Searching for Ancient History In... Seattle!?

I live in the Pacific Northwest, specifically the glorious Canadian province of British Columbia. But unfortunately, there just isn't much ancient stuff here. Which is a shame for ancient history lovers like myself. There are, of course, some ancient First Nations artifacts, but not really anything from the Old World. There are some pretty cool museums, but none of them have truly ancient stuff. Which is what I love. So, I decided to take a little trip to Seattle the week before Christmas to see if there was any ancient history in Seattle, of all places. And turns out, there's tons. Including some truly amazing treasures within the Seattle Art Museum and the Seattle Asian Art Museum. Now, because this channel is dedicated to ancient Egypt, this video will cover all the truly spectacular ancient Egyptian treasures within the Seattle Art Museum. And depending on how much you like this, I'll show off all the Greek and Roman artifacts, all the Mesoamerican artifacts, and all the ancient Asian artifacts. But without further ado, here's all the ancient Egyptian stuff. Starting off with the ancient Egyptian antiquities, a feast for the eyes, we have the Pyramidion of a guy called Hori. What the hell's a Pyramidion, I hear you ask? Well, it's the very tippy top of a pyramid or an obelisk. Now, this didn't top a big royal pyramid. It was at the top of a small pyramid built for a commoner. You see, in the New Kingdom, the funerary chapels of private tombs were sometimes built with a small hollow mud brick pyramid capped by a Pyramidion just like this, often decorated with solar motifs. Like praising the sun. According to the label, this thing was found at a place called Abou Tig. And Abou Tig isn't actually an archaeological site. It's a modern city in Middle Egypt. And at first, I thought that the Pyramidion must just be from somewhere else, and whoever sold it on to the museum must have just been lying, since these are most commonly found in Thebes and Saqqara, sometimes as far south as Nubia. But according to a big catalog of all the sites in Egypt, the statue of a guy named Hori was actually found in the neighborhood of Abou Tig in 1886 and is now in the Cairo Museum. This is one of the only other things said to be from the vicinity of Abou Tig, and they share the same name, they're from roughly the same period, the New Kingdom, and it seems to be the late 18th dynasty based on the style, and they're even wearing pretty much the same thing. This particular Hori, the statue Hori, was an agent of the House of the King, one of the Amenhoteps. I don't know what the two vertical lines of hieroglyphs say on the Pyramidion, I wish I had kept learning Middle Egyptian, but if someone does and there is seemingly a connection between the two Horis, then maybe the undiscovered tomb of Hori lies right near Abou Tig. Eh, probably not though. Okay, unhinged rant over. Next up, I saw the amazingly well-preserved stela of a guy called Jephi from the Sixth Dynasty, so the end of the Old Kingdom, along with his wife, Menetz, whose arm is apparently three feet long, and who's wearing the typical tomboyish hairstyle of the time. Apparently, it's from the famous Upper Egyptian site of El Kab, but I don't know how they learnt that. Right below that was a late Ptolemaic canopic chest, which would have once held someone's internal organs, decorated with a regular falcon and a falcon topped with a jackal's head. Right next to that, there was a nice alabaster canopic jar lid from the Middle Kingdom, when they all looked like this and they didn't have animal heads. And above that, there were some little oarsmen without oars from a Middle Kingdom model funerary boat. Then we come to the beautifully pristine stela of a woman named Ujurennes from the middle of the 26th Dynasty, so around 600 BC. Here, you can see Ujurennes adoring the sun god Ra-Horakhty on the right, and the creator of the universe, Atum, on the left. Above that is the winged sun disk Horusbechdedi, identified by the hieroglyphs just below him. Believe it or not, this thing is actually made out of wood, and it likely survived due to the dry climate of western thieves. It was probably found there in 1858, underneath the grand mortuary temple of Queen Hatshepsut by Auguste Mariette as part of something called the Cache of the Priests of Montu. After the New Kingdom, having easily accessible above-ground funerary chapels as part of your tomb meant that your tomb was going to get robbed. So instead, easily portable wooden stelas were created to replace the chapels, and this is one of them. Sitting right above that was a relief of some guy's wrangling a sacrificial bull cut out of the wall of a mastaba from the 5th dynasty, probably from Saqqara. At the end of the case, there was this plaster Roman mummy mass, and they put it in there along with a beaded collar and a winged heart scarab and all these other amulets to sort of simulate what a mummy is usually buried with, because they don't have one of their own, which I thought was pretty neat. Then there were these really nice Ushabtis, the one on the left from sometime in the late period, and the one on the right looks like a really nice example from the 21st dynasty. In fact, so nice, I'm thinking maybe, just maybe, it could be from the royal cache DB-320. Lots of very similar bright blue Shabtis were found there, and there's also the fact that the guy who originally owned this was in Egypt when the cache was first found in 1871. The next case contained a statue of a guy called Pawan Hatef holding a naus, or shrine, containing a now headless Osiris. This has been attributed to the 27th dynasty, also known as the first period of Persian occupation, which also happened to be