In the heart of the ancient city. Five years of research of Kraków archaeologists at Paphos Agora in Cyprus (2011 – 2015). Robert Słaboński’s photography exhibition.

May-July 2017

Curator: Małgorzata Żukowska-Gieżek

Place: Archaeological Muzeum in Poznań, ul. Wodna 27, 60-781 Poznań

The Archaeological Museum in Poznań hosts an exhibition of photographs documenting discoveries and the results of research carried out by Kraków archaeologists at Nea Pafos in Cyprus. The research conducted from 2011 (within the frameworks of Paphos Agora Project) under the direction of Prof. Ewdoksia Papuci-Władyka, the head of the Chair of Classical Archaeology at the Jagiellonian University, concentrates in the heart of the ancient city – agora.

The beginnings of Nea Pafos, whose monuments have been inscribed on UNESCO’s World Heritage List, date back to the turn of the 4th/3th cent. BC. In the Hellenistic/Roman period it was the capital of ancient Cyprus. Agora, as the main city’s square, featured the most important administrative, commercial and cultic functions. The excavations revealed architectural complexes of a public character, including a temple and a storehouse. Exceptionally attractive finds, such as vessels, figurines and coins, were uncovered from a well, transformed into a dump after a period of use.

The project is documented by a well-known photographer and archaeologist Robert Słaboński, who interestingly illustrates interdisciplinary activities of Kraków archaeologists in the centre of the ancient capital of Cyprus. Showing both the effort and commitment of people, methods of research and outstanding artefacts, he brings us closer to the knowledge about the city’s history.

Photographs are accompanied by ancient Cypriot vessels and a stone head of a kouros, of which the oldest date back to the Late Bronze Age and the youngest to the Hellenistic period. The artefacts come from the collection of the Jagiellonian University in Kraków.

20 May – August 2017

Exhibition curator: Andrzej Ćwiek

Place: Archaeological Museum in Poznań, ul. Wodna 27, 61-781 Poznań

Our new temporary exhibition, which opens on the Night of Museums, tells a story about the discoveries made by Polish archaeologists during the last 20 years in Saqqara.

Located about 30 km south of Cairo, Saqqara is an ancient necropolis dedicated to rulers and dignitaries from nearby Memphis, one of the capitals of ancient Egypt. The most famous structure among many archaeological features located in Sakkara is the oldest pyramid on the Nile – Djoser’s step pyramid built around 2650 BC. Professor Karol Myśliwiec has been in charge of the mission of Polish archaeologists conducting excavations near this pyramid for the last 20 years. The first geophysical surveys were conducted by the Poles in 1987. Later, for nearly 10 years, sufficient funds were collected to return to Sakkara. Since 1996, investigations at this site have been carried out by a team of Polish archeologists every year.

Poles have made many important discoveries at the necropolis, including rock-cut tombs of high-rank pharaoh dignitaries. Among the valuable finds are the tomb of Merefnebef (discovered in 1997) and the priest Ni-anch-Nefertum (2003), richly decorated with polychromatic reliefs.

Egyptologists have also found hundreds of mummies, some of them in beautifully decorated cartonnages – plaster coatings covered with paintings of a religious character. They also explored burial chambers, with unique coffins made of reed. In 2010, the researchers identified quarries in which limestone was procured for the construction of the nearby Pyramid of Djoser.

The exhibition features the history of research and illustrates the most interesting facts with numerous photographs and with artefacts discovered at the necropolis.

In addition, educators of the Archaeological Museum in Poznań have prepared attractions for the youngest. One of the exhibition halls is available to our guests: reconstructed costumes, Egyptian hairstyles and many more attractions can be tested my every visitor.

February – the end of April 2017

Exhibition curator: dr Małgorzata Winiarska-Kabacińska

Place: Górka Palace, ul. Wodna 27, 61-781 Poznań

Our new temporary exhibition “Close encounters with…” is dedicated to the subject of woolly mammoths and their coexistence with humans. The visitors can learn about the sources for the study of one of the better-known animals of the Ice Age, and see the finds which certainly capture the imagination of all the interested in the distant past. The displayed bone and teeth remains, together with descriptive posters and pictures, give an insight into the size, appearance, and behaviour of the extraordinary mammals that roamed Asia, Europe and North America in the Pleistocene epoch. The artefacts on display, accompanied by information about other finds, reflect some aspects the Palaeolithic people’s world  (e.g. characteristic female figurines), and they prove that mammoth played an important role in their lives both in terms of subsistence (as a source of food, material for shelter or tools) and, possibly, in a spiritual sphere (bone carvings, rock art).

