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Monika Doliƒska

Looking for Baste Iret.The Cartonnage from the Collection

of Micha∏ Tyszkiewicz

Any mistake encountered in the museum inventory makes us looksuspiciously at the neighbouring entries and their recorded provenance. Weare painfully conscious that the last war created enormous havoc, not onlyamongst the museum objects themselves, but also in their documentation –the loss of priceless certificates of origin drastically reduces the value of theseobjects. Reconstructing the history of an object requires meticulousexamination and is not always successful. In the case of exhibits from theEgyptian collection of the National Museum in Warsaw, the situation is evenmore complicated, due to the fact that a large part of the objects had not evenbeen catalogued before the war, as the transport of antiquities from the lastcampaign at Edfu had arrived at the museum only just before the outbreak ofhostilities. Mistakes were inevitable whilst cataloguing mixed and brokenobjects after the war.

Such was the case of cartonnage inv. no. 141987 (ill. 1), described in theinventory as a gift of the French Institute of Oriental Archaeology andsupposedly excavated at Deir el-Medina. The next entry, inv. no. 141988,after careful investigation appeared to belong to a coffin of Tay-Akhuth fromthe old collection. Another one, the coffin of Djed-Khonsu-iuf-ankh, inv. no.141795, also appeared to be a nineteenth-century acquisition and its numberand provenance was mistaken. What was the guarantee that cartonnage inv.no. 141987 really was from Deir el-Medina?

The village of the workmen who constructed the royal tombs was built atthe beginning of the New Kingdom and prospered nearly till its end. Whenat the end of the 20th Dynasty, during the stormy period of civil wars andLibyan raids, workmen moved to the protection of the temple at MedinetHabu, the area of the village and its tombs were used as a convenient placeto bury the dead. After the 21st Dynasty the village was totally deserted untilthe Ptolemaic times, when the temple of Hathor was built nearby and the oldhouses and tombs turned out to be ideal burial grounds. It is unlikely that the

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cartonnage, dated to the 22nd Dynasty,could have come from that site:according to the excavation reports ofBernard Bruy¯re, the director of theFrench mission between 1922 and 1951, no objects from this period were found, and certainly no cartonnageof this type.

Where did the exhibit come from if not from Deir el-Medina? Was there anylost cartonnage in the Warsaw collectionthat could be connected with object inv.no. 141987?

Following a detailed examination ofthe pre-war inventories, one possibilityhas appeared:

“No. 21885: Portrait case of an Egyp-tian mummy, of a very late period,probably Roman. Portrays the wife of a scribe from the temple of Horus andIsis named Baste Iret. Length: 165,5cm.” The date of the entry was the 25th

October 1919; the origin was specifiedas the ¸ohojsk collection of Micha∏Tyszkiewicz.

This object was regarded as “lost duringthe war” and forgotten long ago. It was difficult to determine if the above-mentioned short description matchedthe existing cartonnage, as it had suf-fered badly during the war: it was crum-pled and cracked as if somebody hadtrampled on it, and to make thingsworse, huge amounts of dirt stuck to thewax used in attempt to protect the sur-face. The texts were illegible and thename of the dead woman couldn't berecognised (the yellow colour of the face pointed to the woman as the ownerof the cartonnage). Was she Baste Iret? A pre-war photograph of the cartonnage(ill. 2) showed a beautiful face framed by a wig adorned with a vulture head-dress and a lotus flower. This made us feel all the more sorrow at the destruc-tion which afflicted this object after nearly two thousand years of existence. Allthe more we were keen on rescuing it, and restoring – if perhaps not to a stateso ideal as that portrayed on the photo – this was impossible – but to a more or

1. Damaged cartonnage inv. no. 141987(new inv. no. 238435)The National Museum Warsaw(photo Z. Doliƒski)

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less satisfactory condition. There was some hope that under the layers of dirtand wax some legible texts had survived and that it would be possible torestore some of the beauty of the face and its colours, as well as proper shapeof the body.

This task was undertaken by Mr. Stefan Miszczak, from the Atelier forConservation of the National Museum in Warsaw. After several months ofwork, the effects can be appreciated: Baste Iret, although not so beautiful asshe once was, was transformed from crumpled debris into an anthropoidcartonnage (ill. 3). But was it really the Baste Iret from the pre-war inventorybook?

