Gurob Harem Palace Survey
The Gurob Harem Palace Project (see www.gurob.org.uk) is a preliminary study of the urban and funerary remains at the ‘harem town’ of Mi-wer in the Faiyum region of Egypt. The project began in 2005, and we have worked annually at the site since then.
One crucial way to try to understand the nature of an Egyptian harem of the New Kingdom, as well as the whole community and socio-economic infrastructure that developed around such an institution, is to study a place that has yielded both archaeological and textual evidence for a harim. Gurob (or Medinet el-Gurob: “City of the Crows”) represents precisely such an opportunity – it is a New Kingdom settlement and cemetery site at the south-eastern end of the Faiyum region that was occupied from at least the early 18th Dynasty until the late Ramessid period. Many aspects of the inscriptions, papyri and archaeological remains suggest that the principal raison d’être of this settlement was to maintain an important royal harem.
The principal aims of the project are (1) to produce an accurate 1:1000 map of the site as a whole, combining GIS so as to allow our growing databases of ceramics, small finds and lithics to be mapped onto the visible surface features (2) to create more detailed plans of the main points of archaeological interest in the settlement and cemeteries, (3) to produce a basic modern corpus of pottery at the site, (4) to use satellite photographs, geophysical methods, core-drilling and surface examination to gain a better understanding of the original architecture and ancient activities, as well as the relationship between the site of Gurob and its landscape and environment. The vast majority of the ceramic material covering the surface of the site dates to the mid- to late New Kingdom, affording considerable potential to analyse chronological and functional patterns across the site through the study of such material.
We are grateful to the British Academy, the Wainwright Fund, the Egypt Exploration Society (Centenary Studentship fund), Ancient World Tours, the Friends of the Petrie Museum, and the School of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology for generously funding and/or facilitating our work at the site.
Preliminary reports on the 2005, 2006 and 2007 seasons have been published in Shaw 2007, 2008 and 2009. Key previous publications are Petrie 1890, 1891, Loat 1905, Borchardt 1911, Brunton and Engelbach 1927, Kemp 1978, Thomas 1981, Lacovara 1997.
For annual reports, full bibliography and further details, including details of our conference event in London on September 11 2009, see www.gurob.org.uk.
Bibliography
Borchardt, L., 1911. Der Porträtkopf der Königin Teje im Besitz von Dr. James Simon in Berlin. Leipzig: J.C. Hinrichs.
Brunton, G. and Engelbach, R.E. 1927. Gurob, London: BSAE/ERA.
Kemp, B.J., 1978. ‘The harim-palace at Medinet el-Ghurab’, ZÄS 105: 122-33.
Lacovara, P., 1997. ‘Gurob and the New Kingdom ‘Harim’ Palace’, in Ancient Egypt, the Aegean and the Near East: Studies in Honour of Martha Rhoads Bell , ed. J. Phillips (San Antonio, 297-306.
Loat, W.L.S., 1905. Gurob. London: BSAE/ERA.
Petrie, W.M.F. 1890. Kahun, Gurob and Hawara. London: EEF.
Petrie, W.M.F., 1891. Illahun, Kahun and Gurob. London: EEF.
Shaw, I. 2007. ‘Gurob: the key to unlocking an Egyptian harem?’, Current World Archaeology 23 (June/July), 12-19.
Shaw, I., 2008. ‘A royal harem town of the New Kingdom: new fieldwork at Medinet el-Gurob’, Queens of Egypt, ed. C. Ziegler (Paris: Somogy Art Publishers, 2008), pp.104-15.
Shaw, I., 2009. ‘Seeking the Ramesside royal harem: new fieldwork at Medinet el-Gurob’, Ramesside Studies in Honour of Kenneth Kitchen, ed. M. Collier and S. Snape (Bolton: Rutherford Press, 2009), pp.207-17.
Thomas, A.P., 1981. Gurob: a New Kingdom town, 2 vols (Egyptology Today 5/1). Warminster: Aris and Philips.
