No abstract

This paper aims to analyse the different steps in the phenomenon of material entanglementoften invisible in the archaeological record -between the Egyptian and Nubian material cultures of the Second Intermediate Period (1750-1500 BC) in the so-called 'Egyptian Cemetery' (southern part of the Eastern Cemetery) at Kerma. Faience figurines have been selected as the case study to analyse the processes of a. material appropriation, when an Egyptian artefact is integrated into a different cultural world; b. incorporation and tinkering, when the appropriated product is reshaped/modified at Kerma; c. hybridisation, when there is the generation of a product with a new ontological meaning, reinterpreted on a local background.The archaeological site of Kerma, situated between the Third and Fourth Cataract in Sudan, was investigated by George Reisner in 1913-16 1 , and included the ancient urban centre on the eastern side of the Nile, and the cemetery occupying a vast area three kilometres north-east of it. During the Middle Bronze Age, the living community at Kerma rapidly increased and expanded until its apex during the so-called Classic Kerma Period (ca.1750-1500 BC, hereafter shortened to KC), when it hosted the ruling class whose territorial control extended over all of Upper and Lower Nubia.The so-called Eastern Cemetery, covering an area of 80-90 hectares 2 , was already in use by ca. 2500 BC and continued during the Archaic Kerma Period (ca. 2150-1950 BC) as attested by artefacts from burials in the sector Reisner called 'cemetery N' 3 ; its southernmost part (labelled 'Egyptian Cemetery' because the greatest number of artefacts from there were of Egyptian manufacture) was mainly occupied during the Classic Kerma phase (1750-1500 BC), and contained the characteristic burial structure of the time: the tumulus. Along the southern edge of the cemetery were four exceptionally large tumuli (K III, IV, X, XVI) that may be approximately 1

A group of Middle Kingdom objects discovered at the beginning of the twentieth century, and stated as coming from a tomb near el-Matariya (Heliopolis), was acquired by a French collector, Maurice Nahman, and later widely dispersed across public institutions and private collections worldwide. The group included a large quantity of faience figurines (over 34 pieces identified so far). The aim of this article is to reassemble the group (also visually) and address three critical points about its 'discovery': a) the authenticity of each single artefact; b) the reliability of the place of provenance (el-Matariya) and its archaeological setting (a funerary context); c) the validity of the association of the objects as a group, i.e. the likelihood that they were all effectively connected with each other in the same original context (itself a unique archaeological occurrence). While el-Matariya and a single funerary context for them are still plausible hypotheses, next to the possibilities that these objects may have come from either a temple deposit or a multiple burial assemblage, the author aims to demonstrate that in no way can they be considered to have come from a 'provenanced context'.A group of objects discovered at the beginning of the twentieth century, and stated as coming from a tomb near el-Matariya (Heliopolis), drew the attention of several scholars, both for its exceptional number of Middle Kingdom faience figurines and for the rarity of archaeological contexts containing such artefact types 1 . All of the objects were originally acquired by a French * I wish to thank Niv Allon for providing useful observations and the information about the lion amethyst (see below), Helen Strudwick for her help in the Fitzwilliam Museum with the Hornblower letter. I am grateful to Wolfram Grajetzki and Angela Tooley for reading the article and Dietrich Raue and Federica Ugliano for their information about Heliopolis. I am extremely grateful to all of the institutions who have allowed me to publish their photos, Neal Spencer for the British Museum, Helen Strudwick for the Fitzwilliam, Diana Craig Patch for the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (henceforth MMA), Vincent Rondot and Audrey Virgy for the Musée du Louvre, Lisa Cakmak and Pat Boulware for Saint Louis Art Museum. Finally, once more I am extremely grateful to Paul Whelan for reading my English.1 kEmP, mErrillEEs 1980, 163-4; Bourriau 1988, 120. For archaeological contexts containing this 'Au mois de mai 1928 j'ai vu au Caire chez M. Maurice Nahman, l'antiquaire bien connu, une petite collection d'objets en faïence provenant tous d'un même tombeau. Ce tombeau, d'après M. Nahman, aurait été découvert, il y a environ quinze ans, par des fellahs près de Matarîyeh (Héliopolis) et tout son contenu fut acquis par M. Nahman. Ces objets […] sont maintenant dispersés un peu partout et j'ai eu grande peine à me faire une idée de leur ensemble', kEimEr 1929b, 49. Doc. 2'Voici la liste des pièces qui sont parvenus à ma connaissance: vases en albâtre, petits vases et coupe...

The aim of the article is to trace the history of faience figurines in late Middle Kingdom Egypt, following a metanarrative level of synthesis. Moving from one of the most visible changes in the course of history, the turn from Modernism to Postmodernism, the article defines a key to read the path of faience figurine production from their appearance in the late Middle Kingdom to their disuse at the end of the Second Intermediate Period: changes in the pattern of society correspond to the production of a different material culture and to the abandonment of previous perceptions. Faience figurines represent a diagnostic category of objects defining a specific epoch. Their value as historical signatures is here used to supply a different interpretation for the history of the Second Intermediate Period Egypt, integrating microhistories with bigger pictures, as a combination of Postmodernism and Grand Narratives approaches.

The results published here are part of my research at the British Museum as a post-doctoral fellow at the Department of Ancient Egypt and Sudan in 2014. I am grateful to Marcel Marée, Neal Spencer and all the AES staff, who strongly supported me. I am grateful to Ilona Regulski for inviting me to the conference in London to present the G62 group and for all her hard work in assembling the volume. I am especially grateful for comments and information shared by Paul Whelan, Wolfram Grajetzki, Janet Richards, and Robert Bianchi. I am indebted to Alice Stevens and Campbell Price for permission to publish the museum images/documents of the Petrie and the Machester museums; to Christian Knoblauch for the additional information about the pottery from G62; to Angela Tooley for the photos of tomb E 1.