REVIEW BY TANEASH SIDPURA
The objects from Ahhotep’s burial at Dra Abu el-Naga, dating to the Eighteenth Dynasty, are a fascinating assemblage of mostly gold and other expensive materials, and are certainly worthy of further study. However, rather than being a catalogue of the objects as the title might suggest, this book is instead a mix of articles relating to its discovery and display, some limited analysis of objects, and useful, broader interpretations of the Second Intermediate Period. It consists of 17 articles by 15 scholars, based on a workshop at the American Society of Overseas Research held in 2018. The delay in publication was due to lack of funding, highlighting the plight facing many Egyptologists needing to publish important research.
After two studies on Second Intermediate Period chronology (which include the proposal that the recently identified ‘Abydos Dynasty’ was contemporary to the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Dynasties), there are three articles on Ahhotep’s burial by Gianluca Miniaci. Very little is known about the discovery of the burial, including its location and original contents, but Miniaci describes his painstaking research – hunting down hard-to-find material from multiple archival collections – and provides some useful clarity on these and other issues.
