Malqata: Manufacturing at a Ceremonial Settlement

The eighteenth-dynasty royal city of Malqata has been selected, since much evidence has been discovered here, particularly with regard to faience-production and glass-working, and there is also limited evidence of metalworking and sculpture-production. The settlement itself dates to the reign of Amenhotep III, and more specifically to his thirtieth regal year, when it was established to celebrate the king’s first ḥb-sd (Sed-) festival, the jubilee and rejuvenation celebration of his thirty years of reign. He celebrated a total of three festivals, the other two taking place in his thirty-fourth and thirty-eighth regal years. Due to the somewhat patchy nature of the early excavations and survey work done at Malqata, especially between 1888 and 1971, no genuine spatial analysis, such as was done for the material from Amarna or Gurob, has been possible for Malqata. The early excavation reports, for instance that by Tytus, or those by Winlock for the Metropolitan Museum missions, simply state in a matter-of-fact way that they located the remains of glass factories in, for example, the South Village. They usually continue to list some of the artefacts that were found, which would indicate the presence of glass-working and faience-manufacture in the area, but they do not describe these objects in any detail, and nor do they indicate where—within the large area covered by the South Village—they were found. However, the author has had the opportunity to study the unpublished archive material from the early excavations at Malqata by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, which took place during the early years of the last century. The excavation diaries kept in these archives revealed no detailed information as to more precise locations or quantities of finds. They did, however, make possible a better understanding of the origins of these interpretations, and the sample of relevant artefacts examined made possible further identification and clarification of their nature. In addition, the author was able to access some of the objects relevant to glass-working and faience-production from Malqata at the Brooklyn Museum and was furthermore given permission to study some of the unpublished site reports, plans, and finds lists from the University Museum of Pennsylvania mission, which took place between 1971 and 1977.