Scarab Seals from a Middle to Late Bronze Age Tomb at Pella in Jordan.

• Author: Weinstein, James

The University of Sydney expedition to Pella in the northern Jordan River valley uncovered a triple-chambered tomb (labelled Tomb 62) at the northeast comer of Tell el-Husn, a mound located south of the main tell. The tomb's rich assortment of burial goods included fifty-five scarabs. This small book provides a typological and comparative study of the scarabs.

The introduction, section 1, offers brief remarks on the contents of the tomb and the materials from which the scarabs were manufactured. The major portion of the text, section 2, discusses the scarabs and their parallels. Section 3 summarizes the designs and materials, following which there is an appendix in which the scarabs are classified according to the typology developed by William Ward (Studies on Scarab Seals I [Warminster: Aris & Phillips, 1978]) and the late Olga Tufnell (Studies an Scarab Seals II [Warminster: Aris & Phillips, 1984!). After that comes the detailed catalog of the scarabs. Here the author gives the location, dimensions, condition, surfInstitutions," JARCE 27 [1990]: 14-45) and G. Englund ("Gifts to the Gods, a Necessity for the Preservation of Cosmos and Life: Theory and Practice," Boreas 15 [1987]: 57-66).

S. Donadoni reviews the hieroglyphs composed to decorate the obelisks associated with Charles X and those of Alessandro Torlonia and his family. Despite the fact that these monuments were created within a decade of Champollion's decipherment of the hieroglyphs, the texts are extraordinarily accurate in their reflection of court protocols.

E. Edel deals with two worked blocks of Ptolemaic date from the ruins of the site of Xois. The blocks contain five toponyms, written within crenelations surmounted by representations of bound prisoners. Some of these are identified as African place names and belong, according to Edel, to a pharaonic tradition in which Nubians can appear as Mauerleute. The innovation in the Ptolemaic Period appears to be the depictions of these Africans with beards, a characteristic which is apparently unattested earlier.

1. E. S. Edwards deals with a naophoros, ostensibly of late Saite date, now in the collections at Truro, Cornwall. To his discussions of the meaning of this statue type, one should also consider the remarks on this subject by both G. Posener (La Premiere Domination perse en Egypte: Recueil d'inscriptions hieroglyphiques, Bibliotheque d'Etude XI [Cairo: Publications de l'Institut Francais d'Archeologie Orientale, 1936!, 5-6) and J. van Dijk ("A Ramesside Naophorous Statue from the Teti Pyramid Cemetery," OMRO 64 [1983]: 52-58). The depiction of a tripartite wig on a male figure of this date is an exceptional feature which deserves note.

P. J. Frandsen's extended observations on the root nfr result in the interesting suggestion that the phrase r??-nfr in P. Anastasi I, 3, 3 and oDeM 1077, 3 is actually a clever pun denoting the place of embalming, which, in passing, he suggests may have more often than not been in the very vicinity of the tomb in which the deceased was eventually to be interred.

Sarah I. Groll discusses a passage on a Turin stela (no. 102) in which divine anger is ascribed to the goddess Mri.s-gr. Whereas her evidence is mainly drawn from the texts, one should now note the visual connections between that deity and others, particularly Hathor, as patrons of the western, Theban, mountain (V. A. Donohue, "The Goddess of the Theban Mountain," Antiquity 66 [1992]: 871-85).

Despite the various interpretations to which the Tale of the Shipwrecked Sailor has been subjected, W. Helck briefly suggests that the literary value of the narrative is secondary to its propagandistic message, which he considers in relation to other, contemporary compositions.

In a brief communication dealing with aegyptiaca in France, J. Leclant calls attention to several Egyptian objects discovered in known Merovingian contexts. Leclant suggests that these objects and others,' such as a monumental situla in porphyry, were brought to Europe by early travelers and pilgrims to the Holy Land.

Acknowledging the honoree's approbation of the work of the Jesuit...