Cleaned texts have survived only partially, but it is now possible to read thename: Nehemes-Bastet (“Saved by Bastet”). The schematically drawn plantsign after the name – the determinative of the dead woman – is similar to thesign of the eye, “ir”, and this is probably the source of the reading “Baste Iret”from the old inventory. So the reading of the name, in spite of differences,supports the identity of the object from the ¸ohojsk collection and the preserved cartonnage. Also the name and title of the husband of the deadwoman speaks in favour of this hypothesis – a scribe, Harsiese (“Horus, theson of Isis”) reminds us of a scribe from the temple of Horus and Isis men-tioned in the old inventory. The date given there is wrong – the cartonnagedates from the 22nd Dynasty, not from the Roman period – but we shouldn'tbe surprised: at the beginning of the 20th century, when this entry was written, the typology of these objects was not known, in spite of the fact thatfor a long time they had been quite frequently brought to Europe, to

2. Head of the cartonnage of Baste Iret on

a pre-war photograph

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become the pride of some private col-lection or the centrepiece of a séanceof unwrapping the mummy. In the lat-ter case they were carefully cut alongthe side – as in this case – to extractthe mummy and examine it.

In the years 1861 and 1862, CountMicha∏ Tyszkiewicz (ill.4) travelledin Egypt. He started to collect hisfamous collection of antiquities, sometimes buying them, but mostlyconducting his own excavations atKarnak and on the west bank of theNile. At Karnak, the excavations werecarried out legally, with the permissionof the vice-king – but in the valleybehind the mountains of Asasif theywere illegal – breaking a ban imposedby the officials of Auguste Marietteand conducted under the cover of thenight. The exact site of these illegalexcavations is not known; it couldhave been any valley close to Asasif.The work proved successful as early ason its second night, as Tyszkiewicznoted in his diary:1

“Having locked the door of thecabin we begin to open two mummies. One of them, enclosed in a woodencase, very decorative, is covered withgreen paintings, very protruding, andpaintings on this green are red andrather shallow (today this case can be seen in Paris, in the Louvre, in theDepartment of Egyptian Antiquities2).So we started with this coffin but to my surprise the mummy enclosed in it had nothing except normal bands. The other mummy, although inconspicuous, was beautifully painted on a case made of glued linen andrewarded us doubly, as I found in it a body of a woman adorned with manygold jewels and idols made of lapis lazuli. Thick golden ear-rings,

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1 Egipt zapomniany czyli Micha∏a hr. Tyszkiewicza Dziennik podró˝y do Egiptu i Nubii (1861–

1862), ed. by A. Niwiƒski, Warsaw 1994, pp. 245–247.2Only a wooden mummy cover is presently in the Louvre, inv. no. E.3859.

3. Cartonnageafter restorationactual inv.no. 238435The National Museum Warsaw(photo Z. Doliƒski)

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4. Count Micha∏ Tyszkiewicz (after J. Tyszkiewicz,

Tyszkiewiciana...)

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two finger rings and a splendid necklace of the same material set withcarnelians were found on the appropriate places of the body. A golden platewith hieroglyphic text lay on a breast, a bracelet made of strung amethystsand carnelians and another one in the shape of a serpent adorned her arms.A crystal figure of idol Sawak lay at her feet. Overjoyed at this beautiful andrich prize I decided to dig on in this promising valley and I sent generousbaksheesh to my workmen to encourage them to further efforts andsearching.”

“A case made of glued linen” is certainly a cartonnage, and very probably– our cartonnage. As a matter of fact, several other mummies appear in thestory spun by Tyszkiewicz,3 but none of them, it seems, was equipped with acartonnage – at least Tyszkiewicz doesn't mention any. One would like toknow what happened to the golden jewels, but the description is so scantythat any attempt at identification must remain a hypothesis. On the plate inthe book (ill. 5) written by Józef Tyszkiewicz,4 the son of count Micha∏, wecan see golden jewels; among other things a splendid pendant inlaid with glassand lapis lazuli, shaped like a ram-headed deity seated on a lotus flower. Is this the “idol made of lapis lazuli” mentioned by Tyszkiewicz? This object,presently in the Louvre, is dated to the Third Intermediate Period and its closest parallels come from the 22nd Dynasty.5 Another object of the same

