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Abydos Ware and the Location of the Egyptian First Dynasty Royal Tombs

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Abydos Ware and the Location of the Egyptian First Dynasty Royal Tombs ABYDOS WARE AND THE LOCATION OF THE EGYPTIAN FIRST DYNASTY ROYAL TOMBS Tomoaki NAKANO* Introduction Until quite recently, the location of the Egyptian First Dynasty royal tombs was a central issue in studies of the formative period of ancient Egypt. In the early 1900s, Petrie confirmed eight possible royal tombs of the First Dynasty, mainly on the basis of the discovery of royal stelae, which were supposed to have stood in pairs in front of each tomb (Fig. 1-A).(1) But, about four decades after Petrie's investigations, Emery found a series of more elaborate and larger tombs at Saqqara, the necropolis of the ancient capital of Memphis (Fig. 1-B).(2) After that, a long period of controversy began over the location of the true royal tombs. The discussion has mainly concentrated on comparing the sizes of the tombs at both sites in the wake of Emery's argument that the large Saqqara tombs were true tombs for actual royal burials, whereas the Abydos tombs were used as cenotaphs to commemorate the original homeland of the king of Upper Egypt.(3) Owing to a series of successful archaeological investigations of funerary enclosures(4) and late Predynastic chiefs' tombs in Abydos(5) recently, however, most Egyptologists now believe that there was a royal funerary complex consisting of a funerary enclosure and a tomb for each king in Abydos. Therefore the royal tombs are now believed to have been located in that area rather than in Saqqara. Nevertheless, there are some problems that this view has not focused on yet. At least five enclosures at Abydos have been attributed to First Dynasty kings-Aha, Djer, Djet, and Den, and to queen Meritneith, among the eight or nine monarchs of the period. But the dating of the other enclosures (including the possible enclosure of King Aha) is quite uncertain due to the lack of inscribed material associated with them. One possible dating method, recently * Ph.D. Student, Nanzan University; JSPS Research Fellow Vol. XXXIII 1998 1 2 ORIENT ABYDOS WARE AND THE LOCATION OF THE EGYPTIAN FIRST DYNASTY ROYAL TOMBS tested by O'Connor, is to measure the layout of the enclosures, focusing in particular on the details of the gateways; the value of such a criterion is still uncertain, and we have to wait for further results. Therefore at least three kings -Anedjib, Semerkhet, and Qaa-have still not been associated with a funerary enclosure.(6) In the case of King Anedjib, the last but two kings of the First Dynasty, his tomb in Abydos (Tomb X) is of inferior quality when compared to the tombs of other kings or to the contemporary mastabas in Saqqara. Most scholars are now in favour of Saqqara as a cemetery for high officials.(7) They usually cite the names of officials(8) found within the mastabas as supporting evidence. However, in any one tomb, one or more king's name have also been found on inscribed objects, and little is known about the relationships among the people named, who may include people who placed offerings in the tomb at later times. Moreover, there is the case of tomb 3357, in which over 700 occurences of the name of King Aha were found but no other names.(9) There is therefore still ample room for further investigation on the status of the Saqqara cemetery, although the recent discoveries at Abydos strengthen the claim that the tombs there contained the actual burials of the First Dynasty kings. Strictly speaking, it is no exaggeration to say that we will never know the best answer to the issue until we find the bodies of the First Dynasty kings. That, however, is nearly impossible now.(10) In spite of much discussion devoted to these tombs, until recently little attention has been given to the artifacts found in them. Therefore, in this paper I review the location of the Egyptian First Dynasty royal tombs in the light of the artifacts. I shall focus upon the so-called 'Abydos Ware,' a type of Early Bronze Age Palestinian pottery which was imported into Egypt at the time.