Houses at Abu 1800 Bc

The central town streets ending in the precincts of Heqaib, Satet, and probably Khnum were filled with relatively rich houses (Kemp 2006, 199, Figure 70). Here, elegant pillars in papyrus-bundle motifs might have evoked specific divine forces such as Hathor, as well as the idyll of leisurely boating and hunting in papyrus marshes. The walls of the pillared central halls were painted in bright-colored bands (Pilgrim 1996, 123). From this period, there are both large and small

Houses in the quarter on the other side of the later Khnum temple, to the south. Here stood the house mentioned with the baby burials (see preceding text, Infant burials in houses); by 1800 bc, it had been divided into two separate structures (Pilgrim 1996, 40-43, Figure 7 Houses 23 and 24, and at the next phase p.45, Figure 9 Houses 12 and 22). In the smaller structure, less than 10 x 5 meters, the rear room was found still with its wooden threshold and traces of a single-leaf door; the larger central space, either a hall or an open court, had been a place of work, leaving flint chippings and fragments of wood tools. During the earlier phase in the life of this structure (House 23), a baby less than four months was buried in the entrance room, perhaps after the house had been abandoned; the body had been wrapped in linen, covered with reeds, and then protected by a sandstone block and two polishing stones, perhaps set here as grave markers (Figure 2.16). In the house of the neighbors (House 24), there were too few finds to identify the functions of each room or area within it, but one corner contained two seal impressions from one seal, along with a calcite vase shard and a fragment of a harp, perhaps indicating a certain leisure in the quarter, unless deposited here from use elsewhere (Pilgrim 1996, 43 with n.102).

Some decades later, a larger house again occupied the site, with rooms arranged around a courtyard 6 x 5 meters, with brick granary beside a shallow (20 cm) hollow for standing a round-bottomed jar (Pilgrim 1996, 49, Figure 10, House 10). Each of these architectural changes testifies to the intervention of people with different resources and needs, who would have formed groups of

Figure 2.16 House 23, excavation of the early to mid-second-millennium BC levels of Abu town. Drawing © Wolfram Grajetzki, after Pilgrim 1996.

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Different sizes, in ever-changing combinations of ages, genders, and classes. Always multiple, these are the social dimensions of the human space. The covered rooms and open courts of the buildings tended to have varying functions, rather than be fixed in each house as bedroom or reception room, as we might expect. However, secondary architectural features such as granaries, hearths, and water jar installations would establish longer horizons of use in their yards or chambers. In House 10 of this site, a woman or a man waking in the north room might walk into the court, across the yard to work at the granary, out through a front room into the dead-end alley on the east, turning south to leave the houses beside the temples and head for fields, riverbank, or fishing boats. The sacredness of each step might be a sustained experience or vary according to the season, the time of day or night, and the memory of each space—including, but not restricted to, the memories built into places of burial (in one case on Abu an adult burial, perhaps not so rare within settlements; cf. Pilgrim 1996, 82-83 n.226 for evidence across Egypt 2000-1600 Bc). Materially, each person and group would follow a path of varying distinctness or sacredness, only visible archaeologically where distinct material form is used or celebrated in ancient writing or depiction. A century or more after the construction of House 10, a grander building was laid out over this patch of town, with five column placements in an expanded central court (Pilgrim 1996, 55, Figure 12, House 5). Curiously, none of the usual, more obvious traces of living appeared: no hearth, granary, or animal refuse, as if this building was ceremonial or very seldom used, whether sacred or not.