Professor P E Newberry, who studied the botany of Tutankhamun’s tomb when it was discovered.
Over the years a wealth of plant material has accumulated from the excavation of the tombs and temples in the Valley of the Kings, and its identification has been undertaken by many botanists of various nationalities. Gradually a picture has been built up of burial customs, local and imported timbers, trade routes and ecological information about the region.
The first scientist to study the living flora of Egypt was a Swede, Petter Forsskal, who perished in 1763 during a royal Danish expedition to Egypt and the Yemen. His results were published in 1775. He was followed by the Frenchman A D Raffenau-Delile, who was the botanist with Napoleon’s expedition and published a superb description of Egypt in 1813. French interest in Egypt has continued ever since - the most notable contribution to the botany of the tombs being that of Victor Loret. The German botanist Georg Schweinfurth (1836-1925) gathered objects of agricultural and botanical interest for the Agricultural Museum which he founded in Cairo, and he sent duplicates to the Berlin-Dahlem botanical museum, where he worked on the material in his later years, publishing many papers on the subject.
However, all this was before Howard Carter’s discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb; the botanist who was associated with that event was Professor P E Newberry, OBE, MA.
Percy Newberry was still at school in 1884 when he met Flinders Petrie at the British Museum while unpacking his boxes of excavated Ancient Egyptian objects. Petrie even allowed Newberry to draw some of these and the drawings were reproduced in Petrie’s book on the ancient Graeco-Egyptian site of Naucratis. By 1888 Newberry had nearly completed his studies at London University, and he had started to identify the plant remains of wreaths and funerary bouquets, as well as fruits and seeds discovered by Petrie in the tombs. At that time this was an unusual subject to study and he was probably the first British Egyptologist to publish on plants.
Later, Percy Newberry became Professor of Egyptology at the University of Liverpool (1906-19) and Professor of Ancient History and Archaeology at the University of Cairo (1929-33). In 1922 he was with Howard Carter during the excavation of Tutankhamun’s tomb. Much plant material was discovered there, some of which was identified by Newberry, and is kept at the Cairo Museum, with small samples at Kew. He published an account of these finds in Howard Carter’s book (see Further Reading).
Several of the timber samples had been sent to L A Boodle at Kew, who identified them by microscopical examination in the Jodrell Laboratory. He was Assistant Keeper at the time and after his retirement a few years later he was invited to continue the study of Tutan-khamun’s plant material by Sir Arthur Hill, the Director of Kew, whose help had been sought by Howard Carter in May 1932. Boodle readily agreed to help for a very
Small fee and sent the results to Howard Carter, fully expecting to see the published results of his labours.
Unfortunately the third volume of Carter’s book was nearly ready for publication when the Depression, followed by the Second World War, stopped preparation of the definitive works on the tomb. In any case Carter died in March 1939, leaving all his manuscripts to the Griffith Institute at Oxford. His death was followed in August 1941 by that of Boodle, who, though a shy and diffident person, nevertheless acutely regretted that his study of Tutankhamun’s plants never saw the light of day during his lifetime. Boodle was succeeded at the Jodrell Laboratory by Dr C R Metcalfe, who continued research on ancient plant material, including the Tutankhamun finds, in collaboration with Dr L Chalk of Oxford.
No account of the study of the plants of Ancient Egypt can omit Professor Vivi Tackholm (nee Laurent). I first met Vivi - as all her friends knew her - as long ago as 1954, soon after I joined Kew Herbarium. Her large jovial figure rapidly engulfed her friends and acquaintances in a great bear hug and she had a toothy smile that soon developed into an infectious laugh. Although Swedish, she lived for most of her life in Cairo.
L A Boodle of the Jodrell Laboratory at Kew, who examined timber, seeds and other plant material from the tomb.
The Agricultural Museum, Cairo, where botanical objects from Ancient Egyptian tombs are displayed.
Photo: F N Hepper
She was born on 7 January 1898 of parents who were both medical doctors. After graduating in botany at the University of Stockholm in 1921, she worked her way around the United States and then returned to Sweden as a journalist. Following her marriage to Professor Gunnar Tackholm in 1926, they both left for the newly founded Faculty of Science at what is now Cairo University, to establish a Botany Department. Gunnar died in 1933 but Vivi decided to continue their work on the flora of Egypt and the creation of a herbarium in Cairo. The first volume of her great Flora of Egypt was published in collaboration with Mohamed Drar in 1941, despite wartime difficulties. Unfortunately the Flora was so encyclopaedic in content that the four published volumes contained only the Monocotyledons and a few of the Dicotyledons. But these four are a marvellous source of reference, for they deal with ancient plant remains as well as the living flora. Her one-volume Students’ Flora of Egypt (1956, 2nd ed. 1974) is now superseded by L Boulos’s Flora of Egypt (1999-2005).
Vivi’s generosity was legendary. She gave books, sweets and scarab beetle seals to students and contacts as prizes and gifts according to the status of the receptor. I was also beneficiary of her hospitality in Cairo in 1963. Her wide knowledge of the history of ancient and modern Egypt made for a fascinating tour of the museums, mosques and churches. Of particular interest to me was the Agricultural Museum and the lesser-known parts of the Cairo Museum where Tutankhamun’s treasures are kept. Vivi’s interest in and knowledge of
Ancient plant material were extensive, as shown by her splendidly produced popular work Faraos blomster (‘Pharaoh’s Flora’) which unfortunately is available only in Swedish. Vivi died suddenly in her eightieth year.
