Egyptian Monuments: Tuna el-Gebel

Tuna el-Gebel

Tomb of Petosiris

Near to the modern entrance to the catacombs is the tomb of Petosiris. This tomb is constructed to look like a temple (it looks rather like Dendera). The outside is decorated in typical Late Period style, whilst the outer court is decorated in a Greek style. The tomb was constructed around the time of the conquest of Egypt by Alexander the Great, and seems to have been decorated like this to curry favour with the new rulers of Egypt.

Tomb and Chapel of Isadora

Isadora was a wealthy and beautiful young woman living in Hermopolis during the time when the Roman emperor Antoninus Pius (AD 138–161) ruled over Ægyptus. She fell in love with a young soldier from Antinopolis (current Sheikh ‘Ibada), and they wanted to get married. However, her father refused, so the young couple decided to elope. Unfortunately, Isadora drowned while crossing the Nile. Her body was mummified, and her father built an elaborate tomb for her, featuring an elegy inscribed in Greek. At some time after her death, a cult developed around her tomb. Isadora's mummified remains are still present, encased in glass, in her mausoleum—a prominent building at Tuna el-Gebel.

Tuna el-Gebel was the necropolis of Khmun (Hermopolis Magna). It is located in Al Minya Governorate in Middle Egypt.

Near the modern village of Tuna el-Gebel, on the edge of the Western Desert, a large site functioned as the necropolis for the ancient town of Khnum or Hermopolis. The cemetery was located 11km from the city, in an area which is perhaps better known as the north-western boundary of Akhenaten’s city of Akhetaten and is marked by a boundary stela.

When visiting Tuna el-Gebel, Akhenaten’s boundary stela is the first monument to be reached, on the right hand side of the road and also the earliest monument at the site. A steep flight of stone steps leads to a tiny rock shrine cut into the escarpment and the large boundary stela which is cut into the face of the cliff. The shrine, found by a Jesuit traveller, Claud Sicard in 1714 contains the first of the Akhetaten boundary stela to be identified, with rock-cut sculptures of Akhenaten and his family and an accompanying text dated to year 6 of his reign. At the top of the stela the king and queen offer to the Aten in a typical Amarna pose, while the text below records Akhenaten’s oath not to extend the limits of his city. The royal statues on the left are now headless and support tall offering tables depicting the couple’s three eldest daughters. The stela, now much eroded is protected by large smoked glass doors. A gafir holds the key to open the doors (if he can be found!) for visitors with permission to view the stela.

Tuna el-Gebel - Funerary Temple of Potosiris

The most important monument in the necropolis is the Funerary Temple of Potosiris, a leading citizen of Hermoupolis and High Priest in the Temple of Thoth, who built this family mausoleum about 300 B.C. It consists of a vestibule dedicated to the memory of Petosiris a later part of the structure and an almost square chapel, with four pillars, which Petosiris dedicated to the cult of his father and his elder brother. Both chambers were decorated by Egyptian artists with reliefs of great interest for the history of Egyptian art, some of them with well preserved coloring. While the religious scenes, particularly in the chapel, are in purely Egyptian style, apparently following 18th Dynasty models, the secular ones depicting events from everyday life in the vestibule and on the lower part of the chapel walls are in a hybrid Egyptian-Greek and sometimes in a purely Greek style.

The temple, surrounded by mounds of rubble, is approached by a paved road some 22yd/ 20m long and 13ft/4m wide, on the left hand side of which is an altar, 8ft/2.40m high, with four horn like projections at the corners. The facade of the temple has four columns with elaborate foliage capitaisand a doorway in the middle. Between the columns are high stone screens, which, like the pilasters at the sides, are adorned with reliefs depicting Petosiris making offerings and praying to the gods of his nome.

The reliefs on the back of the screens the north wall of the vestibule are on secular themes, depicted in a hybrid Graeco-Egyptian style. To right of the entrance: metalworkers making a variety of articles; a man working on the centerpiece for a table; metal being weighed; the finished articles being packed for dispatch. To the left of the entrance: two uppermost rows, the preparation of unguents; two lower rows, carpenters at work; two men working with a lathe (the earliest known representation); making of a fourposter bed. East wall, in three rows (from the bottom row upwards): plowing; the flax harvest; the corn harvest, the corn being threshed with sticks. South wall: to the left of the door, Petosiris's sons with their parents; at the foot of the wall, men carrying offerings; to the right of the door, Petosiris's daughters with their parents; at the foot of the wall, mourning women and an offering scene, in purely Greek style. On the side pilasters, above, the dead man playing a board game. West wall: in the two upper rows cattle-herds in the fields, in the bottom row vintage scenes.

