Introduction

Here are ideas in archaeology which spring from hunches or a belief that things ‘should or could have been like this’, frequently without clear and irrefutable evidence. hey were then repeated uncritically by following generations of scholars, long enough to become imbued with a life of their own. hey are no longer theories, but dogma beyond any need for reconsideration. hese ideas tend to become as permanent and irrefutable as the names that stand behind them. Meanwhile research has moved forward and archaeological methodologies have changed extensively, prompting and even obliging researchers to revise their views on the subject of many apparently dogmatic ideas.

An ideas worth reconsideration is the recesses and canopic pits found in some Old Kingdom mastabas. he recesses, which are encountered mainly in tombs of the early fourth dynasty, are small rectangular rock-cut niches, mostly in the south walls of burial chambers, nearer to one of the two corners, on the level of the floor or just under the ceiling (Fig. 1). Canopic pits are just as small, rectangular in shape, cut into the floor in the southern or south-eastern part of the burial chambers, next to the sarcophagus (Fig. 2a). he commonly accepted idea is that recesses were the irst to appear and were replaced over time with canopic pits.1 Such changes are indeed observable, but one should note the hybrid mastaba of Seshemnefer III in Giza (see further below), which is furnished with both a recess and a pit (Fig. 2b). Both features are thought to have served as special repositories for the viscera removed from dead bodies during the mummiication process (see below). he point is, however, that there has never been a shred of 1 F. Dunand and R. Lichtenberg, Les momies et la mort en Egypt (Paris 1998), 26.

Evidence coming from the caches as such to support this idea—no remnants of mummiication and no canopic jars. Considering the numbers of canopic containers that have survived from the Old Kingdom, it does seem strange that not one was found inside any of these pits allegedly made to hold them. Let us then take a closer look at this intriguing architectural feature of Old Kingdom tombs and reanalyse the inds and the conceptions behind their function, all the more so since three of Egyptology’s luminaries — Petrie, Reisner and Junker—are involved.819