(11) I. Methods The ideal strategy for reviewing the location of the royal tombs through a study of the finds would be to examine all the artifacts uncovered from all the tombs at Abydos and Saqqara and to compare the cultural features of both cemeteries. However, the Abydos tombs have suffered greatly from robbery, fire, and demolition since ancient times. I therefore decided first to check carefully all the objects found (by studying the reports from both sites) and then Vol.XXXIII 1998 3 reject those objects which cannot contribute to an identification of the true location of the royal tombs. The objects stolen were principally valuable materials such as precious stones and ivory. Ordinary objects of daily use were already widely produced and had spread all over Egypt. I selected so-called 'Abydos Ware' for investigation for several reasons. The first reason was, as just noted, that pottery is not usually stolen and damaged comparing with other artifacts. Even when it suffers some damage, often the fragments can be found. That is why pottery is utilized to establish archaeological dating all over the world. Indeed, for decades Abydos Ware has been important for establishing the relative chronology of Egypt and Palestine. The names of the Egyptian kings found with this pottery give significant clues for interpreting the chronological relation between two areas (Table 1). Kantor noted that the first appearance of the pottery in the reign of King Djer, indicates the beginning of the Early Bronze Age II period in Palestine. The chapter on Egypt and Palestine in the standard work edited by Ehrich, "Chronologies in Old World Archaeology", devotes a great part of it to Abydos Ware and its ability to contribute to our knowledge of the relative chronology between the two areas.(12) Table 1 Comparative Chronology between Egypt and Palestine (Southern Canaan) (modified from R. Gophna, "Early Bronze Age Canaan: Some Spatial and Demographic Observations," in The Archaelogy of Society in the Holy Land (ed. by T.E. Levy), London, 1995, p. 279-Table 1) 4 ORIENT ABYDOS WARE AND THE LOCATION OF THE EGYPTIAN FIRST DYNASTY ROYAL TOMBS The second reason why I choose Abydos Ware was because of another important feature of pottery. Changes in style due to time and regional differences are characteristic of all pottery, and this is particulaly true in the case of Abydos Ware. As some scientific analyses (such as those commissioned by Hennessy(13)), suggest, this pottery was mainly produced in the area of the Dead Sea, which is consistent with the fact that the Egyptian kings of the First Dynasty, especially the early kings, had extended their influence to that region. Since the publication in 1955 of Yadin's article(14), which raised the possibility of Egyptian penetration into Palestine, excavation in that region has progressed greatly. Numerous objects with the names of the Egyptian kings, Egyptian-like mud-brick architecture, Egyptian-like pottery, and so on have been uncovered from such sites as En-Besor and Tel Erany (Fig. 2). For this reason, some scholars even say that Palestine was under the control of the Egyptian kings as a kind of colony, especially in the Early Bronze I period.(15) Although the nature of the political relationship is still controversial, an abundance of archaeological evidence clearly points to the presence of members of the Egyptian elite in the area. In addiiton, there is ample evidence that powerful local rulers in Egypt imported Palestinian pottery as early as the late Predynastic period (preceding the First Dynasty). Recent discoveries of much Palestinian wares(16), notably the pottery found in the late Predynastic king's tomb U-j in Abydos, clearly demonstrate that such imports flourished among the upper Egyptian ruling group. Since the kings of the First Dynasty are believed to have come from the local area(17), the distribution of Abydos Ware in Egypt may become a key to understanding the true location of the royal tombs. The final reason for investigating Abydos Ware was that I have been able to obtain information on a large number of unpublished Abydos Ware sherds from the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford and the Petrie Museum in London. So far, the Abydos Ware from Abydos cemetery has been presented only in the form of rough sketches in the reports of Petrie (Fig. 3).(18) Thus, the total number of items found at Abydos and the details of the pottery remain unclear. The pottery of Saqqara, by contrast, has been relatively well presented. The data can be found in Emery's "Great Tombs of the First Dynasty" series. Emery labeled the Abydos Ware with a "G" and divided it into fifteen sub-types, with a number for each sub-type.(19) Because of this discrepancy in publications it would be wrong to say that the amount of Abydos Ware at Saqqara is much Vol.XXXIII 1998 5 Fig. 2 Map of EBI sites with Egyptian Finds in Canaan [modified from The Nile Delta in Transition (see, notes no. 15), p. 444] 6 ORIENT ABYDOS WARE AND THE LOCATION OF THE EGYPTIAN FIRST DYNASTY ROYAL TOMBS ABYDOS. ROYAL TOMBS: AEGEAN POTTERY. VIII. ALL ABOVE FROM ZER. Fig. 3 Drawings of 'Abydos Ware' in a Report of Abydos by F. Pertie [F. Petrie, Abydos I, London, 1902, Pl. VIII.] Vol. XXXIII 1998 7 greater than the amount at Abydos; we are now able to review the location of the First Dynasty royal tombs on the basis of an analysis of an expanded and reorganized corpus of Abydos Ware.
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