El Kab Part 3

But two, or perhaps three, tombs of this form were found inside the walls. This cemetery was well known to the Arabs, and a few years ago a party of the Qurneh dealers, armed with a bogus Museum permit, dug there for several weeks. The tombs they had rifled could be distinguished from tombs that were intact or had been plundered in early times by the sharper edges of the depressions left. Time has rounded over the traces of the earlier robberies, so that anciently robbed tombs look much like those which are intact, but in which the roof has fallen in causing a dip in the ground not unlike the top of a tomb-shaft. The cemetery lies in a shoal in the dry stream-bed, at whose mouth El Kab was placed. This shoal is a great bank of gravel and a fine clay-like detritus, the beds of which lie alternately, the thickness of each varying in different parts. The practice in the XIIth dynasty was to sink the tomb-shaft until a layer of gravel was reached sufficiently strong for a chamber to be safely cut out of it.

The chambers were about 2 m. square and probably rather less than 150 m. high, but they were made flat-roofed, and in most cases the roof had fallen in, crus.h.i.+ng the bones and often also the pottery below.

Even if the roof was complete when we opened the tomb, it would usually fall before we could examine and clear out the interment. With only the warning of the fall of a single pebble, or just a little gutter of sand, a ma.s.s of perhaps two tons would suddenly drop with a thud. On two occasions a man was caught by some part of the fall, and once, just as the helpless man was being dug out, a clumsy helper dislodged a few more hundredweight and buried him again. These are anxious moments, for when this s.h.i.+fting ground has once begun to slip, the whole side of a tomb may fall at once. Happily we had no serious accident, though there were many narrow escapes. It is necessary in such work to watch the men very carefully, and to insist on their taking reasonable care, for they will, if left alone, burrow beneath dangerously overhanging ma.s.ses of soil rather than take the trouble of removing them. The method in which the door of the burial-chamber was closed was not at first clear; but four or five of the large jars (PL.

XIV) were so often found just inside the entrance that it seemed probable they had been used as a building material, just as the peasants near Keneh now use the spoilt water-jars from the potteries there. Later on two of the doorways were found actually blocked up in this way--three jars in the lower tier, two more above them, and the interstices filled with mud. Probably, then, these large pots were the common water-jars of the Middle Kingdom. Other tomb-doors were blocked with bricks, very roughly laid. Coffins were very rare; there was one of unbaked clay, long and narrow; and a trace of wood (No. 121) in another grave may have been part of a coffin. But the soil of El Kab is so damp and full of salt that unpainted wooden coffins may have disappeared without leaving any trace. The same causes have doubtless removed the clothes in which the dead were buried, for of these I saw no trace. The most remarkable fact was the entire absence of mummification, at least, of any effective kind. In the ground near the good XVIIIth dynasty tombs, mummies were found, perhaps the servants of the great men of the inscribed tombs. There seemed no great difference in the conditions to which these mummies and the bodies of the XIIth dynasty people had been exposed. Yet no trace of mummy-cloth, dried skin, hair, or bitumen was ever met with in the earlier cemetery. Nor in the early burials that I opened at Ballas were any mummies found, and certainly most of the mummies known belong to the XVIIIth dynasty or later. Is it possible that mummification was confined to the upper cla.s.ses until the great increase of wealth in the XVIIIth dynasty led to the wider adoption of the custom?

Some of the later Neolithic bodies were, however, dried, either by artificial means or by some property of the soil, so that the whole body could be lifted out without any of the limbs snapping off. It is reported that the body of an engineer, who, not many years ago, died and was buried at a.s.suan, and afterwards exhumed to be sold as a mummy, was dried up in this way.

A chamber generally contained more than one body; four was a not uncommon number, and in one chamber eight persons, probably women, lay side by side. This fact certainly agrees badly with the idea just expressed of the absence of mummification. The objects found in the graves were of well-known types. Bottle-shaped vases at the head and feet, alabaster kohl pots, kohl sticks of ivory, bronze mirrors without handles, paint-slabs with their pestles and spatulae of serpentine and basalt, with beads of green glaze and various kinds of hard stone, were the regular staple of our finds. And the date of these was already well known from Kahun and other places; indeed the date of this cemetery could be seen at once from the chips of pottery lying on the surface. This conclusion was confirmed by the two private stelae (PL. IV), and a cylinder of Amenemhat III, found in one necklace. Inscriptions were extremely rare; there were few scarabs, and perhaps the most interesting object was the plain alabaster statuette (PL. V, 2), which was found close to the skull of its owner.

