Photographs from the archive of the IUO Italian Archaeological Mission to Upper Egypt (1977-1986)
Grazia A Di Pietro, Elena D'Itria, 2019. https://doi.org/10.5284/1056618. How to cite using this DOI
Data copyright © Museo Orientale 'Umberto Scerrato', University of Naples 'L'Orientale' unless otherwise stated
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Primary contact
Grazia A
Di Pietro
Naqada Publication Project
Museo Orientale 'Umberto Scerrato'
University of Naples 'L'Orientale'
Via Chiatamone 57-61
80121
Napoli
Italy
Resource identifiers
- ADS Collection: 3508
- DOI:https://doi.org/10.5284/1056618
- How to cite using this DOI
Overview
(a) Photographic collection
The collection of photographs, digitised and presented here, is part of the larger archaeological archive assembled by the Italian Archaeological Mission of the then 'Istituto Universitario Orientale' of Naples (henceforth IUO), in Upper Egypt, between 1977 and 1986 (directors: C. Barocas, R. Fattovich and M. Tosi). This expedition conducted nine seasons of fieldwork, including excavation and surveys, at Naqada (25°58" North, 32°44" East; cf. Figure 2) and in the wider region where this site lies. These field investigations allowed the acquisition of new data and information on several aspects such as the geomorphology of the site of Naqada and the extension of the Predynastic settlement (c. 4th millennium BC), whose main extant core was identified to be on the terrace of Zawaydah (cf. Figure 1). The excavations conducted at this latter locality revealed evidence of architectural remains and, in addition to large amounts of pottery, lithics, small tools and non-utilitarian clay objects, led to the recovery of seals and clay sealings, which are amongst the earliest glyptic material attested in Egypt to date.
Figure 2 - Panorama of the site of Naqada, viewed from the NW. The pyramid of Nubt is visible on the edge of the desert terrace, in the left part of the photo.
Along with photographic records, the archive produced by the IUO Mission during this fieldwork also comprises written records (field notes, unpublished reports, correspondence, official documents), drawings (maps, plans, sections, illustrations of the finds), as well as artefacts and ecofacts. Both the documentary archive, currently held at the Oriental Museum 'Umberto Scerrato' of the University of Naples 'L'Orientale', in Italy, and the material archive, most of which is kept at the Storeroom of the Supreme Council of Egyptian Antiquities in Qift, in Egypt, have been subjected to intensive scrutiny and thorough study over the years. These records, data and finds have offered the basis for research that—amongst other results—has shed new light on aspects of the late Predynastic settlement at Naqada (c. 3500–3100 BC), complementing previous published accounts and studies of the better known cemeteries located at this site (see: Overview / Bibliography).
In contrast to other components of the IUO archaeological archive, the photographs documenting the field activities of the Italian expedition have only recently undergone in-depth analyses, since 2016, thanks to the availability of new funding. This specific set of photographs consists approximately of 1,500 negatives, slides and prints. These records span the campaigns conducted in 1977, 1978, 1979, 1981, winter and autumn 1982, 1983 and 1984, while no photographs are available for the last field season, which occurred in 1986. Overall, the main archaeological sites of the Naqada region appear to be represented, with the main focus being on Naqada and Zawaydah. From a thematic point of view, seven broad categories can be distinguished: (i) landscape views; (ii) site views; (iii) monuments and archaeological features; (iv) archaeological fieldwork; (v) artefacts, both in situ and not; (vi) people involved in the fieldwork and (vii) local life. In the last few years, this photographic material has been closely inspected, organised, inventoried, provided with short descriptions and fully scanned. A representative selection of the resulting digital images is now included in ADS, in order to make it available to the larger scientific community and informed members of the public interested in the archaeology of early Egypt.
(b) Place names
Within the context of the present digital collection, both in the introductory text and photos description, the following main toponyms are used.
'Naqada region' / 'region of Naqada' is employed to refer to the widest stretch of the Nile Valley to which this expression has been related in the archaeological literature so far (cf. Friedman 1994: 461). This is the area corresponding to the historic Fifth Upper Egyptian nome, whose boundaries lay approximately between the centres of Deir, in the north, and Khozam and Qamûla, in the south (Fischer 1964: 5, map of the Coptite nome; Helck 1977: 385, 387).
