Ceramic Offering Trays in the Museo Egizio, Turin: Establishing Typologies and Locating Unprovenanced Specimens

ةشقانمو ميظنت ةداعلإ ةلواحم كانه ثيح يرصملا فحتملا يف ةدوجوملا تايراخفلا نم ةعومجم ةسا رد ىلع ةلاقملا هذه دعاست كلت وأ اهنع رشنلا مت يتلا فحتملا يف ةدوجوملا عطقلا عيمج رابتعلاا نيع يف ذخؤتُ .ةيراخفلا يناوصلا نم ةينغ ةعومجم ةلاقم يأ اهنع رشنيٌ مل يتلا عطقلا يناوصلا نم ريبك ددع :تاعومجم ثلاث ديدحت مت .ردصملا بسح اهميسقت متيو ،اَقبسم قرطُو ردصملا ةلوهجم يناوصلا نم ةعومجمو نيلَبَج نم يناوصلا نم ةعومجم ،طويسأ ةربقم يف يليرابايكس تايرفح اهردصم .ةداملاو لكشلا صئاصخ ساسأ ىلع اهميسقتو ةقدب ةعومجم لك صحف متي .اهئانتقا  ثيح نم يناوصلل ةكرتشملا تامسِلا ددّحتُ ريراقت وأ ىرخأ فحاتمل تاعومجم نمض ةظوفحم ىرخأ يناوص عم تانراقملا دعاستُ .دحاولا ردصملاو عقوملا ثيح نمو لكشلا ب ةلمتحملا تا ريثأتلا نع فشكلا ىلإ ةفاضلإاب ةكرتشملا صئاصخلا زا ربإو هباشتلا هجوأ ديدحت يف ةفلتخملا تابيقنتلا عقاوملا ني .اهتيبعش ىدمو اهتلاامعتسلا لضفأ مهف ىلإ يرثلأا اهقايس نمض ةقدب اهتيبثتو ىقللا ميظنت ةداعإ ةلواحم يدؤت .ةرواجملا قطانملاو ةدكؤم ريغ نلآا ىتح ربتعتُ تناك يتلا يرصملا فحتملا تانيع ردصم ديدحت ةداعإ فلّؤملا حرتقيَ ،اَ ريخأ .


Introduction
Over the last few years, latching onto a renewed interest among scholars in the study of pottery offering trays and soul houses, the author has conducted a study of the objects belonging to this class in Turin's Museo Egizio. The museum holds a collection of 39 offering trays and 5 soul houses, the majority of which are currently displayed in the permanent galleries. This first publication presents a thorough study of all the offering trays. Soul houses will be addressed in a future paper. 1 The Museo Egizio's collection of offering trays is particularly interesting and rich, since it includes a wide variety of well-preserved specimens and a sig- The trays in the Museo Egizio can be divided into two groups according to provenance (Asyut, Gebelein) and a third group (unprovenanced) comprising all the remaining objects. The closest provenanced parallels will be used here as "anchors" to propose a likely geographical origin for the unprovenanced ones. Parallels will be searched for in the known corpus of trays from other museum collections and excavations. 5 In addition to the summary publication of the entire corpus of trays from the Museo Egizio, this article's main contribution is to provide a methodology for the typological study of the material and the identification of parallels for the reconstruction of provenances.

Methodology
The methodological standards followed for the analysis of the material first required a definition of the class of objects to which offering trays belong.
In the literature, 6 offering trays are always treated as being in the same class as soul houses. While from a material point of view they are both made of clay, there is a slight difference between the two: an offering tray is a ceramic tray with representations of offerings on its surface; a soul house is also a ceramic offering tray with representations of offerings, but with the addition of a maquette, an architectural model, which constitutes the main focus of the tray and is its most distinguishable characteristic. The presence -or absence -of this maquette neatly distinguishes the two (Fig. 1).

