“Would I lie to you?

”
The truth behind object marks and museum catalogue entries
Dr Carla Gallorini, c.gallorini@bham.ac.uk

In 1914, having finished work at Abydos, G.A. Wainwright and T. Whittemore turned their attention to the
cemeteries close to the village of Sawâma, located on the eastern bank of the Nile, near the modern village of
As Sawamah Sharq and roughly 6 miles north of Akhmim (Fig. 1). The work was carried out on behalf of the
American branch of the Egypt Exploration Society (then Fund) in the hope that the site “might still yield types
of pottery much sought by the museums, and, perhaps, other objects of interest” (Whittemore’s foreword to
Wainwright 1920: v). During their work at Sawâma Wainwright and Whittemore investigated various
cemeteries, mostly datable to the New Kingdom, but in the preliminary report Whittemore also recorded the
presence of Roman tombs and a Coptic cemetery (Whittemore 1914: 246). However, the site is usually
associated with an early 18th Dynasty cemetery which produced an abundance of material scattered today
amongst various American Museums1. A full report of the excavation at Sawâma never appeared2, but in 1971
Bourriau and Millard published a detailed account of Wainwright and Whittemore’s work based on the
original excavation records and on the examination of many of the objects in American museums.

Figure 1. Image showing the location of the modern village of As Sawamah Sharq (yellow pin) and its position in relation to Siflaq to the west
and Akhmim to the south.

Among the objects on loan to the University of Birmingham from the Eton Myers collection is an assorted
group of pottery vessels presented to Eton by G.A. Wainwright in 1959. The vessels are listed in the museum
catalogue as coming from Sawâma, although in three cases3 the provenance is queried with a question mark.
The aim of this short paper is to look more closely at the vessels and the objects marks they bear in relation to
the original excavation records4 in the hope they could provide evidence to validate or refute the suggested
provenance.

1
The finds from the excavation were divided between the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, The Brooklyn Museum, Cornell University,
the University Museum in Philadelphia, and the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (Bourriau and Millard 1971: 28;
Artefacts of Excavation - British Excavations in Egypt 1880-1980).
2
Whittemore published a brief report in JEA 1, 1914, 246-7 and made passing references to some of the finds from Sawâma in
his foreword to Wainwright’s publication of Balabish (Wainwright 1920: v-vi).
3
ECM1956, ECM1963 and ECM1965.
4
The records - housed in the Lucy Gura Archive, The Egypt Exploration Society, London - consist of tomb cards, drawings of
pottery, stone vessels, scarabs and beads, 77 half-plate negatives and a notebook listing the photographs. Tomb cards and
 The group consists of five vessels, one complete5, two fragmentary6 - but enough of the body is preserved
to allow for a secure attribution to their ceramic type - and two small rim sherds7.
There is no doubt that ‘pilgrim
flask’ ECM1981 (Fig. 2) comes
from the early 18th Dynasty
cemetery at Sawâma. Object
mark ‘S.15/2’ is easily deciphered:
‘S.’ stands for Sawâma, ‘15’
refers to the number given to the
grave in which the vessel was
found - Grave 15 - and ‘2’
signifies that two vessels of this
type were retrieved. The original
excavation records strongly
support this interpretation. Each
tomb card from Sawâma bears
the tomb number on the top right-
end corner usually in the form of
‘S. x’, just like the object mark on
our flask; in the tomb card for
grave 15 (Fig. 3), beside the
sketch of the pilgrim flask are the
words ‘green grey polish. Hard Fig. 2. ‘Pilgrim flask’ ECM1981. @Eton Fig. 3. Tomb card for Grave 15.
grey clay. Neck inserted dry. 2’; Myers Collection, University of Courtesy of the Lucy Gura Archives, The
Birmingham. Egypt Exploration Society, London.
very similar wordings are also
found on the pottery drawing
sheet, where the presence of two examples of this pottery type in Grave 15 is expressed in the same way, as a
fraction, with 15 over 2. It is also interesting to note the comment ‘neck inserted dry’, suggesting that our flask
was found already broken, as the manufacturing technique cannot be detected by looking at a complete vessel.
From the same grave and now housed in the University Museum, Philadelphia, is a Cypriote base-ring ware
juglet, a type also known as bilbil (accession number E15445.) The juglet has an almost identical object mark
‘S.15/1’, and from the excavation tomb card we know it was found in the same grave as our pilgrim flask. The
marks must have been applied to the vessels before the final distribution between museums took place.
ECM1957 is a small squat jar in Marl A2 with decoration in red still visible on the neck and shoulder (Fig.
4). On the base, the word ‘SAWAMAH’
is written in pencil and is accompanied by
previous and current accession numbers –
‘59.128’ and ‘ECM 1957’ - in ink. The
general pottery type is well attested at
Sawâma, in a range of sizes and with or
without decoration (Bourriau and Millard
1971: fig. 5, 69-77 and fig. 6, 78-89). On
the basis of the size, of the overall shape
and of the small flat base, our vessel
belongs to type 82 in the Sawâma corpus
(Bourriau and Millard 1971: fig. 6),
Fig. 4. The red decoration is still clearly visible on squat jar ECM1957. The view although the decoration does not match
of the base shows the object marks. @Eton Myers Collection, University of
Birmingham. the one illustrated in the pottery plates.
. This is not surprising as it was general

