Hedvig Győry: Mélanges offerts a Edith Varga „Le lotus qui sort de terre” (Bulletin du Musée Hongrois des Beaux-Arts Supplément 1. Budapest, 2001)
ROSALIE DAVID: The Riqqeh Pectoral in the Manchaster Museum
In order to remove the bandages from the mummy so that he could search for any jewelry within the wrappings, the robber lifted out the body and laid it across the top of the coffin. The head and chest protruded beyond the edge and thus gave the robber easier access to unravel the bandages. Under the upper chest bandages, he found the first piece, a pectoral consisting of a winged scarab supported by lotus flowers. When Engelbach later recovered this piece, he noted that it was at a much higher level in the bandages than the other ornaments in the set, and therefore concluded that the robber must have been in the act of removing it from the body, when disaster struck, preventing the plunder of this and the other pieces. At this point, it seems that the roof collapsed, crushing not only the mummy of the tomb-owner, laid out on top of the coffin (Engelbach reached this conclusion about the position of the mummy because fragments of wood from the coffin were found only underneath and not on top of the body), but also the tomb-robber. The position of the bones of the robber's skeleton indicated that the full impact of the collapsing roof had crushed the man while he stood or crouched near the mummy. His accomplices who had remained outside the tomb, alerted to the accident and fearful that their crime would be discovered, probably quickly filled in the tomb shaft and placed the bricks back in place, before making a hasty escape. They apparently never returned to retrieve the treasure, and since the tomb also escaped later plunder, this unique set of Middle Kingdom jewelry still awaited archaeological discovery. The set comprises four pieces. The first pectoral 4 consists of part of a winged scarab, standing on a kha-sign and supported by two lotus heads. The head and forepart of the scarab, as well as the sun-disc which it once held between its fore-feet, are broken off and missing. 5 Engelbach found it in this state and, despite a thorough search of the tomb, the missing section was never located or recovered, leading him to conclude that the piece may have been broken even before burial. However, the existence of an almost identical pectoral in the British Museum collection (EA 54460) 6 enables the original and complete form of the Manchester piece to be determined. The overall design of both ornaments spells out Kha 'kheperre, the prenomen of Senusret 11, and they are fine examples of cloisonné-work. In the Manchester piece, 7 gold wire has been 1 Manchester Museum registration number 5967, H:.2.5 cm; L: 1.3 cm. 5 Engelbach, op. cit., pl. I, no. 1. " C. Andrews, Ancient Egyptian Jewellery, London 1990, p. 130; pi. 113a, top. r Engelbach, op. cit. (note I), p. 11; pl. I, no. 1.
