Centre or Periphery?

Our knowledge of the Egyptian culture is based to an extraordinary degree on the provisions, architecture and décors of tombs. On the one hand this is due to the exceptional conditions of the Egyptian climate that allows for the very good preservation of burial goods, and on the other hand the ancient Egyptian understanding of the hereafter lead to abundant cemeteries located in the desert preventing their over-building by settlements as well as their opulent equipment with burial goods. Due to the sheer abundance of excavated objects in Egypt, it is more the exception than the rule that all discovered tombs were fully excavated and that each one was comprehensively published. One of these exceptions is the cemetery of Turah, located in the suburbs of modern Cairo and excavated in 1910 by Hermann Junker who produced a formidable publication in 1912. Even more exceptional is the fact that nearly all of the objects were brought to Vienna and only a small part was distributed to other collections in Europe. This allows for easy access and a restudy of the objects on the basis of modern methods and research questions. Mainly based on group photographs and a few drawings, the existing publication makes comparisons with objects from other sites dating to the end of the 4th and the beginning of the 3rd millennium BC rather unsatisfactorily. It is also rather complex to get an idea of the tomb provisions and their chronological development on the basis of the tomb list. By default, each tomb will be illustrated with its respective content in drawings, photographs and detailed descriptions. As a new approach, all data will be presented in an online database and the results will be published in a printed book. Only rarely used yet, the objects will be analysed with modern scientific methods, such as petrography and neutron-activation-analysis providing information on the origin of diverse pottery vessels or lead-isotopic analysis for metal objects. These analyses will give answers to questions such as Were the tombs of this cemetery provided with local goods or have products been acquired from other parts of Egypt?, Do the tombs differ from other tombs of the same period or was there a homogenous group of burial goods all over the country? or What can we tell about the religious conception of the buried? Are there differences between the tombs based on religion or the social status of the buried? And finally: What was the role of this site in state formation?

When Junker excavated in 1910 the cemetery at Turah close to Cairo, he was granted the majority of the grave goods for Vienna, i.e.1028 of the documented 1316 objects. The majority of these (ca. 84 %) still belongs to the Kunsthistorische Museum, while smaller quantities were distributed to the Institute of Egyptology and the Technical Museum in Vienna, the Joanneum in Graz, the Archaeological Museum in Krakow and the Egyptian Museums in Berlin, Hildesheim and Leipzig. From the 588 excavated tombs nearly all date to the period from the end of the 4th and the beginning of the 3rd mill. BC, while 30 tombs belong to the 4th dynasty (ca. 2600 BC). Thanks to the excellent documentation for its time, Turah always played an eminent role for this period, yet it is not sufficient anymore for contemporary research questions. The objects were therefore for the first time documented in drawings, photos and descriptions to make it comparable to other material. Also, a variety of different scientific analyses were undertaken. These cannot be performed on newly excavated material in Egypt, as the export of samples is prohibited and the necessary technologies are not available in the country. Thus, for the first time a site-specific nile clay is substantiated. Until now it was supposed that all alluvial clays along the Nile were identical. Pottery vessels from other clays were produced in various areas in Middle and Upper Egypt. Also, stone vessels derive from different areas. The greatest diversity of the interregional networks is represented by jewelleries. While gemstones derive from mountains along the Nile, areas at the Red Sea and the Western desert, corals and snails came from the Red Sea and the Mediterranean. Furthermore, an artificial paste was identified which could only be differentiated from semiprecious stones by the use of a scanning electronic microscope. Also, copper objects could be attributed to mining areas in Sinai and less well-known mining zones in the Eastern Desert. In summary, the objects reflect the embeddedness of Turah in the existing cultural unity of Egypt already before the official state foundation and its closeness to the state's centre, albeit exhibiting some differences to the elite cemeteries. A further new insight is the cemetery's structure according to clans or families in which more elaborate tombs are surrounded by simpler graves. The difference is only represented by the architecture and the tomb's size and not by the number of grave goods or the existence of a coffin, as both are also attested in small pit tombs. Remarkably high is the portion of graves without any burial object probably reflecting differences in religious thoughts, while the low number of children's graves suggests further cemeteries.