Sub-classes encompass groups of offering trays
with the same geographical provenance. It is useful to organise trays on the basis of provenance, as it has already been noted that shapes and decorations often outline regional and local trends. 7 Starting from provenanced trays to distinguish types within different local corpora makes it easier to assess the significance and scope of the wealth of material with unstated or unknown provenance in museum collections.
Within the distinguished sub-classes, in the present  Finally, variants are derivations from the type showing systematic differences, but including the type's dominant features. 9 An unavoidable limit of the present research is that it does not adopt the Vienna System, considered today to be a standard method, 10 for the description of the clay fabrics, due to the impossibility of cutting fresh breaks on the artefacts.
For the purpose of the investigation, a database was set up, a simplified version of which is visible in the several tables included in this article. For the Asyut material, shape, colour, spatial arrangement, quantity of offerings, as well as other features were taken into consideration. The same criteria were applied to the Gebelein corpus, except for spatial arrangement, since all the pieces share the same arrangement.

Current state of research
Offering trays have been discussed in a number of articles published in the course of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, stimulated by the increasing quantity of material discovered in excavations all over Egypt. 11 Actually, offering trays have been part of museum collections since the first half of the nineteenth century. 12 Yet, interest among Egyptologists was never keen enough for the wealth of available material to be organised into comprehensive catalogues or monographs, most probably due to their anepigraphic nature. 13 This has left the total number of trays in museum collections and excavations unquantified and the distinction between types in the same class of material never sufficiently clear. 14 Such a quantification would be the first necessary step to understand the position of trays within the range of cultic and ritual activities. More recent times have seen an increase of articles and publications covering the subject in more or less homogeneous ways. 15 Still, we are far from having quantified the material and we continue to work on different corpora and different collections, each of us applying their own method and terminology, often different from those of the others.
As regards the state of research on the subject, the most updated and complete articles on offering trays were written by A. Kilian, who published the material from the German-Egyptian excavations in the necropolis of Asyut. 16 Her articles summarise -and clarify -the main interpretations of offering trays, and include general remarks about the materiality, decoration, placement, and use of trays, as well as adding to the corpus new material from recent excavations in Asyut.

Origin and development
Offering trays have been interpreted as directly derived from stone offering tables, and the difference in materials as a direct consequence of the economic background of the owners, clay constituting a cheaper alternative to stone. 17 However, it should be noted that offering trays ceased to exist after the Middle Kingdom, while stone offering tables were used throughout Egyptian history. Furthermore, Killian has called attention to the completely anepigraphic nature of offering trays as opposed to the often inscribed tables, and highlighted the variety of shapes of trays as a main difference from the (almost) invariably rectangular shape of tables, and the much wider range of objects, images, and offerings depicted on stone tables compared to their clay "counterparts". 18 Given these considerations, it would not be accurate to state that offering trays are directly and exclusively developed from offering tables.
An attempt to propose a theory of the development of offering trays was first made by Niwinski, who defined the process of formal change whereby the shape of the base gradually shifted from square to round as "décadence formelle". 19 This theory has been strongly dismissed by Tooley, 20 because the hypothesis is based on an incorrect dating of the material: Niwinski dates round trays later than square trays, but the opposite has been demonstrated by Slater, who dates the Dendera offering trays (predominantly of round and oval shapes) exclusively to the First Intermediate Period. 21 Additionally, Tooley's research, which also takes in materials from other archaeological excavations, has shown that tray shapes depend on regional trends, 22 with square trays being typi-cal of Middle Egypt and round trays of Upper Egypt. This concept will be shown to be of crucial relevance for the present research, since it has been theorised that base shape is one of the criteria to determine the provenance of a tray. 23 This approach departs from the concept that no two offering trays can be identical: 24 actually, many of them share common features, allowing for typological distinctions.

