Festive Fragments

During my undergraduate years at Penn, I had the privilege of taking courses on ancient Egyptian history and culture taught by David O’Connor. Now, as a Curator in the Egyptian Section, it is an honor to highlight a substantial collection of artifacts accessioned into the Egyptian collection as a result of O’Connor’s work at the site of Malkata in Western Thebes. While the O’Connor name is synonymous with Abydos, that site was not the only place in Egypt where he conducted excavations. From 1971 to 1977, he and Barry Kemp co-directed five seasons of archaeological work at Malkata, the location of a palace-city built during the reign of Pharaoh Amenhotep III of the 18th Dynasty. In ancient times, the palace was called Per-Hay, or the “House of Rejoicing,” but the palace was part of the wider royal city that became known as Tjehen-Aten, city of the “Dazzling Aten.” The Penn Museum’s excavations at Malkata produced the final set of archaeological material to enter the Egyptian Section’s collection through division of finds with the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities. Never exhibited, this group of some 500 artifacts provides a fascinating glimpse into the palace of Amenhotep III at Thebes.

The urban character of Malkata intrigued O’Connor as he had a longstanding fascination with Egyptian cities and towns, and the site presented an excellent opportunity to excavate parts of a royal city. Before O’Connor and Kemp’s excavations, Malkata had already been partially explored in the 19th century, and later by the Metropolitan Museum of Art from 1910 to 1920. Subsequent archaeological investigations at Malkata were conducted by the Archaeological Mission of Waseda University from 1985 to 1992, and additional work at the site was undertaken by the Joint Expedition to Malkata, with eight seasons led by Peter Lacovara and Diana Craig Patch between 2008 and 2017. One of O’Connor’s and Kemp’s contributions lay in understanding the huge artificial lake, the Birket Habu, that fronted the palace-city, as well as the presence of urban and settlement areas that surround Malkata’s palace complex. Indications that Malkata formed only part of a larger urban center have proven correct in recent years as extensive, well-preserved settlement areas (see the article by Zahi Hawass on page 54) have been found extending northwards from Malkata behind the mortuary temple of Amenhotep III, today called the Kom el-Heitan. We can see now how the Malkata palace and the royal mortuary temple and surrounding settlement formed the larger royal city that came to be known as the Tjehen-Aten.

A central feature of Malkata is the pharaoh’s palace, which served as the residence for Amenhotep III, his chief wife Queen Tiye, and other members of the royal family during the latter part of his reign. The palace was also the setting for ceremonial and court-related activities. The construction of this vast, elaborately decorated mudbrick structure began early in Amenhotep III’s reign and continued until his regnal Year 29 when his court moved permanently to Malkata in anticipation of the celebration of the king’s Sed-festival in Year 30. The Sed-festival, or jubilee celebration, was an ancient ritual of Egyptian kingship wherein the gods of Egypt would reaffirm the pharaoh’s rulership. In the 18th Dynasty, the Sed-festival took place after a king had reigned for 30 years and every three years after that. Ultimately, Amenhotep III would celebrate two additional Sed-festivals at Malkata, in Years 34 and 37. Scenes depicting elements of Amenhotep III’s jubilees are recorded on the walls of Soleb Temple, on relief fragments from his mortuary temple, as well as in the mortuary temple of Amenhotep, son of Hapu, and in the Theban tombs of Khaemhat (TT57) and Kheruef (TT192). The celebration of the Sed-festival would have extended across Egypt, lasting for weeks, with Malkata and the Theban region serving as the focal point of these festivities.

