Ancient Egyptian Tombs

The Culture of Life and Death

Steven Snape

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9781444393736
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Egyptian Ancient History
• Index: History

This book explores the development of tombs as a cultural phenomenon in ancient Egypt and examines what tombs reveal about ancient Egyptian culture and Egyptians' belief in the afterlife.

• Investigates the roles of tombs in the development of funerary practices
• Draws on a range of data, including architecture, artifacts and texts
• Discusses tombs within the context of everyday life in Ancient Egypt
• Stresses the importance of the tomb as an eternal expression of the self

Chapter 1

Nameless Lives at Tarkhan and Saqqara

Early Tombs and the Ka

Burials and Beliefs in Predynastic Cemeteries

One of the most regularly repeated refrains within Egyptian archaeology is the extent to which the subject is relatively blessed with the survival of ancient tombs and cemeteries when compared to settlement sites. Indeed many ancient towns and cities can only be located because of the survival of their cemeteries while the dwellings of the Living have disappeared beneath the floodplain of the Nile. This is especially true for the Predynastic – the period before the unification of Egypt at c.3050 BC. While shifts in the course of the Nile over the past six thousand years mean that a few Predynastic towns are now on the desert rather than submerged beneath the damp Nile silt of the cultivation, it is still the desert-edge cemeteries, deliberately placed there, which provide the best corpus of evidence for Egypt before the pharaohs (Wengrow 2006; Wilkinson 1999).

The evidence from the excavation of hundreds of Predynastic graves (Castillos 1982), especially from the cemeteries of southern Egypt, makes it possible to describe, in broad terms, typical burials of the Predynastic Period and its sub-divisions, although it should also be noted that, as later, no two graves of the Predynastic are identical in their form or contents. Typical burials of the Badarian (c.4500–3800 BC) consist of oval pits containing contracted burials, lying on their left side, head to the south, facing west, lying on a mat and wrapped/covered by a mat or gazelle skin. Grave goods include distinctive handmade pottery, long-toothed bone/ivory combs, slate palettes and personal jewellery (Midant-Reynes 2000: 153–8). Graves of Naqada I (c.3800–3500 BC) are essentially similar to those of the Badarian, but with some degree of differentiation based on the size of the grave and the number and quality of its contents, especially at the major centre of Hierakonpolis (Adams 1987; Midant-Reynes 2000: 170). This differentiation became more marked in Naqada II (c.3500–3300 BC). Other innovations of Naqada II included much less consistency in the orientation of the body and the replacement of animal skin coverings with matting and linen; in richer graves they were superseded by the introduction of coffins made of basketwork and, ultimately, wood. (Midant-Reynes 2000: 187; see Chapter 9 below). The move towards a clear differentiation between small numbers of large and well-provisioned tombs and a majority of much less impressive graves, probably indicating social status within larger, politically sophisticated communities, is seen most starkly during Naqada III (c.3300–3100 BC; Midant-Reynes 2000: 235ff.). However, the most remarkable tomb of the Predynastic – the so-called ‘Painted Tomb’ at Hierakonpolis – probably dates to Naqada II (Midant-Reynes 2000: 207ff.); in any case this tomb belongs to an owner who can certainly be regarded as elite, and probably quasi-royal, and a precursor to the definitely royal tombs of Dynasty 1 (see Chapter 2).

We can be reasonably confident about the reconstruction of these Predynastic graves and their contents owing to the exceptionally high levels of preservation of objects placed within the grave, which was filled with the dry, desiccating sand of the desert. These high levels of preservation extended to the body itself, which had effectively, but in all probability accidentally, been provided with ideal conditions for natural mummification as the dry desert sand acted as a natural absorbent for the potentially destructive decompositional fluids. This natural preservation of the body would have far-reaching consequences for Egyptians' attitudes to the body in their view of the afterlife and, consequently, tomb design itself. However, although these Predynastic graves and their contents are often extremely well preserved, we have little idea as to how, if at all, the position of the graves was marked since no substantial superstructures have survived until relatively late in the period. It is possible that a simple mound of sand/gravel was the most usual covering of these graves. In addition, we do not know how the graves of the Dead were regarded by the Living. In fact we have no real idea about what the Predynastic Egyptians actually believed would happen to them after death. The evidence of the graves themselves is ambiguous and capable of radically different interpretations.

