Early Dynastic Egypt (5 page)

substantiated, it none the less remains an important source-book for the Early Dynastic period, and in particular for Emery’s own discoveries at North Saqqara.

In contrast to the important series of First Dynasty mastabas, the numerous minor tombs of the First Dynasty, plus the Second and Third Dynasty burials excavated by Emery before and after the Second World War (1934–9 and 1945–7), were never published. This is much to the detriment of Early Dynastic studies, since the later tombs, in particular, yielded important evidence for the evolution of mortuary architecture in the latter half of the Early Dynastic period, providing a link between the First Dynasty élite tombs and the mastabas of the Old Kingdom.

Saad at Helwan

In his first five years at North Saqqara, up to the outbreak of the Second World War, Emery was assisted by Zaki Youssef Saad (1901–82). Saad was to make his own major contribution to Early Dynastic studies by excavating the huge
necropolis
across the river at el-Maasara (Plate 1.5) (Saad named the site ‘Helwan’ after the nearest large town). The excavations lasted from 1942 to 1954, and revealed in excess of 10,000 graves (Saad 1947, 1951, 1957, 1969). All but a handful dated to
‘Dynasty 0’
and the Early Dynastic period. The necropolis must have served the city of Memphis, which lay directly opposite on the west bank of the Nile. The sheer size of the Helwan burial ground is staggering, and reflects the size of the capital’s administrative class, even at the beginning of Egyptian history. Some of the tombs clearly belonged to individuals of considerable status (Wood 1987), almost equalling in size the contemporary

Plate 1.5
The Early Dynastic necropolis at

Helwan/el-Maasara (author’s photograph).

mastabas at North Saqqara (Wilkinson 1996a). Unfortunately, to the great loss of Early Dynastic studies, the results of Saad’s later seasons were never published (although some finds from the later seasons are discussed in Saad 1969), and the wealth of material that must have been uncovered in the years 1947 to 1954 remains inaccessible.

Montet at Abu Rawash

Jean Pierre Marie Montet (1885–1966), best known as the excavator of Tanis, directed work at Abu Rawash, at the northernmost end of the Memphite necropolis, in the late 1930s, at the same time that Emery was excavating at North Saqqara. Montet’s discoveries on so-called Hill M-a prominent knoll close to the edge of the cultivation— paralleled those of Emery further south: élite mastaba tombs of mudbrick, their façades decorated with recessed niches, dating to the First Dynasty (Montet 1938, 1946). The cemetery at Abu Rawash seems to have been used exclusively during the reign of Den, and may have served as an ‘overspill’ burial ground from North Saqqara. As at the latter site, one of the large tombs at Abu Rawash was accompanied by two boat burials.

Lauer at the Step Pyramid complex

After two years of excavation at the Step Pyramid complex, it became clear to Firth that the skills of an architect were required to reassemble the mass of confusing fragments and reconstruct the original appearance of Netjerikhet’s great funerary monument. So, in 1926, Firth called upon the services of the young Jean-Philippe Lauer, who has since devoted his entire life—in a career spanning the last seventy years—to the restoration of the complex. Most of the architectural elements that are visible today owe their appearance and restoration to Lauer’s patience and insight. More than any other scholar, Lauer has been responsible for elucidating the history and symbolism of the Step Pyramid complex (Lauer 1936, 1939, 1962).

Discoveries of great importance were made by Lauer during the clearance of the galleries beneath the Step Pyramid. Particularly interesting is the hoard of stone vessels amassed by Netjerikhet to furnish his burial. The vessels seem to have been gathered together from the royal stores as they include many inscribed for earlier kings (Lacau and Lauer 1959). Nearly every king before Netjerikhet is attested, including some ephemeral rulers unknown from other sources. Some vessels are inscribed with the names of successive rulers, including a group of bowls bearing the names of the last four kings of the First Dynasty. The stone vessels from the Step Pyramid thus comprise one of the most important sources of historical information for the first two dynasties. Many vessels bear inscriptions not incised but written in ink (Lacau and Lauer 1965). These attest the use of cursive script as early as the First Dynasty—already suggested by the papyrus discovered by Emery in the tomb of Hemaka – and provide valuable insights into the workings of the Early Dynastic administration. They include the earliest known occurrence of the title of
‘vizier’
(the executive head of the administration), and the earliest reference to an administrative division or
nome.
The inscriptions from the Step Pyramid complex form one of the largest bodies of early writing from Egypt.

