Archaeology Lecture with Henry Colburn

Henry Colburn (Kelsey Museum of Archaeology, University of Michigan) will join us to speak on "Diplomatic Drinking and Other Lessons about Achaemenid Egypt from the Tell el-Maskhuta Hoard." Refreshments will be available from 12 to 12:30 p.m.

Lecture abstract:

In the winter of 1947–48, a hoard of at least fourteen silver drinking vessels, thirty-one gold-mounted agate eyestones and six to ten thousand Athenian tetradrachms and local imitations thereof was discovered at Tell el-Maskhuta in the eastern Nile Delta in Egypt. The initial reports on the hoard were by numismatists, who published a small fraction of the coins, and in the 1950s Biblical scholars became interested in the Aramaic inscriptions on the silver vessels, especially the one mentioning Gashmu the Arab, a shadowy figure who appears in the Book of Nehemiah. Yet the hoard, which dates to the late fifth century BCE, has never been studied in its entirety, despite its extraordinary potential to shed light on the history of Egypt under Achaemenid Persian rule, for four main reasons. First, the vessels appear to be Egyptian versions of Persian drinking vessels. This implies the adoption of Persian drinking practices by certain segments of the Egyptian population despite the famously conservative nature of Egyptian culture. Second, the inscriptions, and perhaps also the eyestones, imply the presence of a Qedarite Arab community in the eastern Nile Delta, which had probably been installed following Cambyses’ invasion in 526. Third, Tell el-Maskhuta was situated on the Red Sea canal constructed by Darius, and was also the site where the famous statue of Darius from Susa was originally erected. In other words, it was a key node in the empire’s infrastructure network. Fourth and finally, the Athenian tetradrachms in the hoard presumably came to Egypt as a result of the Persians requiring tribute to be paid in silver. As Egypt was rich in grain but poor in silver, this was acquired by the export of grain to the Greek world, especially Athens, in exchange for coins. By the end of the fifth century these coins were sufficiently widespread in Egypt that they had been integrated into Egyptian weight standards and were even minted locally to supplement the otherwise unreliable money supply. This lecture is a preliminary report on an ongoing study of the hoard that focuses on these four aspects, with a view towards elucidating both the nature of Achaemenid rule of Egypt and the intercultural character of the Egyptian Late Period.

Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology