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5. EARLY MEDIEVAL COPTS OF THE FAYOUM OASIS, EGYPT: AN ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDY

EARLY MEDIEVAL COPTS OF THE FAYOUM OASIS, EGYPT: AN ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDY

Vasilyev Sergey

Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia

Vasilyev Sergey, e-mail: vasbor1@yandex.ru.

Аннотация

This study deals with skeletal remains of the early medieval Copts from the necropolis of Deir el-Naqlun, the Fayoum Oasis, Egypt. That these skeletons and mummified bodies are indeed Coptic follows from the fact that they were found during excavations at the territory of a Coptic monastery and there were some elements of Coptic monastic garments on many of them. The study was performed together with the Center of Egyptological Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences in 2002. We studied 30 skulls using the standard craniological program. Twenty of them belonged to males and ten to females. The cranial index is average and most male skulls tend to mesocrany. Height indices of the braincase suggest that male skulls are medium high. The facial skeleton of males is relatively narrow (lepten). The orbital index is average and so are nasal dimensions. The horizontal facial profile in males is very sharp, especially at the middle level. Such profiles are characteristic of Caucasoids. The cephalic index characterizes female skulls as mesocranic with a tendency to dolichocrany. According to height indices, they are relatively high. The facial indices suggest that females had relatively narrow faces, high orbits, and average nasal dimensions. Their faces are more sharply profiled than those of males. Postcrania are represented by skeletons of six males and two females and by more than fifty isolated long bones from collective graves. Preliminary studies showed that the average stature of males, calculated after V.V. Bunak’s formula, equaled 164.8 cm and that of females, 156.2 cm.

Ключевые слова

physical anthropology, craniology, osteology, Copts, Egypt

Цит.: Vasilyev Sergey EARLY MEDIEVAL COPTS OF THE FAYOUM OASIS, EGYPT: AN ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDY // Вестник Московского университета. Серия XXIII. Антропология, 2014; 3/2014; с. 85-85