The term 'Naqada' / 'site of 'Naqada' is reserved for the area including approximately the strip of low desert slightly to the north of the pyramid of Nubt to 'Cemetery B', on the west bank of the Nile, and on which the excavations directed by W. M. Flinders Petrie in 1894–5 focussed (Petrie and Quibell 1896: pl. IA). It is distinguished from the modern centre of Naqada, which is about seven km to the south of the foregoing archaeological site.
The IUO Mission adopted the toponym 'Zawaydah' to refer to the site where it conducted archaeological excavations (Barocas 1986: 17–8), which is the gravel terrace whose northern portion corresponds to Petrie's South Town (Petrie and Quibell 1896: pl. IA; Di Pietro 2017: 147, Figure 1). 'Zawaydah' is used in this sense here, although alternative meanings for the same place name exist (de Morgan 1897: 36, 38, fig. 19; Fischer 1964: 4, map of the Coptite nome, no. 3; van Wetering and Tassie in press). Following previous key publications (Petrie and Quibell 1896: 34, 60, pl. I–IA), the place name 'Nubt' is employed with reference to the settlement remains, mainly dated to the Dynastic period, lying on the low desert terraces immediately to the north of Petrie's South Town (Di Pietro 2017: 147, Figure 1). Again, different uses of this toponym exist in the literature (van Wetering and Tassie in press).
Overall and with a few exceptions (e.g. Zawaydah), the choice of geographical terms made in this and other works (Di Pietro 2017, in press) aims to abide as closely as possible by the nomenclature set by the earliest and foundational archaeological work in the Naqada region (Petrie and Quibell 1896) and by more than a century of literature based on it (e.g. Bard 1994). The chosen toponymy is also how the main site within the region, Naqada, is immediately recognisable outside of the field of research concerning specifically early Egypt.
References cited:
- Bard, K. A. 1994. From Farmers to Pharaohs: Mortuary Evidence for the Rise of Complex Society in Egypt. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press.
- Barocas, C. 1986. Les raisons d’une fouille et d’un survey: le site de Naqadah. Cahiers de Recherches de l’Institut de Papyrologie et d’Égyptologie de Lille 8: 17–28.
- de Morgan, J. J. M. 1897. Recherches sur les origines de l’Égypte. Tome II: Ethnographie préhistorique et Tombeau royal de Négadah. Paris: Ernest Leroux.
- Di Pietro, G. A. 2017. Beyond the bounds of domestic life? Naqada: Aspects of the settlement in the Middle–Late 4th millennium BC. In Midant-Reynes B. and Tristant, Y. (eds.), Egypt at its Origins 5. Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference "Origin of the State. Predynastic and Early Dynastic Egypt", Cairo, 13th – 18th April 2014. Leuven − Paris − Bristol, CT: Peeters, pp. 145–63.
- Di Pietro, G. A. In press. Naqada seen through the archives of the IUO Italian Archaeological Mission (1977–1986). In Stevenson, A. and van Wetering, J. (eds.), The many histories of Naqada. London: Golden House Publications.
- Fischer, H. G. 1964. Inscriptions from the Coptite Nome. Dynasties VI–XI. Rome: Pontificium Institutum Biblicum.
- Friedman, R. F. 1994. Predynastic Settlement Ceramics of Upper Egypt: A Comparative Study of the Ceramics of Hemamieh, Nagada, and Hierakonpolis. PhD dissertation, University of California, Berkeley: U.M.I./Ann Arbor.
- Helck, W. 1977. Gaue. Lexikon der Ägyptologie II: 385–408.
- Petrie, W. M. F. and Quibell, J. 1896. Naqada and Ballas. London: Bernard Quaritch.
- van Wetering, J. and Tassie, G. J. In press. Nubt (Petrie’s Naqada site, De Morgan’s Toukh site) during the Fourth Millennium BC. In Stevenson, A. and van Wetering, J. (eds.), The many histories of Naqada. London: Golden House Publications.
(c) Bibliography
- Barocas, C. 1986. Les raisons d’une fouille et d’un survey: le site de Naqadah. Cahiers de Recherches de l’Institut de Papyrologie et d’Égyptologie de Lille 8: 17–28.