The study of Ancient Egyptian plants goes on, however, both in Egypt and elsewhere. Many of Boodle’s identifications were published by A Lucas (in 1926) and all of them by Dr Renate Germer, who is continuing the German Egyptology tradition of Georg Schweinfurth mentioned above. Her booklet, in German, on Tutankhamun’s plant material includes details based on Howard Carter’s numbering system (C Nos) for the objects he found and on Newberry’s botanical notes. C de Vartavan has studied the weed seeds occurring among Tutankhamun’s cereals.
Archaeobotanical techniques Botanical specimens excavated from dry Egyptian tombs are often sufficiently well preserved for identification to be possible without recourse to anatomical examination. This is especially true of fruits, seeds, leaves, flowers and other large objects, but fibres, binding strips, basket material, wood and charcoal must be examined under a microscope.
The aim of microscopical examination is to determine the characteristic cellular structure of the lower epidermis. In order to look at these cells, the upper layers need to be scraped or peeled away. Ancient leaves that have become brittle may need to be simmered in boiling water to soften them, so that this can be done. Hard material needs to be soaked in Jeffrey’s solution (10 per cent nitric acid, 10 per cent chromic acid) so
A thin section of cedar of Lebanon (Cedrus libani) timber seen under a microscope, showing the distinctive cellular structure and an annual ring.
That it can be sectioned with a razor. First the material is examined under low-power magnification, which reveals the structure of whole cells. In this way it is possible to distinguish at a glance a palm from a grass, a grass from a sedge. High-power magnification can then be used to identify genera and species. The cells become clearer when immersed in Parazone, washed and treated with 70 per cent glycerine. Staining techniques show up the various tissues in different colours. Thus cellulose is coloured green (or blue or yellow) by alcian stain, suf-franin stains lignin yellowish, while phenol distinguishes unstainable silica. However, haematoxylin, a stain commonly used on fresh material to show up cellulose, is of little use on archaeological specimens.
Fortunately the Egyptian flora is relatively small and the same species were regularly used for the manufacture of articles, but even so a standard reference is required for comparing material under examination. The Jodrell Laboratory at Kew has a vast collection of microscopic slides, accumulated over many years, first by L A Boodle and then by Dr C R Metcalfe and the former head of anatomy, Dr David Cutler, who kindly helped me with this study. These slides are permanent, stained preparations of sections of plants - leaves, stems or wood. They have usually been taken from living material, so when using them for comparison with ancient objects allowances must be made for shrinkage and distortion. Restoration of the original appearance is sometimes possible after treatment with Parazone or chlor-zinc-iodine reagent.
Some archaeological traps
Not all the plants found in excavations are ancient, or at least contemporaneous with the civilisation being excavated. For example, timber is often reused for building purposes. Any attempt to date a building by carbon dating its timber will be of doubtful accuracy unless it can be checked by independent means. Another problem is when ancient graves have been dug through, thereby introducing more recent material among older strata. The desert wind can also play tricks, by sucking in such things as cigarette packets, while rodents carry items into their holes. Sometimes obviously incongruous material is mixed with old samples. Thus I was surprised that the excavations in the sacred animal necropolis at Saqqara yielded corn (maize) cobs, which have been carbon-dated to 2002! It so happens that Boodle also realised that he was examining maize fibres in the so-called ‘dog’s bed’ sent to him from the cemeteries of Armant. But this calls into question less obviously intrusive material that could easily be ancient or recent. For example, in the absence of carbon dating it is difficult to be sure whether the pine cones, chestnuts and hazel nuts (which all must have come from Europe or Western Asia) also retrieved from Saqqara are contemporary with the ancient cereals and other objects from the tombs.
A few years ago there was the widely reported find of tobacco by the French Egyptologists investigating the mummy of Rameses II. Since tobacco (Nicotiana species) is entirely American, these finely ground particles must have been a later introduction, probably in the form of snuff during the 19th century.
Living seeds?
Probably the question most frequently asked about Ancient Egyptian plants is whether the cereals found in the tombs have ever been germinated. The short answer is ‘no!’. Popular opinion is still inclined to believe stories of mummy wheat germinating but the scientific evidence is against it. In fact, most of the seeds of the numerous species found in tombs are carbonised. There can be little doubt that any grains which have produced healthy plants were cunningly introduced into the tombs or somehow switched with ancient ones. Although the dry atmosphere of Egyptian tombs has preserved in a remarkably complete state most of the objects hidden in them, seeds rapidly become too dry to germinate. Fresh seeds are alive: their embryos are dormant and the life processes continue, at a greatly reduced rate. In order to stay alive, they need moisture, albeit a very small amount. However, even if the seeds in the tomb had not dried out, the natural processes of ageing (which are still not fully understood) would have taken effect, for a time comes when the protoplasm (the living contents of the cells) can no longer reproduce itself, and life ceases altogether.
World History
