Giza Mastabas, Queen Hetepheres’s Hidden “Tomb,” and the Workmen’s Cemetery

Although few of the lowest-status persons were buried at Giza - the unskilled laborers who quarried stone and hauled blocks up to the pyramids - Giza tombs demonstrate a stratified society, from the king and royal family, to high officials, to various overseers and elite workers at the pyramids. To the east and west of Khufu’s pyramid are a number of high-status mastaba tombs of the 4th Dynasty. At that time, the office of vizier was held by a number of royal princes - which probably reflects tight family control of the state. In life and in death these viziers retained close ties to the king.

Many of the mastabas associated with Khufu’s pyramid were excavated by George Reisner.

Essentially these mastabas were solid structures with stone casing over a core filling. Inside was an offering chamber with a carved “false” door, the symbolic entrance through which the deceased traveled to receive offerings. A vertical shaft led to the burial chamber cut below in the bedrock. The tomb of Queen Meresankh III, one of Khafra’s queens, has several subterranean chambers, including a chapel with an impressive row of figures carved against the wall.

The mastabas were initially laid out in planned rows, with larger double tombs for members of the royal family to the east of the Great Pyramid. Complicating this plan are intrusive tombs of the 5th and 6th Dynasties, built in between the earlier ones. Some of the western tombs were first built with solid superstructures and an exterior decorated stela, but were later modified with interior chapels. Rock-cut tombs of Khafra’s and Menkaura’s family members are located farther south, in quarry areas near their pyramids.

Box 6-D The Giza Archives Project

The Harvard University-Boston Museum of Fine Arts (MFA) Expedition at Giza (1905-1947), under the direction of George A. Reisner, was the longest running archaeological project at this major Old Kingdom cemetery. A pioneer of archaeological research in Egypt, Reisner kept meticulous records of his Giza finds, including field notes, photographs, plans and drawings, and this unmatched resource is now available in an online archive (Www. gizapyramids. org).

Beginning in 2000, Giza Project director Peter Der Manuelian (now at Harvard University) and his staff digitized more than 37,000 black-and-white excavation photos, as well as more recent ones in color. Almost 4,000 records of Giza tombs and monuments and more than 22,000 artifacts have also been copied. The archive also includes about 10,000 maps and plans from the entire Giza necropolis, a digital library of articles on Giza, and about 4,500 pages of Reisner’s unpublished manuscripts. For each Giza tomb there are links to all of Reisner’s records, including artifacts found in the tomb and where they are located now. Material from recent MFA fieldwork at Giza, as well as Giza material from other expeditions, museums, and universities around the world have also been included in the Giza Archives.

But the Giza Project is also bringing Reisner’s excavations into the 21st century. Additions include zoomable satellite photos of the site and the restoration of tombs and monuments in virtual reality, as they appeared in the third millennium Bc (Plate 6.8). The Giza Archives Project is an excellent example of how well-recorded sites in Egypt, even though excavated long ago, can be relevant to the continued work of scholars as well as archaeologists working at the site now.

The finely modeled bust of Prince Ankh-haf (Khafra’s vizier, Plate 6.6) comes from the largest tomb in the cemetery to the east of the Great Pyramid, while the seated statue of Khufu’s corpulent vizier and overseer of works, Hemiunu, is from one of the largest tombs in the western cemetery. In some of the Giza tombs, in the burial chamber or at the bottom of the vertical shaft, Hermann Junker and Reisner found what have been called “reserve heads,” portrait-like limestone heads (without the rest of the body; Figure 6.12). Junker’s explanation for these artifacts is that they were a substitute in case the head of the deceased’s mummy was destroyed. More recently, Roland Tefnin has suggested that they were “magical heads,” which were mutilated in connection with execration rituals. The intentional destruction seen on these heads can possibly be explained by passages in later religious and mortuary texts.

The Giza tomb of Hetepheres I, the wife of Sneferu and the mother of Khufu, was found accidentally by Reisner’s photographer in 1925. Located to the south of the causeway of Khufu’s pyramid, the tomb had no superstructure. The undisturbed burial chamber was at the bottom of a very deep vertical shaft (30 meters) filled with stone, but when opened there

Figure 6.12 “Reserve head” from a mastaba tomb to the west of Khufu’s Giza pyramid. Source: akg-images/Erich Lessing.

Was no mummy in the travertine sarcophagus. Reisner thought that Hetepheres’s original burial was elsewhere, possibly at Dahshur near one of her husband’s pyramids, but when it was robbed her son Khufu reburied her tomb goods near his pyramid. It has also been suggested that the queen’s body was robbed before the intended burial in this tomb, or that her true burial was in one of the three queens’ pyramids of Khufu’s complex, and was subsequently robbed. Another interpretation of this underground chamber is that it was not a tomb, but a ritual deposit of the queen’s funerary equipment.

Wood from Hetepheres’s furnishings had decayed, but on the chamber’s floor were gold inlays and gold foil, which originally covered some of the furnishings. Meticulous care was taken in the chamber’s excavation - every fragment was recorded in notes, photographs, and drawings, which enabled the reconstruction of a sedan chair, bed and headrest, two chairs/thrones, and a tent canopy and box containing linen that covered it (sewn with gold rosettes) (Figure 6.13). Silver bracelets of the queen were decorated with butterfly designs of inlaid carnelian, lapis lazuli, and turquoise.

In another area at Giza, to the west of the royal production complex, Zahi Hawass has been excavating a cemetery with hundreds of tombs belonging to project overseers, artisans, and laborers. Pottery and inscriptions help date the cemetery to the 4th and 5th Dynasties.

Tomb superstructures include mud-brick pyramids, domed forms, and mastabas, with

Figure 6.13 Restored furniture found in the Giza tomb or ritual deposit of Queen Hetepheres I, the chief queen of Sneferu and mother of Khufu. Source: Werner Forman Archive/Egyptian Museum, Cairo.

