Science1 publisher3 min readPublished
A vector tracing of one surviving photograph revives the case that Meretneith ruled as king
The mud stopper excavated at Saqqara in the 1940s is lost, and so is the glass plate. The reading now rests on a scan of the one surviving print, and on two of the four royal emblems in a single row of signs.
The Scientist · Science desk
What happened
- Walter B. Emery read the first and fourth of the row's four serekhs as Djer's and the middle two as Meretneith's, and many scholars of the time rejected the second half of that reading.
- The new team applied a multistep process to a scan of the archive photograph, isolating the hieroglyphs, inverting the colours and converting the image to a scalable vector graphic.
- In the resulting replica, the name portions of the second and third serekhs are consistent with the main sign used to write Meretneith's name, according to the study in Prague Egyptological Studies.
Compiled by The ScientistSomething wrong?How this is made
Why it matters
- capability A scanned print can be turned into a measurable drawing whose every stroke is a stated decision. That gives 1940s excavation archives a second life as evidence when the excavated object has gone missing.
- constraint With both the stopper and the glass plate missing, no future scholar can re-photograph or re-measure the surface, so this dispute will be settled by argument over one image, if it is settled at all.
- contradiction The same row of signs is doing two jobs in one paper: it is offered as the mark of a king and as the mark of a co-regent standing beside Djer, so the serekh alone does not separate independent rule from shared rule.
- precedent Accepting the reading would seat a woman in the First Dynasty royal line on the strength of a processed archive photograph. Other lost-object arguments will be measured against that bar.
Isolating the signs, inverting the tones and converting the result to a scalable vector graphic rearranges pixels inside a scan [12]. None of those steps touches the mud stopper, which is missing along with the glass plate made from it [7], so nothing enters the replica that was not already in the photograph [3]. It does change who can argue with the reading: every stroke in a vector file is a decision about which dark marks belong to a sign and which belong to the mud, and the file carries those decisions in a form another Egyptologist can open and measure [3]. Walter B. Emery's hand illustration made the same kind of decisions by pencil; the authors say their replica is much more accurate than his drawing [13].
The base is narrow. The row holds four serekhs, an emblem combining a royal building, a patron deity and a ruler's name [8], and Emery assigned the first and fourth to Djer [9]. That leaves two signs to carry the claim [1]. The inscription was found on 13 stoppers dug from an unidentified Saqqara tomb in the 1940s, and one photograph of it survives [6]. The other 12 stoppers have no surviving image [2].
What the paper reports is a consistency: the name portions of the second and third serekhs match the main sign used to write Meretneith's name [14]. The step from that to a royal identification belongs to the authors, and they label it. "In our opinion, the result identifies Meretneith with the primary mark of rulers in this period," they wrote [15]. From there they conclude she was a female king, the true equivalent of a male ruler, and the second female ruler of ancient Egypt whose name was recorded in a royal serekh [16].
Treating dig archives as recoverable data is a claim the paper cannot test here. A tracing can be validated where the object still exists: process the photograph, then compare the vector to the surface. This object is gone [7]. Whether more than one person traced the signs is not stated. The process was built with Crystal Miller, a digital technician at Macquarie University in Sydney [11].
Other evidence for Meretneith's authority does not depend on the photograph. She has a lavish funerary complex in the royal cemetery, inscriptions pairing her name with administrative titles and departments, and impressions on royal tomb seals [17]. Studies estimate at least 30 years of rule in one capacity or another [18]. The paper also proposes sorting her career into stages by evidence type, with the tomb seals placing her later as regent and king's mother [19]. Egyptians named her on the tomb seal of a subsequent ruler, Semerkhet [20].
What to watch
- Whether other Egyptologists accept the second and third serekhs as Meretneith's, now that a measurable replica exists to argue over.
- Whether the Egypt Exploration Society archive yields the missing glass plate or images of the other 12 stoppers from the Saqqara tomb.
- Whether the same process is run on inscriptions whose objects still exist. That would show how faithful the tracing is to a surface.