In this context, an important, though rather enigmatic monument may be significant. In the cemetery of Dara, some 27 km. downstream from Asyut in Middle Egypt, a truly gigantic mud-brick mastaba-tomb, known as Kom Dara, occupies a commanding position. This building has not yet been properly investigated. In its present condition, an area of 138 X 144 m. (that is, 19,872 sq. m.) is delimited by massive outer walls that originally rose to a height of about 20 m. The remains of the mortuary chapel that must surely once have formed part of the complex have not yet been found. The interior, however, was reached by a sloping corridor entering the building in the middle of its north side, and leading down to a single subterranean burial chamber constructed from large limestone slabs.
The enormous size of this tomb, along with its square layout and the location of its burial chamber, are immediately reminiscent of a pyramid. Closer analysis of its construction, however, reveals beyond any doubt that the building was never planned as a pyramid. In fact, access to the burial chamber from the north is a fairly common feature in private tomb architecture of the late Old Kingdom, while the square layout of the superstructure is paralleled by lesser tombs in Dara cemetery itself Kom Dara, therefore, may be understood as a monumental tomb that derived from a local prototype, very much in the way that the royal saff-tomhs at Thebes developed from the simpler types of saff-tomhs built for the funerary cults of the ordinary people.
On the basis of pottery, Kom Dara can be dated to the earlier half of the First Intermediate Period. Its owner remains unknown to us, and there is not yet any definite evidence to support the frequently repeated identification with an otherwise unattested King Khuy, whose name appears on a relief fragment found reused in another building at the site. The tomb itself however, attests unequivocally to its owner’s aspirations to a political role that far surpassed that of a mere nomarch, regardless of whether he actually dared to assume the titles of royalty.
There are no historical records that can tell us what was actually happening at this site, but the whole context makes it plain that the owner of the Kom Dara tomb did not in fact succeed in establishing an independent centre of power, as the Thebans did at a slightly later date. It is tempting, however, to speculate a little further. In the wide, fertile plains of Middle Egypt, every ambitious local dynast was bound to find himself immediately surrounded by a score of powerful competitors. The geographical situation itself, therefore, may have helped to stabilize the balance of power between a number of Middle Egyptian local rulers, which, in turn, could have been material in maintaining royal overlordship. In addition, it does not seem too far-fetched to assume that here, in one of the agriculturally most productive areas of the country, the Crown saw important interests at stake and, accordingly, felt rather less inclined to tolerate the political adventures of provincial rulers than in the remote stretches of the ‘head of the south’ (that is, the Theban region).
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