Pharaoh Wosername unearthed

[Duncan Head]

"The 3,600-year-old remains of a previously unknown pharaoh have been discovered in southern Egypt, the country's antiquities ministry has announced.

The discovery of King Woseribre Senebkay is the first firm evidence of a forgotten pharaonic dynasty whose existence archaeologists had suspected but never proved."

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/jan/22/archaeologists-remains-unknown-pharaoh-egypt
and
http://www.thedp.com/r/93b611de

[Patrick Waterson]

Interesting; thanks, Duncan.

[Dave Beatty]

I suppose this means we'll have to re-do all of the chronology for the entire ancient Near East...

[Patrick Waterson]

We shall have to do that anyway, so why not? 

[Duncan Head]

I suppose this means we'll have to re-do all of the chronology for the entire ancient Near East...

If, as the Guardian article suggests, Senebkay's Abydos dynasty ruled contemporaneously with known dynasties in the north and south, I don't see that it gives us any additional reason to revise chronologies; it just suggests that for a certain period Aegyptus in tres partibus divisus est rather than merely two.

[Duncan Head]

And it looks as if he died in battle - http://news.discovery.com/history/archaeology/pharaoh-brutally-killed-in-battle-analysis-shows-150225.htm

[Patrick Waterson]

And on horseback or in a chariot.  So back goes the clock for Egyptian chariot and/or cavalry use - I would not be at all surprised if evidence were to emerge of both being in common use during the Middle Kingdom.

Personally, I think 'Userabra' is a more dignified reading than Woseribre - not to mention closer to the likely pronunciation of the original name.

Thanks for finding this, Duncan.

[Duncan Head]

And on horseback or in a chariot.  So back goes the clock for Egyptian chariot and/or cavalry use - I would not be at all surprised if evidence were to emerge of both being in common use during the Middle Kingdom.

Does it, though? I'm not sure what the accepted date is for earliest Egyptian chariot use these days. I do know that the DBMM list allows a few towards the end of the Middle Kingdom - some while before Kamose and Ahmose's liberation wars - but I can't recall on what basis. (The Buhen horse skeleton may be part of it, but I think there's more?)  And Woseribre Senebkay's date is still a bit vague, I think.

That's even if we accept that he was hacked down from the back of a horse or chariot. The leg wounds suggest he was above his attackers, yes, but a staircase or a city wall or the deck of a ship, say, might also provide suitable scenarios.

[Patrick Waterson]

Nice to see chariots allowed for the Middle Kingdom, even if only towards the end.  The article itself notes: "... Egyptians appear to have been mastering the use of horses during the Second Intermediate Period," so it looks as if evidence, or at least opinion, is gravitating that way.  We can at least bury the old chestnut about the Hyksos overrunning Egypt because they had chariots and the Egyptians had none.

The wounds to the lower back suggest that the opponent who delivered them would have to have been behind the Pharaoh, which to my mind rules out a staircase scenario unless he was trying to get away and had left it too late.  This is of course not beyond the bounds of possibility, though any Pharaoh worth his natron would have died with his face to the enemy if he possibly could.

For him to be attacked on a city wall he would either have to be standing on the battlements (in which case he would have a different sort of head wound when he fell) or standing behind them with attackers part-way up and behind him.  Hard to envisage, at least for me.

Ship's deck - again, the problem is that he would have to be facing the wrong way round.  And why would the body not have simply been thrown overboard for the crocodiles?

I suspect the forensic team have been through this sort of cogitation and opted for horse and/or chariot as the 'most likely' scenario.  This would of course require the said steed or vehicle to have been surrounded by axe-wielding infantry, suggesting the Pharaoh' s battle had gone very wrong - possibly Egypt's equivalent of Bosworth.

