Chronology
5500 - 4000 BC Badarian 4000 - 3500 BC Naqada I Amratian 3500 - 3300 BC Naqada II Early Gerzean 3300 - 3200 BC Naqada II Late Gerzean 3200 - 3050 BC Naqada III Late Gerzean 2686 - 2181 BC Dynasties III-VI 2181 - 2040 BC Dynasties VII-XI 1 2040 - 1782 BC Dynasties XI 2 - XII 1782 - 1570 BC Dynasties XIII-XVII 1570 - 1070 BC Dynasties XVIII-XX 1070 - 525 BC Dynasties XXI-XXVI 525 - 332 BC Dynasties XXVII-XXXI Alexander the Great Philip Arrhidaeus Ptolemies Roman Emperors
Upholstery
As well as straps made from leather, woven cord was used to make seats for chairs and stools. This is seen in the Second Dynasty stela of the Lady Heken at Helwan. On simple stools the cord was bound around the seat rails, while on more elaborate chairs holes were drilled through the seat rails and the cord was woven across to form the seat. Cushions were used from as early as the Second Dynasty. A fine stela, from Saqqara, shows Sehefner seated on a low-back chair. The deceased sits on a...
Predynastic and Early Dynastic Periods
Up to and during the Predynastic Period resistant materials were worked with knives and saws made from flint figure 19 and simple copper tools were manufactured during the Badarian Period, 4500 to 4000 BC, to carve wood, ivory and stone. By the Naqada I Period 4000 to 3500 BC basalt and other stone vases were being bored with copper drills and in Naqada II metal, stone and wood working proliferated. Therefore, by the beginning of the Early Dynastic Period and the unification of the lands of...
Basket techniques
Basketwork too was practised from as early as Neolithic times. By plaiting natural fibres, such as the leaves of the date palm, some kinds of coarse grass and pliable plant stalks, craftsmen were able to weave many different types of basketware. The carpenters and joiners themselves used baskets of holdall type to carry their tools. It had to be reinforced with cord ribs and had a carrying handle figure 3 . 3. Carpenter's basket, Lahun, Twenty-second Dynasty. Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford, I 49....
Applied techniques
Gypsum, a hydrated form of calcium sulphate, occurs in Egypt in either rock or crystal form and was made into a thick plaster. It was applied to the surface of poor-quality timbers to disguise the grain and any exposed defects. If paint was to be used to decorate a piece of furniture, then a thinner ground made from whiting and gum or glue would have been laid on to the timber. This material is called gesso and made a perfect foundation for paint. The paints were made by finely grinding...
Early boxes
The origins of the bed-frame, stool and chair were firmly established by the end of the Early Dynastic Period. It was during the Old Kingdom that boxes developed in all shapes and sizes. In the Old Kingdom tombs at Saqqara there are many wall reliefs which illustrate this. Earlier boxes were made from plain boards that were corner-jointed together while later examples are of frame and panel construction. Some are painted while others are inlaid or veneered. In the Fourth Dynasty tomb of Queen...
Woodworking materials
A surprisingly complete record of carpentry in ancient Egypt can be pieced together through examining tomb scenes, archaeological excavations and discovered materials. From the earliest times basic ideas were turned into tangible products, setting the design principles that are still followed thousands of years later. The properties of timber were understood and tools were developed to work it. At first these were basic hand tools, but then specialised tools and cutting aids were produced....
Headrests
Another headrest is placed on a box below Queen Meresankh's armchair. Egyptians did not use pillows. Instead they used a wooden support to rest their heads on. Generally, headrests have a solid base and a carved head support which were connected by a short tapered column which was mortised and tenoned at both ends. Egyptian women shaved their heads to help with personal hygiene and wore wigs that were stored in reed boxes. Using a headrest might appear to us uncomfortable some were padded...
Canada
Royal Ontario Museum, 100 Queen's Park, Toronto, Ontario M5C 2C6. Czech Republic Narodni Muzeum v Praze, Vitezneho Unora 74, Prague 1. Denmark Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Dantes Plads, DK-1550 Copenhagen V. Egypt Egyptian Antiquities Museum, Tahrir Square, Kasr el-Nil, Cairo. France Mus e Calvet, 65 rue Joseph-Vernet, 84000 Avignon, Vaucluse. Mus e de la Vieille Charit , 2 rue de la Charit , 13002 Marseilles. Mus e des Beaux-Arts, Palais Saint-Pierre, 20 place des Terreaux, F- 69001 Lyons. Mus e du...
Late and Roman Periods
Little furniture has survived from these later periods. During the Third Intermediate Period the administrative capital of Egypt moved to Tanis in the Delta, where the royal tombs of the kings of the Twenty-first and Twenty-second Dynasties were located. These small tombs were discovered virtually intact by Pierre Montet in 1939. They contained no furniture and their wall scenes are mainly funerary in subject matter they do not show the everyday activities performed as part of normal life that...
Joints
In many Predynastic burials the crouched body was placed in a simple box or on a frame of wood which had been covered with plant stems. Much of this early timber has decayed but from surviving pieces showing the corners and edges it is possible to identify a number of woodworking joints. The majority of boxes have butt-jointed corners held together with wooden pegs or tied with n. Butt-joint. 12. Box and frame corner joints a, half-lap b, simple mitre c, shoulder-mitre d, double shoulder-mitre...