negatives are readily available on the Society’s Flickr feed (www.flickr.com/photos/egyptexplorationsociety/albums). I would
like to thank Carl Graves for his help in accessing the material in the Society’s London office.
5
ECM1957.
6
ECM1981 and 1956.
7
ECM1963 and ECM1965.
practice at the time to draw only one vessel of the many found, and then add notes concerning the surface
treatment of the other examples to the side of the drawing. Only one of the five examples8 of type 82 known
to have come from Sawâma has been positively identified9 (Bourriau and Millard 1971: 38), but the
description of the remaining vessels in the original records is too vague to allow the attribution of our jar to
any of the tombs listed in the pottery plates.
ECM1956 was originally part of a double vase, consisting of a jug and a pilgrim flask (Gallorini 2013)
thrown separately but then joined together through a loop at the rim (for a complete example see E.2610). The
damage on our jug shows clearly where it was once attached to the
pilgrim flask, both at the rim and on the body. On the neck of our
jug are two marks in pencil: ‘18th’ and ‘355’. In the past mark ‘355’
has been read as ‘85 S’, due to scratchings and stains on the surface,
and it is listed as such in the museum catalogue, suggesting a
provenance from grave 8510 at Sawâma. However close inspection
of the piece has made clear that the correct reading is ‘355’ (Fig. 5).
The latter is also repeated in ink on the base, accompanied by
number ‘5’ and by the previous and current accession numbers –
‘59.128’ and ‘ECM1956’ (Fig. 5). The single ‘5’ on the base has
been read in the past as ‘S’ and it is listed as such in the museum
catalogue, maintaining the perception that the vessel was found at
Fig. 5. Damage on rim and body and object Sawâma. Following the new reading, the marks in pencil refer
marks on the neck and base of ECM1956. Eton respectively to the probable date for the vessel - 18th Dynasty - and
Myers Collection, Research and Cultural
Collections, University of Birmingham.
the tomb number in which the vessel was found (355). Wainwright
used a similar marking system in pencil on the pottery from
Balabish11 and some of the marks must have been applied at the time of the excavation as they are already
visible in the original half-plate negatives12. Only 161 graves were cleared at the early 18th Dynasty cemetery
at Sawâma, undermining a possible provenance of ECM1956 from this cemetery. Furthermore, this type of
jug, either on its own or as a part of a double vase, is not present in the known corpus of pottery from the site
and double vases of this type are more commonly found in contests later in date, form the reign of Amenophis
III to the early 19th Dynasty. It is clear that the association between Sawâma and ECM1956 is based on a
misinterpretation of the object marks and should therefore be rejected.
ECM1963 and ECM1965 are two small rim sherds from ‘White Crossed-Line’ ware (C-ware) vessels,
most likely a bowl and a beaker. Both sherds are in fabric Nile A, red coated on the exterior and inside the
rim, and burnished. Linear decoration is applied on the exterior in white gypsum paint. Both sherds bear on
the interior the object marks ‘S’ and ‘WAIN. 16’ in ink, while only ECM1963 also has the mark ‘N+B’ in
pencil (Fig. 6). The ‘S’ could be a reference to Sawâma while ‘WAIN. 16’ is more difficult to interpret. It also
appears on two further C-ware sherds13 of unknown provenance, hinting at a possible use of the mark within

Fig. 6. ECM1963 (left) and ECM1965 (right). Eton Myers Collection, Research and Cultural Collections, University
of Birmingham.

