The Royal Tombs of Ancient Egypt

Aidan Dodson

• Publisher: Pen & Sword Archaeology
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781473821590
• eBook ISBN: 9781473880047
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Egyptian Ancient History
• Index: History

The renowned Egyptologist presents a fascinating and comprehensive history of Ancient Egyptian pyramids, mausolea and other funerary monuments.
The royal tombs of ancient Egypt include some of the most stupendous monuments of all time, containing some of the greatest treasures to survive from the ancient world. This book is a history of the burial places of the rulers of Egypt from the very dawn of history down to the country's absorption into the Roman Empire, three millennia later. During this time, the tombs ranged from mudbrick-lined pits in the desert, through pyramid-topped labyrinths to superbly decorated galleries penetrating deep into the rock of the Valley of the Kings.
The Royal Tombs of Ancient Egypt is the most comprehensive study of ancient Egyptian funerary monuments to date. Egyptologist Aidan Dodson examines not only the burial places themselves, but also the temples built to provide for the dead pharaoh's soul. The volume covers the tombs of both native and foreign monarchs as well as royal family members.

Chapter 1

In the Beginning

The first royal tombs

Until the latter part of the fourth millennium BC, Egyptian burial places were generally simple graves cut into the desert surface and marked by little more than low mounds of sand or gravel. In such graves, a flexed corpse was laid on its side, facing east, surrounded by various possessions. Graves of the Badarian and Naqada I cultures in Upper Egypt were generally oval or circular, with the body placed in a foetal pose, often wrapped in goat skins or mats and facing east, with the head to the south. Funerary equipment is largely restricted to pottery vessels, together with some examples of ivory and bone combs, slate palettes and perhaps pottery figurines. By Naqada II, the design of the grave became more rectangular, with more plentiful and standardised funerary equipment. The orientation of the body was also generally reversed to face west, which was in historic times the location of the home of the dead; the head remained at the south end. The graves were sometimes elaborated with wooden linings and roofs, while some very high-status examples were lined with brick and divided into two compartments by a wall.

Amongst these is the first known decorated tomb in Egypt, Hierakonpolis 100.¹ The mud-brick walls of the tomb were covered with a layer of mud plaster and then by a coat of yellow ochre. Only one wall was wholly covered with decoration, although hints of decorated areas survived on the other walls at the time of discovery. The scenes contained elements of what later became part of the Egyptian iconographic canon, such as hunting, smiting enemies and a series of bound prisoners. The apparently unique nature of the decoration suggests a particularly high status owner, and as such the tomb could be seen as one of the very earliest ‘royal’ tombs in the country.

Hierakonpolis appears to have been the focus for the grouping of southern Egyptian polities that seem to have begun to coalesce around 3300 BC into what would ultimately become the united kingdom of Egypt. Some of its later chieftains constructed a cemetery of brick-lined tombs 2 km to the west of tomb 100, up the Wadi Abu’l-Suffian, which had already been used as a cemetery in Naqada I times.² The tombs here were considerably larger than earlier examples and occupied areas of between 9 and 22 m². One tomb, number 23 of Naqada IIa/b date, was particularly large and preserved traces of a superstructure of wood and reeds (pl. Ia). It is possible that other such superstructures existed, although they have not survived.

Tombs with very similar substructures were constructed in Cemetery U at Abydos (fig. 1). They formed part of the Umm el-Qaab cemetery, which lay in front of a valley leading back into the western hills (pl. Ib, map 10), and was first used in Naqada I-IIa times, with elite tombs beginning in Naqada IId2 and running through until historic times. These were almost certainly the tombs of the men whose immediate descendants would unite the country for the first time.

