t gives me great pleasure to dedicate this work to Professor William Kelly Simpson. Prof. Simpson was one of the first Egyptol-ogists I met in Egypt. At the time I was an undergraduate student at the American University in Cairo. I happened to find Prof. Simpson working on the epigraphy of the tomb of Idu during one of my many vis-its to the Giza Plateau. Later Prof. Simpson became a supporter of my work at Giza, and then my advisor at Yale University where, with great patience, he guided me through basic skills in ancient Egyptian language and history. Among many valuable lessons that I learned from Prof.
Simpson was that the material retrieved by George Reisner and the Har-vard University–Museum of Fine Arts Expedition to Egypt and Nubia are living records and not dead archives. I am honored to dedicate to Prof. Simpson this attempt to shed more light on a poorly known site by drawing upon those records.
Following the Step Pyramid of King Netjerykhet (Djoser) atSaqqara, the royal builders attempted and failed to complete another step pyra-mid complex at Saqqara for Sekhemkhet, similar in form and compara-ble in size to that of his predecessor. The Layer Pyramid of Zawiyet el-Aryan is a third step pyramid complex begun for a king whose identity is uncertain. There can be little doubt that the Layer Pyramid follows shortly after that of Sekhemkhet, because the substructures and mason-ry of the superstructures are so similar, even though there are large un-certainties in the measurements of both so far reported.1
The Layer Pyramid is less known and more poorly documented than the Sekhemkhet complex. Lepsius (1848) visited the pyramid and numbered it XIV.2 Barsanti excavated the substructure in 1900.3 Reisner and Fisher cleared more of the substructure, and excavated the north and east exterior of the pyramid and the cemeteries around it from Dec-ember 1910 until May 1911. Their publication of the pyramid itself was
1 J.P. Lauer, Histoire monumentale des Pyramides d’Egypte 1 (Cairo, 1962), pp. 209–11.
2 R. Lepsius, Denkmäler aus Aegypten und Aethiopien, Text 1, p.128, Pyramid no. XIV.
3 A. Barsanti, “Ouverture de la pyramide de Zaouiét el-Aryan,” ASAE 2 (1901), pp. 92–94.
I
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limited to a brief article.4 Maragioglio and Rinaldi5 point to serious dis-crepancies between the published architectural drawings of the pyramid and the measurements given by Barsanti and Reisner. In 1978 Dows Dunham, at the age of 87, prepared a volume on the Harvard–MFA Egyp-tian expedition.6 While reproducing the plan and profile and some brief remarks about the Layer Pyramid, this publication dealt mostly with 73 out of about 300 graves from the nearby cemeteries dating to the Archaic Period, Dynasty 3, New Kingdom, and Roman Period. To date, no map has been published showing the pyramid and its relationship to the cemeteries.
Topography of the Layer Pyramid
Because the context of this pyramid is so poorly published, I offer a topo-graphic map of its site from the 1:5,000 map series of the Cairo area (fig.
1).7 The one-meter contours of this series allow us to see clearly the topographic context of the Layer Pyramid.
The pyramid occupies a site about 7 km north of Saqqara. It is situated about 113 m west of an escarpment that rises 27 m above the flood plain. In choosing a location close to the flood plain the builders departed from the trend of Netjerykhet and Sekhemkhet to build far out in the desert. In this sense the setting of the Layer Pyramid is transition-al to that of the Meidum pyramid, where proximity to the flood plain fa-cilitated the connection of the pyramid with a dock and valley temple by way of a causeway.8 Is this a hint that the builders of the Layer Pyra-mid already had in mind a departure from the old rectangular enclosure to the newer idea of a smaller enclosure, and an eastern chapel and causeway?9
4 G.A. Reisner and C.S. Fisher, “The Work of the Harvard University–Museum of Fine Arts Egyptian Expedition,” BMFA 9 (1911), pp. 54–59.
5 V. Maragioglio and C.A. Rinaldi, L’Architettura delle Piramidi Menfite, Part 2: La Pira-mide di Sechemket, La Layer Pyramid di Zauiet el-Aryan e le minori piramidi attribuite alla III dynastia (Turin, 1963), pp. 40, 43.
6 Dows Dunham, Zawiyet el-Aryan: The Cemeteries adjacent to The Layer Pyramid (Boston, 1978).
7 This series for the greater Cairo area was plotted photogrametrically from aerial photo-graphy flown in 1977 for the Egyptian Ministry of Housing and Reconstruction. The Layer Pyramid is included in Map Sheet F19. I took out most modern structures in the vicinity of the pyramid for the preparation of this map.
