For burial complexes of the 7 th -6 th c. BC on the territory of Forest-Steppe Scythia some types of beads are quite common. These are usually referred to as being made of "Egyptian" faience. They are mainly represented by beads of various shapes, as well as less common conical-shaped "beadsrosettes". The site of production of the former is difficult to establish, but for the latter, the territory of Transcaucasia is determined. Their appearance and wide distribution in the Northern Black Sea region is associated with the nomadic Scythians, who advanced in the late 7 th c. BC -first half of the 6 th c. BC to the Ukrainian Forest-Steppe through the Caucasus after the completion of the Asiatic campaigns. Exceptionally important finds for this period objects imported from Egypt of rare types for the territory of Scythia. They were found in Skorobir -in one of the biggist burial grounds of the Bilsk fortefied settlement (Vorskla basin), as well as material excavated from of the Lyubotyn fortified settlement (Siversky Donets basin). Among them are Egyptian necklaces -amulets and a bead of the 6 th c. BC. Some objects could have come to the Forest-Steppe from Greek centres, while others probably belonged to Scythian warriors who received them as a military trophy. At present, these are the only such early finds in the Northern Black Sea region, complementing the set of imported pieces that ended up in the Dnipro Left Bank during the Scythian Archaic Period. Discovered in female burials of the 6 th c. BC, Egyptian amulets prove that already in this period they were perceived by the population of Scythia as sacred symbol -an attribute of priests, whose functions in barbarian society were most likely performed by women -representatives of the social elite.
The article analyzes new data related to initial distribution of Bāb el-Gusūs antiquities from Lot. No. 6 received by the Russian Empire in 1894, based on the new documents from the State Archive of Odesa Region. Professor Oleksiy Derevytskyi from the Novorosiiskyi (Odesa) University was responsible for placement and further destiny of these artifacts among university museums of Empire. Thus, the Lot was bigger than it was thought before and contained coffins (6 pcs.), mummy-covers (4 pcs.), shabtis (92 pcs.), shabti boxes (3 pcs.), and mummy shrouds (3 fragments). The detailed reports by Professor Derevytskyi concerning distribution of the artifacts, bills of lading, cost estimates, and the letters confirming receipt of the artifacts were found in the Odesa archive. By March 1895, the antiquities were distributed among the following institutions of the Russian Empire: 1) Moscow University (1 coffin (Cairo J.E. 29687), 10 shabtis, 1 mummy shroud); 2) Kyiv University (1 coffin (Cairo J.E. 29634), 10 shabtis, 1 mummy shroud); 3) Kazan University (1 coffin, 9 shabtis); 4) Novorosiiskyi (Odesa) University (1 coffin (Cairo J.E. 29712), 2 shabti boxes, 9 shabtis, 1 mummy shroud); 5) Kharkiv University (1 coffin, 9 shabtis); 6) Warsaw University (1 coffin, 9 shabtis, 1 shabti box); 7) University of Yuriev (Tartu) (1 mummy-cover, 9 shabtis); 8) University of Helsingfors (Helsinki) (1 mummy-cover, 9 shabtis); 9) The Imperial Society for the Encouragement of the Arts, Saint-Petersburg (1 mummy-cover, 9 shabtis); 10) Baron Alexander von Stieglitz Central School for Technical Drawing, Saint-Petersburg (1 mummy-cover, 9 shabtis).
The article provides a publication of an ancient Egyptian offering table from the collection of the Odessa Archaeological Museum of the NAS of Ukraine (inv. no. 52971). The object entered the museum in 1938 and is still in the current exposition. The first translation of its text and prosopographic analysis were made by S. V. Donich. He concluded that the offering table belonged to a queen named Isis and dated it to the New Kingdom. Later, O. D. Berlev studied the table, believing that Isis is the name of the goddess, and the object itself dates back to the 26 th Dynasty. The article presents translations of the text on the offering table made by these Egyptologists, and offers the author's annotated translation of the inscriptions, analysis of the visual program of its design, dating, origin of the text and semantic load of the object. It is said that the offering table belonged to a woman named Isis, who was a member of the elite of ancient Egyptian society, but most likely did not belong to the royal family. Despite following the tradition of design characteristic of the New Kingdom (type C 4 according to R. Hölzl), the offering table should still be dated to the 26 th Dynasty. Its text consists of two formulas -of libation and incense, and goes back to the motifs already known from the Pyramids Texts of the Old Kingdom. The primary source for it was probably the liturgical texts of the temple rituals of the New Kingdom, such as the "Liturgy of Amenhotep I", which were written on a certain hieratic papyrus. Attention is drawn to the fact that the last words of both formulas written on the gutter for liquid pouring of the altar: wab -"purity, purification" and cnTr Hs.w mr.w -"incense, praised and loved", have a separate conceptual meaning, ascending to the solar-lunar representations, reflected in the formulas, and finalize the ritual, textual, and semantic programs of the object.
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