The gold was surely too weak to support the pressure of a thrust if the dagger was meant to be used - so it must have been made as a funerary object for the tomb. A solid gold shoulder holds the bronze blade attached by three gold rivets. The disks are inlaid with crosses of thin gold and between the disks are squares inlaid with light brown carnelian. The grip is beaten gold and inlaid with disks of lapis lazuli and green feldspar. The crescent-shaped pommel is made of lapis lazuli. Near Ita's waist, perhaps having dangled from her belt, was this remarkable dagger (left). But Princess Ita trumped her royally in daggers. Khenmet had a dagger made of gilded wood. But other objects found in both Khenmet's and Ita's tombs are more debatable: such as wooden staffs and sceptres (signs of authority), a set of bronze tools, including chisels, burins, and knives, a mace (symbol of power), and daggers. It is also exactly what we expect wealthy ladies to take with them to the grave. They are the adornments, so to speak, of their social and religious functions at the royal court. No one doubts that the jewellery reflects the personal identity of these women. She had lots more gold jewellery (five bracelets on each arm, chokers, and clasps among other items), as well as a collection of separate gold pieces (above), perhaps from several different necklaces, which looks quite un-Egyptian in character and is more reminiscent of goldwork from the Aegean, perhaps Minoan Crete.Дespite its beauty, I'd really like to get away from the fabulous golden gee-gaws and consider something quite different. Khenmet's jewellery was drop-dead gorgeous. She too was described as a king's daughter but boasted the additional title of 'the one united with the white crown' ( Khenmetneferhdjet, perhaps not a title but a longer version of her name). Like Ita, she was laid to rest in a set of three containers: an outer sarcophogus made of quartzite, a wooden coffin with inscriptions almost identical to those found inside Ita's coffin, and a badly-decayed inner anthropoid coffin - its head covered in blue and gold and with inlaid silver eyes. We don't know if Princess Khenmet, who was buried near Ita in the same gallery, is her sister or not. The actual mummy wore around her neck the remains of a broad collar made of silver and beads of lapis lazuli, carnelian, and turquoise, and was decked out with multiple armlets and bracelets. The poorly preserved inner anthropoid coffin (that is, shaped like a human mummy) was embellished with inlaid silver eyes, a headdress in blue with golden bands, and a broad beaded collar on the breast. Then, a middle coffin decorated with gilded edging and inscribed on the inside with religious texts and on the outside with wedjat eyes, symbols of protection and royal power. The outer sarcophagus was a simple sandstone rectangular box. Her body was found inside a set of three containers.

Princess Ita's tomb consisted of two chambers, one completely filled by the sarcophagus, while the other contained her burial goods. Horus has placed gold on his eye, a gold collar (Pyr. She and other females of her family were the lucky ones. There was no such insult to the grave of Princess Ita. Most tombs were also massively looted in antiquity resulting in fragmentary finds and badly-disturbed contents. So many of their tombs were excavated in the nineteenth or early-twentieth centuries when, to be honest, archaeologists were more interested in getting objects for museum collections than in recording details of the dig, let alone correctly sexing the skeletons. In his Tomb Treasures of the Late Middle Kingdom: The Archaeology of Female Burials, Dr Grajetzki pulls together for the first time all possible information on Middle Kingdom tombs belonging to elite and royal women (the so-called 'Court Type' burials of people closest to the king in a word, his courtiers). The reason I want to tell you about her is that I've just read a fascinating new book by Egyptologist Wolfram Grajetzki, Honorary Research Associate at University College London.

We actually know something about this princess. One of the finest such pieces is this masterly polished head of Princess Ita, a child of Pharaoh Amenemhat II (1919вЂ“1885 BCE), the beloved king's daughter of his body.* Most of the grandest statues, of course, depicted kings and princes but royal sculpture also extended, if less often, to the females of the ruling families.

Ask anyone: the glory of Middle Kingdom art is its sculpture - and I agree: it really does reach an extraordinary high level, especially during the 12th Dynasty (ca.

The middle ita