8 Already planned during the earlier stages E1 and E2 of the pyramid?
9 Major elements of the Djoser type of pyramid enclosure were to reappear during the history of Egyptian pyramids. See D. Arnold, “Das Labyrinth und seine Vorbilder,”
MDAIK 35 (1979), pp. 1–9; idem, Der Pyramidenbezirk des Königs Amenemhet III. in Dahschur 1: Die Pyramide (Mainz am Rhein, 1987), pp. 97–98.
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Mark Lehner, Z500 and The Layer Pyramid of Zawiyet el-Aryan
Fig. 1. Topographic map of Zawiyet el-Aryan and environs, based on aerial photography from 1977.
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Perring made the curious observation that the rock before the north front “had been scrapped away, so as to form on the eastward an inclined approach from the plain beneath.”10 Yet, in spite of the Layer Pyramid’s proximity to the flood plain, there is no easy route by which a causeway could have descended the escarpment which drops 16 m over a distance of 68 m, too steep for a causeway without the construction of a long foundation ramp to make a functional slope. As Maragioglio and Rinaldi pointed out,11 there is a more gradual slope through a narrow recess in the escarpment to the southeast of the pyramid, between spurs A and B.
While this is the traditional place for an entrance in the Djoser type of pyramid enclosure,12 it is a slope yet too steep for the Meidum type of causeway.
Like the Sekhemkhet enclosure,13 the Layer pyramid sits astride a long ridge that the builders may have wanted to utilize in laying out a long rectangular terrace or enclosure oriented slightly northwest–south-east. The ridge, defined by spurs H, the pyramid site, BB, CC and D, forms a nearly continuous line oriented approximately 18° west of north. The pyramid is also oriented in this general direction, about 8° to 9° west of north (measured off the map). Clarence Fisher records in his notes (see below) that he did a “gridiron of trenches” from spur A toward the E–NE and found no traces of walls that might have formed an enclo-sure.14 Immediately below the southwest corner of the pyramid, the builders might have used the steeper edge of another wadi as a quarry.
But this depression comes very close to the pyramid, and it is hard to imagine room for the south end of a long enclosure like those of Netjerykhet and Sekhemkhet.
To the northwest of the pyramid, the natural ridge gives way to a wide and gentle northward slope (off the upper right corner of the map, fig. 1). This might be compared to Saqqara, where a broad wadi slopes from the old Abu Sir lake basin at the edge of the flood plain up to the area of the royal enclosures of Netjerykhet, Sekhemkhet, the royal sub-terranean gallery tombs of Dynasty 2, and the great rectangular enclo-sures on the west.15
10 J.S. Perring, The Pyramids of Giseh 3 (London, 1842), pl. IV, p. 4.
11 Maragioglio and Rinaldi, L’Architettura 2, p. 45.
12 See note 9.
13 Maragioglio and Rinaldi, L’Architettura 2, p. 12; L’Architettura 2, Addenda, Obs. 1 bis.
14 MFA Record Box 2, Site Diary II, pp. 51, 68.
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Z500: The Published Record
The pyramid and its substructure have already been described based on what has been reported from the original fieldwork.16 There is general agreement that the pyramid and its enclosure were never completed.
The substructure was likewise left unfinished and possibly never used for a royal burial. Lauer suggested that the work stopped with the pre-mature death of the king and the possible total loss of his body.17 The only clue about the identity of the king for whom the pyramid was be-gun is the Horus name, Khaba, inscribed on stone bowls that were part of a cache of alabaster, limestone, and hard stone vessels from “Mastaba Z500” located north of the pyramid.18
Z500 is the only Dynasty 3 tomb treated in Dunham’s publication of the graves from the nearby cemeteries. This gives the impression that Z500 is the only Dynasty 3 tomb of consequence near the Layer Pyra-mid, although Reisner and Fisher mentioned “four large mud-brick mas-tabas of the type common in the late Third Dynasty.”19 Dunham notes that Z500 is oriented east–west, however the photograph he published20 shows that it is, in fact, oriented north south. He published four entries from Fisher’s site diaries as the “only diary notes dealing with this build-ing and its contents.”21 The first of these follows:
February 4, 1911. The large mastaba to the north of Mound C (the Zawiyeh Pyramid) is divided by cross-walls of mud, below which are rubble walls; there are no shafts.
