GENERAL EDITOR’S EOREWORD

When we think of ancient Egypt, it is often questions concerning the origins of this great civilization that remain the most fascinating and puzzling. By the time the first pyramids were built at Saqqara and then at Giza in the 3rd Dynasty, the monumentality and imposing style of Egyptian art and architecture seem already well established. But what is known of the preceding period? In recent years it is from the site of Abydos in Upper Egypt that much new evidence has been emerging about this time, casting light not only on the ist and 2nd Dynasties of Egypt, but also upon their predecessors at the very end of the predynastic period. Here, it is clear, were located the first royal tombs, and from recent researches at Abydos come new insights into the origins of king-ship in Egypt, and the formation there of early state organization. Moreover, we now have the earliest indications of writing in Egypt, which rival in antiquity those of Early Dynastic or Late Predynastic Mesopotamia.

In this fresh and original account of Abydos David O’Connor starts with the feature for which Abydos has been known in more recent times, the great temple erected by the New Kingdom pharaoh Seti I, father of Ramesses the Great. This remains one of the great monuments of the period and the most conspicuous on the site.

Aydos was most famous in the heyday of Egyptian civilization, in the Middle and New Kingdoms, for the temple of the god Osiris, brother of Isis and father of Horns. Here probably from as early as 2000 bc there took place the annual procession from the temple to the supposed tomb of the god, a structure that modern scholarship now recognizes as the re-used tomb of the First Dynasty pharaoh Djer. In the procession was re-enacted the murder of the god by his brother Seth, his dismemberment, his reconstitution by his faithful wife (and sister) Isis, and, through her divine skills, his posthumous conception of his divine successor Horus. David O’Connor discusses the great complex of Abydos at that time using the helpful concept of a sacred landscape, a terrain largely dedicated to the dead and dominated by the divine presence of Osiris, ruler of the netherworld, ‘Eternal Lord Who Presides over Abydos’. We obtain an unusually clear picture of the rituals surrounding the death of the pharaoh at the height of Egyptian power and influence in the early years of the New Kingdom.

David O’Connor has been associated with research and excavation at Abydos since 1967, and is thus in an excellent position to summarize its

Complex history. He has himself been involved in the excavations of the early town and the study of the interesting and very early mud enclosures that represent some of the largest surviving monuments from Old Kingdom times, and has been able to clarify their likely function. Perhaps the most remarkable feature of the site is the survival of extensive remains of the tombs of the rulers of the ist and 2nd Dynasties (including the tomb of Narmer, the legendary first pharaoh of a united Egypt), and of their predecessors. The whole cemetery area including these early burials is known in Arabic as the Umm el Qa‘ab, the ‘Mother of Pots’, and constitutes one of the most interesting and informative cemeteries in the world of archaeology. O’Connor reviews the evidence of these early royal tombs: it is now clear that only during the znd Dynasty did Saqqara become the official burial place of the pharaohs. He reviews also the work of Gunter Dreyer, of the German Archaeological Institute in Cairo, who has revealed the importance of the site in the late predynastic period, when what were in effect royal tombs were constructed, prior to what later chroniclers regarded as the officially recorded ist Dynasty. The cemetery in question also includes the now famous Tomb U-j, with its series of inscribed labels that carry the evidence for writing in Egypt back to around 3300 bc, so allowing scholars to question the previously accepted theory that knowledge of writing came first to Egypt from Mesopotamia.

O’Connor is also able to give us a first-hand account of his discovery of the remarkable series of boat burials at Abydos, where no fewer than 14 full-scale predynastic wooden boats, all dating from before 3000 bc, have been found in remarkably well-preserved condition. This fleet - for they were buried together — now ranks as the earliest surviving assemblage of boats in the world. When excavation has proceeded further they will tell us much not only of the early history of river travel on the Nile, but also of the social organization inevitably required to effect these labour-intensive burials. Such a substantial input of labour here and in the massive enclosures of the same period anticipates in some ways the massive investment of labour which went into the construction of the first pyramids, only a few centuries later, when the practice of royal burial had left Abydos and been transferred to Saqqara.

Work continues at Abydos. One marvels at the seemingly inexhaustible resources of the site and at the scale and duration of the cult of Osiris. But for me what is most fascinating is the insight which we obtain into this burial ground of proto-kings and early kings at the crucial period when the Egyptian state was first emerging and the civilization of the pharaohs was taking shape.

Colin Renfrew