It is a great pleasure to dedicate this contribution to David O’Connor, and to acknowledge the generosity and insight with which he guided my research as a student and continues to contribute to it as a colleague. The present study concerns two subjects to which he has devoted significant attention: the Third Intermediate Period and the archaeology of North Abydos. In a very real sense, the ongoing research of the many projects of the Penn-Yale-IFA Expedition to Abydos is a legacy of his mentorship that has enriched our understanding of such major socio-cultural processes such as state formation, urbanism, regionalism and core-periphery relations, trade, agency and the construction of sacred landscape in Egypt.
The artifact that forms the focus of the present discussion was exposed in the course of excavations carried out in North Abydos in 1997, under the auspices of the University of Pennsylvania Museum-Yale University-Institute of Fine Arts, New York University Expedition to North Abydos. The research formed one component of an ongoing systematic archaeological investigation of the area adjacent to the Osiris Temple Enclosure, which has been identified as the ‘Votive Zone’ (see Fig. 1). The 1997 field season followed the work of the previous year in which a previously unknown cult structure built during the reign of Thutmose III was found at the site and partially excavated (Pouls Wegner 2002: 264ff). The designation of the Votive Zone refers to its utilization as a locus of ritual activity involving the dedication of monuments and artifacts to local deities in the hope of receiving reciprocal offerings from the temple institution and of participating symbolically in cult rituals associated with that institution, a pattern of utilization attested in the material culture remains of the Middle through New Kingdom from the site (Pouls Wegner 2002: 53-54, 104ff).