Baboon mummies had already been noticed in the Wady Gabbanat el-Qurud by the early 19th century, as evidenced by the name of the valley when Wilkinson surveyed it about 1830. Furthermore, near the point where the wady base meets the desert plain (Fig. 2), the Englishman drew three small circles and labeled them “Gabanet el Gerood or Apes burial ground (Ape mummies Priapi &c in these ravines),” a different location from that explored by Lortet and GaiUard.
Wilkinson also noted corn mummies (1835: 79):
Among other unusual figures carefully interred here are small idols in form of mummies, with the emblem of the god of generation. Their total length does not exceed two feet, and an exterior coat of coarse composition which forms the body, surmounted by a human head and mitred bonnet of wax, conceals their singular but simple contents of barley. (In the one I have it has aU sprouted).
In 1913, after the excavations of Lortet and GaiUard, the University of Heidelberg purchased, in Luxor, several objects similar to those excavated. These had a provenance of “Affenfriedhof siidlich von Biban el-Banat” and consisted of a mud Osiris figure in a pottery coffin, a falcon-headed mud figure in a double pottery coffin, and an Osiris brick (Tooley 1996: 168, 172).
That same year, the Cleveland Museum of Art purchased a number of items with a provenance of “the Monkey tomb” from the Luxor dealer JusefHassan, aU cited above: wax masks from com mummies (C. WiUiams 1918: pi. 28: 12; Berman 1999: no. 398, 1914.712—3) and three painted-pottery Osiride figures (Berman 1999: no. 292), along with the pottery funerary figure (Bohac 1999) and bronze falcon head (Berman 1999: no. 291). Three weeks later the Cleveland Museum also purchased several bronze figure parts from JusefHassan but without recorded provenance (Berman 1999: no. 290, also described above). A smaU linen-wrapped Osiris figure with wax face accompanied by four packets with wax sons-of-Horus heads were accessioned by Cleveland in 1914, and, thus, could have had the same provenance but are without record (C. Williams 1918; pi. 29 nos. 426.14, 423.14); Berman communication, 17 Nov. 1997).
World History
