illustration: 101. HITTITE HARPER.]
[Illustration: 102. PHOENICIAN VENUS MIRROR.]
traces here. Foremost is the coffin of a high official who was of the
Tursha race, the Turseni, probably, of the northern Aegean. The ushabti
figure of a Hittite, Sadi-amia, was found in an adjoining grave. A
wooden figure of a Hittite harper, wearing the great pigtail of his
race, was picked up in the town. A bronze mirror, with a Phoenician
Venus holding a dove as the handle of it, was found in a tomb. While
constantly Aegean vases, such as those of the first period of Mykenae,
are found in both the town and in tombs. The Greek custom of a funereal
pyre remained here in a modified form; although the body appears to have
been buried in Egyptian fashion (as I found light hair on some of the
mummies here), yet the personal articles were all burnt. Apparently on
the death of the owner a hole was dug in the floor of the room; into
this were placed the chair, the clothing, the mirror, combs, necklaces
and toilet articles, the glass bottles, the blue-glazed bowls and
vases, the alabaster dishes, the knife and other implements, and the
best pottery of the deceased.
[Illustration: 103. AEGEAN VASES. 1: 2.]
[Illustration: 104. BLUE AND YELLOW GLASS BOTTLE.]
All these were burnt; the fire was smothered with potsherds laid over
it; earth was then filled in, and the brick floor of the room was
relaid. No such custom is ever known among Egyptians, and this shows
again the foreign occupation of the place. We know from inscriptions how
the Mediterranean races, Libyans, Akhaians, Turseni, and others had
pushed into Egypt from the west, and that they had settled in the Nile
valley to even somewhat south of the Fayum. This place was evidently
then one of their settlements, and its sudden fall under Merenptah just
agrees to his expulsion of all these foreigners in the fifth year of his
reign. We have here then before our eyes the remains of that great
invasion which has always hitherto been a literary shadow without
material substance.
[Illustration: 105. BLUE-GLAZED VASES. 1: 6.]
As before mentioned, the marks on pottery so often found in the town of
the twelfth dynasty at Illahun, are also found at Gurob. The list of
signs used is somewhat different, but the greater part may be
identified; and it is impossible to deny that they are the same as a
whole, though naturally modified by alteration, addition, and omission,
in the course of a thousand years. Having now, therefore, this body of
signs in use in 1200 B.C. in a town occupied by people of the Aegean and
Asia Minor, Turseni, Akhaians, Hittites, and others, it will require a
very certain proof of the supposed Arabian source of the Phoenician
alphabet, before we can venture to deny that we have here the origin of
the Mediterranean alphabets.
[Illustration: 106. BLUE-GLAZED BOWLS.]
Besides these remains, Gurob proved to be a treasury of a later age. In
the Ptolemaic period some town had existed in this neighbourhood, the
inhabitants of which were buried here in the edge of the desert, apart
from the earlier town. Their mummies are destitute of amulets or
ornaments, and have all gone to black dust, their cartonnage coverings
are without names, and of the most conventional and uninteresting kind,
and their coffins are of prodigious rudeness, worthy of a savage of the
Pacific; while their tombs are rude holes scooped in the sandy soil. In
no respect would these burials seem worth notice, had not the cartonnage
makers used up old papyri as the cheapest material for their trade. But
what was worthless in the days of Philadelphos is a treasure now; the
soldiers’ wills appointing as executors the sovereigns, Philadelphos and
Arsinoe, the private letters, the leaves of Plato and unknown Greek
plays, the accounts,--all these can be unfolded from what looks like
hopeless rubbish. The cartonnage in the earlier examples was glued
together, and this has not only injured the writing, but almost always
served as a bait to worms, who have destroyed it; but later on the
makers found that simple wetting and moulding would suffice, and we can
now often peel apart sheet after sheet of writing as fresh as in the
days when Cleopatra was yet unborn.
Some remains of even later times are found here; and I obtained from
native diggers many Coptic embroideries, and a beautiful set of Roman
glass vessels.
The essential value of Gurob is in giving us a thoroughly fixed date for
the earlier stages of the civilization of Greece; in showing the races
of the Mediterranean at home in Egypt; and in explaining how far they
had imbibed Egyptian culture during their first sojourn on the Nile; and
what they may be expected to have borrowed from thence at this early
period.
[Illustration: 107. IVORY DUCK BOX. 1: 2.]
[Illustration: 108. PYRAMID OF MEDUM.]