3 Ibid., pp. 159, 241, 253, 367.4 Józef Tyszkiewicz, Tyszkiewiciana: militaria, bibliografia, numizmatyka, ryciny, zbiory, rezydencje etc. etc., Poznaƒ 1903.5 Ch. Ziegler, “Un chef d'oeuvre de la collection Tyszkiewicz, le pectoral au bélier (Louvre E 11074)”, in Essays in Honour of Prof. Dr. Jadwiga Lipiƒska (Egyptological Studies I), Warsaw1997, pp. 325–326.

5. Golden objects fromthe Tyszkiewicz collection(after J. Tyszkiewicz,Tyszkiewiciana...)

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date, a golden finger ring of the royalsecretary Hormes, with an image ofBastet-Hathor and cartouches of Osor-kon,6 also found its way to the Louvre,offered by Micha∏ Tyszkiewicz withnearly two hundred other Egyptianworks of art. This ring probably comesfrom Bubastis, but it cannot be exclud-ed that it turned up in Thebes forinstance as a family souvenir.

The cartonnage of Nehemes-Bastet,like many other Egyptian objects (thepapyrus of Bakai, for instance, also dis-covered during those clandestine exca-vations), was sent to ̧ ohojsk – the seatof the Tyszkiewicz family, owned byKonstanty Tyszkiewicz, Count Micha∏'suncle. Konstanty created a museum at¸ohojsk in 1842 and until 1907 onecould have admired a showcase filledwith Egyptian antiquities.7 W∏adys-∏aw Wankie, a journalist, described itscontents in 1907 and mentioned “amummy, unfortunately already opened”and “a beautiful papyrus, admirablypreserved”.8 The grandson of Konstan-ty, Józef, the owner of ¸ohojsk since1897, moved the Egyptian objects toVilnius in 1910 and planned to establisha new museum there. His death in 1914halted these plans. In 1915, Józef ’swidow, Krystyna Brandt-Tyszkiewicz,donated these objects to the Art Society“Zach´ta” in Warsaw.9 In 1919 theywent to the National Museum in Warsaw

together with the rest of ̧ ohojsk collection, which had been donated to “Zach´-ta” by another member of the Tyszkiewicz family. In this way the cartonnage,

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6 Louvre inv. no. E 3717; cf. Tanis. L'Or des Pharaons, exh. cat., Paris, Galeries Nationales duGrand Palais, Marseille, Centre de la Vieille Charité, Paris 1987, p. 176.7 Cf. A. Majewska, “La collection égyptienne des Tyszkiewicz de ¸ohojsk au Musée National deVarsovie”, in Essays... op. cit., p. 174 and footnote 14. 8 W. Wankie, “Muzeum ¸ohojskie”, Âwiat, 1907, 35, p. 10.9 A. Snitkuviené, “Lithuanian Collections of Count Micha∏ Tyszkiewicz and His Family”, inEssays... op.cit., pp. 237–238.

6. Cartonnage of Nehemes-Bastet on a damaged

pre warphotograph

The National Museum Warsaw

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the papyrus of Bakai and many other Egyptian antiquities landed in our muse-um. About 120 of them survived the last world war in better or worse shape.

How does the cartonnage of Nehemes-Bastet look today?The cracked and fragmentarily preserved surface makes the decoration

rather illegible and the form of many details can only be guessed on the basisof parallels with similar objects. Fortunately, a recently discovered broken glassnegative has permitted us to add some details which no longer existed (ill. 6).For the purposes of clarification, I have included information concerning theadditional (now lost) details in square brackets in the text below. The back ofthe casing is cut away beneath bands of colour separating the front and the back,except for a head, which is preserved as a whole. The dominant colours are red,yellow and blue on a white, rarely visible background. The wings of a vultureheaddress, painted on a blue wig, frame the delicately modelled yellow face (ill.7). The wig is encircled by a fillet of lotus petals and small coloured blocks, and

7. Upper part of the cartonnage of Nehemes-Bastet

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a lotus flower hangs above the forehead. On top of the head a large scarabKhepri with a shen-sign in his hind legs is painted on a yellow and redbackground, resembling a sun disc. Between the lappets of the wig is a figureof the seated goddess Maat, painted on a bed-net background.