Function and dating
Offering trays are basins whose purpose and main function was the collection of liquid libations poured on them by the officiants of offering rituals. 25 The nature of the ritual is strictly related to the provision of nourishment, often represented by miniature model offerings present on the surface of trays. While trays mainly occur in tombs and funerary contexts, their discovery in other contexts such as settlements, Nubian fortresses and, in one case, temples, makes the picture more complex. 26 Since the material is completely anepigraphic (except in one case) 27

Future research
It should be mentioned that the approach used in this work is experimental. Only further research on the subject will be able to shed more light on issues such as typological divisions and provenance.
Moreover, some of the trays mentioned here have not been directly examined by the present author, but only seen in photographs. A future step would be to collect as much material as possible, in order to expand the range of specimens available for typological seriation, extending it to the whole corpus of known offering trays.
Performing a thorough data collection and establishing a potentially valid typology would be a pre-requisite for addressing other considerations, particularly socio-anthropological aspects, such as the rituals carried out on the trays, or semiotic aspects relating to the trays themselves and the modelled offerings applied onto them. Moreover, while the social environment behind the production of these objects has been treated only superficially, interesting insights could be gleaned from well-documented archaeolog- The historical and artistic potential of this material has only been partially fulfilled. Its dissemination in the cultic sphere -measurable only after having quantified the number of trays found -could be analysed by relating it to other objects with the same functions (stone offering tables and soul houses), in an attempt to elucidate the stylistic and material relations underlying a social and regional context.

Offering trays from Asyut
The fourteen offering trays recovered by the Italian  A defining feature of many trays from Asyut is the presence of internal boundaries, small L-shaped inner edges that divide the surface. 37 The separation of internal spaces on the surface appears to be inspired by contemporary stone offering tables. 38 On the other hand, some trays from Asyut show no spatial divisions of any sort, thus making this a criterion for typological distinction. The presence, absence, or placement of the ox head is also a criterion for typological distinction, as the head appears on 80% of the trays from Asyut.
Combining all these criteria, the present author has developed a typological distinction into four types and five variants (Fig. 2)  S. 7979 is the only Turin offering tray whose archaeological context is known, having been recovered by Schiaparelli's mission in Tomb 2. 41 The context of the tomb was disturbed and only Some fragments recovered in Asyut by the German-Egyptian mission 46 may belong to this type, but they are too poorly preserved for this to be sure (Table 2).
Type I Variant B is comprised of two U-shaped offering trays 47 with basins and a single raised offering (Table 3). All the offering trays of Asyut Type I share common      (Table 5).
· S. 9179 (Fig. 6) has a single platform, with an ox leg and a round loaf of bread represented on it.
· S. 14944 (Fig. 6) has two platforms, one with an ox head, the other with an ox leg and a round loaf of bread.
The most direct parallels can be found in an offering tray recovered in Dendera by Petrie 51 and an unprovenanced offering tray in the Liverpool Museum, 1973.1.362. 52 Type II Variant C (Table 6) (Table 7). (Table 8) comprises trays of quadrangular shape, sometimes roughly modelled, with a small frontal spout. 56 They always depict an ox head       at the centre of the back rim of the tray. There are no internal divisions on the surface of the tray. The offerings are arranged at the centre of the tray, be-

P. 6447
This is a fragment, unpublished, of an offering tray or possibly a soul house (Fig. 11, Table 11). Even The internal rim bends 90 degrees, assuming an L shape. No parallel has yet been found, but the internal divisions are typical of the Asyut material.

Offering trays from Gebelein
The  discussed in another study.  Fig. 18) and S. 14259 (Fig. 12,   Fig. 15) were instead found in tombs in the northern area of the necropolis during the same campaign.
Further information about the archaeological context of these trays is unavailable at the moment, but   In the corpus of trays from Gebelein, five different shapes can be distinguished (Fig. 13), with a predominance of the oval shape (37.5 %), followed by

Gebelein Type I: round trays with crossing channels
These are almost perfectly round offering trays (Table 12). 66 Their surface is decorated with two channels, crossing at the centre of the tray to form an X-shape, thus dividing the upper surface into four

