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THE ROCK PIGEON DEPICTIONS
FROM EGYPT AROUND 1350 BC AT TELL EL AMARNA
In his 1998 art-historical book
on the history and reputation of the pigeon over the millennia,
Daniel Haag-Wackernagel also extensively discusses pigeon keeping in
ancient Egypt. Referring to the monograph by H. Frankfort (1929), he
discusses in detail the early rock pigeon depictions discovered in
the 1920s from the Green Room of the North Palace at Tell El Amarna
(Fig. 1). These have recently attracted renewed attention (Stimpson/Kemp
2022), and some depictions appear to have been altered in detail
compared to the original drawings.
Construction and Destruction
Amarna was built as a new capital on the east
bank of the Nile around 1350 BC by the ruler Akhenaten. It was
located halfway between the earlier capitals of Memphis and Thebes
(Fig. 2). Shortly thereafter, it was destroyed by his successor, who,
for religious reasons, wanted to erase the name Akhenaten from
history. The room and the depictions were not discovered until the
1920s. Some of the ruins were used as building material elsewhere
and some were built over. Initial excavations began in 1925, and
evaluations began hastily in 1926 due to concerns about further
destruction (N. de Garis Davies in the chapter on the images in the
1929 anthology).
Could rock pigeons have
existed in remote regions?
In a blog post from January
2023 (https://www.atlasobscura.com/), Shoshi Parks takes up the
Stipson/Kemp study and explores the question of whether rock pigeons
could have settled at that place at all, given the remote location
of the site at the time. This question and the explanations
surrounding it may create the false impression that rock pigeons
descended from pigeons in dovecotes and not the other way around.
Rock pigeons existed before urbanization began. When the
domestication of rock pigeons began is unclear. It is assumed that
other pigeon species were also kept and domesticated in Pharaonic
times (Ingrid Bohms 2024, p. 622). Gardens and aviaries were
suspected to have existed near the Green Room. The aviaries' animals
could also have come from other regions. The unnatural decoration,
pigeons in a papyrus thicket, was already addressed in 1929 and was
also attributed to artistic freedom by Stimpson/Kempt.
Unnatural Depiction of Tails
and Flight Feathers
The unnatural tail shape and
the upwardly protruding wings of the rock pigeons are addressed.
Frankfort, as editor of the monograph, already points out that in
the drawings, the body is captured from a side perspective and the
tail and, in some cases, the wings are captured from above (p. 17).
One assumption is that the artist intended to express the
restlessness and wildness of the animals through the atypical wing
position. This is supported by the fact that other bird species also
exhibit this 'quirk' in the depictions. This is also noted in the
chapter on the drawings of the North Palace by N. de Garis Davies
(p. 58 ff.).
Lack of the characteristic
black tail bar in the paintings of the rock pigeon
Haag-Wackernagel, like the
other authors, classifies the blue-marked pigeons as rock pigeons.
One of the rock pigeons is identified as a check pigeon due to the
check pattern on the shield, extending beyond the bars (Fig. 1).
Images and assessments were included in the 2009 in the German
language book "Pigeon Breeds." There, another characteristic
atypical of the rock pigeon, the wild type of the domestic pigeon,
is also mentioned. The black tail bar is completely missing at the
end of the tail. This has occurred as a mutation in domesticated
fancy pigeons. However, it is unlikely that such mutations existed
at that time. This was likely an error by the artist or due to
deterioration and restoration.
The restoration before and
after
Garis Davies provides a
detailed comment on the condition of the finds. „The
paintings, when seen by me in February, 1926, after their second
excavation, were in a very bad state of preservation, less in
respect of loss of colour, though this was much darkened by that
kind of red rust which is apt to encrust the surface of the green
pigment employed by later Egyptian artists, than in its lack of
adhesion to the walls. The mud plaster on which the colour was
directly laid had been so riddled by white ants that it consisted
almost entirely of their excreta, and the film of colour adhered to
the wall so lightly in parts that a touch would bring it down…“ (p.
67). „The left-hand portion of the west wall had some time been
badly damaged by fire, and the design here could only be at secured
by washing off the carbon. The right half, on the other hand, though
very defective, retained its colours in a state not far removed from
the original, save for a certain dulling and deepening of the greens“
(p. 68).
Influence of restoration on
the preservation of the original
The upright wings are unlikely
to have anything to do with the restoration. They are visible in the
initial black and white sketches by Nina de Gary Davies. However, in
the tail area of some specimens, a large portion of the paint film
on the plaster or the clay plaster itself may have flaked off, which
could have resulted in the addition of tails that were too wide.
