Tenth International Congress of Egyptologists Abstracts of Papers

XICE – Abstract of Papers
view of these interesting finds, a survey was undertaken in this Shaykh Sa’id South
area. Material was collected in circles of 1 m diameter that were set out around all
gridpoints. In each gridsquare, the most interesting diagnostics were gathered. Most
commonly found were pottery sherds, fragments of stone vases, and stone and flint
drills. So far, no mud-brick structures were discovered.
After initial investigation, two major groups of ceramics could be determined.
Firstly, a group of Old Kingdom pottery material was differentiated. These sherds
were mostly found in a small part of the survey-surface (Area A). The ceramics
consist of large fragments of both bDA and flat breadmoulds, fragments of beerjars and
a couple of Maidum-bowl fragments. On some of the breadmoulds, potmarks are
present. Secondly, a group of New Kingdom pottery could be determined. So far,
some characteristic types for the later New Kingdom/ Third Intermediate Period could
be identified (e.g. Bes vases, along with sherds of blue painted jars, flowerpots, sherds
with black band decoration, restricted vessels, ...). As the site of Tell al-Amarna is
situated close-by, a comparison could be made with the pottery material available
from this area.
The presentation will give an overview of this new ceramic material, originating
from the survey in Shaykh Sa’id South. A typology of this group will be attempted to
be made. All pottery-sherds will be described and their fabric will be determined on
the basis of the ceramic-corpus and descriptions of adjacent sites. 34 This typology and
description will be done by STEFANIE VEREECKEN (ph. D. student) together with the
author during the 2008 mission of the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven at Dayr al-
Bersha (March-April 2008). The investigation and description of the stone material
are not the subject of this paper and will be carried out by LUCIA KUIJPER.
HIERATICA 1.0: a new and unique tool designed for egyptologists
Juan De la Torre
It was many years ago when I managed to program the software named
“Amanuense”, the only hieroglyphs editor completely done in Spanish language. This
editor permitted to work with 800 signs, groups of hieroglyphs created and inserted
automatically, auto-learning function of the own program, many ways of writing and
other utilities that lacked in the very extended software at that moment, as the wellknown
Winglyph. That software, nevertheless, lacked one of the essential elements to
be useful in printed publications: vectorial graphics.
Two years ago, I began to work again in the “Amanuense” with the intention of
complete it with new functions and, fundamentally, to endow it of vectorial graphics.
Now I can say that this purpose is already managed, but I have wanted to go further,
and now the Egyptological community have a new program of hieroglyphs and
hieratic edition. Now, at these moment, I am developing a new tool that will turn out
to be extremely useful for professionals of Egyptology, which will be at public
dispossal not before the end of this year, but at the begginings of 2008. It is known for
all the existing problem we have, when one try to insert hieratic signs into a
hieroglyphs editor software and more difficult is still to find a single and unique
34 J.D. BOURRIAU, L.M.V. SMITH and P.T. NICHOLSON, New Kingdom Pottery Fabrics. Nile clay and
mixed Nile/Marl clay fabrics from Memphis and Amarna, The Egypt Exploration Society, Occasional
Publication 14 (Londen, 2000).
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