The treasure of El Lahun is a significant cache of Middle Kingdom artefacts discovered in 'tomb 8', a subsidiary burial belonging to Sithathoriunet, presumed daughter of Senusret II, at his funerary complex in El Lahun. The treasure was held in decorated ebony chests and features a unique 'crown of Sithathoriunet' bearing an uraeus with an accompanying gold embellished wig; an exquisite 'pectoral of Senusret II' with a minutely-detailed reverse; a second near identical 'pectoral of Amenemhat III'; two distinct sets of jewellery; a set of toiletries, including a mirror with an intricate, inlaid handle; a set of calcite oil and obsidian cosmetic jars; and many other varia. The majority of these finds reside in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (The Met) in New York City, though a few items are in the Egyptian Museum (the EMC) in Cairo.
Sithathoriunet lived through the reigns of three pharaohs – Senusret II, Senusret III, and Amenemhat III – during the apogee of the Middle Kingdom, when she amassed a considerable collection of valuable items. Upon her death, she was buried with these in a shaft tomb south of Senusret II's pyramid. The tomb was plundered in antiquity, but the robbers failed to notice a small recess carved into the lower half of the antechamber's west wall that contained five chests bearing many of her riches. The breaching of her tomb left it open to the elements allowing successive floods to fill the recess with mud and bury her treasures. While the organic contents of her hoard decayed and the tarnishable materials corroded irreparably, the artefacts sat otherwise undisturbed for millennia.
In early February 1914, archaeologists working for the British School of Archaeology in Egypt (BSAE) under Flinders Petrie rediscovered and cleared the recess, carefully documenting every minute bead, scrap of material, and surviving artefact. Gaston Maspero, then Director-General of the Department of Antiquities, chose only a few items for the museum in Cairo, as it had already received similar hoards from the galleries of Sithathor and Mereret at Dahshur. The remainder were put up for sale by Petrie and purchased by The Met in 1916. Though the Great War delayed their delivery, the treasures were finally transported from London to New York City in 1919.
Provenance
The cache was discovered about 10 February 1914 and reported by Flinders Petrie in The Times (UK) on 20 May 1914. Yet, the full publication of the excavation reports at the site of the pyramid of Senusret II – Lahun I by Guy Brunton and Lahun II by Petrie, Brunton, and Margaret Alice Murray – was delayed until 1920 and 1923 respectively owing to the course of the Great War. A similar hoard was discovered by Jacques de Morgan at Dahshur on 7–8 March 1894 and is in the possession of the Egyptian Museum (the EMC), such that only a few items from the Lahun cache were taken for it by Gaston Maspero, the then Director General of Antiquities in Egypt, whilst the majority were purchased by the Metropolitan Museum of Art (The Met) in 1916 from the Rogers Fund and a gift from Henry Walters, the Second Vice President of the Museum. The war too delayed the transfer of the artefacts, which were stored in Britain until 1919 when they were finally shipped to New York.
The treasure was contained in the easternmost of four shaft tombs sunk south of the pyramid, designated 'tomb 8', and was built during the reign of Amenemhat III some 38 years after Senusret II's death. It had been robbed anciently, as evidenced by looting of her sarcophagus. It was accessed through a deep shaft that led to the antechamber. This chamber's walls were separated into two sections, with the treasure recess inset in the centre of the lower half of the west wall. It was approximately wide, cut deep, and had a sloped ceiling high. On discovery, it was three-quarters filled with mud which had to be carefully cleared to retrieve its contents. The treasure was originally held in five wooden chests stored within the recess that had since decayed, along with other organic material, such as the threads of the necklaces and wigs of hair, and tarnishable materials, such as silver and copper fittings.
It belonged to Sithathoriunet, a of the Twelfth Dynasty who lived through the reigns of her presumed father, Senusret II, and the pharaohs Senusret III, a possible husband, and Amenemhat III, a possible nephew. Her name and title survived on the banded calcite canopic jars and magic jar recovered from her burial chamber. Her tomb contained the only extant records of her existence. She lived during the cultural peak of the Middle Kingdom, and was the beneficiary of its fruits as the recipient of some of the finest jewellery crafted by ancient Egyptians.
Chests
Two of the five chests belonging to Sithathoriunet were reconstructed by Arthur Cruttenden Mace for The Met. He wrote of them, in the museum's Bulletin, 'weary of reference-hunting and the quest of the elusive adjective, an object with a story comes as a real godsend ... for not only do we know their full past history ... but we have been the means ... of adding a further chapter to that history by restoring them'. For the reconstruction, the ivory inlays were restored by Mikumasa Miki, the wood by George Clarihew, and the colour by 'Miss Cartland'.