This was the only figure of the kind found in the cemetery, and is probably the earliest dated ushabti. It represents a mummy-shaped figure; no hands, hoe, or basket can be seen, but the face is well executed.

The tombs were, of course, often robbed, how often, it was difficult to decide, for the destruction caused by the falling roof is very similar to that caused by early robbery. But it was very seldom that a skull could be preserved, or that the exact position of the bones in the body could be worked out. There had been very little re-use of the shafts; in one occurred pottery and a mirror of the XVIIIth dynasty, in another a Roman lamp; but these were exceptions; it was purely a Middle Kingdom cemetery.

22. A fine collection of beads was obtained, chiefly in hard stone. In one tomb alone (No. 156) I spent most of two days trying to recover the order in which the beads had been strung on the necklaces. Seven people had been buried in one chamber of this tomb; a great ma.s.s of pebbles had fallen from the roof, smashed the bones and pottery, and so scattered the beads that some care was needed to keep together those from one string. Some of the bodies were adorned with necklace, bracelets, and anklets, and had also a string of beads round the waist.

The commonest beads were spherical and barrel-shaped, of carnelian, haemat.i.te, and amethyst, and discs of sh.e.l.l, these last the commonest of all. In green felspar there were small flat discs, hawks, and hippopotamus heads. Sphinxes with human heads are generally of amethyst. Uninscribed scarabs, in carnelian, amethyst, and jasper, were not uncommon.

CHAPTER IV.

NEW EMPIRE MONUMENTS.

23. Singularly little is left in El Kab of any period later than the Middle Kingdom, unless, indeed, the great walls be of later date than we have supposed. The broken pottery inside the town enclosure, that is the south-west corner of the great square, seems to be of various periods, but to contain a large quant.i.ty of a fabric most like that of the XXVIth dynasty. As Nectanebo rebuilt the temple here, it is natural to suspect that this late pottery is of his reign or near it.

Ma.s.ses of similar pottery are to be found thrown out from several of the large tombs, in and behind the hill of Paheri. These tombs are probably of the XVIIIth dynasty, and were re-used for piles of poor burials at the later date. Of poor burials of the XVIIIth dynasty only two were found. These were in the long coffins of that coa.r.s.e red earthenware, fragments of which may be seen by the tourist on his way to the tomb of Paheri. There are a few robbed tombs near the foot of the hill, but no large cemetery is known. It is possible that El Kab was not a very large town at this period; the family of Paheri and Aahmes may have been the only great house of the district.

24. Some examination was made of the beautiful little temple of Amenhotep III, which lies an hour's walk up the desert, not with the view of copying it, for that work had already been undertaken by Mr.

Clarke, but in order to discover, if possible, where the original temple was. It seems more than probable that all the VIth dynasty inscriptions on the great detached rock near the temple were made by pilgrims visiting a shrine; many fragments of Old Kingdom vases also are to be found lying near. It at first occurred to me that a cemetery of the Old Kingdom might lie here, and a search was made in all likely, and some unlikely, places, but nothing was found, except a broken water-jar with a late Greek inscription. The early pottery near the temple was then turned over; it appeared to be a mere rubbish heap, with no sign of tomb or of brick building. It lies on the slope of the bank of loose detritus, on which the temple itself is built.

The torrent which, from time to time, sweeps down the old river-bed, is, at this point, wearing away its southern bank. Below the heap of old pottery is a little vertical cliff, 4 m. high, in so soft a rock that it is clear the steep face has been recently formed, and the temple itself is threatened by a small stream bed behind it. It may be, then, as Professor Sayce first suggested, that the original temple stood on the northern part of the shoal which is now washed away; this idea is confirmed by our finding in the stream bed opposite the present temple the early table of offerings shown in PL. IV, 1, with many more small fragments of inscription on pieces of sandstone. The original temple, then, has gone, the pile of pottery thrown out from it will be carried away too; even the temple of Amenhotep may be undermined within no very long period. The effects of sudden storms in the desert are greater than might be supposed. There is no vegetation to stop and absorb the rain, the ground is excessively hard, and all that does not immediately sink into the soil runs rapidly down into the larger watercourses, and forms in a few hours a deep and broad stream. Such a storm occurred three years ago at El Kab, and the inhabitants tell us that, for two days, a tributary stream entered the Nile there. The railway engineers have had to provide for the recurrence of such spates.

