Temples, Tombs & Hieroglyphs_ A Popular History of Ancient Egypt - Barbara Mertz [60]
The prettiest of all the pieces of Twelfth Dynasty jewelry is a crown made of strands of fine gold wire, starred at irregular intervals with tiny five-petaled turquoise flowers with carnelian centers. The wire was caught here and there by cross-shaped pieces of gold, and the effect of the dainty flowers against the shining black hair of the princess must have been lovely.
Most of this jewelry is in the Cairo Museum. However, another such hoard, from the pyramid of Senusert II at Lahun, was found by Petrie in 1914, and this magnificent example of the ancient jeweler’s art is now in the possession of the Metropolitan Museum. Except for the crown I have described, which is a uniquely lovely thing, the Met’s jewelry is the equal of anything in the Cairo collection. It belonged to a lady named Sit-Hathor-Iunet.
When archaeologists find anything as valuable as this jewelry, they like to deal with it personally. But when the news of the find reached Petrie, he was in a quandary; he had strained himself and was physically unable to do the job. This was not a question of going down into the tomb and lifting up a box neatly packed with pieces of jewelry. The box had decayed, as had the thread on which the beads and separate elements were strung, and the resulting mess looked like the burial chamber of Hetepheres on a miniature scale. Petrie’s standards demanded that each individual bead be cleared and recorded on the spot; otherwise, all hope of restringing the necklaces and bracelets in something like their original order would be lost. Petrie’s assistant at that time was Guy Brunton, who, like most of his students, was to become a prominent Egyptologist in his own right. Brunton spent a solid week in that tomb, curled up on the bare floor of the corridor at night to guard against thieves, and digging beads out of petrified mud by day, until the find was cleared and recorded.
Once the jewelry was restored, it was obvious that Petrie had made a superb discovery. The Cairo Museum was a lot more relaxed about releasing objects in those days, and they already had a magnificent collection of Twelfth Dynasty jewelry, thanks to de Morgan. Petrie was allowed to keep what he found. He had been excavating under the auspices of the British School of Archaeology, which was composed of individual members as well as institutions such as museums and universities. Up to this time the discoveries that the Cairo Museum relinquished had been divided among the members in proportion to the amount of their contributions, but it was obvious that the jewelry was too valuable and too important to be included in the usual seasonal division. Petrie decided to offer it to the member who (or which) would pay the most for it, the proceeds, of course, going to the School’s excavation fund. Being a loyal Englishman, he offered it first to British museums but was chagrined to discover that none of them could, or would, take advantage of the proposition. Finally he had to expand the offer overseas, and the rich Americans got into the picture. Thanks to the generosity of private donors and the solvency of its funds, the Metropolitan Museum was able to acquire Sit-Hathor-Iunet’s jewels.
Senusert III’s son was another Amenemhat, the third in number. He too was well known to the Greeks, but his achievements were in the arts of peace rather than war.
The capital of Egypt at this time was, as we have said, Ittawi near the entrance to the Fayum. The Fayum might be called a large oasis; it