the time when Herodotus, the father of history, visited Egypt. One of the most interesting objects in this case is actually the smallest, and the oldest, predating pharaonic civilization by centuries. It's something called a tag figurine, which is characteristic of the Nakata II period, around the middle of the 4th millennium BC. They're often made of bone, like this one. They're very simple, and just consist of a head at one end and a deep groove to indicate legs at the other, which may have been used for securing string, since they were probably used as amulets, and maybe even by magicians attempting to cure various ailments, since one has been found in a magician's medical kit as part of a burial at Heracompolis. They're frequently placed together in graves in sets of two or more, and are thought to maybe depict ancestors, but there's a lot of mystery surrounding these things. They have another tag figurine off display, which looks oddly familiar. This case also contained two Ptolemaic sculptor's models, which are these small, mostly limestone reliefs and sculptures, only partially depicting their unfinished subjects. This museum has one bust on display, and one relief on display, both depicting kings. They're a special class of object coming from the late and Ptolemaic periods, and are thought to have been either used to teach sculptors, or as votive offerings deposited in temples when petitioning the gods. Sitting in one corner of the case was a sad little Roman funerary mask for a boy, bedecked in gold jewelry. Above that was another relief cut from the wall of a tomb, this time a pretty well-known one. This is from TT34, the enormous tomb of the mayor of Thebes and governor of Upper Egypt, Montuemhat. Depicted here with his second wife, Shepenwepet. Apparently the hieroglyphs above them represent the last parts of their personal names. Montuemhat first served the last pharaohs of the 25th Kushite dynasty, who were expelled by the Assyrians. This led to the sack of Thebes in 663 BC under the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal. So Montuemhat rebuilt Thebes and became its de facto independent ruler for a bit, while the Assyrians were replaced by their vassals, the native Egyptian 26th dynasty. And there was a third case with some pretty neat stuff in it. Next up, I saw this little Middle Kingdom Hippopotamus figurine, which reminds me of William the Hippopotamus in The Met. And right next to it was a third intermediate period figure of the god Thoth as a baboon, proudly showing off his long, uh, tail, uh, and a Roman rendition of the fierce protector of mothers and children, Bess. Then sprinkled on the wall above it were some nice fience figurines, like this Teweret and this Patikos. And both Isis and the goddess of Lower Egypt, Uto, or Wadjet, suckling the infant Horus. So then I saw this weird guy. He's a very unique and strange alabaster statuette of an official belonging to a type thought to be from around the 11th or early 12th dynasties, so around 2000 BC. At first, I was very skeptical that it was actually real and not just some bit of tourist kit. But as referenced by the label I saw, it is actually really similar to a statue in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, which suggests that they were even made in the same workshop. As you can see, it lacks a lot of detail and is strikingly abstract for an ancient Egyptian statue. It's because it belongs to a style that never really caught on, and it's one of a very small group of such statues made like this. It's been suggested that the artisans who made these usually made stone vessels and wooden models instead, and that these statues represent their first attempt at sculpting humans in stone. Right next to that was a wooden three-in-one composite god, Ta-Sokar Osiris, who's pretty common. Part of a beautiful Fiance model Sistrum, depicting the head of the fertility goddess Hathor with her distinctive cow ears. The Sistrum was this sort of rattle that was sacred to her and Isis, and her head was usually at the base. We actually saw the Sistrum earlier on the Stela of Uterinus, where it was used as a column capital, as it was in real life. Oh, I really loved seeing this. It's a 26th Dynasty New Year's flask, a type of object I did a whole video about last New Year's. This is the counterpoise of something called a menat necklace, depicting the famous cat goddess Bastet, who I think here is actually shown as a lion, as happened a lot. Next, we come to a true masterpiece, one of the highlights of the entire museum's collection, the head of Thutmose III, or at least it's thought to be him. There isn't any glass between you and him, so you can actually stand face-to-face with him. It's really an amazing experience. Unlike a lot of other objects in the museum, we know exactly where this came from. It was discovered at Armont, just south of Thebes, and the cult center of the falcon-headed war god Montu. It was discovered there in the 30s by Sir Robert Mond, a British chemist and archaeologist. This diorite head was found in the higher levels of an area called Pt, just to the south of a lake at the site, of course near the temple of Montu, and could have been thrown there at any date since it was pretty high up near the surface. Apparently, the excavator got 10 different Egyptologists to try to date it by style, but they all dated it to periods ranging from the 4th dynasty to the Ptolemaic period somehow, even though nowadays it's considered almost certainly to be from the reign of Thutmose III, the great warrior king who built a lot at Armont. In fact, the biggest building operations ever undertaken at Armont in the dynastic period were initiated by Thutmose III, and many blocks from the temple bear his name. He