- Barocas, C. 1989. Fouilles de l’Istituto Universitario Orientale (Naples) à Zawaydah (Naqadah, ‘South Town’ de Petrie): campagne 1984. In Schoske, S. (ed.) Akten des vierten Internationalen Ägyptologen Kongresses, München 1985. Band 2. Hamburg: Helmut Buske, pp. 299–303.
- Barocas, C., Fattovich, R. and Tosi, M. 1989. The Oriental Institute of Naples Expedition to Petrie’s South Town (Upper Egypt), 1977–1983: an interim report. In Krzyżaniak, L. and Kobusiewicz M. (eds.) Late Prehistory of the Nile Basin and the Sahara. Poznań: Poznań Archaeological Museum, pp. 295–301.
- Di Maria, R. 2007. Naqada (Petrie’s South Town): the sealing evidence. In Hanna, H. (ed.) The International Conference on Heritage of Naqada and Qus region. Monastery of the Archangel Michael, Naqada, Egypt 22–28 January 2007. Preprints. Vol. I. Cairo: ICOM-CC-Wood, Furniture and Lacquer, pp. 65–78.
- Di Pietro, G. A. 2011. Il ruolo di Naqada nella tarda preistoria egiziana e nel processo di formazione dello stato nell’antico Egitto. PhD dissertation, University of Naples 'L'Orientale'.
- Di Pietro, G. A. 2011. Miscellaneous artefacts from Zawaydah (Petrie’s South Town). In Friedman, R. F. and Fiske, P. N. (eds.) Egypt at its Origins 3. Proceedings of the Third International Conference “Origin of the State. Predynastic and Early Dynastic Egypt”, London, 27th July−1st August 2008. Leuven – Paris – Walpole, MA: Peeters, pp. 59–79.
- Di Pietro, G. A. 2016. Upper Egyptian Pre- / Proto-dynastic settlement ceramics. The assemblage from Petrie's 'South Town' at Naqada. In Bader, B., Knoblauch, C. M. and Köhler E. C. (eds.) Vienna 2 - Ancient Egyptian Ceramics in the 21st Century. Proceedings of the International Conference held at the University of Vienna, 14th–18th of May, 2012. Leuven − Paris − Bristol, CT: Peeters, pp. 179−90.
- Di Pietro, G. A. 2017. Beyond the bounds of domestic life? Naqada: Aspects of the settlement in the Middle–Late 4th millennium BC. In Midant-Reynes B. and Tristant, Y. (eds.), Egypt at its Origins 5. Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference "Origin of the State. Predynastic and Early Dynastic Egypt", Cairo, 13th – 18th April 2014. Leuven − Paris − Bristol, CT: Peeters, pp. 145–63.
- Di Pietro, G. A. 2018. Investigating intra- and inter-site variability of Late Predynastic - Protodynastic settlements of Egypt. In Kabaciński, J., Chłodnicki, M., Kobusiewicz, M. and Winiarska-Kabacińska, M. (eds.), Desert and the Nile. Prehistory of the Nile Basin and the Sahara. Papers in honour of Fred Wendorf. Studies in African Archaeology 15. Poznań: Poznań Archaeological Museum, pp. 365–86.
- Di Pietro, G. A. In press. Naqada seen through the archives of the IUO Italian Archaeological Mission (1977–1986). In Stevenson, A. and van Wetering, J. (eds.), The many histories of Naqada. London: Golden House Publications.
- Di Pietro, G. A. In prep. Naqada in the context of state formation process in ancient Egypt.
- Fattovich, R. 2001. La Missione Archeologica Italiana dell’Istituto Universitario Orientale di Napoli in Alto Egitto (Naqadah): un ricordo e un commento. In Casini, M. (ed.), Cento anni in Egitto. Percorsi dell'Archeologia Italiana, Milano: Mondadori Electa, pp. 35–7.
- Fattovich, R., Malgora, S., Pirelli, R. and Tosi, M. 2007. Explorations at South Town by the Naples Oriental Institute (1977−1986). In Hanna, H. (ed.) The International Conference on Heritage of Naqada and Qus region. Monastery of the Archangel Michael, Naqada, Egypt 22–28 January 2007. Preprints. Vol. I. Cairo: ICOM-CC-Wood, Furniture and Lacquer, pp. 46–56.
- Gleba, M., Boudin, M. and Di Pietro, G. A. Accepted for publication. Textiles from Zawaydah (Naqada, Upper Egypt). Archaeological Textiles Review 61.
