Procurement of Libyan Desert Glass for Tutankhamon's Revitalising Pectoral?
SIMON, Rita
For the modern era the so-called Libyan Glass Area, located approximately 800 kms from the Nile Valley in the Great Sand Sea of the Egyptian Western Desert, was discovered and first mentioned by the French Consul of Jeddah, Fulgence Fresnel, in 1846. Yet, the actual scientific discovery of the area waited until 1932. Though the formation of the Libyan Glass is still under discussion, in the past decades exploring expeditions found scattered traces of neolithic use of the material in the form of chipped stone tools and axes in the far-off desert around the Area. Yet curiously, the only authenticated occurrence of the material as far as the Nile Valley is in a pectoral from the tomb of Tutankhamon (KV 62). The motifs of the pectoral represent a complex symbolism related to the revitalising resurrection of the pharaoh propelled by the forever transformation of the moon and the sun from each other. In my presentation, I will examine the some of the possibilities of how and when the natural glass scrap that made up Tutankhamun’s scarab in the pectoral could have ended up in the Nile Valley (e.g. by way of inw or expeditionary operations). This may shed some light on the connections between the Nile Valley and the oasis borderland during the 18 th Dynasty.
Session 2. Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Study of Ancient Economies [info]