The succeeding Naqada III culture saw a more general elaboration of burial places, the rectangular form now becoming standard. There was also far greater distinction between the sepulchres of the highest status individuals and those of lesser folk. One of the most impressive of the former was U-j at Umm el-Qaab (pl. IIa),³ constructionally identical with Hierakonpolis 100, although far larger, with a dozen rooms, the result of at least two phases of construction, which added additional storerooms to an original core of a burial chamber and surrounding cavities. It was the direct ancestor of a whole series of similar tombs built there by the kings of the First Dynasty, the first rulers of the whole country. Its precise date remains a matter for some debate, particularly over whether its apparent owner, ‘Scorpion’, is identical with a king of that name who owned a mace-head found at Hierakonpolis and is datable directly before the unification of Egypt around 3000 BC, or an earlier homonym.

The Umm el-Qaab spread southwestward over time, with the sepulchres of kings of the Early Dynastic Period at its furthest extension. The first of these lay in Cemetery B, just beyond Cemetery U, and included two tombs that appear to date to the period just before the unification. One, apparently belonging to a king named Irihor (B0/1/2),⁴ comprised three pits in the desert gravel, of which one (B2) was lined with brick, with a wood and mud-brick roof. Another, apparently of Ka (B7/9), was similar but was made up of only two pits.⁵

The First Dynasty

The sepulchres constructed following the unification continue the preexisting construction philosophy for such structures, brick-lined cuttings in the desert gravel. They were roofed with wood beams, but the structure above this is unclear. One or more layers of mud brick lay above the roof, but the form of the actual superstructure remains unclear, given the almost total lack of preservation above the level of the substructure walls. However, a few traces suggest a sand-tumulus directly above the wooden roofs of the substructure in at least some cases, with the whole tomb covered with a mound of gravel, perhaps defined by brick retaining walls, although no actual remains have been identified.⁶

The tomb of Narmer (B17/18),⁷ probably the principal historical prototype for Menes, the traditional unifier of Egypt, was a modest structure, comprising what was originally two separate pits, but had become a single cavity when the dividing wall between them collapsed; a thin brick dividing wall was then added as a repair.

Three pits (B10/15/19), with brick linings between 1.5 and 2.1 m thick comprised the tomb of Hor-Aha (pl. IIb),⁸ roofed with two to five layers of mud-bricks, laid on matting and supported by wooden beams. Chamber B15 served as the burial chamber, the three chambers covering an area of 12 by 9 m, apparently covered by sand mound 40 by 16 m. A series of subsidiary graves lay northeast of the main tomb, those closest to the king’s tomb probably belonging to members of his family (see p. 6).

Hor-Aha’s complex at Umm el-Qaab was supplemented by a group of three brick enclosures, all dated to the reign by sealings, some 2 km to the northeast, overlooking the cultivation (see fig. 1).⁹ It is possible that Narmer may have also built an enclosure in the area, part of a wall having been found still further northeast.¹⁰ The largest of Hor-Aha’s enclosures included key features that would recur in later examples, in particular a complex entrance at the southern end of the east wall, with a brick-built multi-room structure just inside. There were at least four – probably originally six – subsidiary graves outside the enclosure, while on the northwest side were a pair of much smaller enclosures (perhaps attributable to his wives?).

These structures stand at the beginning of a sequence of such ‘remote’ enclosures that were built down to the end of the Early Dynastic Period, with some (but not all) of the Umm el-Qaab kings’ tombs matched with an enclosure (pl. IIIa).¹¹ All appear to have had entrances at the southernmost end of the east face – the location of the offering place in contemporary and later private mastabas – and another at the eastern end of the north face – in the direction of the Kom el-Sultan, the site of the city temples. They were clearly part of the kings’ broader funerary complex, at least some housing a small brick chapel and perhaps a number of wooden/other plant-material structures (albeit not fixed into the ground, given the lack of any surviving post-holes), the possible form of the latter being perhaps indicated by the skeuomorphic stone structures in Abydos enclosures’ lineal descendant, the Step Pyramid complex of the beginning of the Third Dynasty (p. 12).

While seal-impressions from some enclosures indication significant ritual usage, each enclosure was demolished prior to the completion of the enclosure of the succeeding king, with walls tumbled inwards onto a specially-laid layer of clean sand. They thus seem to have been employed on a time-limited basis, perhaps for a defined period of time following a king’s death or interment.