A key part of O’Connor and Kemp’s fieldwork focused on the Birket Habu, an expansive artificial harbor extending approximately 2.5 km in front of the Malkata palace complex. The 1970s excavations studied the construction history of the harbor and probed the huge spoil mounds that surround the harbor. As an amazing feat of ancient engineering, the harbor served both practical and ritual functions and the city must have been a remarkable sight with its landscaped waterfront. The harbor would have facilitated the transport of a variety of goods, produce, and materials into and out of the city while also providing riverine access for the king and his court, as well as an area for recreation and ritual activity. At its southern end, past the royal city, the harbor met a painted mudbrick platform where some of rituals of the king’s Sed-festival would have been celebrated. As a fully functional urban center, Malkata was also the location of a temple to Amun, additional royal residences, administrative facilities, storage spaces, workshops, elite villas, and smaller dwellings. After Amenhotep III’s death in his Year 38 or 39, the palace-city was abandoned under his son and successor, Amenhotep IV/Akhenaten. Akhenaten would soon complete the construction of his own new royal city at Tell el-Amarna less than a decade after his father’s death. In its layout and urban features, the new royal city, Akhet-Aten, the “Horizon-of-the-Aten,” owed considerable inspiration to Malkata.

Malkata at the Penn Museum

The Penn Museum’s Egyptian Collection today houses approximately 500 objects from O’Connor’s and Kemp’s excavations at Malkata. This group of artifacts is notable as it represents the last excavated artifacts to be accessioned into our Egyptian collection before a change in Egyptian antiquities laws formally ended the partage system of divided finds in 1983. Since that time, all objects excavated by foreign missions remain in Egypt, under the oversight of the Ministry of State for Antiquities, previously the Supreme Council of Antiquities. From a production standpoint, a variety of materials are represented in this group of objects including alabaster, bone, bronze, carnelian, ceramic, faience, glass, mud, flint, and terracotta. The artifact types include small finds like beads, figurine fragments, and pottery sherds. The largest quantity of object types consists of bricks (including stamped variants), mud jar stoppers bearing seal impressions, and jars labels written in hieratic script, a cursive form of hieroglyphs.

At first glance, the Malkata materials at the Penn Museum appear to be a humble selection of objects, but a closer look reveals their tremendous interest in understanding the celebration of Amenhotep III’s jubilees. They provide a tangible glimpse of what life may have been like in this royal city. A multitude of hieratic jar labels document provisions, including wine, beer, animal fat, and meat which were designated for the festivities associated with the royal jubilees. These jar labels also record the names of dozens of officials who participated in preparations for these festivities. The numerous jar stoppers from amphorae filled with wine and other foodstuffs allow us to imagine the celebrations surrounding the king’s Sed-festival. Some of these stoppers are decorated with the cartouches of Amenhotep III and of Queen Tiye signifying wine sourced from royal estates. Additionally, archaeological work at Malkata has revealed that many important buildings in the palace complex of Amenhotep III at Malkata were lavishly decorated with painted floors, walls, and ceilings. While our collection does not contain any examples of these wall paintings, the brilliant colors of the painted amphora stoppers give a sense of the vibrancy of the decoration the ancient artists could achieve and allow us to imagine the dazzling beauty of the royal residence. The vibrantly painted jar stoppers were part of the pageantry at Malkata and show how the palace and its very physical contents reflected the visual aspects of royal celebrations that occurred at the royal city of the “Dazzling Aten.”

Although David O’Connor’s excavations at Malkata concluded in 1977, his fascination with Malkata, especially its palace, remained undiminished even after his work at the site had concluded. This enduring interest might have been fueled in part by his curiosity about the archaeology of the ancient Egyptian city and the symbolism he regarded as central to its layout. Additionally, his continued interest in Malkata could be attributed to the fact that the Penn Museum houses artifacts from one of the few other exceptionally preserved ancient Egyptian palaces, belonging to Pharaoh Merenptah of the 19th Dynasty, excavated by Clarence Fisher on behalf of the Penn Museum from 1915–1923 (see the article on page 60). Subsequent to his work at Malkata, O’Connor authored a series of compelling publications examining the nature of palaces and temples during the New Kingdom. He used Malkata as a case study to argue that New Kingdom palaces, and royal cities by extension, were intentionally designed to embody the Egyptian understanding of the cosmos, particularly those elements of the cosmos linked to the divine nature and activities of the reigning king.