The burial in a subterranean shaft. A small group of tombs belonging to higher-status persons is located up a ramp at a higher elevation of the escarpment. Larger than the tombs in the lower part of the cemetery, these tombs are rock-cut or made of mud-brick covered with limestone. craftsmanship of tomb artifacts is of higher quality than in the lower cemetery, as are the inscriptions carved or painted around the false doors. The most important title found in the upper cemetery is “Director of the King’s Work.” Tomb inscriptions include curses for tomb robbers, threatening attack from crocodiles and hippopotamuses. Women were also buried in this cemetery, including a priestess of the goddess Hathor, and one female burial was of a pregnant dwarf. Well-preserved, painted statues of tomb owners have been excavated in serdab chambers, as well as smaller figurines.

Human remains from this cemetery have been studied by scientists at the Egyptian National Research Center. Age at death for many of the men was 30-35, while a number of women were younger, probably dying in childbirth. The burials were not mummified, indicating their relatively lower status. Most burials were in a contracted position, with head to the north facing east - not fully extended in coffins as in higher status burials. Work-related problems, such as degenerative arthritis and limb fractures - and even amputations - are evident in a number of skeletons.

Box 6-E Belief in burial and the afterlife

Although the symbolism of prehistoric burials in Upper Egypt cannot be specified because written funerary texts are a much later development, some basic beliefs concerning the afterlife are probably symbolized in these burials. In the Naqada culture the body was buried in a grave and was sometimes protected by coverings such as reed mats or animal skins. If not disturbed by grave robbers or scavengers such as jackals or hyenas, unmummified bodies placed in pits in the desert could be remarkably well preserved in the arid environment. For example, at Naqada in 1978 Kathryn Bard excavated the burial of a child that still had brain tissue in the cranium. Some Predynastic burials at Hierakonpolis, with limbs covered in bark (see 5.3), may even represent an effort to preserve the body artificially. The deceased was to be symbolically nourished in the afterlife, and was provided with real food, and probably beer and water in large jars. Bread has been found in some Predynastic burials at Armant, and a bowl with barley seeds was in the Naqada child’s burial that Bard excavated. Artifacts that the deceased would have used and enjoyed in life, such as jewelry, hair ornaments, and cosmetic palettes, were also placed in some Predynastic burials.

For those of means, more protection of the body and grave goods was possible with the development of tomb architecture in the Early Dynastic Period. The burial was below ground: the 30-meter shaft cut in the bedrock and filled with masonry leading to Queen Hetepheres I’s burial chamber (ritual deposit?) at Giza is evidence of the great efforts taken to protect some burials. In the burial chamber the preserved body was placed in a coffin or sarcophagus. A tomb superstructure called a mastaba covered the burial shaft. This was where offerings were placed by family members

And/or priests, first in specially designed niches on the mastaba’s exterior, and later in an offering chamber inside the structure.

In the offering chamber was a niched false door, above which were carved mortuary texts of the offering formula (hetep di nesu), which was another way to magically provide sustenance for the deceased. Blocked off and not a real door, the false door was the route through which the deceased’s ka traveled from the subterranean burial to the offering chamber. Also in the mastaba was a small sealed-off room (serdab) for the deceased’s statue, often with a slit for the statue to look outside. The Opening of the Mouth ceremony enabled the deceased to breathe, eat, and speak in the afterlife, and was performed on the mouth of the deceased’s statue by a priest with special tools.

It was believed that there were three elements of a person’s existence in the afterlife: the ba, ka, and akh, which have no real equivalents in Judeo-Christian and Muslim beliefs. The ka is often translated as “life force”; it was the “personality” of a living person and an aspect of the deceased that required offerings left in the offering chamber. Royal pyramids may also have had a ka statue chamber or a small ka pyramid. The ba is often translated as “soul,” but it is perhaps better to think of it as a manifestation of an individual’s self after death. Depicted as a human-headed bird from the New Kingdom onward, the ba traveled between the tomb and the world of the afterlife. The akh is associated with “effectiveness” in life and transfiguration in the afterlife. For the afterlife, the akh needed the correct mortuary texts/spells to be rendered effective. It may have a similar meaning to “spirit,” with both good and bad results for the living - and an angry akh could affect the living adversely. As Mark Lehner has succinctly stated in The Complete Pyramids, “the reunion of the ba with the ka is effected by the burial ritual, creating the final transformation of the deceased as an akh”

For the ba to exist the body of the deceased had to be preserved, which was the underlying rationale and ideological reason for mummification. Zahi Hawass has found evidence at Saqqara of a Ist-Dynasty official whose bones were covered with resin, and evidence of bodies wrapped in fine linen is also known from this period. Bodies could also be wrapped in linen (including each finger and toe) that was soaked with resin, and molded to appear more lifelike - and less putrefied. By the 4th Dynasty there is evidence of evisceration, which meant that the internal organs were embalmed separately. Although the body of Queen Hetepheres I was missing from her Giza “tomb,” her viscera were discovered in a travertine container divided into four compartments, which had been placed in a special sealed recess. The viscera had been preserved in a natron solution, which was still in three of the compartments.

After burial the body was believed to be reunited with its internal organs. Later Old Kingdom mummies were wrapped and modeled in linen that was then painted with facial features and hair. Sometimes even the genitalia and breasts were articulated in linen, and modeling was also done in plaster on the mummy. The brain’s true function was unknown and it was usually removed from the cranium: the heart was thought to be the seat of intelligence. True mummification of the entire body, in which the remaining muscles/tissues and bones were packed with natron solution, became technologically advanced in the New Kingdom (see Box 8-C) - but it was very costly.