Bárta, Miroslav. 2011. "A new Old Kingdom rock-cut tomb from Abusir and its Abusir-Saqqara context." In Old Kingdom, new perspectives. Egyptian Art and Archaeology 2750–2150 BC, eds. H. and N. Strudwick, Oxford and Oakville: Oxbow Books. 9-21. (original) (raw)
Bárta, M. 2020, Non-royal tombs in Abusir, small
Kings of the Sun. Studies, 2020
The modern interdisciplinary exploration of ancient Egyptian burial sites represents one of the major trends of contemporary archaeological research in Egyptology. Cooperation among representatives of the natural, technical and social sciences is imperative if we are to understand the information collected during the excavation process. The ancient Egyptians believed in an afterlife similar to the life they had lived on earth, and their tombs – in terms of their location, architecture, decoration, inscriptions, and burial equipment – reflected many aspects of their world, including the administration of the state, the social standing of tomb owners and their families, the realities of everyday life, religious ideas, the anthropology of the population of that time, and the state of (and changes in) the environment. Over time, four royal complexes of Fifth-Dynasty kings were built in the Abusir pyramid field during the Old Kingdom. In addition, members of the royal family and the state’s high officials constructed their tombs here. In their shadow, lower-ranking officials, along with their wives and children, would be buried. All of these monuments tell thousands of multifaceted stories, from which we can reconstruct the history of the world’s oldest territorial state. As the Abusir burial ground is so vast, it comes as no surprise that several different non-royal burial sites gradually arose independently of each other in this widespread area over the course of the third millennium BCE. While the factors influencing their position, nature and time of origin varied, key considerations would undoubtedly have been the location of the Old Kingdom’s capital, White Walls, the evolution of the network of settlements, the local cult topography, and the main communications connecting the necropolis with the Nile valley. Although much of the site remains unexplored, current knowledge and archaeological research offer a relatively detailed awareness and description of how it developed in time and space. Each of the burial sites tells, in its own specific way, the story of its time and of the owners of the individual tombs. These monuments reflect the dynamics and transformations of ancient Egyptian society. The following text provides a very limited description of some of these sites, drawing on the enormous wealth of sources known to date .
New Egyptian tomb type found at Abusir South? Report on the excavations of mud brick complex AS 103
Prague Egyptological Studies XXI, 2018
In the autumn season of 2017, four mud brick structures designated as AS 103 were excavated in the area of the south-eastern part of the New Kingdom temple (AS 70–73). It is a complex of four corridor chapels/tombs (in an area of 15.0 × 12.7 m), with single or composed niches in the western inner walls. One of the niches in Corridor Chapel 1 was cased with red-painted wooden planks. Shafts were detected in front of the niches, a fairly uncommon phenomenon in Egyptian tomb architecture. The term “hollow tomb with a shaft below a niche” is being proposed for this new tomb (sub)type. A preliminary study of the pottery leads to the conclusion that the tombs were built from the east to the west, with Corridor Chapels 4, 3 and 2 built successively in the Third Dynasty and Corridor Chapel 1 in the Fifth Dynasty. Even though they were funeral -structures, not many burials were excavated: the remains of a single human body have been found. The structures did not contain many finds, either. However, four white limestone offering basins were uncovered in situ. One of them was inscribed with the female name Nfr.t-jw=s. It is evident that the excavations have brought to light new insights into burial practices of non-elite people of the Old Kingdom period. In the context of Abusir South, AS 103 represents the first thoroughly excavated complex of such a type of tombs. Based on preliminary probing, similar structures are very likely located nearby, continuing in all directions. Keywords: Abusir South – Old Kingdom – mud brick tomb – corridor chapel – niches – human burial – pottery – offering basin – wooden casing
Prague Egyptological Studies, 2017
The excavations at Abusir South have already uncovered many tombs that added valuable information to the general knowledge of the development of the Old Kingdom society, its burial and funeral habits, and last but not least social relations and their impact on the lives of ancient Egyptian officials. One of the last discoveries is represented by the tomb of “the elder of the judicial hall” Kaisebi (AS 76) and the adjoining tomb of Ptahwer (AS 76b), which are located to the south of the anonymous mastaba AS 54 lying on the most prominent spot of the whole Abusir South area. Kaisebi and Ptahwer built their tombs between this huge mastaba AS 54 and recently discovered 18.5 m long ship, both dated to the end of the Third Dynasty. Tomb AS 76 was constructed in two phases in the course of the late Fifth and Sixth Dynasty. The first one consisted of a rather small rectangular mastaba with a chapel, a northern niche, a serdab, and two shafts. Later on, the original structure was enlarged by an annexe (AS 76b) attached to the eastern wall of AS 76, which included another offering place and two burial shafts. The cruciform chapel of Kaisebi’s mastaba with colourful wall paintings contains a well-preserved false door in situ.
After our preliminary paper concerning the funerary monuments within the 'Neferhotep Complex' in Luxor, which has been presented in this journal a few years ago 2 , it is now necessary to reconsider all the monuments of this architectural complex 3 from a wider perspective, in order to reinterpret the changes of uses and rituals, which are attested in these tombs, as important elements to understand how most of the private funerary monuments of the Theban necropolis are often characterised by an unpredictable complexity and an elaborated cultural stratification. When approaching the study of private tombs at Thebes, often the main emphasis is given to the iconographic and epigraphic apparatuses, to the typologies and chronologies of the finds and to the layout. In general Theban tombs, as suggested by some scholars 4 , are mostly associated with the names of the individuals for whom they were built; they are considered as if they were always and for ever 'pre-planned projects' for a single individual or family. But in this way we lose the developments and the changes to the project which may have occurred even during the early phases of construction; some alterations in accommodation may be due to unexpected reasons which occurred even during the construction of the monument. There are numerous cases of premature deaths of members of the family or of related families which determined a different choice in the layout and in the burials. Possible changes to the original project may have occurred due to an abrupt change in lithotypes to forms which are unsuitable for quarrying, determining therefore the change of orientation of chambers and corridors in order to find more suitable bedrock. Moreover, there was also the need to respect or avoid chambers and sections of close tombs which were earlier in date and may have been unknown because they were no longer in use: in this case the reaching of the chamber of an unknown earlier tomb during the quarrying may have determined the choice to adapt or change the project or even re-use earlier burials. The partial use or reuse of sections or chambers of other tombs may certainly happened in later phases, but it could also belong to the early phases, in case the original project have reached nearby tombs. Therefore the study of use, reuse and later developments of these tombs, in order to properly understand the chronology and the stratification of the architectural and planimetric phases, needs to take into account, together with iconographic, epigraphic, ritual and anthropological studies, also the geomorphology of the area, the topography of the surrounding monuments, the study of lithotypes and sub-lithotypes, the micro-