Winnowing Scoop
Late Period
This winnowing scoop would have been one of a pair used to toss newly threshed grain into the air so that the lighter husks would blow away and the heavier grain would fall back down. It was found discarded in the debris that filled a courtyard shared by a Middle Kingdom tomb (around 2000 BCE), a Third Intermediate Period burial (around 900 BCE), and the tomb of Nespekashuty, a high official who lived during the 26th Dynasty (around 650 BCE). Demotic and Greek texts on the walls of Nespekashuty's tomb and rubbish, including texts on flakes of limestone (ostraca), indicate that reuse of this area continued into the Ptolemaic and Roman eras. Evidence for later use by Coptic monks is seen in the drawing of a Late Antique saint (23.3.761, sixth to seventh century CE) on another block from the tomb.
For more on the tomb of Nespekashuty, see 23.3.468.
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