Gebelein Type II: circular depressions
The second type from Gebelein is characterised by the presence of two or more circular depressions on the surface of the tray, from which channels depart, connecting the depressions to the low frontal rim (Table 13). · S. 14259 (Fig. 15, Fig. 12  K02/88.6. 74 Since this shape appears mostly at these two sites, it seems likely it was mainly manufactured in the Gebelein-Thebes area, even though it appears in trays from the Dendera corpus.
Belonging to this type, but quadrangular in form, is Variant A of Type II, comprising three quadrangular offering trays 75 with circular depressions on their internal surface (Table 14): · S. 11963 ( Fig. 16) is quite rectangular; the rim is of the same height across the perimeter of the tray, but is interrupted by two circular depressions in correspondence with the two channels.
Around the channels and the two circular depressions, several offerings are visible, including a recognisable ox at the very centre of the tray. · S. 11964 (Fig. 16) is the best preserved of the two.
It shows a protruding spout on the front. The in- Finally, there is a fragment of a U-shaped offering, unpublished, whose only preserved superficial feature is the side of a channel (Fig. 18, Table 16). The object is too badly preserved to fall within any of the proposed categories.

Gebelein Type III, or "Gebelein-Armant" type
Gebelein has yielded a great quantity of oval-shaped offering trays, with a continuous rim that encircles the upper surface of the piece. At the issue of the channelling, the rim has an opening a few millimetres in diameter to allow liquids to flow out of the tray. The channels divide the surface into two areas, one for the offerings, which always include    85 as well as another specimen. 86 However, this provenance can be regarded as doubtful, as if true it would mean that these are the only two trays ever found in Saqqara, 87 whereas the northernmost limit of distribution of trays is known to be Lahun. 88

S. 1189 and S. 1190
These two objects 89

P. 6456
The museum sources provide no information about the origin of this rather large tray, which is unpublished (Fig. 21, Table 19). It was recomposed from Armant, but this is not certain. It is also plausible  In specimens from Dendera, Gebelein and Western Thebes, the circular depressions are almost always two in number. 94 The double depression appears to be typical of these three sites only, since it is not attested elsewhere. The crossing channels are found exclusively on trays excavated in the Theban Necropolis. 95 The combination of U-shape form, circular depressions, and grid channels points to Upper Egypt as the region of origin of the tray and Western Thebes as the possible site of provenance.
P. 730/1, P. 730/2, P. 730/3, P. 730/4 These four offering trays (Fig. 23   Besides giving an accurate count of known trays from the same sites, the survey has also shed light on the "popularity" of certain shapes and features, highlighting local trends and common representational aims. For example, Variant A of Type II in the Siutian corpus presents three basic characteristics: the quadrangular shape, the central ox head at the back of the tray, and the L-shaped walls on the front.
All these characteristics appear at other sites but never combined, pointing to a peculiar regionalism of the site of Asyut. Not only do trays from the same site look alike and could be grouped in typologies according to shape, arrangement of the offerings, and other macro-characteristics, but it is possible to see that some features occur at other site outside of local boundaries, sometimes with such frequency that it is possible to argue for the existence of an actual style. The most eloquent example is the occurrence of trays with the same shape and arrangement of offerings behind T-shaped channels at Gebelein and Armant.
Not surprisingly, provenanced trays find their closest parallels not only among specimens from the same site, but also among trays found in geographically neighbouring sites, as in the cases of Armant-Gebelein, Gebelein-Thebes, and Thebes-Dendera.
In some cases, the resemblance between unprove-  "Burial Customs", pp. 249, 296. 8 Instead of giving the exact number of offerings present on the surface, they have been divided into the following categories: none (= 0), one (= 1), few (>1), many (> 3). 9 I am extremely grateful to Paolo Marini for our methodological discussions. The guidelines followed in the typological division were largely inspired by his doctoral thesis "Contenitori di ushabti", 2016.
qualitative and statistical observations could be made, greatly contributing to the work of scholars of the subject by shedding new light on a category of objects that was quite popular and counts hundreds of specimens that are awaiting proper study and publication.