25. The foundation deposits may be considered together. They came from two temples--the large one within the walls, and the small temple of Thothmes III, which lies to the north of the town, and west of the hill of Paheri. In the latter the deposits were very numerous for so small a temple (_v._ PL. XXVI). Under each corner of the main wall was one of the little pits filled with sand, which have now become so familiar, and at a metre's distance along the side wall was another and larger deposit. The pits were about 60 m. in diameter; in two, there was at the bottom a recess, filled with the small cups of brown clay. The objects are all closely similar to those found in the other deposits of this reign at Koptos and Nubt. One shape of pot, however (XXI, 14), has not been seen in a foundation deposit before, and the flat tiles (15 cm. long) of blue glaze, one in each deposit, must be mentioned. All the deposits were carefully unearthed, and the position of the different objects noted, but there was no obvious design in the arrangement.

The deposits found under the great temple are of more interest; those of Amenhotep II, under walls covered with inscriptions of Rameses II, give one more instance of the latter's usurpations. Deposits of two other distinct cla.s.ses contained no inscriptions of kings' names, and cannot be dated. Their position is shown in the very rough sketch of the plan of the temple in PL. I.

The contents of the different deposits is given below:--

N. 1. A polygonal sandstone mortar (XXI, 46), twenty small cups (43), three small round dishes, three taller pots (44), flat tablets of red and green gla.s.s, a bronze pan (30), five long gla.s.s beads (38), the green glaze figure (29) like a small ushabti, a small green glaze model of an ox with the legs tied together, the bronze models (33, 34, 35), a tile of dull green glaze, a model clay brick, a small piece of bitumen, and a piece of resin which burns with a smell like myrrh.

N. 4. Sandstone mortar, eye in green glaze (28), the other objects as in N. 1, but with the addition of tablets of calcite and lead.

N. 5. contained the glaze block (40), a bronze knife, a little brick of myrrh, and pottery, as in the others.

N. 2. and N. 3. consisted each of a single object, one a small oblong block of iron 1-1/2 inch long, and the other a tablet of blue frit (like 37).

These last two deposits clearly do not belong to the same builder as the rest.

The deposits of Amenhotep II contained alabaster models, the inscriptions identical with those of Thothmes III, excepting the change of cartouche.

26. The temple to the east of the central eastern gate of the town was excavated, and a XIIth dynasty tomb was found beneath it. The walls had been carried away, but the floor of the temple was nearly complete, and from the scratches made upon it by the masons the plan was recovered. This will be published by Mr. Clarke. No foundation deposits were discovered, and the only sc.r.a.p of inscription was a part of the cartouche of Nectanebo.

27. No certain solution can be given of the question of the date of the great wall. Reasons for thinking it to be the work of Usertesen II have been already given, but several attempts were made to test this hypothesis. The base of the wall was cleared at several points to search for any acc.u.mulation of rubbish left by the builders, and all the gateways were examined for foundation deposits. In the east gate, at a height of 3 feet above the stone pavement, there was a layer of potsherds, painted with a rough decoration of comma-shaped dashes, and with them were some fragments of an ostracon written in late demotic.

This would show that the gateway was already partly ruined and blocked in Roman (?) times. And between the row of mastabas to the north and the great wall were found the foot of an ushabti, perhaps of the XXVIth dynasty, and a pot (PL. XX, 13), probably Roman. The first was on the ground level, the second 5 feet above it. But the position of these objects only shows that the sand-heap had not reached its present level when they were dropped, and I observed nothing quite inconsistent with the early date suggested. It should be added, however, that the stonework of the gates and the arch in the north wall seem, to Mr. Somers Clarke's experienced eye, to show some features of a much later style. These he will describe in his own work on El Kab.

28. A group of late bronzes were found at one point in the south of the great enclosure. They were 800 in number, each mounted on a little wooden base. One (PL. V, 3) was a fine piece, representing Nekheb adored by a kneeling figure. The rest were Osiris figures, except one, which represented Imhetep. About a hundred were 5 inches high, or upwards, of fair workmans.h.i.+p, made in thin bronze cast on a core.