The arms are covered by a large collar made of many rows of lotus petals andred-and-blue blocks. On the right shoulder a small bird [with a human head:ba] is perched on a sign symbolising the West; the emblem on the left shoulderhas not survived. A falcon with outspread wings, holding shen-rings in its claws,overlaps the lower part of the collar. The falcon is ram-headed, crowned witha sun disk – it is probably a nocturnal form of the sun god, Re-Atum, unitedwith Osiris during his journey through the netherworld.

Several figures are placed in a register under the falcon (ill. 8). At either side,the Four Sons of Horus are shown (on the left is Hapi with a baboon head

8. Middle partof the cartonnage

of Nehemes-Bastet

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and a poorly preserved Imseti, and on the right, the jackal-headed Duamutefand the equally poorly preserved Qebehsenuf). Closer to the centre, twoimages of Osiris appear, but are no longer recognisable, identified by the shortcaptions T1 and T2. [Osiris on the left was shown mummiform, with a falconhead, equipped with a white crown and a uas-sceptre; Osiris on the right wasrepresented by the Abydene fetish Ta-ur, with a supporting pole flanked bytwo upright winged lions.] Closest to the centre were two uraei in royalcrowns, but only the one on the left in a white crown of Upper Egyptsurvived. [The one on the right wore a red crown.] The very centre of thiscompartment is occupied by a falcon's tail and legs painted on a feathered red-and-blue background.

All these figures stand on the wings of another falcon, this time falcon-headed and crowned with a red solar disc. This falcon in turn is supported

9. Lower part of the cartonnageof Nehemes-Bastet

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by the crossed wings of figures from the next register: of goddesses Isis andNephthys, standing on either side of the case and crowned with yellow discs.Green-bodied goddesses are facing inwards and reach out with winged arms.Between their wings begins a column of hieroglyphic text (T3), running downin several sections and separated by the tips of the wings of goddesses and yetother falcons, right up to the feet of the case. The texts are written in blackon yellow background. The central column and two horizontal lines of thetext are framed by red and blue bands. Short captions in front of thegoddesses (T4 and T5) give their names.

The next register is separated from the upper one by a horizontal line oftext (T6 and T7, to the left and right from the central column). Two falconsare painted on either side of the case, standing on a sign representing gold (ill.9). These falcons are sometimes labelled as Horus Behdeti, sometimes as Isisand Nephthys, but most often remain nameless as in this case. Theiroutspread wings cross in the centre of the case, overlapping the centralcolumn of text. Beneath is the next line of text, completely illegible now. [Onthe old photograph traces of the owner's name are barely recognisable.]The feet are decorated with two figures of the Wepwawet jackal on a

standard, with hieroglyphs of his name written nearby. The front and the sidesof the feet are encircled by a frieze made up of ankh, uas and neb-signs. Thelast signs of text from the central column are written over signs of the frieze. The overall pattern of decoration, with emphasis on prosperous symbols andprotective deities, is typical of the majority of Theban cartonnage cases fromthe 22nd Dynasty. However, they differ in their details. First of all, the Abydene fetish, usually the most prominent element of decoration, with acolumn of text on a supporting pole, is in a subordinate position here, as oneof the figures in a row. The arrangement of the wings of the protective deities differs in various cases: the wings can either just touch the central column of text (which is the support of the fetish)10 or the wings can cross – butbeneath the text, without overlapping it. Here two variants are possible: bothpairs of wings are crossed under the central column of text11, which is sometimes the support of the fetish12, or one pair of wings touches the centralcolumn, while the other one crosses under the text.13 The only other examples