Goneim at the Sekhemkhet complex

Zakaria Goneim (1911–59) was responsible for one of the most important and unexpected discoveries at Saqqara: the unfinished Step Pyramid complex of King Sekhemkhet, the successor of Netjerikhet whose own mortuary complex so dominates the Saqqara plateau. Goneim was appointed Keeper of the Saqqara necropolis in 1951 and almost immediately began excavations to the south-west of the pyramid of Unas. His discovery and excavation of an unknown mortuary complex built for a previously unknown king of the Third Dynasty caused something of a sensation (Goneim 1957). In some respects, the architecture of the Sekhemkhet complex is more developed than that of the Netjerikhet monument, illustrating a gradual refinement in the monumental use of stone. A pen holder from the chambers beneath the pyramid is inscribed with the second name of King Sekhemkhet, confirming his identification with the Djoserty of the New Kingdom lists. Goneim’s discovery not only resolved one of the outstanding problems of Third Dynasty chronology, it also helped scholars to see the Step Pyramid complex of Netjerikhet in context: as part of a sequence of development in the sphere of royal mortuary architecture, rather than as a unique and unparalleled monument.

A change of perception

During the two decades of excavation in the Memphite necropolis, Early Dynastic studies struggled to keep up with the wealth of new evidence provided by archaeologists. However, despite the continuous flow of excavation reports, critical examination of some of the overriding issues did not cease altogether. An important transformation in the understanding and perception of Early Dynastic Egypt came with the publication of Emile Massoulard’s book,
Préhistoire et protohistoire d’Egypte
(Massoulard 1949). He seems to have been the first scholar to recognise, or at least to articulate in print, that the civilisation of dynastic Egypt was largely an indigenous development, with its most fundamental roots in the culture of the Predynastic period (Massoulard 1949:333). By contrast, the theory of the ‘dynastic race’—a ‘master race’ of invaders from the east, thought to be responsible for imposing civilisation on the ‘primitive’ and unsophisticated indigenous Egyptians—had been articulated by Petrie only ten years before (Petrie 1939) and was still being espoused enthusiastically by scholars such as Emery (1961) and Edwards (1971) two decades after the publication of Massoulard’s work. The recognition of the indigenous roots of classic Egyptian civilisation emphasised the continuities between Predynastic and Early Dynastic culture. The achievements of the First Dynasty, it was realised, were the result of a long period of cultural and political development, rather than a radically new order imposed from outside. This change of perception undoubtedly influenced the course of Early Dynastic scholarship, and has now totally replaced the discredited ‘dynastic race’ theory.

A TIME OF TRANSITION: 1957–76

The end of an era: Klasens and Emery in the Memphite necropolis

From 1953 until the break in excavations in 1956, Emery was assisted at North Saqqara by Adolf Klasens. The following year, Klasens took his own team to the northernmost site of the Memphite necropolis, Abu Rawash. Here, he directed three seasons of excavation for the Leiden Museum of Antiquities, from 1957 to 1959 (Klasens 1957, 1958, 1959, 1960, 1961). He re-investigated the élite cemetery excavated by Montet, uncovering several more mastabas of the First Dynasty (Klasens 1961). Immediately below Hill M, at the edge of the cultivation, Klasens revealed a sequence of four Early Dynastic cemeteries, spanning the period from ‘Dynasty 0’ to the late Second Dynasty. The graves yielded abundant quantities of stone vessels and pottery, including imported Syro-Palestinian jugs, providing concrete evidence for trade between Egypt and the Near East during the First Dynasty. One of the most significant objects was an ivory plaque, originally covered in gold foil, decorated in relief with the head of a cow goddess (Hathor or, more likely, Bat) between two ‘thunderbolt’ symbols of Min (Klasens, 1958:50, fig. 20 (y) and 53, pl. XXV). This small object is an important piece of evidence for Early Dynastic religious iconography.