A good case in point is a burial excavated by Petrie in 1912–13 at the late Predynastic cemetery of Tarkhan, which is 60 km south of Cairo on the West Bank of the Nile. The interment in question was numbered 1845 by Petrie (1914) and was particularly important as it seems to have been the only one of the burials he excavated that season which had not been robbed, and therefore the only one where the placement of the objects within the grave could be confidently said to be a deliberate arrangement at the time of burial. On the basis of the pottery found within it, the grave was assigned Sequence Date (SD) 77, which places it just before the unification of Egypt; it might therefore be seen as sitting on the cusp between the somewhat enigmatic graves of the Predynastic Period and the explanation-rich tombs of the Dynastic Period. An alabaster bowl, with a slate palette placed over it, had been positioned in front of the face of the contracted body, lying on its left side with head to the south facing west, while other pottery storage jars had also been put into the grave (Figure 1.1).

Figure 1.1 Tarkhan Tomb 1845: the burial (after Petrie 1914: Pl. 12)

Faced with this evidence, it is possible to produce a range of hypotheses which explain the observed phenomena. One might draw the conclusion that the grave and its contents represent a belief (or, rather, possible sets of beliefs) in the afterlife – the body buried in the foetal position might reflect the cycle of birth and death; the body facing west towards the setting sun and the land of the afterlife beyond the horizon; the objects within the tomb might have been placed there for the use of the Dead in the afterlife, or for their journey there. Predynastic graves might therefore display a developed spirituality in respect of the afterlife which can be directly traced into those belief-systems which are very clearly expressed in the Dynastic Period.

However, one might also look at the evidence of Tarkhan 1845 and decide that it represents a very different state of affairs in that the body buried in the crouched position within a shallow grave minimizes the effort needed to dispose of a dead human body by burial and that the objects placed within the grave represent a fairly minimal set of comparatively low-value objects which were personally associated with the dead individual and, for superstitious reasons, would not be wanted by a living member of the community. Predynastic graves might therefore represent a minimal effort to dispose of the inconvenient dead and no belief in the afterlife need be assumed.

Both these explanations represent extreme cases of trying either to find or to deny a belief in an afterlife in every feature associated with these burials, and the ‘truth’ is unrecoverable since we cannot reconstruct the mental states of those individuals who lived and died in Predynastic Egypt. In fact the interpretation of beliefs in an afterlife based on the fact of burial and the presence of grave goods is fraught with difficulties, and any ethnographic survey of burial practices and the social and belief-systems which gave rise to them presents us with a surprising kaleidoscope of possibilities; such a survey was carried out by Ucko (1969), from whose work the following examples are drawn. Burial itself does not necessarily imply any specific belief in an afterlife, nor may it be socially important to the society which carries it out – it may simply be the necessary disposal of waste in the form of an inconveniently large dead human body. For the Nuer of the Sudan, burial involved the disposal of the body, with little in the way of funeral ceremonies, in an unmarked grave. This raises the interesting issue that the treatment of the body after death does not necessarily correlate with ideas regarding an afterlife for the non-corporeal person; Dynastic Egyptians, as we shall see, were unusually concerned with the dead body as a vehicle for eternal well-being.

The objects placed within the grave might be interpreted as things which were needed by the Dead, but this is also not necessarily the case. For the Lugbara of Uganda, grave goods do not reflect a belief in an afterlife but rather the social personality of the tomb owner, with specific objects reflecting specific elements of the person – a quiver for a hunter/warrior, a stool for an elder, firestones for a wife, grinding stones for a mother. The issue of ‘person-ness’ connected to the tomb was a fundamental one for the Dynastic Egyptians and, at particular periods, the selection of material placed within a burial reflects this concern. It may also be the case that the disposal of objects within the grave represents not the needs of the Dead but those of the Living, who, at the time of burial of a loved one, ‘simply wished to dispose of objects which had particular emotional connotations’ (Ucko 1969: 265). It is also the case that the specific positioning of the body within the grave, although it hints at a special treatment of the body with a specific aim in mind, is also capable of varied interpretations. Is an eastwards-facing body always looking towards the rising sun, or one looking westwards towards the setting sun? Is the east or the west a place where the Dead face because that is where the Dead go? Are there specific local or more distant (e.g. Mecca for Muslims or Jerusalem for mediaeval Christians?) points of orientation which are more significant than cosmological factors?

The ambiguity of Tarkhan 1845 seems, as an example of Predynastic burials, to stand in marked contrast to the high-quality, understandable material from the elite tombs of Dynastic Egypt, and the interplay and different levels of explanation provided by that material – architecture in its localized context; extensive visual depictions and explanatory texts on the walls of those tombs; contents including specialized mortuary ‘kit’, among which is the body itself, elements of which are also often inscribed with explanatory text – which provide a very solid platform to understand the afterlife beliefs of the ancient Egyptians.

However, Tarkhan 1845, like other late Predynastic tombs from this site, and unlike most earlier Predynastic burials, had a carefully constructed superstructure which, although modest in size and made from simple mudbrick, indicates a significant development in tomb design which itself reflected the development of a major idea in the role of the tomb as a vehicle for the well-being of the Dead.