A short distance further south is the Tuna el-Gebel necropolis, with a very good rest-house just inside the entrance gate. The site stretches for about 3km to the south along the desert and contains tombs and mortuary houses arranged in sand-swept streets which vary in style dating from the Late Period to the Roman era. Only a portion of the necropolis has been excavated, first by Chassant in 1903-4 and Weill in 1912. The galleries of the city of the dead dating to the first centuries AD were uncovered by Sami Gabra’s excavations for Cairo University in 1920s and 1930s and British, German and Italian expeditions have worked at Tuna el-Gebel in the latter half of the 20th century. The earliest material to be found dates from Rameses II, but this is thought to have been out of context.

The first monument encountered is the family tomb of Petosiris, a high priest of Thoth who probably lived around 300 BC. This temple-tomb is unique, built in pure Egyptian style with a pronaos (pillared entrance hall) at ground level and a cult chapel behind, with the burial chambers cut into the rock below ground. The inlaid wooden coffin of Petosiris can be seen in Cairo Museum. The pillared portico contains scenes of industries (jewellers, metalworkers, incense-makers and woodworkers) and agriculture. On the rear wall at either side of the entrance to the cult chapel Petosiris and his wife are seen with their relatives, with scenes of butchers and offering-bringers below. The cult chapel contains four square pillars with the burial shaft in the centre. The wall decoration here is in Egyptian hieroglyphs, but the figures wear Greek-style clothing in a rare blend of the two distinct periods. The eastern and western halves of the chapel are dedicated to the father and brother of Petosiris respectively and show traditional funerary scenes and Egyptian deities. The extremely well-preserved and elegant reliefs are heavily influenced by both Egyptian Old Kingdom and conventional Greek style art. One of the most important texts in the chapel includes a description of works in the temples of Hermopolis. The tomb appears to have been recently cleaned and has modern lighting installed, which shows the superb reliefs at their best. Most of the original paint is still in place and the colours are soft and airy with a great deal of pale blue. This is one of the most beautiful Egyptian tombs I have ever visited.

Behind the tomb of Petosiris is the tomb of Isadora, which dates to the 2nd century AD, with it’s sparse decoration and Greek texts in memory of the lady buried here. A tragic legend is connected to Isadora - a young girl who lived in the town of Hermopolis and renowned for her beauty and good nature. She fell in love with a young man from Antinopolis (present day Sheikh ‘Ibada) on the east bank of the Nile. Unfortunately disaster struck when Isadora’s boat overturned while sailing to visit her fiance and she was drowned. Her grief-stricken father built the elaborate tomb in her memory and she lies there still, her mummy enshrined in a case inside the first chamber of the tomb. At the rear of the chapel is a large sculpted half-shell over the funerary couch.

To the south-east of Isadora’s tomb is the Oedipus tomb, decorated with copies of scenes from the Greek Theban cycle - the originals are now in Cairo Museum. There are many other tombs in the city of the dead, some painted with mock stone panelling, similar to Greek tombs at Alexandria. Some of the tombs are open and others may be opened on request.

A little further south is an enormous Roman waterwheel and well-shaft, 34m deep, which probably supplied the area with water during the Roman era.

Back towards the north of the site a stone balustrade is said to have defined an enclosure in which sacred ibis were raised and beyond this are the ibis and baboon burials in extensive catacombs - the largest feature of Tuna el-Gebel. These are the sacred catacombs of Thoth, his ‘living images’. Most of the animal burials date to the Graeco-Roman Period and a baboon sarcophagus dating to Darius I was found here as well as a number of stone ibis sarcophagi. The side chambers of the catacombs are packed with pottery jars containing the mummified bodies of the birds. One of the most important finds here includes a jar which contained Aramaic administrative papyri from the Persian occupation. The catacombs also incorporated cult structures above ground, including a temple built by Alexander IV.

Excavations have continued at Tuna el-Gebel, most recently (in the late 1990s) by the Egyptian Antiquities Organization directed by Zahi Hawass. Remains of a church and Roman mudbrick walls have been uncovered in a town located at Nazlet Tuna to the north of the site which is mentioned in administrative papyri and where thousands of artefacts lie scattered on the ground.

Sources:

Egyptian Monuments - Tuna el-Gebel

Wikipedia - Tuna el-Gebel

PlanetWare Inc - Tuna el-Gebel, Funerary Temple of Potosiris

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