Ancient CyprusAncient Cyprus

Excavator · Scholar

Manfred Bietak

b. 1940 · Austria

Austrian excavator of Tell el-Dab'a in the Nile delta, where about 500 pieces of Cypriot pottery are used to date Middle Cypriot III and Late Cypriot I; his Egyptian-based dates are disputed.

Biography

Manfred Bietak's excavations at Tell el-Dab'a (Avaris) in the eastern Nile delta produced about 500 pieces of Cypriot pottery2. He was born in Vienna on 6 October 194011.

Most of the Cypriot material is Middle Bronze II, from areas AII-AV and the palace area FI. Proto White Slip, White Painted V and VI, Bichrome and other Late Cypriot wares appear only in the later phase of stratum D/2, the last Hyksos period2,3. Louise C. Maguire thanks him for directing the work and enabling her study of the pottery2; her Tell el-Dab'a XXI (2009) appeared in the series he edits4.

Robert Merrillees built his chronology of White Painted Pendent Line ware on these strata, giving it a span there of 1725 to 1575 BC6, and used Bietak's classification of Tell el-Yahudiyeh ware7. Bietak set out his chronology in a 1989 paper on the Middle Bronze Age of the Levant1. His dates rest on the Egyptian sequence; Sturt W. Manning and others, working from radiocarbon, have argued for lower dates for Late Cypriot I and the Thera eruption5. Höflmayer calls him an advocate of the conventional chronology in that dispute9.

Life and work

  1. 6 October 1940
  2. 1989
    Published 'The Middle Bronze Age of the Levant: A New Approach to Relative and Absolute Chronology' in Åström (ed.), High, Middle or Low? (Gothenburg, pp. 78-120); cited with Bietak 1979, 1991 as the publication of the Cypriot pottery at Tell el-Dab'a.

    Bietak 1989, pp. 78-120Maguire 1995, p. 54

  3. 1991
    Published 'Der Friedhof in einem Palastgarten aus der Zeit des späten Mittleren Reiches und andere Forschungsergebnisse aus dem östlichen Nildelta (Tell el-Dab'a 1984-1987)', one of the reports on the Cypriot pottery from areas AII-AV and palace area FI.

    Bietak 1989, n/aMaguire 1995, p. 54Davies & Schofield 1995, p. 71

  4. 1995
    Maguire's study of the Cypriot pottery of Tell el-Dab'a notes that his excavations have produced about 500 Cypriot sherds and vessels, mostly Middle Bronze II, with later Proto White Slip, White Painted V-VI and Bichrome in the final Hyksos phase.

    Maguire 1995, p. 54Davies & Schofield 1995, p. 35

  5. 2002
    Merrillees proposes the maximum span of White Painted Pendent Line style at Tell el-Dab'a as 1725-1575 BC, and Manning, Sewell and Herscher discuss Bietak's chronological interpretation of Late Cypriot IA trade.

    Merrillees 2002, p. 3Manning et al. 2002, pp. 148

  6. 2007
    Merrillees uses Tell el-Dab'a as the basis of Bietak's classification and chronology of Tell el-Yahudiyeh ware; Eriksson discusses White Slip I contexts against his Egyptian chronology.

    Merrillees 2007, pp. 87Contexts in the Discovery…, pp. 86

  7. 2009
    Maguire's Tell el-Dab'a XXI: The Cypriot Pottery and its Circulation in the Levant appeared in the Tell el-Dab'a series edited by Bietak.

    Maguire 2009, n/a

  8. 2012
    Höflmayer treats him as a leading advocate of the conventional (high) chronology in the Santorini eruption dating debate.

    Höflmayer 2012, pp. 435

Connections

3 people
Robert Stuart MerrilleesSturt W. ManningLouise MaguireManfred Bietak
Colleagues

Colleagues & contacts

Discussed in documents

Sources

  1. 1.M. Bietak (1989). “The Middle Bronze Age of the Levant: A New Approach to Relative and Absolute Chronology”. High, Middle or Low? Acts of an International Colloquium on Absolute Chronology, Gothenburg 1987, Part 3 (ed. P. Åström), 78-120. Paul Åströms förlag, Gothenburg.
  2. 2.L. C. Maguire (1995). “Tell el-Dab'a: The Cypriot Connection”.
  3. 3.W. V. Davies; L. Schofield (eds) (1995). Egypt, the Aegean and the Levant: Interconnections in the Second Millennium BC.
  4. 4.L. C. Maguire (2009). Tell el-Dab'a XXI: The Cypriot Pottery and its Circulation in the Levant. Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vienna.
  5. 5.S. W. Manning; D. A. Sewell; E. Herscher (2002). “Late Cypriot IA maritime trade in action: Underwater survey at Maroni Tsaroukkas and the contemporary east Mediterranean trading system”.
  6. 6.R. S. Merrillees (2002). “The Relative and Absolute Chronology of the Cypriote White Painted Pendent Line Style”.
  7. 7.R. S. Merrillees (2007). “The Ethnic Implications of Tell el-Yahudiyeh Ware for the History of the Middle to Late Bronze Age in Cyprus”.
  8. 8.“Contexts in the Discovery of White Slip I and the Thera Controversy”.
  9. 9.F. Höflmayer (2012). “The date of the Minoan Santorini eruption: quantifying the 'offset'”.
  10. 10. (2016). Palestine in the Bronze and Iron Ages (papers in honour of Olga Tufnell).
  11. 11.Wikidata/GND authority record: Manfred Bietak. Online