Egyptian ‘Funerary Cones’ from El-Moghraqa, Gaza

Abstract

In 1996 the Palestinian Department of Antiquities, Gaza, identified a previously unknown site dating to the second millennium BC, in the area of el-Moghraqa, some joom north of the Wadi Gaza. The cultural remains recovered from the surface included a series of terracotta cones stamped with the cartouches of Thutmose III and Hatshepsut. These artefacts are unique amongst the cultural assemblages of the Levant and are most closely paralleled by Egyptian funerary cones of the Eighteenth Dynasty from Thebes. Fieldwork conducted by the Gaza Research Project (GRP) in 1999 and 2000 examined the archaeological context of the cones, with the purpose of identifying their function and assessing the symbolic significance of this Egyptianizing material within a Levantine context.