8
From graves S2, S11, S41, S73 and S99.
9
The jar from grave S11. It is kept in the Brooklyn Museum, accession number 14.635, and according to the original records is
the only one with decoration also on the rim.
10
Tomb 85 at Sawâma produced three vessels: type 20, 22 and 38 (Bourriau and Millard 1971: fig. 15).
11
Compare C. Graves 2016 in this exhibition.
12
See for example the fragmentary vessel in the shape of a bird from tomb 66 at Balabish (Wainwright 1920: plate XXV, 56;
Egypt Exploration Society’s Flickr feed, Balabish Negatives 1915, BAL.NEG.78).
13
Also presented to Eton by Wainwright: ECM1964 and ECM1966.
Wainwright’s own pottery typology. The mark ‘N+B’ has no parallel among the other Wainwright’s objects
here in Birmingham, and I tentatively suggest a reference to Petrie’s publication Nagada and Ballas, in which
this kind of Predynastic pottery was first described14. C-ware is mostly found in funerary contexts dated mostly
to the Naqada I period. Its spatial distribution is limited to the area between Matmar and Hierakonpolis, with
a small pocket in the Aswan region (Graff 2011: 48, fig. 1). There is no mention in the published or
unpublished records from Sawâma that Wainwright and Whittemore ever investigated a Predynastic cemetery
or that Predynastic sherds were found among the pottery in the early 18th Dynasty graves15, but the provenance
from Sawâma cannot be completed ruled out. The object mark ‘S’, so similar to the one on ECM1981,
supports the attribution, as does Sawâma geographical position, just to the south of one of the three main areas
in which C-ware flourished: on the east side of the Nile between Matmar and Hemamieh (Finkenstaedt 1981:
7). We have to allow for the possibility that our sherds were surface finds kept by Wainwright for its own
reference collection.
One of the obvious and lasting consequences of the ‘partage’ system16 is the dispersal of artefacts from
excavations to institutions and private collections worldwide. The vessels discussed above illustrate clearly
the difficulties faced when trying to recreate the severed link between museum objects and their original
archaeological contexts.

Bibliography
Bourriau J.D. and Millard A. 1971. ‘The excavation of Sawâma in 1914 by G.A. Wainwright and T.
Whittemore’, JEA 57, 28-57
Finkenstaedt, E. 1981. ‘The Location of Style in Painting: White Cross-Lined Ware at Naqada’, JARCE 18,
7-10
Gallorini, C. 2013. ‘Innovation Though Interactions: a Tale of Three Pilgrim Flasks’, published on-line
(http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/research/activity/connections/Essays/CGallorini.aspx) in the catalogue of
the exhibition ‘Connections: Communication in Ancient Egypt’ at the University of Birmingham
Graff, G. 2011. ‘Les enjeux de l’iconographie des vases peints de Nagada II (Égypte, IVe millenaire):
maintien de l’équilibre cosmique ou régénération de la vie?’ Anthropozoologica 46.1: 47-64
Graves, C. 2016. “Balabish: rediscovering an expedition”, in S. Boonstra (ed.) Objects Come to
Life, Birmingham Egyptology. http://www.birminghamegyptology.co.uk/virtual-museum/objects-come-
to-life/balabish/
Reeves, N. 1999. ‘Ancient Egypt in the Myers Museum’, in S. Spurr, N. Reeves and S. Quirke, Egyptian Art
at Eton College. Selections from the Myers Museum, Windsor, New York, 4-6
Stevenson, A., Libonati, E. and Williams, A. 2016. ‘A selection of minor antiquities’: a multi-sited view on
collections from excavations in Egypt, World Archaeology 48(2). DOI: 10.1080/00438243.2016.1165627
Wainwright, G.A. 1920. Balabish, EES EM 37, London https://archive.org/details/balabish37wain
Whittemore, T. 1914. ‘The Sawâma cemeteries’, JEA vol. 1, No. 4 (Oct. 1914), 246-7

14
Wainwright used the abbreviation N.B. in reference to Petrie’s publication in the footnotes of his Balabish volume.
15
As it happened for example in a Pan Grave tomb at Balabish (Wainwright 1920: 41, pl. I, 2, tomb group 208).
16
The practice of distributing finds from excavations to public institutions or private individuals who had sponsored the work
(Stevenson, Libonati and Williams 2016).