They were all piled together in a s.p.a.ce 11 m. by 6 m., not near to any tomb.

29. Near the south-east corner of the town (PL. XXIV) was a peculiar brick building, consisting of four rows of brick pillars, six in each row, enclosed in a surrounding wall. The pillars were about 2 m. square, the pa.s.sages between them only about 80 m. wide. The actual height of the brickwork was 150 m. or less, but the building may have been a high one, for the base of a brick staircase remained between two of the pillars. Throughout the building were great numbers of pots, chiefly broken, of a long bottle-shape with a wide mouth, and pierced at the bottom, with a hole an inch wide (XX, 14); these pots exactly fitted certain holes left at regular intervals in the brickwork. Pots nearly of this shape, but shorter, are still used in Egypt, being built into the walls of pigeon-towers to serve as nesting-places for the birds. So far as the pottery guides us, the building might then be of Arab times, but the large size of the bricks (34 cm. 175 11), part of a stone window found on the south side, and the smooth surface of the site before we began to dig, make it unlikely that the structure is recent.

CHAPTER V.

DESCRIPTION OF PLATES.

30. PL. I--Nos. 1, 2 and 3 are the plan, elevation, and longitudinal section of one (264) of the sunk arch tombs believed to belong to the early XIIth dynasty.

No. 4 gives the plan of the chamber in the IVth dynasty tomb of Ka-mena; 5 and 6 are rough notes of the stone walls on the east and south sides of the same chamber.

No. 7 gives the plan of the important tomb in which an inscribed cylinder was found in a.s.sociation with Neolithic pots (No. 166, - 13).

No. 8 is a rough-sketch plan of the great temple of El Kab, inserted to show the position of the foundation deposits.

31. PL. II.--1. The stone vessels of the Neolithic period and the Old Kingdom, as they were shown at University College. Only one was perfect; even those that look most complete were picked out in small pieces from the gravel or mud, and were put together by the help of our friends in England. On the right hand are five slate paint slabs of the later Neolithic type; nearer the wall are diorite bowls, alabaster tables, flat dishes of limestone and alabaster, a bronze ewer (from Ka-mena), and a pottery model of a granary.

No. 2 shows all the small objects from the important tomb with a _majur_ burial (166)--sh.e.l.ls, ivory disc, ivory hairpins, a flint flake, a steat.i.te cylinder, beads, ivory bracelets, two pots and two stone bowls. (For inscription on the cylinder _v._ PL. XX, 29).

No. 3 represents the objects from Ka-mena's tomb as photographed in front of our house soon after being found (larger size in PL. III, 2).

No. 4 shows a mastaba wall when just excavated.

No. 5 is a view of our house with the stacks of pottery before it.

PL. III.--No. 1. The sandstone statue of Nefer-shem-em.

No. 2. The bronze and stone objects from Ka-mena of the time of Sneferu, with whose name the flat diorite bowl below was inscribed.

The central bowl is of very light-coloured, translucent diorite, and the deeper one of porphyry. Below are model tools in copper. (These are given in outline, PL. XVIII, 56-65.)

PL. IV. (Note by Dr. Spiegelberg.)

1. Table of offerings from dry stream bed on desert near Amenhotep's temple, dedicated with the usual formula addressed to Anubis, Osiris, and Nekhbet, by "the confidential friend of the king, the treasurer, chief prophet, destroying the evil (?) [Kfau? asf?]" ... and to his father "deserving well of his G.o.d, the confidential friend of the king, the treasurer,[A] chief prophet, privy councillor of the royal treasure Shema[.a]."

[A] For _?asuta_, see Spiegelberg in a forthcoming paper of Aeg. Zeits.

This is the person mentioned in a rock inscription of El Kab, published by Stern (Aeg. Zeitschr., 1875, PL. I r.). By this identification we can claim this tablet for the VIth dynasty.

2. The inscription of this XIIth dynasty sandstone stela from the cemetery must be divided in the middle. The right half--"the well-deserved of Anubis, Usrtsn, son of Srtuy (?)"--relates to the chief personage holding a _nabut_ in the left hand and the well-known sceptre of command in the right.