Royal Funerary Equipment of a King Sobekhotep at South Abydos: Evidence for the Tombs of Sobekhotep IV and Neferhotep I? /
:
Recent excavations at South Abydos have produced evidence for the date and ownership of a group of royal tombs adjacent to the tomb enclosure of Senwosret III. Tombs S9 and S10, two structures investigated initially by Arthur Weigall, are late Middle Kingdom royal tombs constructed using the distinctive format of the late Middle Kingdom royal pyramid interiors known primarily from the Memphite region. Excavations during 2013–2015 in and around tomb S10 now permit its attribution to one of the Thirteenth Dynasty Sobekhotep kings. Evidence includes a monumental funerary stela bearing the nomen Sobekhotep that appears to derive from a now-destroyed chapel associated with S10. The stela was likely reused in an adjacent intrusive tomb: that of the Second Intermediate period king, Woseribre-Senebkay. In Senebkay’s tomb, excavation revealed that king’s canopic chest, constructed from reused planks that had originally belonged to the cofn of a king Sobekhotep. The original painted texts include a distinctive set of Cofn Texts (Spells 777–785), examples of which date to the middle–late Thirteenth Dynasty. The probable chronological range of these spells, paired with additional lines of evidence suggest that S10 is the burial place of one of the longer-reigning Sobekhotep kings of the middle Thirteenth Dynasty, likely Sobekhotep IV. The proximity of S10 to the similarly designed tomb S9 implies royal burials at South Abydos of two closely connected kings, the brother kings Neferhotep I and Sobekhotep IV, who were unusually active at Abydos and may have chosen to associate their tombs with the mortuary complex of Senwosret III. During the later Second Intermediate period, Senebkay (ca. 1650–1600 BCE) and associated kings reused both funerary equipment and materials from these late Middle Kingdom tombs.
The Barque of Wenut-Shemau at the Sed-Festival: An Old Kingdom Temple Relief from Herakleopolis /
:
In the collection of the University of Pennsylvania Museum is a limestone relief depicting a king at life-size engaged in a boat ritual as part of the Sed-festival. Discovered in 1904 at Herakleopolis, this object can be dated, based on context, iconography, and style to the early Old Kingdom. Only the upper part of this monumental relief is preserved and the name of the king does not survive. However, the associated labels show that the scene depicted a king, accompanied by Iunmutef, receiving the barque of the goddess Wenut-Shemau, or Nekhbet, at the Sed-festival. This relief, reused in the foundations of the Twelfth Dynasty at Herakleopolis derives from what was evidently a large-format tableau of Sed-festival scenes in a royal cult complex of the Old Kingdom. The relief is a forerunner to scenes in the Twentieth Dynasty tomb of Setau at El Kab depicting the arrival of Wenut-Shemau at the site of the Sed-festival. The ceremonial mooring of the barques of Wadjet and Nekhbet at the Sed-festival may form a central, but hitherto unrecognized, element of the Sed-festival. The closest surviving parallels to the Herakleopolis scene occur in fragmentary reliefs from the Valley Temple of Sneferu at Dahshur. Attribution is proposed to Huni, Sneferu or Khufu. The Sed-festival block may have been transported to Herakelopolis from one of the Memphite pyramid complexes, or from Meidum, during the early Twelfth Dynasty. Alternatively, the relief may derive from an early Old Kingdom royal complex at Herakelopolis itself, possibly originating in a mortuary complex of Huni that once stood at that site. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.5913/jarce.53.2017.a007
A Late Middle Kingdom Temple Bakery at South Abydos /
:
Recent excavations have exposed the original bakery belonging to the mortuary temple of Senwosret III at South Abydos. Initially founded as a six-chambered building, the bakery was expanded in several phases to become a larger complex that housed a series of chambers dedicated primarily to large-volume hearth baking. Associated ceramics show that baking practices involved parallel use of rough-ware trays (aprt) and cylindrical bread molds (bDA). The bakery was linked by a walkway system with adjacent buildings also involved in the production and supply of offerings to the temple. One of the neighboring buildings appears to have been a companion brewery that was removed and replaced during a phase of alteration to the production area. The bakery and related structures are components of a larger shena or production zone that once extended nearly 300 meters along the edge of the Nile floodplain between the temple and town at the site of WAH-swt-¢akAwra-mAa-xrw-m-AbDw. Evidence from the bakery and neighboring structures shows that the layout of the shena was an extension of the urban plan of the town of Wah-Sut. Flanked by the main institutional buildings, the site was spatially organized around this multi-activity production zone which formed the site’s economic and industrial nucleus.
King Seneb-Kay's tomb and the necropolis of a lost dynasty at Abydos
:
This volume is the publication and analysis of the tomb of pharaoh Seneb-Kay (ca. 1650-1600 BCE), and a cemetery of associated tombs at Abydos, all attributable to a group of kings of Egypt's Second Intermediate Period. The tomb of Seneb-Kay has provided the first known king's tomb of pharaonic Egypt that included decorated imagery in the burial chamber. That evidence, discussed in detail in the volume, allows us to identify this previously unknown ruler along with a group of seven similar tombs that can be attributed to an Upper Egyptian Dynasty that survived for approximately half a century during a period of pronounced territorial fragmentation in the Nile Valley. The book examines the architecture and artifacts associated with these tombs, as well as presents an osteological analysis of the bodies of Seneb-Kay and the other anonymous individuals buried at South Abydos. Seneb-Kay's skeletonized mummy was recovered inside his tomb and provides a rare opportunity to examine the body of a king of this era. He is the earliest substantially preserved body of an Egyptian king to survive in the archaeological record, and the first known Egyptian pharaoh whose skeletal remains show that he died in battle. The analysis of his death in a military encounter, along with insights from the other skeletal remains indicates a line of kings whose rise to power was associated with their social background as members of the military elite. The book examines the wider implications of these bodies in terms of the pronounced militarization of society in the Second Intermediate Period. Seneb-Kay's tomb has also provided extensive evidence through its use of reused blocks bearing decoration, of earlier elite and royal monuments at Abydos. The combination of evidence provides a new archaeological and historical window into the political situation that defined Egypt's Second Intermediate Period