The idea was not to dismiss conventional methodical approaches, such as stylistic analysis or religious inquiry but rather to verify or to correct their positions. Photo : P. Additionally, the figurines found there are mostly fragmented, contrasting with the many complete terracottas in museum collections that form visual encyclopedias of Egyptian religion and culture.
But on the other hand, the advantage of the archaeological material is a secured provenance and a dating proposal at the very least—as inaccurate as it might yet be. Consequently, during the conference the mutual examination of the material resulted in numerous conclusions. For example, the traditional dating by formal phenomena has lost little of its value, but in fact is frequently confirmed by many excavations.
Therefore very important were the presentations of Ross Thomas on the large number of figurines from Naukratis, as well as of James Bennett on the figurines from a votive pit of the 1 st centuries B.
The occasional finding of molds or products from the same mold—for example at Schedia, Kiman Faris, or Bubastos—widens the possibility of reconstructing the ancient production network. The deviation of thematic preferences already can be seen between the eastern and western Nile delta in the talk by Pascal Ballet. These subjects are also found at other sites, such as Memphis or Naukratis, but obviously in much lesser quantities and in different types and molds.
Moreover, a type that might have been expected to be dominant at Bubastos, Bastet as a cat, to date is completely absent, while Sergej Ivanov illustrated how the transformation of Bastet figurines from bronze to terracotta might have taken place at Memphis and, as Eva Lange illustrated, at Alexandria, where the early Hellenistic Boubasteion recently yielded many terracotta figurines of Bastet or the hellenized Bubastis.