The exhibits come from the collection of the Archaeological Museum in Poznań and from the Institute of Geology, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań.

„Every step leaves a trace”. Historic footwear from the collection of Archaeological Museum in Gdańsk.

12 January – 7 May 2017

Exhibition curator: mgr Kateriny Zisopulu-Bleja

Place: Górka Palace, ul. Wodna 27, 61-781 Poznań

The exhibition held currently in the Poznań Archaeological Museum has arrived from the Museum of Archaeology in Gdańsk. The Museum in Gdańsk for over 30 years has conducted archaeological excavations within the historical part of Gdańsk. As a result of this work, each year thousands of movable artifacts arrive to the Museum’s storage facilities, including the ones made of leather. Local depositional conditions contribute to the excellent state of preservation of this type of product. Nearly 90% of the leather artefacts are shoes and waste from footwear production. Due to a complex conservation and reconstruction programme for historic footwear implemented for over 15 years by the Museum, it was possible to gather a unique collection of shoes in Europe and the largest in Poland, which reflects the changes in the shoemaker craft and European fashion during last 600 years.

Did lovers confess love using shoes? How did people walk along streets full of snow? What were heels invented for? Who were horseshoes or crampons used by? Why were shoes given funny names like cowmouth shoe or bear shoe?

You will find answers to the above questions, and much more, on the exhibition „Every step leaves a trace”. Historic footwear from the collection of Archaeological Museum in Gdańsk.

The exhibition also presents:

• over 130 artifacts related to the history of footwear, including 70 shoes
• reconstruction of a 15th century shoemaker’s workshop
• the arcana of historic shoes restoration
• a film showing why many shoes survived intact underground

16 December 2016 – 31 August 2017

Exhibition curator: mgr Kateriny Zisopulu-Bleja

Place: Górka Palace, ul. Wodna 27, 61-781 Poznań

The unusual discoveries, hidden for centuries under the pavement of the Old Market Square in Poznań are now displayed in the medieval basement of the Górka Palace. The exhibition titled “234 square meters of Poznań” is open to visitors from 16 December 2016 to 31 August 2017.

The future will see the revitalization of the Old Market Square. However, before comes the new, it is worth to look into the old. Revitalization plans have created favourable conditions for archaeological investigations preceding the investment. In 2015 the research in the area of the Old Town was carried out under the direction of Kateriny Zisopulu-Bleja from the Archaeological Museum in Poznań

The town’s main square is a special place. For centuries, it was a vital inter-regional and local trade hub. An important role was played also by the town’s authorities, whose seat was once located in the vicinity of one of the excavated trenches. Half a year of the work of archaeologists has allowed for uncovering the Market Square as seen through the prism of collected material remains. The finds have enriched our knowledge about spatial layout and the past infrastructure.

Among the artefacts discovered on the Old Market Square the visitors can see the revelations in the form of denarii of Władysław I Łokietek or the relics of party games, dices, pawns and tokens. Fascinating are also cult-associated objects, such as a pilgrim badge dating to the period between the second half of the thirteenth and the early fourteenth centuries. The artefacts of outstanding rank include a tournament diadem, unique on the European scale, being a manifestation of elite chivalry culture from the late thirteenth and the early fourteenth century.

Six months of the field work in the Old Market Square area was only a stage in the full recognition of the research effects. With each month, meticulously accumulated data provide further findings, and many months of conservation works carried out in the Archaeological Museum in Poznań restore the splendour to the objects buried for ages in the ground.

Many weeks of cabinet work are now ahead of archaeologists. Over a thousand selected artefacts guarantee a lot of hours of analyses. However, the objects should not be held in magazines all the time. Therefore, we cordially invite all the interested to the exhibition “234 square meters of Poznań”.

Extraordinary forms of pottery from the Roman Influence Period

13 December 2016 – January 2017

Exhibition curators: mgr Alicja Gałęzowska, mgr Patrycja Silska

Place: Gorka Palace, ul. Wodna 27, 61-781 Poznań

The exhibition features a number of extraordinary pottery vessels that come from the area inhabited by barbarians in the first centuries of the common era. They include the imitations of metal, glass and clay objects manufactured in the provinces of the Roman Empire. These were rarely exact copies, as in the world of barbarians the Roman forms underwent transformations, and they were adapted to the local tastes. The most common forms found in Poland are represented by clay imitations of glass bowls decorated with ribs and some types of glass and clay goblets. An interesting category of pottery comprises mysterious vessels with glass panes set into their bottoms and sometimes also into the walls. Thus far, the function and meaning of these vessels have not been convincingly explained. Among pottery peculiarities are also so called hedgehog vessels ornamented with multiple protrusions emulating similar decorations of Roman glass and clay vessels.

