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The Shrine of Taharqa is a Egyptian shrine that was located in Kawa in what is now Sudan but since 1936 been in the Ashmolean museum.[1][2]
Description
The shine was originally built within a large temple dedicated to Amun-re.[3] It appears to have been constructed at the same time as the rest of the temple.[4]
History
The shrine was built during the fist half of the seventh century BC under the rule of the pharaoh Taharqa.[3] A neighbouring shrine was added in the 6th century BC under the rule of the pharaoh Aspelta.[4]
Westerners became aware of the broader temple site in the late 19th century.[2] Small digs were carried out in 1929 and 1930 and an extensive excavation began 22 November 1930.[2] These digs exposed the remains of the buildings to the weather and they started to decay.[5]
The carved walls of the shrine along with the Wall of Aspelta were removed from the site in 1936 with the permission of the Sudanese government while other carvings were transferred to Khartoum with the aim of protecting them fro further decay.[5][3] The blocks were removed by building sand ramps up the side of the shrine and then moving them to the ground on rollers.[5] They were then coated in a solution of nitrocellulose in amyl acetate and acetone before being were transported to the Ashmolean Museum in 233 cases.[5][3] This process took about a month to complete.[5]
At the Ashmolean
Once at the Ashmolean a further layer of nitrocellulose was applied to the stones.[3] By the 1960s this had started to decay and in 1968 it was removed from most of the shrine and replaced with a layer of paraffin wax.[3]
Since November 2011 the shrine has been in the museum's Egyptian and Nubian galleries.[1]
- ^ a b Guner, Fisun (25 November 2011). "Art Gallery: Egyptian and Nubian Galleries, Ashmolean Museum". The Arts Desk. Retrieved 18 May 2024.
- ^ a b c Kirwan, L. P. (1936). "Preliminary Report of the Oxford University Excavations at Kawa, 1935-1936". The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology. 22 (2): 200-211. doi:10.2307/3854627.
- ^ a b c d e f Hanna, Seamus; Norman, Mark (1990). "The cleaning and removal of surface coatings from a seventh century BC sandstone shrine from Nubia". Studies in Conservation. 35 (sup1): 23–27. doi:10.1179/sic.1990.35.s1.006. ISSN 0039-3630.
- ^ a b Armstrong, Caroline H (2015). "The Two Non-Blue Amuns of the Shrine of Taharqa at Kawa". The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology. 101 (1). SAGE Publications: 177–195. doi:10.1177/030751331510100109. ISSN 0307-5133.
- ^ a b c d e Kirwan, L. P. (1936). "Preliminary Report of the Oxford University Excavations at Kawa, 1935-1936". The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology. 22 (2): 210-211. doi:10.2307/3854627.