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<< Other Photo Pages >> Gerzeh cemetery - Barrow Cemetery in Egypt in Upper Egypt (South)

Submitted by Andy B on Saturday, 01 June 2013  Page Views: 6046

Neolithic and Bronze AgeSite Name: Gerzeh cemetery Alternative Name: Girza, Jirzah, Tomb 80, Tomb 67, Tomb 105, Tomb 205
Country: Egypt
NOTE: This site is 3.587 km away from the location you searched for.
Region: Upper Egypt (South) Type: Barrow Cemetery
Nearest Town: al-Girza
Latitude: 29.450000N  Longitude: 31.200000E
Condition:
5Perfect
4Almost Perfect
3Reasonable but with some damage
2Ruined but still recognisable as an ancient site
1Pretty much destroyed, possibly visible as crop marks
0No data.
-1Completely destroyed
 2 Ambience:
5Superb
4Good
3Ordinary
2Not Good
1Awful
0No data.
 no data Access:
5Can be driven to, probably with disabled access
4Short walk on a footpath
3Requiring a bit more of a walk
2A long walk
1In the middle of nowhere, a nightmare to find
0No data.
 no data Accuracy:
5co-ordinates taken by GPS or official recorded co-ordinates
4co-ordinates scaled from a detailed map
3co-ordinates scaled from a bad map
2co-ordinates of the nearest village
1co-ordinates of the nearest town
0no data
 3

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Gerzeh cemetery
Gerzeh cemetery submitted by Andy B : The Gerzeh bead (top left) has nickel-rich areas, coloured blue on a virtual model (bottom left), that indicate a meteoritic origin. Image credit: Open University / University of Manchester (Vote or comment on this photo)
Gerzeh was a predynastic Egyptian cemetery (about 3500 -3000 BC, Naqada II - III) located along the west bank of the Nile. Gerzeh is situated a few miles due east of the lake of the Al Fayyum.

At the beginning of 1911 Gerald Wainwright was working for Flanders Petrie, helping excavate the tomb area north of Meydum Near the village of Gerzeh he found a cemetery with many intact tombs from the Pre-Dynastic era. It was particularly the middle years of this period – c. 3600-3300 BC – which were represented, and Petrie, accordingly, called the period Gerzean. The finds from Gerzeh were of great interest since it was the first time that finds from this period had been made so far north in Egypt.

The tombs were principally rectangular or oval graves. The burial lay in the foetal position, surrounded by grave-goods: jars of pottery or stone, together with, in certain cases, strings of beads made of semi-precious stones and faience. The jars were filled with, or represented, food drink and fragrant ointments and oils. Many of the tombs contained small, miniature stone jars

The Gerzean is the second of three phases of the Naqada Culture, and so is called Naqada II. It is preceded by the Amratian (Naqada I) and followed by the Protodynastic or Semainian (Naqada III).

For more on the Gerzeh culture see Wikipedia, for more on the various tombs of the cemetary see Digital Egypt. Info also sourced also from the Pitrie project.

NOTE: Although we have listed as a 'barrow' cemetery, there are not any significant above ground barrows as far as we know.

Note: Predynastic Egyptians accessorised with iron beads made from meteorites
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Gerzeh cemetery
Gerzeh cemetery submitted by Creative Commons : Diorite Vase from the Neqada II period, Predynastic Ancient Egypt, from the Field Museum Creative Commons image, credit: Wikipedia User: Madman2001 (Vote or comment on this photo)

Gerzeh cemetery
Gerzeh cemetery submitted by Andy B : Close up of the Gerzeh bead made from meteoritic iron Image credit: Open University / University of Manchester (Vote or comment on this photo)

Gerzeh cemetery
Gerzeh cemetery submitted by Andy B : The Gerzeh bead (top) has nickel-rich areas, coloured blue on a virtual model (bottom), that indicate a meteoritic origin. Image credit: Open University / University of Manchester (1 comment - Vote or comment on this photo)

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Ancient Egyptians accessorised with iron bead made from a meteorite by Andy B on Saturday, 01 June 2013
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Researchers at The Open University (OU) and The University of Manchester have found conclusive proof that Ancient Egyptians used meteorites to make symbolic accessories. The Gerzeh bead is the earliest discovered use of iron by the Egyptians

The evidence comes from strings of iron beads which were excavated in 1911 at the Gerzeh cemetery, a burial site approximately 70km south of Cairo. Dating from 3350 to 3600BC, thousands of years before Egypt’s Iron Age, the bead analysed was originally assumed to be from a meteorite owing to its composition of nickel-rich iron. But this hypothesis was challenged in the 1980s when academics proposed that much of the early worldwide examples of iron use originally thought to be of meteorite-origin were actually early smelting attempts.

Subsequently, the Gerzeh bead, still the earliest discovered use of iron by the Egyptians, was loaned by the Manchester Museum to the OU and the University of Manchester’s School of Materials for further testing. Researchers used a combination of the OU’s electron microscope and Manchester’s X-Ray CT scanner to demonstrate that the nickel-rich chemical composition of the bead confirms its meteorite origins.

OU Project Officer Diane Johnson, who led the study, said: “This research highlights the application of modern technology to ancient materials not only to understand meteorites better but also to help us understand what ancient cultures considered these materials to be and the importance they placed upon them.”

Meteorite iron had profound implications for the Ancient Egyptians, both in their perception of the iron in the context of its celestial origin and in early metallurgy attempts.

Co-author Dr Joyce Tyldesley, a Senior Lecturer in Egyptology at The University of Manchester, said: “Today, we see iron first and foremost as a practical, rather dull metal. To the ancient Egyptians, however, it was a rare and beautiful material which, as it fell from the sky, surely had some magical/religious properties. They therefore used this remarkable metal to create small objects of beauty and religious significance which were so important to them that they chose to include them in their graves.”

Philip Withers, Professor of Materials Science at The University of Manchester, added: “Meteorites have a unique microstructural and chemical fingerprint because they cooled incredibly slowly as they travelled through space. It was really interesting to find that fingerprint turn up in Egyptian artefacts.”

The paper, ‘Analysis of a prehistoric Egyptian iron bead with implications for the use and perception of meteorite iron in ancient Egypt,’ is published in the Meteoritics and Planetary Science journal.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/maps.12120/abstract

Source: Manchester University. With thanks to Jackdaw1 for the link, see also the Nature report:
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