Another noteworthy group includes pots covered with schematic or stylized figural ornaments executed with incising or impressing techniques, and sometimes with plastic elements. Vessels with figural representations are known mainly from cemeteries. Rarely, they depict zoomorphic motifs, including deer, horses, cattle, birds, or anthropomorphic ones, which are interpreted as representations of orantes or deities. More often, potters reached for geometrical motifs – swastikas, crosses or circles, which may have had an apotropaic character. It is generally accepted that figural depictions had symbolic meaning, associated with the realm of believes, particularly those of eschatological nature. The interpretation of individual figural representations is limited to hypothetical divagations.

The displayed pottery vessels come from Greater Poland, and they are housed in the collection of the Archaeological Museum in Poznań. The visitors to the exhibition have an opportunity to see these rare and unique finds, which normally are hidden from the eyes of the public.

September-December 2016

Place: The Górka Palace, ul. Wodna 27, Poznań

Exhibition curator: dr Dobiesława Bagińska

In the tenth century Nubia was at the peak of its development. Taking advantage of an instable political situation in Egypt during the reign Ikhshidid dynasty, it conquered Asuan about the year 956 and took over the south of Egypt reaching as far as Achmim.

In Nubian kingdoms, Nobatia, Makouria and Alodia, Christianity began the sixth century BC, influenced by the missions from Byzantine Empire. At the end of the seventh century (the time of king Merkuriors) we can already say about a powerful and independent Kingdom of Nubia with its capital city in Old Dongola, and with other important cities, i.e. Phrim (today Qasr Ibrim), Pachoras (Faras) and Zae (Sai) which were the seats of dioceses. The monophysite Church of Nubia was subordinated to the Coptic Patriarchate in Alexandria, while the royal court and government offices were organized according to Byzantine patterns. Greek was used as the language of official documents. Economy of that time was based mostly on animal breeding and plant cultivation carried out in the Nile Delta between the Third and the Fourth Cataracts, as well as, traditionally, on trade intermediations between “Black Africa” and the Mediterranean world.

Political independence of Nubia was guaranteed by a treaty with the Arabs signed in the year 652. The stable situation enabled the development of crafts, particularly weaving and manufacturing mats, as well as producing high quality pottery vessels. Economic growth enhanced construction works on a large scale and rebuilding of numerous churches according to new patterns. The majority of  these initiatives were facilitated by court patronage. Religious texts were translated from Greek into local Old Nubian language, which then began to appear in both secular and religious documents. It was also the time of art development, including wall paintings which were created to decorate not only churches but also other representative interiors. In the tenth century the Nubian painters developed a characteristic style. Its distinctness consisted in both schematic drawing and the richness of decorative elements on garments of depicted people. In addition to the typical Christian iconography, the paintings showed representations of local court and Church dignitaries under the care of the holy figures, such as king Georgios II (contemporary to Mieszko I) and Martha performing the important royal function of the Queen Mother.

A lot of information about Nubia survived in the account of Ibn Selim el-Aswani, who was a diplomat sent by the Caliph to king Georgios, as well as in the writings of al-Maqrizi, who described, among others, Dongola (Tungul) as a city with wide streets and beautiful building with domes of red brick, which reminded him of Bagdad. Most of the knowledge about the distant past of this region, however, comes from Polish archaeological research in Sudan initiated in 1961 by professor Kazimierz Michałowski in Faras and continued by his successors in Old Dongola, Banganarti and at other sites for over fifty years.

We would like to express special thanks to dr. Małgorzata Martens-Czarnceka, who supported substantive part of the exhibition dedicated to Nubian paintings, and to dr. Stefan Jakobielski, who gave us a lot of important information on the history and archaeology of Nubia in this period.

1 September -31 August 2016

Exhibition curator: Magdalena Poklewska-Koziełł

Place: The Górka Palace, ul. Wodna 27, 1^st floor

Weapons discovered in archaeological contexts are the main sources of knowledge about the art of war in the distant past. The most interesting finds of this category include deposits buried in rich graves containing the warrior’s equipment or very items unearthed in the old battlefields.

The current exhibition displays various kinds of weapons – dating from the Stone Age, through the Bronze and Iron Ages, to the Medieval Period – from the collection of the Archaeological Museum in Poznań. They give the visitor an insight into the changes in weaponry which were taking place over the millennia. Despite multiple transformations regarding the material, mode of production and use of weapons, one thing remained the same: the warrior’s intention to gain fame by making an accurate shot or giving a powerful blow to the enemy.