Further reading
Baines, J., and M lek, S.Atlas of Ancient Egypt. Phaidon, Oxford, 1980. Baker, H. Furniture in the Ancient World. The Connoisseur, London, 1966. Charlish, A. The History of Furniture. Orbis Books, London, 1976. Feduchi, L. A History of World Furniture. Blume, Barcelona, 1977. Garstang, J. The Burial Customs of Ancient Egypt. London, 1907. Killen, G. P. Ancient Egyptian Furniture. Aris amp Phillips, Warminster Volume 1 1980, Volume 2 1994. Lucas, A. Ancient Egyptian Materials and Industries....
Reliefs and wall paintings
The few bed-frames and illustrations of early seats discovered in tombs of the Early Dynastic Period indicate the kind of furniture commonly used then. All of these pieces of furniture would probably have been found in the houses of both middle and high ranking officials and their families. By the Third Dynasty, which marks the beginning of the Old Kingdom, major advances in building construction and the associated trades of woodworking and furniture manufacture are seen. The improvement in the...
Tools
In 1888 Petrie discovered a Middle Kingdom workmen's town at Kahun. These craftsmen worked in the temple workshops built by Sesostris II and lived close by, within a walled enclosure. The town's architect had set out rows of terraced houses of about 50 metres in length, each branching at right angles from the enclosure wall and separated by a street. These parallel streets joined a central avenue which led to the temple complex and its workshops. Each house had a wooden door that was set within...
Egyptian Woodworking and Furniture
Box, Eighteenth Dynasty, tomb of Perpaut, Thebes. Durham University Oriental Museum, 1460. Photograph reproduced by courtesy of Durham University Oriental Museum. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Killen, Geoffrey Egyptian Woodworking and Furniture. - Shire Egyptology Series No. 21 I. Title. II. Series 749. 2932 ISBN 0-7478-0239-4 Published in 1994 by SHIRE PUBLICATIONS LTD Cromwell House, Church Street, Princes Risborough, Buckinghamshire HP27 9AJ, UK. All rights reserved. No...
Furniture
Many of the fragments of wooden furniture discovered in the First Dynasty tombs at Saqqara and Abydos are carved with a bound rush or 'basketwork' decoration. An assembled piece made from two fragments discovered separately by Emile Amelineau and Petrie in the tomb of Semerkhet at Abydos would have formed part of a box figure 24 . One 23. Mortise and firmer chisels, First Dynasty, Saqqara. After Emery, Great Tombs of the First Dynasty, Volume 1, Cairo, 1949, figure 22. side has been bordered...
The furniture of Queen Hetepheres
In 1925 George Reisner, an American Egyptologist, discovered the furniture of Queen Hetepheres at the bottom of a deep shaft close to her son Khufu's pyramid at Giza. Her body was not found in this small chamber, leading Reisner to believe that the tomb where she had originally lain had been robbed and her body stolen shortly after her death. The contents of that tomb were moved to this second chamber, which would have been under tighter security, being within the Great Pyramid complex. Queen...
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Barbara Adams, Editor of the Shire Egyptology series, and Jacqueline Fearn and John Rotheroe of Shire Publications for the help and guidance they have given me. I am very grateful to John Ruffle, Keeper of the Oriental Museum, University of Durham, for allowing me to examine both the Perpaut boxes preserved in that collection. I thank also Mr W. V. Davies, Keeper of Egyptian Antiquities at the British Museum, and his staff for their continued support and assistance. Most...
List of illustrations
1. Steam bending, tomb of Baqt III, Beni Hasan page 8 2. Ivory leg from tomb of Djer, First Dynasty, Abydos page 9 3. Carpenter's basket, Twenty-second Dynasty, Lahunpage 10 4. Reed wig box, New Kingdom page 11 5. Sehefner seated on a cushion, Second Dynasty, Saqqara page 11 6. Woodcutters, tomb of Khnum-hotep III, Beni Hasan page 12 7. Carpenter working with pullsaw, tomb of Rekhmire, Eighteenth Dynasty, 8. Timber conversion using 'through and through' cutting page 13 9. Cupping of timber...
New Kingdom
New Kingdom carpenters had an extensive tool kit and equipment to draw upon figure 50 . They used axes, large and small adzes, pullsaws and handsaws, bow-drills, mortise and firmer chisels, mallets and awls. Egyptian carpenters, like their modern counterparts, used a hone to sharpen the cutting edge of their tools. It was made from slate and usually had a hole bored at one end which allowed it to be hung on a peg somewhere in the workshop. The centre of the hone would become dished by the...
Furniture 1
The Middle Kingdom necropolis of Beni Hasan is situated on the east bank of the Nile between Cairo and Luxor. Cut into the limestone cliffs, which overlook the Nile, are a number of Eleventh and Twelfth Dynasty tombs. These tombs were built for the nomarchs of the Sixteenth Nome, or administrative district, of Upper Egypt. These powerful men ruled almost independently of the king. One of their duties was to regulate work produced in state or temple workshops, and scenes in their tombs show...
Lattice Stool Egypt
Stools would have been the most widely used pieces of household furniture. Egyptians used a number of different types of stool and the quality depended upon the rank of its owner. The lattice stool was probably the most popular with all classes of Egyptians and is widely illustrated in Theban tomb scenes. The construction of the stool is very elegant, having four slender legs into which are jointed at the bottom a cross rail and at the top a curved seat rail. The space below the seat on all...