Museums project

Ancient Egyptian copper objects up to the end of Middle Kingdom

Grant Agency of the Charles University, project no. 526 112

The project was aimed at a documentation of unpublished ancient Egyptian copper finds.  It focused on the objects from the Egyptian prehistory until the end of Middle Kingdom.

The reason for project was that not all publications provided sufficient data on the finds. When writing down the final output of the project, it was necessary to include only the most complete material gathered. Such was the case for the Old Kingdom, Dynasties 4 to 6 . The book was published in 2016.  It is the first monograph ever written on the Old Kingdom copper tools and model tools.

Visited institutions: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Roemer-Pelizaeus Museum Hildesheim; Ägyptisches Museum – Georg Steindorff – der Universität Leipzig; The British Museum, London; Petrie Museum, University College London; The Ashmolean Museum Oxford; Louvre, Paris; Muzeum narodowe, Warszawa; Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien.

The project was presented on the blog of the publisher Archaeopress:

Metal Tools of the Pyramid Builders and other Craftsmen in the Old Kingdom

The final output of the project featured on the main web page of the Faculty of Arts, Charles University (for other outputs, scroll down):

A Monograph by a PhD Candidate of the Czech Institute of Egyptology Coming Out Soon in Oxford

Project outputs

  • Odler, Martin – Dulíková, Veronika 2015: Social Context of the Old Kingdom copper model tools, World Archaeology 47 (1), pp. 94–116, DOI: 10.1080/00438243.2014.991805.
    • paper is focused on the social context of the Old Kingdom copper model tools, hypotheses are discussed in depth in the later monograph

  • Odler, Martin 2015: Copper Model Tools in Old Kingdom Female Burials. In: M. S. Pinarello; J. Yoo; J. Lundock; C. Walsh (eds). Current Research in Egyptology 2014: Proceedings of the Fifteenth Annual Symposium, Oxford: Oxbow Books, 39–58. PDF of the paper for download.
    • paper about the interpretation of the Old Kingdom copper model tools in female burials

 

 

  • Odler, Martin 2015: Adzes in the Early Dynastic Period and the Old Kingdom. In K. Rosińska-Balik, A. Ochał-Czarnowicz, M. Czarnowicz, and J. Dębowska-Ludwin (eds), Copper and trade in the South-Eastern Mediterranean: trade routes of the Near East in antiquity. BAR international series. Archaeopress, Oxford, 85–109. PDF of the paper for download.
    • paper focused on the earliest history of ancient Egyptian adzes, in the 4th and 3rd millennium BC