In Predynastic times, burials were simple, with bodies placed in flexed position in shallow pits. Simple grave gifts might be added, such as a few pots, figurines, tools, cosmetics, and ornaments. In the Archaic period, practices became more elaborate. The body was wrapped in linen and placed with grave goods in a pit sunk 3m—4m into the ground. This burial spot and any adjacent rooms were covered and protected first by a low mound of earth, and then by a mastaba,
Figure 5.3 Mastaba tomb of Queen Merneith (reconstruction), Abydos
A low, flat, rectangular structure made of mud brick, a series of compartments covered by a single roof (Figures 5.3 and 5.4). The facades were decorated to resemble a house, with the grandest showing the same sort of indented facades believed to have been featured on the palace at Memphis, the capital city. Such indented facades were standard in the mud brick architecture of Mesopotamia and, together with the use of cylinder seals and perhaps the idea of writing, indicate the high level of Near Eastern contact in this formative period of Egyptian civilization.
Mastaba tombs beginning with that of King Aha (First Dynasty; Narmer’s successor) at Abydos were surrounded by simple graves for servants and craftsmen buried with the tools of their particular trades (Figures 5.5 and 5.6). Thirty-four such tombs accompanied Aha’s burial; they belonged to seemingly healthy young men, none older than twenty-five, plus a pair of lions. The men may have been dispatched to accompany their master in the afterlife; their presence recalls the array of sacrificed servants in the Royal Cemetery at Ur. This practice did not continue beyond the Archaic period. A good supply of servants was eventually assured by the placing in tombs of such stand-ins as figures painted or sculpted on tomb walls (beginning in the Fourth Dynasty); small-scale models of activities from daily life (farming, preparation of food and drink, etc.), from the First Intermediate Period on; and shabtis (mummiform statuettes), starting in the
Figure 5.4 Mastaba tomb also attributed to Queen Merneith (reconstruction), Saqqara
Figure 5.5 Overall site plan, Abydos
Middle Kingdom. All these images were given life through the texts written on the walls and the magic of ritual.
The Archaic cemetery at Abydos contains an important feature seemingly absent at Saqqara: funerary enclosures. Such enclosures are associated with royal burials. The enclosures may represent palace courtyards, impressive locations for ceremonial appearances of the kings (Figure 5.7). A few kilometers separate them from the tombs; they lie closer to the cultivation zone, more accessible for the living. Their walls have indented “palace-facade” decoration, like the mastabas. Inside they are largely empty space; but the best preserved enclosure, the “Shunet ez-Zebib,” that of the late Second Dynasty king Khasekhemwy, contained a small building in one corner. Outside the eastern wall, twelve wooden boats (19m—29m in length) buried in pits may be connected either with this enclosure or with the adjacent. The presence of the enclosures and the buried boats in the first two dynasties is significant, for both will reappear dramatically in the great tombs of the succeeding Third and Fourth Dynasties (see below).
Figure 5.7 Royal funerary enclosures, Abydos
The identity of those buried in the Early Dynastic mastaba tombs at Abydos and Saqqara has been much argued. Which tombs belonged to the kings? The combination of mastaba tomb and funerary enclosure makes it probable that Abydos, not Saqqara, was the location for most First and several Second Dynasty royal burials. Also favoring Abydos is apparent continuity in burials of distinguished individuals from the later Predynastic period, and the greater number of subsidiary graves of retainers. In this view the Saqqara mastabas would belong to high officials, or might represent northern cenotaphs of the rulers buried at Abydos. The question remains controversial, however, for the mastaba tombs at Saqqara were larger, grander than those at Abydos, even if without enclosures, and the capital city, Memphis, lay conveniently nearby. In the Second Dynasty, royal tombs may well have been divided between Abydos and Saqqara.
World History