10 Cf. the cartonnage of Panepi (inv. no. 147801) in the National Museum in Warsaw.11 Cf. the cartonnage of Nakhtefmut (inv. no. E.64.1896) in the Fitzwilliam Museum inCambridge, the cartonnage of Tjenetdinebu (inv. no. 1881.2228) in the National Museum ofIreland in Dublin, the cartonnage of Djed-Mut-ius-ankh (inv. no. 32) in the ÄgyptischesMuseum in Berlin, the cartonnage of Tabes in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. 12 Cf. the cartonnage of Djed-Amonet-ius-ankh (inv. no. MR-A-517) in the Museum in Raciborz,the cartonnages of Padiset (inv. no. 3940) and Tamit (inv. no. 3942) in the KunsthistorischesMuseum in Vienna. 13 Cf. the cartonnage of Shepenkhonsu (inv. no. J.106) in the Luxor Museum (wings of goddesses arecrossed under the support of the fetish, wings of falcons touch it), the cartonnage of Neskhonsu-pakhered (inv. no. G-19929) in the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology in Berkeley (as above),the cartonnage of Ta-khateru (inv. no. AMM 21) in Rjksmuseum von Oudheden in Leiden (as above),the anonymous cartonnage in the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Lyon (as above); the cartonnage of

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of a pattern of decoration identical with the subject of this paper are the cartonnage of Panepi in the British Museum14 and the cartonnage of Ta-net-rety--sheryt in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.15 A similar pattern appearsalso on the cartonnage of a priestess in the British Museum but there are nohorizontal bands separating the winged figures.16 I have also found one otherexample of wings overlapping the central column of text but with differentlyarranged compartments – on the cartonnage in the Museu Nacional deArqueologia in Lisbon.17

Parallels permit us to safely date this type of cartonnage mummy case tothe 22nd Dynasty, but more precise dating is difficult because no typology of cartonnages has so far been established. It seems that different variants were used at the same time and in the same area: for instance, casings belonging to Neskhonsu-pakhered (in the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Antropology, Berkeley) and her husband Nespernub (in the BritishMuseum)18 differ in many important details. Out of around 30 cartonnagesof which I know until now, only one, that of Nakhtefmut in the FitzwilliamMuseum in Cambridge is precisely dated to the end of the reign of Osorkon I,thanks to leather straps (the so-called mummy braces) with the stamped cartouche of this ruler and a linen fragment with the words “Year 33” and“Year 3”, referring perhaps to the regnal years of Osorkon I and his co-regentShoshenq II, found on the mummy.19 Mummy braces are also painted on the cartonnage of Nakhtefmut and decorate several other cartonnages. It is tempting to presume that the presence of painted mummy braces indicates an earlier date of the cartonnages – similar painted leather straps are characte-ristic of coffins from late 21st Dynasty through to the early 22nd Dynasty, representing the final stage in the development of the yellow-type coffins.

We can find them also on the lid of the inner coffin of Ankhefenkhonsu in theBritish Museum,20 decorated exactly like the typical cartonnages of the period,which is perhaps an intermediary between earlier yellow-type coffins and car-tonnage mummy cases.

Panehesi (inv. no. AMM 17) in Leiden (wings of goddesses touch the central column of text, wingsof falcons are crossed under text). 14 Inv. no. BM 6685. 15 Inv. no. 8641. 16 Inv. no. BM 25258. 17 Inv. no. E 135. 18 Inv. no. BM 30720: a winged scarab is painted on a very broad collar, taking the place of a ram-headed falcon, in place of a second falcon with outspread wings there is a wingless Ptah--Sokar-Osiris in a shrine. 19 E. Vassilika, Egyptian Art. Fitzwilliam Museum Handbooks, Cambridge 1995, p. 92.20 Inv. no. BM 30721.

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H I E R O G L Y P H I C T E X T S

1 2

Words spoken by Osiris Words spoken by Osiris

3(A)

An offering that the king gives to Re-Horakhty

3(B)

Atuma, Lord of Two Lands, the Heliopolitan, Osiris Unnefer,

lord of the land

lord of the land

3(C)

sacred, lord of eternity, the king of Upper and Lower Egypt,

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3(D) /////// /////// /////

ruler of eternity, [that they may give an offering to] Nehemes-Bastetb,

justified, the wifec of the scribed [...] Harsiese

4

Words spoken by Isis, mistress of heaven

5

Words spoken by Nephthys, sister of the god

6 //// ?