The larger ebony chest – the jewellery chest – had decorated ivory panels inlaid with 20 gold-sheathed wooden Djed pillars (𓊽) representing 'stability', and 16 blue Egyptian faïence and gold-framed carnelian false doors. These images were arrayed so that six pillars and five false doors appeared lengthwise, and four pillars and three false doors presented depthwise. Each image was framed with ivory veneers and separated using ebony strips and the panels were laid in a projecting ebony frame with curved silver struts flowing down to the gold encased ebony feet. The frame was crowned by a gold torus mould and ivory cavetto cornice replicating an important style in Egyptian architecture. The body thus imitated the niched facade of a monumental enclosure wall or the panelling of a sarcophagus.
The forward face of the chest had a fastened knob, probably originally of copper but reconstructed of silver, and a second one inserted into the lid above. The ebony lid had a prominent curve, reminiscent of a shrine or naos but oriented perpendicularly to the norm, that was decorated with four inlaid images of Hathor. Her face was gold with slots into which white stone eyes with black pupils and blue faïence eyebrows were set. Gold horns sprouted from her head to host a carnelian sun disk encircled with a band of gold and silver whilst wavy hair of gold and blue faïence strips flowed into a curl of gold embedded with a carnelian gem. Finally, from her neck hung a pectoral of horizontal carnelian and blue faïence strips partitioned by gold. Interspersed between the Hathor heads were probably three ivory inlays bearing the titulary of Amenemhat III, but these had been assigned to the smaller ebony chest during Mace's reconstruction.
The interior was presumably divided into compartments to host the chest's articles, but their composition is now indeterminate. The chest contained two sets of items: adornments for the princess including the 'pectoral of Senusret II', and the principal components of two sets of jewellery; and toiletries including a mirror, razors, whetstones, and a silver dish. There is slight evidence from the burials of Sithathor and Mereret at the pyramid of Senusret III in Dahshur to suppose that other similar chests existed, but none have thus been recovered.
The smaller chest – the cosmetics chest – had the same basic form as the first, but different decoration. By Mace's own admission, the reconstruction for this second chest is much less firm than for the first. It had ivory panels with inlaid false doors composed of strips of red wood, ebony, and ivory presenting a variation of the niched design of the first. This was framed by an ebony body with plain ebony feet and was crowned with a gold torus moulding and an ebony cavetto cornice; however, this moulding originated from a third chest and there was no ivory to support the rebuilt cavetto. It had a curved lid with an ivory and wood border, a frame for the three ivory veneers bearing the nomen, praenomen, and Horus name of Amenemhat III. These probably originate from the jewellery chest interspersed between the images of Hathor. The single internal compartment of the chest was used to store calcite ointment jars, but this too was probably not their original purpose. The manner and placement in which the remnants of the chest were found, remarkably allows a portion of its story to be recounted. Upon Sithathoriunet's burial, the cosmetics chest was placed within the recess atop the jewellery chest. Once her tomb was breached by graverobbers, periodic flooding of the recess with mud instigated the rotting process of the jewellery chest, which, weakening with time, buckled under the weight of the chest atop giving way and causing the cosmetics chest to tumble off and onto its lid. Here it lay upturned for millennia, until it was fortuitously rediscovered by the team of British archaeologists that toiled away at the site in 1914.
The remaining three chests cannot be properly reconstructed. The third appears to be made from red wood based on minute finds and had the gold torus moulding applied to the cosmetics chest. It may have contained obsidian jars and a kohl pot. Its position was behind the second chest as it too tumbled when the jewellery chest broke. The fourth which held the crown, a wig, the 'pectoral of Amenemhat III', and some jewellery is posited to exist principally on the premise that such valuables must have been stored somewhere. It was probably purely wooden, explaining its complete deterioration. The fifth is known to have been the largest, but also the plainest of the five chests, and is believed to have held spare wigs that have since disintegrated, thus accounting for its vacant state. It was identified from the dust and copper nails, some of which had gold heads, that had endured the millennia.
Crown and wig
Sithathoriunet possessed a crown consisting of a polished gold band adorned with fifteen inlaid rosettes, three streamers and two feathers, and, in its centre, an inlaid royal uraeus all principally of gold. The rosettes are inlaid with carnelian and coloured faïence – since bleached – representing lapis lazuli and feldspar or turquoise. The rosettes each represented four flowering Nymphaea waterlilies. They were riveted to the band with three of them having additional gold rings soldered to their base. These served as attachments for the streamers which were hinged to swing freely. In the inner rear side is a riveted tube crowned with a papyrus flower which receives the tang-like stem of the two feathers that projects high-above the wearer's head. Opposite to this sits a detachable uraeus that establishes its owner as a member of the royal family. The cobra is and of gold inlaid with carnelian, lapis lazuli, and a once green faïence that has bleached white. The cobra's head was fashioned from a single piece of lapis lazuli and given garnet encrusted eyes with a gold trim. The crown is unique, distinct from the crowns of Khenmet discovered in Dahshur. It is similar to the painted band depicted on a statue of Nofret – wife to Rahotep, son of the pharaoh Sneferu – in the Fourth Dynasty and to the crowns depicted on a procession of female dancers and musicians in the tomb of Ukhhotep IV, a local governor, in Meir.