Papers by John Coleman Darnell
Antiquity, 2007
Rock art surveying by a Belgian archaeological mission in March-April 2004 in the el-Hosh area on... more Rock art surveying by a Belgian archaeological mission in March-April 2004 in the el-Hosh area on the west bank of the Nile, about 30km south of Edfu in Upper Egypt, led to the discovery of a hitherto unknown petroglyph locality at the southernmost tip of a Nubian sandstone hill ...
Antiquity, 2012
The vivid engravings on vertical rocks at the desert site of Nag el-Hamdulab west of the Nile com... more The vivid engravings on vertical rocks at the desert site of Nag el-Hamdulab west of the Nile comprise a rock art gallery of exceptional historical significance. The authors show that the images of boats with attendant prisoners, animals and the earliest representation of a pharaoh offer a window on Dynasty 0, and depict the moment that the religious procession of pre-Dynastic Egypt became the triumphant tour of a tax-collecting monarch.
in: The First Cataract of the Nile: One Region - Diverse Perspectives (SDAIK 36), D. Raue et al., eds., 2013
Archéo-Nil, 2017
A reexamination of the early hieroglyphic annotation accompanying tableau 7a of the great Nag el-... more A reexamination of the early hieroglyphic annotation accompanying tableau 7a of the great Nag el-Hamdulab cycle of rock inscription tableaux.
Archéo-Nil, 2017
During surveys of the northern hinterland of the region of Elkab, in May of 2017 the Elkab Desert... more During surveys of the northern hinterland of the region of Elkab, in May of 2017 the Elkab Desert Survey Project (of Yale University and the Royal Museums of Art and History, Brussels) discovered a rock art and inscription site near the modern village of el-Khawy. The site comprises three major sections, with the images and inscriptions thus far identified dating from the Naqada I Period through the Old Kingdom. A prominent feature of the site is a large scale early hieroglyphic inscription datable to early Dynasty 0 (with the closest paleographic parallels from Tomb U-j), revealing an early monumental use of the nascent script, indicating a politico-religious use of hieroglyphs already during their earliest period of use, and demonstrating a broader geographic reach for the script than surviving and thus far recognized examples have suggested.
Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts. Abteilung Kairo, 2009
Résumé/Abstract Members of the Aswan-Kom Ombo Archaeological Project have been working since 2005... more Résumé/Abstract Members of the Aswan-Kom Ombo Archaeological Project have been working since 2005 in the West Bank of the Nile, from Qubbet el-Hawa north to Kubbaniya north, Wadi Kubbaniya, Wadi Abu Subeira, and a section of the desert east of Kom Ombo. Both survey and rescue operations are performed, the latter as an answer to the urgency to save as many archaeological sites as possible from the destruction caused by quarrying and building activities in the area. This paper summarizes the main activities of the 2007― ...
Architectural and epigraphic evidence indicates that the rear central chamber of Ghueita Temple (... more Architectural and epigraphic evidence indicates that the rear central chamber of Ghueita Temple (Kharga Oasis) incorporates an earlier, apparently free-standing, shrine. The decoration of the chamber in its present form, and apparently the incorporation of the earlier shrine into the rear portion of the temple, all appear to date to the reign of Darius I.
Studien zur altägyptischen Kultur 27 (1997): 35-48
J.C. Moreno Garcia, ed., Ancient Egyptian Administration, Handbuch der Orientalistik (Leiden and New York, 2013), pp. 785-830
T. Wilkinson, ed., The Egyptian World (London and New York: Routledge), pp. 29-48
S. Hendrickx and M. Gatto, co-authors, in Antiquity 86 (2012): 1-16
The vivid engravings on vertical rocks at the desert site of Nag el-Hamdulab west of the Nile com... more The vivid engravings on vertical rocks at the desert site of Nag el-Hamdulab west of the Nile comprise a rock art gallery of exceptional historical significance. The authors show that the images of boats with attendant prisoners, animals and the earliest representation of a pharaoh offer a window on Dynasty 0, and depict the moment that the religious procession of pre-Dynastic Egypt became the triumphant tour of a tax-collecting monarch.
The vivid engravings on vertical rocks at the desert site of Nag el-Hamdulab west of the Nile com... more The vivid engravings on vertical rocks at the desert site of Nag el-Hamdulab west of the Nile comprise a rock art gallery of exceptional historical significance. The authors show that the images of boats with attendant prisoners, animals and the earliest representation of a pharaoh offer a window on Dynasty 0, and depict the moment that the religious procession of Predynastic Egypt became the triumphant tour of a tax-collecting monarch.
Revue d’Égyptologie 59 (2008): 81-106
J. Dieleman and W. Wendrich, eds., UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology (Los Angeles): http://escholarship.org/uc/item/4739r3fr
The annual Opet Festival, during which the bark of Amun-and ultimately those of Mut, Khons, and t... more The annual Opet Festival, during which the bark of Amun-and ultimately those of Mut, Khons, and the king as well-journeyed from Karnak to Luxor, became a central religious celebration of ancient Thebes during the 18th Dynasty. The rituals of the Opet Festival celebrated the sacred marriage of Amun-with whom the king merged-and Mut, resulting in the proper transmission of the royal ka and thus ensuring the maintenance of kingship.
R. Cappers, ed., Fields of Change: Progress in African Archaeobotany, Groningen Archaeological Studies 5 (Groningen, 2007), pp. 127-138
Uploads
Papers by John Coleman Darnell
An introductory section in each chapter will describe the respective ritual, reference its attestation(s), provide relevant bibliography to the most significant text editions and commentaries, and will examine how the text relates to the others in the corpus. A limited number of notes will explain significant lexicographic and grammatical issues and clarify questions of content for each text. Although ritual actions are part of ancient Egyptian festivals, the latter will not be incorporated in the present volume; they form a separate genre that deserve a translation volume of their own. We will focus on rituals that consist of a cycle of events, and we will therefore exclude individual activities that do not belong to such a cycle.
This quite problematic panel raises the questions of the ‘who’ and the ‘when’. Although a classic set of inquiries in rock art studies, these questions have never been properly addressed regarding Egypto-Nubian rock art. Current scholarship rarely considers the large chronological and cul- tural spectrum of Nilotic rock art, and published analyses tend to bind these productions to the dominant cultural assemblage attested either in Egypt or in Nubia. Because of this approach, only panels with motifs that reproduce images and themes found on Egyptian Predynastic/Early Dynastic (c. 4500-2600 BC) material culture, and to a lesser extent on the material culture of the Middle Nubian phase, have been thoroughly considered. Part of the available data then remains unaddressed.
However, for millennia the deserts surrounding the Nile Valley were crossed by highly mobile groups. It appears that at least some specific depictions found in desert contexts, usually at- tributed to the Naqada period, may very well be the expression of those mobile people and could even be later in date than the various dating criteria from the Nile Valley might suggest. This paper aims to augment current paradigms in the study of figurative rock art in Egyptology and Nubiology and to provide new avenues for investigations.