[The one honoured before]? Isis, protector of the lady

of the house Nehemes-Bastet, justified

7 //// //// ////

[The one honoured before]? Nephthys, sister of the god,

[protector of] Nehemes-[Bastet, justified]

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21 B. Porter, R. Moss, Topographical Bibliography of Ancient Reliefs and Paintings, vol. II, 2nd

edition, Oxford 1972, p. 159: the statuette of Padiamon-nebnesuttawy, the son of Nesmin andNehemes-Bastet, found in the Cachette at Karnak and dated to the Persian Period (inv. no.Ent.37514).22 Porter, Moss, op. cit., vol. I, 2, p.681: a shabti box found in the Ramesseum belonged to her;cf. also A. Kitchen, The Third Intermediate Period in Egypt, Warminster 1973, pp. 219–220.Three other shabti boxes of the same owner are in the Liverpool Museum (inv. no. M13993),in the National Museum of Ireland in Dublin (inv. no. L1030:120) and in the Institutd'Egyptologie in Strasbourg (inv. no. 848). Information about their whereabouts courtesy of Mr.Piotr Bieƒkowski, Claude Traunecker and Piotr Laskowski. 23 M.L. Bierbrier, Hieroglyphic Texts from Egyptian Stelae etc., in the British Museum. vol. 11,London 1987: a stela inv. no. BM 22916. 24 G. Daressy, Catalogue Général du Musée du Caire. Statues de divinités, Cairo 1906: a lowerpart of a statuette inv. no. 38924. This Nehemes-Bastet obviously cannot be the owner of theWarsaw cartonnage. 25 Porter, Moss, op. cit., vol. V, p. 58. 26 Porter, Moss, op. cit., vol. I, 2, p. 802 (inv. no. Ent.3389). 27 For example, the cartonnages of Neskhonsu-pakhered and Ta-khateru, a stela inv. no. BM 35895. 28 Cf. J.J. Janssen, “Two Personalities”, in R.J. Demarée, J. J. Janssen, Gleanings from Deir el- -Medina, Leiden 1982, p. 127, footnote 37.

COMMENTARY:

a – An invocation addressed to Re-Horakhty-Atum, usually also to Osiris,appears on most of cartonnages of this type, as well as on stelae of that period.

b – The name of the dead woman is relatively rare and appears, except onedubious occurrence,21 solely during the 22nd and 23rd Dynasties. Severalbearers of this name are attested: first of all, the singer of the harem of AmonNehemes-Bastet, the granddaughter of Takeloth II, the daughter ofShepensopdet and Djed-Khonsu-iuf-ankh, contemporary with Osorkon IIIand Takeloth III. She was the owner of several shabti-boxes, now in Dublin,Liverpool and Strasbourg.22 The second Nehemes-Bastet was a daughter of amer-netjer priest, Padiamon – her stela is in the British Museum.23 The thirdNehemes-Bastet was a daughter of a prophet of Amon Hor, a wife of Djed--Amon-iuf-ankh and a mother of another priest Hor.24 We find these nameson a small figure in Cairo. A certain Nehemes-Bastet appears also as an ownerof a stela from Abydos25 and of another one from Thebes, now in Cairo.26

Every one of them, except naturally the third one with a husband Djed-Amon-iuf-ankh, could be the owner of the Warsaw cartonnage. Of course, it couldalso be none of them.

c – The expression “ .hbsw(t)” appears to be a frequent designation of marriedwomen, especially popular at the end of the New Kingdom and in the 22nd

Dynasty.27 Relation between this term and the more common “ .hbsw(t)” isunclear. Perhaps various forms of marital relations are meant here.28

d – The rest of the title is lost, we don't know what sort of scribe Harsiese was.

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29 The actual inventory number of the cartonnage is 238435. All pre-war numbers have beenchanged into new 6-digit ones.

To sum up:

The story of the cartonnage of Nehemes-Bastet has reached its happy-end.Not only has the physical shape and some of its previous beauty beenrestored, but also the modern history of the object has been successfullyreconstructed. This cartonnage together with four coffins from the oldUniversity collection had formed the basis of the Egyptological collection in the National Museum in Warsaw, until Prof. Micha∏owski enriched it substantially with finds from Edfu, Deir el-Medina and other sites.29

Linguistic consultation – Micha∏ Murawski

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