The Emergence of the Bipartite Tomb

Tomb 1845 at Tarkhan contains, as we have seen, an interment consisting of a shallow oval grave within which was buried a contracted body and a modest selection of grave goods which may, or may not, tell us something about the afterlife beliefs of the society which produced it. However, the wider context of the burial is rather more informative since the grave is only one part of a larger and more complex tomb. The grave was marked by being surrounded by a mudbrick rectangle which, if filled after burial, could form a rubble-filled, solid ‘box’ now more than a metre high. The position of the burial was therefore clearly marked, but equally clearly no-one was intended to enter this part of the tomb. Attached to the outside wall of this mastaba (the name derives from the low mudbrick benches found outside some village houses in Egypt) was an addition – a tiny room just big enough for a human to enter (Figure 1.2). Petrie found that this room, and the area outside the tomb near it, was filled with large pottery storage jars and food containers. This evidence need not in itself imply any particular beliefs in the afterlife since it might simply be the remains of a funeral feast by the living at the time of inhumation, but there is one further relevant detail: the body within the grave was orientated so that it faced the wall shared by the grave enclosure and the external room, and that wall was pierced by ‘two slits in the brickwork of the mastaba wall, for the offerings to reach the deceased’ (Petrie 1914: 2). This architectural feature was not unique to Tomb 1845, but shared by other similar tombs at Tarkhan. Although it would be dangerous on the basis of this evidence alone to draw wider conclusions about the beliefs behind the development of this tomb-type, two things seem reasonably clear: the importance of food to the Dead and the possibility of some connection between the Dead buried underneath the mastaba and the food brought by the Living and placed in the liminal zone of the attached room. In fact it is almost certain that these Tarkhan tombs represent an early version of what would become a fundamental feature in the way that the form of Egyptian tombs reflected their function – the tomb was essentially bipartite in nature, consisting of two distinct elements which were linked together through overall function, but significantly different in practical use. It is probably accurate at this stage to regard the external rooms at Tarkhan as Offering Chapels and the burials underneath the mastabas as Burial Chambers.

Figure 1.2 Tarkhan Tomb 1845: the Burial Chamber and Offering Chapel (after Petrie 1914: Pls 12 and 14)

However, the Tarkhan tombs only represent one solution to what seems to be a major issue in the afterlife beliefs and burial practices of late Predynastic/early Dynastic: the problem of providing food for the Dead. This problem seems to be the main determinant in the Tarkhan tomb with its separate, accessible Offering Chapel, but other approaches to the problem were experimented with at other sites, especially the among the elite non-royal tomb owners of Dynasty 1.

Elite Mastabas at Saqqara: The Tomb as a Storeroom

The unification of Egypt had a number of important effects on the way the Egyptians expressed the way they understood the afterlife through their tombs. One aspect of this was the apparently unique position of the king and, initially at least, the very separate nature of his burial at the exclusive Umm el-Qa'ab cemetery at Abydos (see next chapter). This royal exclusivity meant that emerging court elites – the high officials who acted for the king in the government of what had become the largest and potentially most powerful country in the early Bronze Age of the Near East – had to look elsewhere for a suitable place to be buried. This suitable place was, essentially, self-selecting. The unification of the Delta in the north and the Valley in the south required a new administrative centre from which both halves of the new country could be governed. The location chosen was Memphis, close to modern Cairo, which was (with a few breaks) the most significant administrative, economic and population centre of Egypt until the foundation of Alexandria in 332 BC. Partly because of the movement of the Nile in this part of its floodplain, the actual location of the city of Memphis shifted over the next 2,500 years, gradually moving eastwards to follow the river. Comparatively little of pre-New Kingdom Memphis remains to be seen today and the lo...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Blackwell Ancient Religions
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Nameless Lives at Tarkhan and Saqqara
• Chapter 2: Pits, Palaces and Pyramids
• Chapter 3: Non-Royal Cemeteries of Dynasty 4
• Chapter 4: Unas, Teti and Their Courts
• Chapter 5: The Tombs of Qar and Idu
• Chapter 6: A Growing Independence
• Chapter 7: Ankhtify
• Chapter 8: Osiris, Lord of Abydos
• Chapter 9: ‘Lords of Life’
• Chapter 10: Strangers and Brothers
• Chapter 11: North and South
• Chapter 12: Ineni, Senenmut and User-Amun
• Chapter 13: Rekhmire and the Tomb of the Well-Known Soldier
• Chapter 14: Huya and Horemheb
• Chapter 15: Samut and the Ramesside Private Tomb
• Chapter 16: Sennedjem
• Chapter 17: Petosiris
• References
• Further Reading
• Index