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Lower Nubian C-Group Figurines - Research and Adventures
My dissertation focused on a group of clay figurines from Lower Nubia, the geographic region along the Nile just south of the ancient Egyptian border. These pieces were hand-modeled by artists from a civilization that we know today only as the C-Group. I examined and documented as many as possible of the excavated corpus and analyzed them in terms of form, style, and details, as well as from the perspective of their archaeological contexts.
While researching this topic I visited several museums in interesting places around the world. Due to copyright restrictions, I can't reproduce the images of figurines, but here are descriptions of the pieces and links to publication sites as well as some travel pictures.
University of Chicago Oriental Institute Museum
This museum, located on the campus of the University of Chicago, holds materials excavated at Adindan by a team under the direction of Dr. Keith C. Seele and published in 1983 by Dr. Bruce Williams. These pieces include several C-Group anthropomorphic figurines, but no livestock figurines were recovered from the site.
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
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This museum, located in Boston, houses a small collection of C-Group objects, including numerous figurines. These were all excavated during the course of the first Archaeological Survey of Nubia (from 1910-1911) and given to the museum by George A. Reisner. Many of these figurines were not published when excavated, but some appear in various excavation reports.
The University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology
​This museum holds all of the figurines excavated by D. Randall-MacIver and C. Leonard Woolley from the settlement site at Areika in 1907. Some of these have not been published, but many can be found in the excavation report published in 1909.
Ägyptisches Museum, Georg Steindorff, der Universität Leipzig
This museum, located in Leipzig, Germany, holds most of the figurines excavated at the site of Aniba by Dr. Georg Steindorff. Many of these pieces were published in 1935 by Dr. Steindorff or later in 1997 by Renate Krauspe of the Leipzig Museum. Some, however, have not been published.
Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna
This museum, located in Vienna, Austria, holds figurines excavated in 1911 and 1912 at Toshka by Herman Junker. These were published in 1926.
