Day 19 - Thutmose III's cartouche on a collar
February 8, 2018
Lots of gold jewelry and other gold objects in Gallery 118, which contains finds from the burials of three minor wives of Thutmose III, along with alabaster, silver, and diorite drinking cups and cosmetics containers and the wives' canopic jars. The wives were named Maruta, Manhara, and Manuwai, as we know from their canopic jars, and were of foreign origin; their marriages sealed alliances between Egypt and the peoples they came from. (I started to write "from which they came'" -- no ending sentences on a preposition having been drummed into me -- and then decided that was way too formal-sounding.) I wonder what that must have been like - how long it took them to learn the language of Egypt and whether there was anyone they could talk to before then, how often they slept with Thutmose, what happened to their children, whether they were friendly or rivalrous (or both) with each other.
The gold objects include not only bracelets and collars but also gold sandals (ceremonial only, I presume), and gold covers resembling thimbles for each finger and toe. There are also two gold hand mirrors. The larger one is about 12 inches high, the other a bit shorter On each, the circular mirror part (I assume it was covered with glass, long since shattered) sits on a headdress whose top is a downwardly curving arc which, according to the caption, represents the cow's horns of Hathor, goddess of beauty. What I take to be Hathor's face looks out at us below the headdress. What strikes me is that she doesn't look like a cow (though she has little cow ears) nor is she beautiful, at leasr by our standards. She has a round face, a broad and flattened nose, and notable marionette lines around her mouth. Maybe there are other images of her that depict her in ways more consistent with what we think of as beautiful; to me, she just looks funny.
What really excites me about this room, though, is that I can read Thutmose III's cartouche! Admittedly, it's a relatively simple one, with images that show, from top to bottom: a circle (the sun?), something that looks like a comb (but may be a feather; I should check), and a six-legged beetle. I see the design very clearly on the clasps of a gold collar inlaid with carnelian and both milky and turquoise-tinted glass. I then go back and recognize the same cartouche inscribed on the insides of the hinged armbands that these same wives presumably wore on their upper arms so that these inscriptions were near their hearts. Wedding jewelry, I wonder? Were the women supposed never to take them off? Wouldn't that be hot in the Egyptian summer?
The gold objects include not only bracelets and collars but also gold sandals (ceremonial only, I presume), and gold covers resembling thimbles for each finger and toe. There are also two gold hand mirrors. The larger one is about 12 inches high, the other a bit shorter On each, the circular mirror part (I assume it was covered with glass, long since shattered) sits on a headdress whose top is a downwardly curving arc which, according to the caption, represents the cow's horns of Hathor, goddess of beauty. What I take to be Hathor's face looks out at us below the headdress. What strikes me is that she doesn't look like a cow (though she has little cow ears) nor is she beautiful, at leasr by our standards. She has a round face, a broad and flattened nose, and notable marionette lines around her mouth. Maybe there are other images of her that depict her in ways more consistent with what we think of as beautiful; to me, she just looks funny.
What really excites me about this room, though, is that I can read Thutmose III's cartouche! Admittedly, it's a relatively simple one, with images that show, from top to bottom: a circle (the sun?), something that looks like a comb (but may be a feather; I should check), and a six-legged beetle. I see the design very clearly on the clasps of a gold collar inlaid with carnelian and both milky and turquoise-tinted glass. I then go back and recognize the same cartouche inscribed on the insides of the hinged armbands that these same wives presumably wore on their upper arms so that these inscriptions were near their hearts. Wedding jewelry, I wonder? Were the women supposed never to take them off? Wouldn't that be hot in the Egyptian summer?
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