Two Ostraka from Deir el-Bahri and the Lily Flower Motif in Twenty-sixth Dynasty Theban Tombs

Abstract

Three sketches on two ostraka at The Metropolitan Museum of Art depict single-flower liliform capitals drawn double red lines (figs. 1-3). l A pale red pigment was used for the preliminary drawing and a bright red pigment for the final one, the roughly sketched contours consisting of overlapping short lines. Each image represents a lily flower with two symmetrically curved petals and two elements hanging from the underside of the petals.2 The latter are shaped like of water, or, as they were more poetically called by N. de G. Davies, drops of dew.3 This type of capital did not survive Egyptian architecture. Similar images known from the New Kingdom tomb painting have under petal elements of different shapes and sizes.4 Establishing a date for a new version of a lily flower image with two is one of the goals of this research. The two ostraka are part of a larger group found the rubbish of the court of the Eleventh Dynasty Theban tomb (MMA 509) into which the later Twenty-sixth Dynasty tomb of Nespakashuty (TT 312) was built. Although most of these ostraka have been published a number of times, their dating is still question. Herbert E. Winlock, after finding them 1922-23, referred to the whole group as snatches of life on flakes of the paper-white limestone which Nespakashuty 's artists drew in their off-time amusing themselves.5 Thirty-five years later W. Hayes re-published the ostraka dating them to the Ramesside Period.6 Other studies attribute them to the seventh century while leaving an earlier date as a possibility.7 Most recently, while including these drawings his list of liliform capitals, Dieter Arnold observed that: unfortunately, the date of the ostraka is unknown. From the date of the surrounding pottery one would tend to date them to the late Ptolemaic/Roman period, when, as we know, artists studied older tombs. However, the two ostraka might even go back to the Twenty-sixth Dynasty, when Nespakashuty built his court into the court of tomb no. 509 (656-650 B.C.).8 It seems that doubts and contradictions dating this material come from an attempt to date the ostraka as a related group although they do not appear to constitute one. Stylistically they can be