The tomb of Djer (O – pl. IIIb)¹² marked a significant change in the structure of recent royal tombs (although reminiscent in many ways of U-j). Rather than a series of separate adjacent pits, a single large cavity was sunk in the desert and lined with brick nearly 3 m thick. Along all sides but the south, a series of stub-walls was built, creating storerooms. The remaining area of the tomb was then enclosed with wooden partitions to define the burial chamber itself. The tomb was modified during the Middle Kingdom, when it was converted into the symbolic tomb of Osiris, an entrance stairway being added at the south end, together with a recumbent figure of the god, datable to the Thirteenth Dynasty.¹³

The tomb is the first from which any trace of an offering place survives (although any other superstructure has entirely vanished). While nothing has been recorded in situ, a stela bearing the king’s name and closely resembling others from later reigns found on site found its way to the Egyptian Museum, Cairo (pl. IVa). Later examples certainly came in pairs and seem to have stood together on the eastern side of the tomb as a focus for the dead king’s cult. Bearing the king’s Horus-name, such pairs are known from royal offering places down to the early Fourth Dynasty at least. Compared to the tomb of Hor-Aha, the number of subsidiary burials was greatly increased (to over 300) and rearranged in geometric blocks, principally to the north and west of the king’s tomb itself, each equipped with a small stela, indicating that the owners were members of the royal household. Questions remain over whether some or all of these graves were occupied at the time of the king’s own interment, and thus represent human sacrifices (cf. p. 6).¹⁴

His remote enclosure (now almost entirely vanished) covered some six times the area of the largest of Hor-Aha’s examples, and was surrounded by 269 subsidiary graves. The similarly-denuded enclosure of Djer’s successor, Djet, was slightly smaller, and had only 154 subsidiary graves. This reduction in numbers is also seen adjacent to that king’s actual tomb, where only 175 subsidiary graves are to be found.

The sepulchre of Djet (Z)¹⁵ was very similar to that of his predecessor, Djer, but again slightly smaller. Traces survived showing that the substructure had been topped by a mound that lay entirely below the surface of the ground was perhaps a representation of the primeval mound; it seems likely that this was a feature of other First Dynasty royal tombs as well.¹⁶ The limestone stelae (pl. IVb) were particularly fine, as compared with those coming before and after. Djet’s widow, Meryetneith, seems to have served as regent during the minority of her son, Den, and as a ruler of the country had a tomb at Umm el-Qaab (Y).¹⁷ This had only a single line of subsidiary graves on each side, totalling forty-one, but the basic concept of the tomb followed that of the preceding kings – a central burial chamber, surrounded by storerooms. The remote enclosure also followed the usual pattern, but again with a greatly reduced number of graves (seventy-nine).

A major design-innovation is to be seen in the tomb of Den himself. Previous tombs had no means of access except through their roofs; thus final structural completion was not possible until after the burial. However, the tomb of Den (T)¹⁸ incorporated a 29 m-long stairway, running under the tomb’s subsidiary graves and (lost) superstructure, giving access to the burial chamber via a door closed after the burial with brick blocking and a wooden portcullis. Stairways were also introduced around the same time into private tombs.¹⁹

The internal layout of tomb T also varied from earlier examples, storerooms being placed entirely outside the burial chamber structure to the south, and apparently only accessible from above, while a stair-accessed complex in the southeast corner was possibly a shrine. The brick walls of the wood-lined...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Abbreviations and Conventions
• Introduction
• Maps
• Chapter 1: In the Beginning
• Chapter 2: The Old Kingdom
• Chapter 3: The First Intermediate Period
• Chapter 4: The Middle Kingdom
• Chapter 5: The Second Intermediate Period
• Chapter 6: The New Kingdom
• Chapter 7: The Third Intermediate Period
• Chapter 8: The Saite and Later Periods
• Endnotes
• Chronology of Ancient Egypt
• References
• Bibliography
• Sources of Images
• Tables
• Figures
• Plates