My name is Saskia Büchner and I run the “Finds Office” on the Jebel Barkal Project. I wanted to share some of the amazing objects we have found this season! But be warned, we are working in an area of ancient settlement, which means that many of our finds are broken potsherds and most of the material is rather worn and fragmented. However, the team has found a few really interesting pieces and whoever found them was “winner of the day” and got a photo and treat (like chocolate or salami).
Finding a complete pot, like this bowl, without a missing piece is considered quite something. Here I am holding one that’s about 2000 years old, found by Taylor Woodcock while she was helping out in Suji Chandrasekaran’s trench.
One of the more spectacular things was found by our excavator and photographer Henrik Brahe: a mostly complete signet ring made of copper alloy. It is not conserved or cleaned yet so the design of the seal is not clear. What do you see? There are rumors about a newly invented elephant hieroglyph, but who knows?
Another pretty amazing piece was found by Taylor: a piece of a large Meroitic jar with an Meroitic inscription on it! They are very few parallels to it, but there was one at Kawa, excavated by Derek Welsby and Isabella Welsby Sjöström. We don’t have any Meroitic specialists on the project at the moment so we will have to ask colleagues for some help.
Suji found a fragment belonging to a large decorated jar, also Meroitic in date (around 2nd-1st century BCE). It has very unusual blue painted decoration that we will have to analyze later but is similar to a recent find at the nearby royal burial site of Nuri.
Last but not least, a little glimpse what amount of material we are dealing with here, what is not uncommon for surface material but with four large excavation areas it amounts to spectacular numbers. No complaints from me, the setting and the office is a great space!