[Dave Beatty]

http://www.penn.museum/press-releases/1180-senebkay-forensic-evidence.html

This is a more full analysis of the skeleton -

Quote The patterns of wounds to Senebkay's body suggest he was attacked while in an elevated position relative to his assailants, quite possibly mounted on horseback. Another surprising result of the osteological analysis is that muscle attachments on Senebkay's femurs and pelvis indicate he spent a significant amount of his adult life as a horse rider. Another king's body discovered this year in a tomb close to that of Senebkay also shows evidence for horse riding, suggesting these Second Intermediate Period kings buried at Abydos were accomplished horsemen. Senebkay and other royal remains at Abydos provide valuable new insight into the early introduction of the horse (Equus ferus caballus) to Egypt. Although use of horseback riding in warfare was not common until after the Bronze Age, the Egyptians appear to have been mastering the use of horses during the Second Intermediate Period. Horseback riding may have played a growing role in military movements during this era, even before the full advent of chariot technology in Egypt, which occurred slightly later, at the beginning of Egypt's New Kingdom (ca. 1550 BCE). End Quote

[Dave Beatty]

Oh, and here is a link to the excellent on line archaeological magazine from Penn State with a couple of articles about the discovery:

http://www.penn.museum/expedition-magazine/expedition-back-issues/expedition-volumes-41-50/432-expedition-volume-48-number-2-summer-2006.html

[Patrick Waterson]

Thanks, Dave.

So the good Pharaoh has the anatomical marks of a good horse rider and fell in battle against axe-wielders.  If he was really unfortunate he may have perished at the hands, or blades, of a coalition of Hyksos and Ethiopian (Nubian) enemies: the Hyksos-Ethiopian alliance is mentioned in the account (dated to Ramesside times) of the freeing of Egypt by Kamose and Ahmose at the start of the 18th Dynasty: they intercepted the messenger the Hyksos king had sent to the Ethiopians and so knew the Ethiopians would not be aware they had been asked to mobilise.  This allowed Ahmose to arrange a blitz down the Nile valley and liberate Lower Egypt.

Userabra Senebkay may have tried something similar but failed to intercept the messenger.  Or he was just caught: the 14th Dynasty seems to have survived in the western Nile delta until the Nile itself dwindled to a trickle (Josephus refers to 'the shrunken Nile' and 12th-13th Dynasty Nilometers record levels 20'+ higher than in subsequent eras) and let the Hyksos across.  The 'Abydos Dynasty' may have established itself as a replacement puppet/client regime and subsequently tried to become something more - or they may have just been destroyed for sport by the Hyksos the way they appear to have done with Seknenre of the 17th Dynasty.

[Jim Webster]

For me the interesting thing is that the Egyptians had horses large enough to be ridden in 1600BC

I'm wondering if their horses came north from Nubia rather than south from the Mediterranean and Mesopotamian worlds

Jim

[Duncan Head]

Ship's deck - again, the problem is that he would have to be facing the wrong way round.

The thing about fighting both onboard ship and on and around city walls is that you're much more likely to be attacked from more than one direction than in a formed battle-line in a pitched battle, so really I don't see this as an entirely valid objection.

And why would the body not have simply been thrown overboard for the crocodiles?

However he died, the burial implies that his body was recovered by his own troops.

Can we distinguish the musculo-skeletal adaptations of long-term horse-riding from those resulting from riding an ass or mule?

[Patrick Waterson]

Can we distinguish the musculo-skeletal adaptations of long-term horse-riding from those resulting from riding an ass or mule?

I would not know.  Presumably the possibility of Pharaoh riding on his ass would have been considered by the physiologists; at a guess there would be a discernible difference because of the likely sustained speeds and manoeuvres of the respective mounts.  The interesting point would seem to be that the nature of his pelvic attachment points took the team by surprise: they were not expecting this in a just-post-Middle Kingdom Pharaoh, despite a presumed tradition of donkey-riding in skeletal remains they would have used for comparison.

The above is just a guess on my part, but the interesting thing is that they were surprised by his equestrian adaptation.

The thing about fighting both onboard ship and on and around city walls is that you're much more likely to be attacked from more than one direction than in a formed battle-line in a pitched battle, so really I don't see this as an entirely valid objection.

Granted, assuming his bodyguards were being or had been cut down, but from below is still not going to be one of those directions.