The Ramesses III prisoner tiles are a collection of Egyptian faience depicting prisoners of war, found in Ramesses III's palaces at Medinet Habu (adjacent to the Mortuary Temple at Medinet Habu) and Tell el-Yahudiyeh. Large numbers of faience tiles have been found in these areas by sebakh-diggers since 1903; the best known are those depicting foreign people or prisoners.Many were found in excavated rubbish heaps
In his 1911 paper on the tiles, French Egyptologist Georges Daressy, of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo noted
Unfortunately, there is no inscription on these tiles fixing the name of the peoples represented; we are forced to compare with the bas-reliefs of the temples or the paintings of the tombs to find a similar type and we are sometimes perplexed.
The Boston Museum of Fine Arts noted in 1908 that the tiles' "provenance is a matter of question
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The foreigner tiles are in different museums the above at the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Austria.
The "Black African" is obviously a Kushite or Nubian
The others identified as Syrian Bedouin, Syrian and Hittite are not so certain
We can see they are not Libyans. By process of elimination it would be a fair guess that the top row are Asiatic of some type. "Shasu" has sometimes been suggested or "Shasu Bedouin" however what a Shasu defiantly looks like is uncertain. Another tile here with similar hair and head band to the two heads in the top row above:
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Second row left (in top picture next to Kusihite) has some features that one sees in a lot of figures in Egyptian art called "Asiatic" or sometimes Syrian or "Syro-Palestinian" in Book of Gates scenes. That thing in common with some of these Asiatic Book of Gates figures are that the bottom of their hair, the bangs at the bottom are curved. Secondly the head band has one or two excess pieces hanging down. They also often have beards jutting out at the bottom and coming to a point
Asiatic, Book of Gates, tomb of Ramesses III Book of Gates, fourth division (P)/fifth hour (H), lower register, scene 30: Syrian and Nubian, Tomb of Merneptah
The other heads (top picture, 3rd row) estimated by the museums as "Hittites" an Anatolian people, if they are, is also uncertain
The script on a monument at Boğazkale by a "People of Hattusas" discovered by William Wright in 1884 was found to match peculiar hieroglyphic scripts from Aleppo and Hama in Northern Syria. In 1887, excavations at Amarna in Egypt uncovered the diplomatic correspondence of Pharaoh Amenhotep III and his son, Akhenaten. Two of the letters from a "kingdom of Kheta"apparently located in the same general region as the Mesopotamian references to "land of Hatti"were written in standard Akkadian cuneiform, but in an unknown language; although scholars could interpret its sounds, no one could understand it. Shortly after this, Sayce proposed that Hatti or Khatti in Anatolia was identical with the "kingdom of Kheta" mentioned in these Egyptian texts, as well as with the biblical Hittites. Others, such as Max Müller, agreed that Khatti was probably Kheta, but proposed connecting it with Biblical Kittim rather than with the Biblical Hittites. Sayce's identification came to be widely accepted over the course of the early 20th century; and the name "Hittite" has become attached to the civilization uncovered at Boğazköy.
Hattusa ramp During sporadic excavations at Boğazköy (Hattusa) that began in 1906, the archaeologist Hugo Winckler found a royal archive with 10,000 tablets, inscribed in cuneiform Akkadian and the same unknown language as the Egyptian letters from Khetathus confirming the identity of the two names. He also proved that the ruins at Boğazköy were the remains of the capital of an empire that, at one point, controlled northern Syria
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Has there ever been a depiction of a Syrian or Bedouin like this....compared to the other Syrian he has thicker lips and hair texture....though as far as I know no other Syrian is depicted as such on Wall Reliefs...??
quote:Originally posted by the lioness,:
Unfortunately, there is no inscription on these tiles fixing the name of the peoples represented; we are forced to compare with the bas-reliefs of the temples or the paintings of the tombs to find a similar type and we are sometimes perplexed.
Posts: 8804 | From: The fear of his majesty had entered their hearts, they were powerless | Registered: Nov 2007
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Unfortunately, there is no inscription on these tiles fixing the name of the peoples represented; we are forced to compare with the bas-reliefs of the temples or the paintings of the tombs to find a similar type and we are sometimes perplexed. ________________________________________________ Top row figures estimated to be a "Shasu Bedouin" and the bottom left a "Philistine", next to him, lower right a "Palestinian" All of these figures have some similarity in hairstyle and could all be the same time, thus any of these names could attributed to any one of them, it's guessing .
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Getty images had another photo of this same item at left listed as "Nubian slave" seems definitely wrong. The museum calls them Syrian Bedouin and Syrian respectively left to right, both virtually the same headband and hairstyle
We also notice that their headband style resembles the figures of the four at top although the hair curves back down hanging
considered to be Peleset
The Peleset (Egyptian: pwrꜣsꜣtj) or Pulasti were one of the several ethnic groups the Sea Peoples were said to be composed of, appearing in fragmentary historical and iconographic records in ancient Egyptian from the Eastern Mediterranean in the late 2nd millennium BC
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quote:Originally posted by -Just Call Me Jari-: Has there ever been a depiction of a Syrian or Bedouin like this....compared to the other Syrian he has thicker lips and hair texture....though as far as I know no other Syrian is depicted as such on Wall Reliefs...??
You made this comment about the left head
Both of these heads appear to be the same type. The head on the right has lips a little smaller. That one I would say could be in the realm of variation in reliefs depicting a so called Syrian
A Syrian of the royal guard drinking beer and wine with a straw. Egypt, 18th dynasty, ca. 1350 BCE. Detail
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