The Archaeology of Race by Challis Debbie;

Author:Challis, Debbie;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Published: 2012-04-08T04:00:00+00:00

6

Peopling the Old Testament

In the Petrie Museum there is a finely modelled terracotta head on a mount and stand labelled ‘Hebrew’ by Flinders Petrie (Figure 6.1). This head comes from the city of Memphis in Middle Egypt, potentially from the Ptolemaic (Greek ruled) period from c. 330–30 BC. The city of Memphis had a large migration of different peoples, particularly from the time of the Persian conquest in 525 BC on, which included a distinctive Jewish population, known from papyri to have played a large role in the public life and administration of the city (Thompson, 1988: 85). The head (museum number UC33278) was published in Petrie’s excavation report Memphis I in 1909. He compared the head to a tomb painting at Beni Hasan, which he had previously intended to photograph as part of his Racial Photographs in 1886–7 but could not as the tomb was too dirty. Petrie wrote ‘The type is that of the Semite, as shown in the chief of the Amu at Benihasan (19), but sturdier and fatter owing to a settled life. It probably represents the Syrian or Jewish trader’ (Petrie, 1909: 16) (Figure 6.2). The head was confused with this portrait at Beni Hasan listed in Petrie’s excavation report and so was placed in the much earlier Middle Kingdom Dynasty 12 (1991–1778 BC) on the Petrie Museum catalogue. Petrie labelled this head ‘Hebrew’, partly because of the known mix of peoples in Memphis from the fifth-century BC on, but also because he thought that it matched a Semitic profile.

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