Gaps filled in by guesswork are indicated in the black and white
sketches. The condition of most drawings upon discovery was worse
than one might have expected from the description and after filling
in some gaps in the preliminary sketches. Time and decay may have
erased the black tail band typical of the rock pigeon (Figs. 3-5
from the center of the east wall).
Decay and restoration may have
played a role in the depiction in Plate IV (west wall) which at
first glance resembles a pigeon. Its size, tail and wings are like
the pigeons depicted next to it, but its neck is longer. The
elongated body, which widens at the back, the longer neck and the
relatively long legs appear disproportionate for a pigeon. In the
first black and white copies made by Nina de Gary Davis, the wing
shield is laced or checkered, and the plaster or paint film has
fallen off in the tail area (Fig. 6). When her husband, N. de Gary
Davies, discussed the pictures, it was initially classified as a
reddish turtledove (p. 64), then in a drawing as a shrike (Fig. 7).
Stimpson/Kemp cite reasons that
may support this interpretation (p. 114). Doubts remain, however.
Even though size distortions are not uncommon in Egyptian
depictions: The rock pigeon is about 33 cm long and weighs about 330
g, while the Taita shrike, which is found in the region, is 22 cm
long and weighs about 50 g. The color restoration incorporates the
reddish-brown back of the red-backed shrike, which is a migratory
bird but also only 16-18 cm long (Wikipedia). In the illustration
used by Stimpson/Kemp, the wing shield coloration has been
transformed into a brownish checkering (Fig. 8).
When and why the changes were
made is not noted. This, however, makes the coloring of the wing
plate closer to Gary Davies's initial guess, that of a turtle dove.
The turtle dove is also smaller than the rock dove. Regardless of
size, the proportions of the body, legs, and neck are not
appropriate for all three species. They are especially in the black
white sketch more in keeping with a duck in unfamiliar surroundings.
The original black and white drawing of the bird shows loss of the
ink film on the wall in the area of the tail. This, as in other
parts of the walls, has been replaced by assumed lines. Thus, the
broad tail, which is long in the final version, may not have been
there in the original version.
Literature:
Bohms, Ingrid, Vögel in der altägyptischen
Literatur. Teilband 1. Ägyptologie LIT. LIT Verlag Dr. W. Hopf
Berlin 2024.
Frankfort, H. (editor), The Mural Painting of
El-ꞌAmarneh. Published by the Egypt Exploration Society, London
1929.
Haag-Wackernagel, Daniel, Die Taube. Vom
heiligen Vogel der Liebesgöttin zur Straßentaube, Basel 1998.
Sell, Axel, Taubenrassen. Entstehung, Herkunft,
Verwandtschaften. Faszination Tauben durch die Jahrhunderte, Achim
2009.
Shoshi Parks, Did Ancient Egypt Have a Pigeon
Problem? More than 3,000 years ago, the birds appeared in
unexpected places. January 25, 2023
Stimpson, Christopher/Barry J. Kemp, Pigeons
and papyrus at Amarna: the birds of the Green Room revisited.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 December 2022.
Volume 97 Issue 391.
Fig. 1: Selected
Rock-Pigeon images at Haag-Wackernagel (1998) from the East and form
the West Wall in the Green Room. One classified as blue check, the
other as blue bar. Taken over in Sell (2009). Source: Green Room
Plate II East Wall and Plate IV West Wall (Frankfort 1929).
Fig. 2:
Amarna, located east of the Nile between Memphis and
Thebes. Peters Atlas, Amarna marked in blue.
Fig. 3: Plate III,
detail from Plate II: East Wall. Drawn by Nina de G. Davies, Colour
Fig. 4: Plate II
East Wall. Drawn by Nina de G. Davies, Black-White
Fig. 5: Plate VIII:
Dove. Detail from Plate II. Before cleaning and restoration
Fig. 6:
Plate IV West Wall, left side. Two pigeons and, to
the right, a bird of comparable size, in Plate V classified as a
'shrike.' Drawn by Nina de Garis Davies
Fig. 7: Plate V:
Pigeons and Shrike (Würger), Detail from Plate IV. Painted by Nina
de G. Davies.
Fig. 8: Pigeon and
Shrike in the black white sketch in Plate IV, in colour Plate V (published
1929) and below in the version published by Stimpson/Kempt 2022.
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