Bitumen from the Dead Sea in Early Iron Age Nubia

Kate Fulcher,Neal Spencer,Rebecca Stacey

doi:10.1038/s41598-020-64209-8

Abstract

Bitumen has been identified for the first time in Egyptian occupied Nubia, from within the town of Amara West, occupied from around 1300 to 1050 BC. The bitumen can be sourced to the Dead Sea using biomarkers, evidencing a trade in this material from the eastern Mediterranean to Nubia in the New Kingdom or its immediate aftermath. Two different end uses for bitumen were determined at the site. Ground bitumen was identified in several paint palettes, and in one case can be shown to have been mixed with plant gum, which indicates the use of bitumen as a ground pigment. Bitumen was also identified as a component of a friable black solid excavated from a tomb, and a black substance applied to the surface of a painted and plastered coffin fragment. Both contained plant resin, indicating that this substance was probably applied as a ritual funerary liquid, a practice identified from this time period in Egypt. The use of this ritual, at a far remove from the royal Egyptian burial sites at Thebes, indicates the importance of this ritual as a component of the funeral, and the value attributed to the material components of the black liquid.

Highlights

Black materials were excavated from different contexts in the pharaonic town of Amara West in Upper Nubia, dating from around 1300 to 1050 BC (19th–20th dynasties), and its cemeteries (1250–800 BC)
Two samples of applied black material were taken from coffin fragments from tomb G244, and five further samples were taken from the black friable lumps found in tomb G321
One reference sample of archaeological Dead Sea bitumen from the British Museum Reference Collection was analysed alongside the samples

Summary

Introduction

Black materials were excavated from different contexts in the pharaonic town of Amara West in Upper Nubia, dating from around 1300 to 1050 BC (19th–20th dynasties), and its cemeteries (1250–800 BC). Large quantities of painting materials were discovered in the form of ceramic sherds used as paint palettes (Fig. 2a), lumps of pigment, and grindstones, in an area at the front of storage magazines, which was possibly being used as a working area (E13.14)[10]. These magazines date to an early phase of the walled town in the 19th Dynasty, c. The original scope of this black layer is not clear from the fragmentary state of the coffin remains, but it appears to have been applied to the exterior of the coffin over the outer plaster layer

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Results

Discussion

Conclusion