Tomb of Aline - Find Conditions, Finds, Date

Find Conditions, Finds, Date

In the second half of the 19th century, the increasing interest in Egyptian history, culture and art led to a veritable contest between various European nations, all aiming to secure ancient finds of the best possible quality (and quantity) for their national museums. In this general context, the German archaeologist Richard von Kaufmann undertook a short campaign of excavations at Haware in March 1892; his most important find was the so-called Tomb of Aline. A shaft led to a simple mud-brick-lined pit of 2.8 by 3.5 m which contained eight mummies. Three were undecorated, two had paper masks and three were adorned with mummy portraits. The grave had no superstructure.

The three mummies with painted portraits lay at the bottom; they were those of the woman Aline and of two female children. The two masked mummies lay at right angles on top of them; they were those of a man and of a somewhat older girl. The two undecorated mummies, in turn, lay on top, again at right angles. On the mummies of the man, the woman and the three girls, the wrapping had been additionally secured with clay sealings, using different sealstones. One depicted Heracles fighting the Nemean lion, the others heads. Not all sealings are preserved. The gravegoods included a clay pot with a spray of flowers, as is typical for such graves. There was also a roughly hewn stele bearing the following Greek inscription:

The grave was named after this inscription. Scholarship assumes that Aline is the woman buried in the tomb and equipped with a mummy portrait. Further, it is believed that the man was her husband and the girls her daughters. As the ages and sexes of the undecorated mummies are not known, they cannot be similarly attributed. The separation of the date in the inscription in two parts, resulting from the insertion of Aline's age in the middle, is unusual. Since it was common in Roman Egypt to count the year from the accession of the current ruler, the grave can be dated, in conjunction with the portrait's hairstyle, quite securely to one of two possible dates. It is usually taken to be from the tenth year of the reign of Tiberius, i.e. 24 AD. The same hairstyle became popular once more a century later, so that the 10th year of Hadrian's reign (AD 107) is also a possibility, but most scholars prefer the earlier date. Further arguments in favour of the later date include the fine painting style and use of hatching, both typical of the 2nd century AD, the lilac tones of the garments, the depiction of the woman as rather well-fed, as well as the hair and beard of the man. It remains unclear when the mummies were deposited and whether all died within the same generation.

Today, the finds from the Grave are at the Egyptian Museum, Berlin. Part of them is on display in the Altes Museum.