Emery resumed his excavations in the Early Dynastic necropolis in 1964, after an interval of nearly nine years. He directed his attention to the western part of the site, where he still hoped to locate the Asklepieion and the associated tomb of Imhotep (H.S.Smith 1971:199). Emery uncovered several mastabas of the Third Dynasty, overlying cult places of the Late Period, and this gave him hope that the tomb of Imhotep lay nearby. The Early Dynastic tombs discovered in these seasons were published only as preliminary reports (Emery 1965, 1968, 1970); an analysis of Emery’s field notebooks might be expected to reveal significant information about the development of mortuary architecture in the Third Dynasty.

Pointing the way: Kaiser, Kaplony and Kemp

Following the end of Klasens’ excavations at Abu Rawash and the change in emphasis of Emery’s work at North Saqqara, little archaeological interest was shown in Egypt’s early periods throughout most of the 1960s. The Egyptological world was largely preoccupied with the campaign to record and salvage the monuments of Lower Nubia, threatened by the construction of the Aswan High Dam. Few scholars paid much attention to questions surrounding the origins of Egyptian civilisation, with two notable exceptions.

Werner Kaiser may be credited with the rebirth of interest in early Egypt. His article on the internal chronology of the
Naqada culture
(Kaiser 1957) revolutionised Predynastic studies, replacing Petrie’s sequence dating system for establishing the relative date of Predynastic graves. A series of seminal articles in the late 1950s and early 1960s (Kaiser 1959, 1960, 1961a, 1964) reviewed the state of knowledge on early Egypt and investigated particular questions relevant to the birth of the dynastic state. Kaiser was particularly interested in the possibility that the legend of a line of kings ruling Egypt before Menes might have a basis in reality, and he explored the evidence for a degree of political unity prior to the beginning of the First Dynasty (Kaiser 1961a). In doing so,

Kaiser made an important contribution to the problem of reconciling the later king lists with the names recorded on monuments of the Early Dynastic period, and he produced a valuable new reconstruction of the
Palermo Stone,
one of the key documents for early Egyptian history. Kaiser was the first Egyptologist to recognise the significance of early
serekh
marks, and the possibilities of arranging them in chronological order by reference to the types of pots on which they occurred. His analysis of the Tura cemetery led him to conclude that up to ten generations of kings had ruled a united Egypt before the reign of Aha (Kaiser 1964). Whilst this dramatic suggestion can no longer be entirely sustained, there is no doubt that state formation was well advanced before the beginning of the First Dynasty, and that the credit for developing this new picture of Egyptian origins belongs to Kaiser. He was also the first scholar to recognise the spread of Upper Egyptian cultural traits northwards during the late Predynastic period (Kaiser 1964), and this model of cultural development remains at the heart of present theories of state formation. Kaiser’s interest in early Egypt was to have a profound impact on the direction taken by Egyptian archaeology in the 1970s and 1980s. As director of the German Archaeological Institute in Cairo, he was to launch major new projects at Abydos and Buto, which continue to shed new light on the Predynastic and Early Dynastic periods. However, his influence was not restricted to the world of German Egyptology. Kaiser’s work also had a pivotal role in reawakening interest in the site of Hierakonpolis, one of the key sites for the rise of the Egyptian state. He was the first scholar to re-examine the material excavated by Quibell and Green at the turn of the century, and to suggest an important role for Hierakonpolis in the process of state formation (Kaiser 1958). The publication of an extensive field survey of sites in Upper and
Middle Egypt
revealed the extent of early remains at Hierakonpolis, and the great potential of the site for further study (Kaiser 1961b). As a direct result of this information, the Hierakonpolis Project was launched in 1967 (see below).