also erected a whole pylon there. There's even a contemporary depiction of it. A big stela was found lying against the pylon and describes him going on a trip to Nubia, where he shot a rhinoceros. An exquisite procession on the north face of the east wing of the very pylon he built shows the results of just such a successful campaign or hunting trip into Nubia, and one part is even fronted by a rhinoceros. But it was judged stylistically to be from the 19th dynasty by various Egyptologists advising Mont. That judgment was cast into doubt by the uncertainty over this very diorite head. So that's another reason why I found it interesting to see this, because we have an actual example of this masterpiece being used to inform the interpretation of another masterpiece during an actual published archaeological excavation. It's also interesting that when this head was first found, it was partially restored with plasticine, which seems to have been removed by now except for one little bit on the lower part of the Uraeus cobra sitting on Thutmose's brow. Just above the head of Thutmose III was a truly massive granite relief of Ptolemy II Philadelphus offering to a now-missing god. This is possibly from the now-destroyed Temple of Isis at Bekhbeit el-Hagar in the Nile Delta, also known to the Greeks as the Isaiam. It was one of the most important Ptolemaic temples of Isis, who was one of the main gods worshipped at the time, and was unusual, if not unique, for being built entirely out of granite instead of softer stones. The earliest pharaoh's name found on blocks from the temple is Nectanebo II, the last native Egyptian pharaoh of Egypt, but the main part of the temple was constructed, or at least decorated, by Ptolemy II. That's because temple building and decoration left unfinished by Nectanebo after the Persians kicked him out of Egypt was revived, and decoration work at the Isaiam, which had been initiated just prior to that, was resumed by the new Greek pharaohs. In Ptolemy II's time, the Ptolemaic Empire was at its largest extent after numerous wars in Syria, and he built all over the place, but he's called Philadelphus sister-loving in Greek because he may have had an unhealthy obsession with his sister. Arsinoe II, who may be depicted by this bust in the Greco-Roman part of the museum, in that he married her, he named tons of places after her, and he also made her a god, so totally not weird behavior. There was another bust underneath it, which is intimately connected to one of the most famous pharaohs of all time, Tutankhamun. You see, the label says that this is a depiction of the god Amun with his distinctive ostrich plumes being cut away, and it is, but it's Amun in the guise of the boy king, and in a way, ironically, it's also a portrait of the heretic pharaoh Akhenaten. After Akhenaten had desecrated the temples of the old gods in place of his new one, the Sundisk Aten, his successor Tutankhamun, or at least the regime behind him, restored the worship of the old gods and physically restored their temples, such as Karnak, the greatest temple in Egypt, dedicated to the cult of Amun, which Tutankhamun built heavily at. He also built tons of new statues of Amun in his image, exactly like this, including one that was very controversially auctioned off by Christie's recently, which you may have seen in the news, but just by looking at it, you can see how similar it is to Akhenaten's sculptures, and that's because sculptors who had worked at his short-lived capital, Amarna, making sculptures of him in his new distinct style, were brought over to Thebes to make these new statues of Amun. Anyways, it's just cool to see stuff from the Amarna period because of how much time I've sunk into reading crazy theories about what was going on. Oh, and there was also this Ptolemaic queen in the guise of Isis right next to it. That was pretty neat. Now we come to our last major object, the piece de resistance, the funerary stela of the first intermediate period count, Cheywet. The inscription, reading right to left, is a standard offering formula called the Hetabdinesu formula, because they always start with that. It means an offering given by the king. Cheywet is called a count and sole companion of the king, but he probably wasn't actually that. He was just a guy who was part of the ranks of courtiers who could go around claiming the title. He was also apparently called seal bearer and treasurer of Lower Egypt, and thus this stela is thought to be from some mid-sized or small town in Lower Egypt. And here we have all the food that was meant to nourish Cheywet for eternity. In this lower register, you have a bird lying on the ground, some beer jars, an offering table, a haunch of a cow, and some assorted vegetables. And above that, you have another offering table, some very specifically shaped feather-like loaves of bread, another cow haunch, and some more vegetables. And this smaller inscription elaborates on what Cheywet wants. It reads, a thousand of bread, a thousand of beer, a thousand of oxen, a thousand of birds, and a thousand of every good and pure thing. So, which is basically a catch-all. Oh, and finally, we have this nice little shabti of a priest of Neith named Hor-Uja that's supposedly from Hawara in the Bayou. Dating to the last period of native Egyptian rule until the modern day, the 30th dynasty. Okay, that's about it for all the ancient Egyptian artifacts, but depending on how well this video does, I'll cover all the Greco-Roman artifacts in the other room, and all the fascinating Mesoamerican artifacts in the same museum, as well as some of the curiosities from the famous Ye Olde Curiosity Shop, including some very creepy mummies, and the ancient treasures within the Seattle Asian Art Museum.