Nicholson Museum, Deitz, Egypt discussed on Conversations
Automatic TRANSCRIPT
But in order to do that we had to make sure the coffin was empty and in order to that we had to do a little bit of research. And that's when we found that the historical record was a little fluid. So what did they tell. You was in that coven. So the coffin had been published in nineteen forty as part of a catalogue of the nicholson museum. Curators did nine forty five and he doesn't talk about the coffin much he says. This coffin is empty. All the state of wood coffin is empty and whether that means he thought it was empty devoid of anything or empty is in devoid of anything of of note or worthy of note according to someone in the nineteen forties. We're not really sure but if you say something's empty that kind of becomes the accepted wisdom. I mean never anything. You've never believe anything rated museum some would say but are they went back throughout database and there was talk of it containing some mixed debris so we weren't really sure and if you'd asked me this the day before we took the lead off what you expect to find. I think i'd have said we expect find nothing. And if you'd said what we hope to find. I think i would have said. I hope that there might be a few residual bandages fewer residual bones that we could perhaps to some say fourteen dining on all something. Where was this particular coffin from originally. Anyway we don't quite know because it's been bought off the antiquities market in the adding fifties. So that means it's been robbed from the original team but the style of the coffin. The white looks the way it's being built that tells us that this coffin deitz to the twenty six dynasty. So we're talking about six hundred base. Say give or take six hundred basically yes. So that's that's before. The founding of the roman republic in other was. That's going that far back. I absolutely all right okay. Six hundred years before the recording. Birth of jesus christ and do you know what part of egypt's modern from so stylistically there's been some coffins that looked very similar that have been excavated at a symmetrical. Sikora that's neat car. So in fact macquarie university in sydney. Doug an unresolved twenty-six tennessee to him there in all about twenty years ago and found it very similar sort of coffin. So i think it's likely that it's from sikora. It's absolutely from egypt. But we're not quite sure what what we know about this time. That the confidence from this era of egyptian history this is. This is like the end of the light. This is the light period of ancient egypt. Isn't it yeah so if you're going to textbook scholars will call it. The light period. I mean it's not a huge amount of imaginations going into that. But it's i find this the more irate about this period the fascinating it seems to me why so up until now egypt. Spain ruled for the previous couple of hundred years by these syrian empire. So the empire that came marching down out of northern iraq. Mosel that that area and then be syrians. Were an egypt is left offending ruling itself for the first time. And what would be the loss. Time for wolf really in its incident. I ancient past so after this period. The the The babylonians greeks a whole persians. All coming in in egypt conquered and ruled ryan's exactly but this twenty-six dynasties is one kind of lost last guy. This lost fluorescence of indigenous local egyptian rule. And what it means to be egyptian is really being questioned by its rules.