- Pirelli, R. 2006. Indicatori amministrativi a Naqadah: contatori, cretulae, sigilli. In Mora, C. and Piacentini, P. (eds.), L’Ufficio e il documento. I luoghi, i modi, gli strumenti dell’amministrazione in Egitto e nel Vicino Oriente antico. Atti delle Giornate di studio degli Egittologi e degli Orientalisti italiani. Milano-Pavia, 17–19 febbraio 2005. Milano: Cisalpino, pp. 67–79.
- Pirelli, R. 2007. Counters and ‘tokens’ at Zawaydah (Petrie’s ‘South Town’). In D’Onofrio, A. M. (ed.) Tallies, Tokens & Counters from the Mediterranean to India. Proceedings of the Meeting held at the Università degli Studi di Napoli “L’Orientale”, Naples 31st May 2004. Napoli: Università degli studi di Napoli "L'Orientale", pp. 39–47.
- Pirelli, R. 2007. Pottery discs and other counters from Zawaydah (Petrie’s ‘South Town’). In Hanna, H. (ed.) The International Conference on Heritage of Naqada and Qus region. Monastery of the Archangel Michael, Naqada, Egypt 22–28 January 2007. Preprints. Vol. I. Cairo: ICOM-CC-Wood, Furniture and Lacquer, pp. 57–64.
(d) Team
The strand of the 'Naqada Publication Project' (2016–2018) resulting in the digital archive presented here has been conducted by:
- Grazia A. Di Pietro, PhD (Inventory of the photographic archive; photos description and introductory text to the digital collection here deposited)
- Elena D'Itria, PhD (Inventory and scanning of the photographic archive; photos description and editing of digital images)
- Scientific advisor: Andrea Manzo, Professor, University of Naples 'L'Orientale', Italy.
(e) Dedication and Acknowledgments
Dedication
The digital collection
'Photographs from the archive of the IUO Italian Archaeological Mission to Upper Egypt (1977–1986)'
is dedicated to the memory of
Claudio Barocas (1940–1989)
Rodolfo Fattovich (1945–2018)
Maurizio Tosi (1944–2017)
Acknowledgments
Our first thanks are to the team members of the 1977–1986 IUO Italian Archaeological Mission to Upper Egypt, whose records and data we had the privilege to access and use and to all people, further listed below, who made their work available to us.
The senior author, G.A. Di Pietro, is sincerely grateful to Rodolfo Fattovich (deceased in 2018; previously Professor at the University of Naples 'L'Orientale', Italy, henceforth 'UNO') for his mentorship during much of the path leading to the 'Naqada Publication Project' (2016–2018) and to Renée F. Friedman (Dr, University of Oxford / Director of the Hierakonpolis Expedition) for her insightful advice and encouragement over the last ten years, including the earliest stage of implementation of this project. The senior author also wishes to thank Rosanna Pirelli (Professor in Egyptology at UNO / formerly team member of the IUO Mission) for having introduced her and allowed access to the IUO archaeological archive between 2005 and 2007.
Special thanks are due to Andrea Manzo (Professor in Nubian and Ethiopian Archaeology and Ancient History at UNO) for his invaluable support to all aspects and stages of the project reported here, as well as to Elda Morlicchio (Professor, Dean of UNO) and to Lucia Caterina (Professor, Director of the Oriental Museum 'Umberto Scerrato', UNO) for hosting this project at the aforementioned museum.
The work performed on the IUO photographic archive and presented here was made possible through a generous grant from 'The Shelby White and Leon Levy Program for Archaeological Publications' (Harvard University, The Semitic Museum, Cambridge MA, USA), to which we are very much obliged.
The painstaking administrative assistance provided to the project by Dr Gabriele Flaminio, Ms Lisa Scotto and Mr Francesco Faiello at UNO, as well as by Mr Peter Mueller ('White-Levy Program' Assistant Coordinator) must also be acknowledged.
Finally, the generous support provided by the 'Open Access Archaeology Fund' (Archaeology Data Service/Internet Archaeology, University of York, UK) for the interface web-page development of the digital collection presented here as well as the work and assistance of Dr Katie Green (Collections Development Manager, Archaeology Data Service, University of York, UK) and Dr Ray Moore (Digital Archivist, Archaeology Data Service, University of York, UK) are deeply appreciated.
