In 1888-1889 and 1889-1890 Flinders Petrie was the first to excavate at the town associated with Senusret II’s pyramid at Lahun. The town was built next to the pyramid’s valley temple and is called Kahun, to distinguish it from the pyramid site (Figure 7.8). Kahun is an example of a specialized settlement, planned by the state from its onset, and is not a typical town where most ancient Egyptians would have lived. But it was the first ancient Egyptian town ever excavated, and since settlement evidence is poorly preserved in Egypt (see 3.3), it remains an important site.
Although some of the town had been destroyed by later cultivation in the floodplain, Petrie was able to make plans of more than half of its mud-brick houses, walls, and streets. (In two field seasons he excavated over 2,000 rooms!) The plan of the town was rectangular, 335 meters long on the preserved west side and 384 meters on the north. It was not fortified, but the rows of houses were surrounded by a thick wall, with one preserved gateway next to the royal mortuary temple. Another thick wall divided off part of the town on the west. Rectangular houses of different sizes were arranged in a grid along streets that ran east-west and north-south, which Barry Kemp suggests exhibits the highly structured bureaucratic organization of the Middle Kingdom. He also cites evidence of other planned state towns of the Middle Kingdom as examples of internal colonization, such as at Karnak, and Abu Ghalib and Tell el-Dab’a in the Delta (see 7.11).
Figure 7.8 Plan of the pyramid town of Kahun. Source: B. J. Kemp, Ancient Egypt: Anatomy of a Civilization. London: Routledge, 1989, Figure 53. copyright © 1989 by Routledge. Reproduced by permission of Taylor and Francis Books uK.
Kahun was abandoned in the 13th Dynasty and later occupants disturbed parts of the site, but Middle Kingdom artifacts were excavated in their original contexts in some houses - as well as seeds of flowers and vegetables. Petrie found tools used by builders (working in both mud-brick and stone), carpenters, copper workers, farmers, fishermen, and weavers. Although many materials would have been provided by the state, the agricultural tools suggest that some workers at Kahun cultivated their own food. Game boards and children’s toys (balls, tops, wooden dolls, etc.) were also found, as were toilet articles and jewelry. Some artifacts, such as the carved ivory “wands” and stone column (offering?) stands, were probably used for private religious or magic practices in homes.
Five large houses with many rooms, ca. 60 x 42 meters in area, were located on the north side of the town, at the western end of which was an area that Petrie called the Acropolis, built on a higher outcrop of rock with access via a rock-cut staircase. Three more large houses were located to the south. In his perceptive study of the settlement, Kemp reconstructs the large houses with a columned reception room, court with pool and portico, bedrooms with sleeping alcoves, granaries, and miscellaneous rooms - similar to what is represented (in a very foreshortened version) in a wooden model from Meketra’s tomb (see 7.4). More granaries were also located in other parts of the town.
Kemp estimates that the granaries in the five large houses could have held enough grain to support a population of 5,000, or 9,000 people on minimum rations. Many of the houses that Petrie excavated at Kahun (ca. 220 of them), however, were small ones arranged back to front in rows with only four small rooms each. With up to six persons in a house, Kemp estimates that the entire community would have numbered fewer than 3,000 persons - a more likely population. If ca. 9,000 people lived there on minimum rations, the town would have been continuously on the brink of disaster, and Kemp’s numbers point out the problems of calculating population estimates based on different archaeological criteria.
Petrie thought that the Acropolis was the king’s residence when he visited his pyramid site. Re-examination of this structure by Nicholas Millet (Royal Ontario Museum) in the 1990s revealed a similar plan to the other large “mansions” in the northern part of the site. To the south of the Acropolis is an open space where the recent excavations uncovered evidence of what was probably a small temple - possibly that of a god named Sepdu known from textual evidence. Kemp suggests that this area (or the area just to the south of it) was where the town’s administration was located. The town government was headed by a mayor, and although the vizier resided at Itj-tawy, there was an office of the vizier at Kahun for legal business.
Hundreds of fragments of papyri were found at Kahun, and administrative documents are especially informative about the town organization. There are lists of gangs of workmen, their dates of work and work details, and of officials and other personnel involved - including soldiers, priests, and scribes. Legal documents include deeds, wills, and appointments of officials. Records of services rendered and payments made were written on small pieces of papyrus. The so-called census lists recorded all members of individual households, which included up to three generations, and their servants (mostly females and their children) - possibly for purposes of taxation or conscription. A number of people named in the Kahun papyri are listed as Asiatics (aamu), suggesting a large presence of people of foreign origin there, who served in households, temples, and the military.
Other papyri from Kahun include model letters for schoolboys, in addition to the real correspondence, and fragments of wooden practice boards used in schools were also excavated. A veterinary text discusses symptoms and treatment of animal diseases, and an important medical papyrus deals with gynecological problems, including those of sterility and pregnancy. A fragmentary text of a religious hymn was found and there were also literary texts. Mathematical works include calculations in solid geometry.
Petrie excavated a number of infant burials beneath house floors at Kahun. But adults, including some officials of the king, were buried in cemeteries near the town and pyramid. It is highly unusual in Egypt or elsewhere that three different forms of evidence would be so well preserved: the planned layout of a town and its houses, burials of people who lived in the houses, and texts which give much more specific information about the operation of the settlement - in addition to that of the nearby mortuary temple and pyramid.
A similar planned state town is known at South Abydos, which has recently been excavated by Josef Wegner. Possibly as large as nine hectares, the town, named Wah-sut, was associated with Senusret III’s Abydos mortuary complex (see 7.5). Seal impressions of the “house of the mayor” have been found in a large mud-brick house (Building A, ca. 80 x 52 meters), and there are at least 11 more elite houses to the east - which are similar to the large northern houses at Kahun. The town was laid out in blocks 100 cubits (52.5 meters) wide, with streets of 5 cubits (2.6 meters). The houses show evidence of internal remodeling and changing use from the late 12th Dynasty though the Second Intermediate Period and probably into the New Kingdom.
The house of the mayor at South Abydos was planned with rectangular granaries, and its garden still contained mud-brick tree pits with remains of sycamore trees. Probably the most remarkable find in this house is a painted mud-brick (Figure 7.9) from the private quarters for a princess that had been transformed from the granaries. On the brick’s base is
Figure 7.9 Descriptive scheme of images painted on a birth brick from South Abydos, Building A. Source: Josef Wegner, “Tradition and Innovation: The Middle Kingdom,” in Egyptian Archaeology, edited by Willeke Wendrich. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010, Figure 7.4.
A scene of a mother holding her newborn baby, with two other women (assisting?) and two standards of the goddess Hathor, who protected women. Magical creatures painted on the brick’s edges were probably also for protection at childbirth. In ancient Egypt women gave birth squatting on bricks (one sign used to write ms, “to give birth,” is a pictogram of this), and the Abydos brick may have been used for a real birth in the large house.
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