Tell el-Farkha
THE POZNAŃ ARCHAEOLOGISTS IN THE NILE DELTA
IN SEARCH OF THE ROOTS OF ANCIENT EGYPTIAN STATE

A photo exhibition presented outside the Museum in Świętosławska Street from March 2016

Exhibition curator: dr Małgorzata Kabacińska

One of the most important issues that still preoccupy Egyptologists is the question of how it happened that about five thousand years ago in the Nile basin emerged the first fully formed territorial state in the world. There are many hypotheses explaining this phenomenon. The most popular one holds that a small tribal state, which was established in the first half of the fourth millennium BC in the southern part of Upper Egypt expanded its territory gradually through conquests. At the same time, in the Nile Delta existed another well organized kingdom. It was conquered by the ruler of Upper Egypt – Menes, who is described in ancient records as the creator of a unified Egyptian state.

This event echoed through the later history of Egypt. The pharaoh was always portrayed as a king of Upper and Lower Egypt, and the union of the two states became a recurrent motif in Egyptian art.

Today, Menes is most often identified as Narmer, the founder of Dynasty I. However, the latest research has indicated that in the time of his reign Egypt had already long been a unified state both in political and cultural terms.

The answer to the question of the unification process should be sought in the Nile Delta. The path that may help resolve the puzzle leads to Tell el-Farcha, the site discovered twenty-five years ago and examined by the Polish Expedition to the Eastern Nile Delta.

The settlement existing in this place for over 1000 years was founded long before the emergence of the Pharaohs’ state and abandoned in the beginnings of the Old Kingdom. It witnessed the birth of the unified Egyptian state and played, as it seems, a vital role in this process. In the earliest period of its history (from about 3700 to about 3300 BC) Tell el-Farcha was inhabited by indigenous people of the Nile Delta. Approximately 3300 BC, from the south arrived the first settlers associated with the earliest political centres evolving in that period in Upper Egypt. The heyday of the Lower Egyptian settlement fell within the Protodynastic period, Dynasty 0 and Dynasty I (3200-2950 BC). In the middle of the rule of the latter, the settlement began to decline. Increasingly poor people abandoned Tell el-Farcha in the time when the great pyramids were built at Giza.

Today, the remains of the settlement consist of three hills located on the outskirts of Gazala village, 120 km north of Cairo. The ancient inhabitants of Tell el-Farcha left behind a six-meter thick layer of the remains of material culture. The first dwellings were large wooden structures. Soon, the settlement inhabitants erected thick mud-brick walls around the most important buildings. In the centre of the settlement stood a residence of a local ruler, while its western side was occupied by breweries representing ones of the earliest structures of this kind in the world. The discoveries made at the site confirm the wealth of the community and their participation in far-reaching trade exchange with both Upper Egypt and the Levant.

Located on an important trade route, Tell el-Farcha attracted attention of southern Egyptian proto-kingdoms, interested in luxury goods imported from the Levant, such as copper, wine, olive and cedar wood. The desire to take control over trade was the reason for the southerners to establish a trade outpost on the borders of the Lower Egyptian settlement. The coexistence of the two different communities led to cultural assimilation and to the adoption of the more attractive cultural patterns from the south.

In the next stage, the settlement inhabitants built an extensive residence, one of the largest buildings in Egypt dating to this period (ok. 3300-3200 BC). It was undoubtedly inhabited by a person connected with the contemporary Egyptian rulers residing in the south – in Abydos or Hierakonpolis. The building was destroyed in a fire associated with an unknown disaster; on its ruins, in the Early Dynastic period, a monumental administrative complex was erected, one of the oldest in Egypt. Within this area archaeologists discovered places of cult with votive deposits containing outstanding works of art, in large part the oldest items of this kind recorded so far in the region.

The inhabitants of Tell el-Farcha were buried on a cemetery located on the east side of the settlement. The vessels deposited in graves were signed with kings’ names, including the three successive rulers: Iry-Hor, Ka and Narmer. A monumental tomb (mastaba) unearthed at this necropolis is the oldest hitherto known example of such structures, which in later periods marked the burial sites of eminent Egyptians. In its vicinity archaeologists found two gold figurines representing men, and two ritual flint knives.

The results of research carried out at Tell el-Farcha have challenged the hypothesis about the invasion of the southerners and the extermination of the late Lower Egyptian culture communities inhabiting the Nile Delta. In the light of new findings, it is more likely that the incomers from the south infiltrated the north of Egypt slowly and gradually, settling both in previously uninhabited areas and in already existing settlement centres.

More information: www.farkha.org

 Photo: R. Słaboński