February 6, 1911. The mastaba now seems to have been of two periods. The outer casing of mudbrick, as well as the cross-walls, are reconstructions rest-ing on debris. Inside these and below some of the cross-walls are walls of rath-er rough construction, not yet fully cleared. Just to the east of the northeast
15 D. Jeffreys and A. Tavares, “The Historic Landscape of Early Dynastic Memphis,”
MDAIK 50 (1994), pp. 150–51. “The location of the late Second Dynasty galleries does not necessarily show a shift of the necropolis as a whole, but indicates a new royal type of site, set farther back in the desert, but equally, if not more, prominent as viewed from the Abusir valley.” This was not a “new royal type of site” as much as the royal tomb site moving to Saqqara. At Abydos the royal tombs had been far out in the desert at Umm el-Qa™ab through Dynasty 1.
16 Barsanti, ASAE 2, p. 94; G.A. Reisner, The Development of the Egyptian Tomb Down to the Accession of Cheops (Cambridge, MA, 1936), pp. 134–36; Lauer, Histoire monu-mentale 1, pp. 208–11; Maragioglio and Rinaldi, L’Architettura 2, pp. 40–49. In reviewing the MFA records for this article, I saw several photographs of the substructure of the Layer Pyramid. Fisher recleared at least the eastern entrance stairway, northern shaft, and north-ern corridors. It is quite possible that unpublished information is to be gleaned about the substructure from these records.
17 Lauer, Histoire monumentale 1, p. 209.
18 Dunham, Zawiyet el-Aryan, pp. 29–34.
19 Reisner and Fisher, BMFA 9, p. 59.
20 Dunham, Zawiyet el-Aryan, fig. A, p. xii.
21 Ibid., p. 29.
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angle of the mastaba is a large rock-cut pit which was never finished, being sunk only to a depth of two meters.22
The remaining two entries, dated April 16, 1911, and May 11–12, 1911, relate to the stone vessels being removed from Z500, with no additional information about the structure of the tomb or its position.
The lack of any definite substructure associated with Z500, the fact that it seemed the only Dynasty 3 mastaba associated with a Dynasty 3 pyramid, the report of its east–west orientation, and the serekhs on five bowls out of the total cache of stone vessels, prompted Nabil Swelim to suspect that Z500 was the beginning of a chapel or north temple for the Layer Pyramid.23 This also seemed plausible to me, particularly after I prepared the map in fig. 1. My initial impression from the published pho-tograph24 was that Z500 lay close to the north side of the pyramid and near its center axis—just north of the vertical entrance shaft.25 The lower cross-walls “of rather rough construction” could be understood as the kind of debris-filled cross walls found in the enclosures of Sekhem-khet26 and Netjerykhet27 where they were used to build up massifs and terraces. The lower cross-walls, then, could be the beginning of a terrac-ing to level out the ridge and to prepare for an enclosure extendterrac-ing north from the pyramid.
Tombs and Topography: The Unpublished Record
Although it was never plotted, Fisher did collect the data for a map of Z500 and the other Zawiyet el-Aryan tombs that would show their loca-tions with respect to the pyramid.28 The data consists of a large plot of Fisher’s survey points from which he took compass readings and dis-tance measures, lists of these measurements, and separate sketch maps of individual tombs and groups of tombs.29 The plotting of this data will take more time and study of the excavation records. In addition to the
22 Ibid.
23 Nabil Swelim, Some Problems on the History of the Third Dynasty (Alexandria, 1983), pp. 78, 96; R. Stadelmann, Die ägyptischen Pyramiden (Mainz am Rhein, 1985), p. 77.
24 Dunham, Zawiyet el-Aryan, fig. A, p. xii.
25 I learned from a visit to the site in February, 1995, that the area immediately to the north of the Layer Pyramid is blocked off by a wall recently built to surround modern gov-ernment installations.
26 M.Z. Goneim, Horus Sekhemkhet. The Unfinished Step Pyramid at Saqqara 1 (Cairo, 1957), p. 1.
27 J.P. Lauer, La pyramide à degrés 1 (Cairo, 1936), pp. 206–208.
28 I would like to thank Rita Freed and Peter Lacovara for their generous assistance in us-ing the MFA records, and Peter Der Manuelian for help with the article’s illustrations.
29 Box HH 8. Peter Lacovara informed me that he found the plot of survey points during a reorganization of the basement collections. The map was temporarily lost when Dunham prepared his publication. So Dunham, Zawiyet el-Aryan, p. ix.
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survey data, the records include Fisher’s diaries and his small pocket notebook (referred to as the “Red Note Book” in the records).30 These contain sketch maps and plans that can be compared to the contour map of the site (fig. 1) for some clarification of the position of Z500 with respect to the Layer Pyramid.
At the beginning of the work, Reisner and Fisher gave letter designa-tions to the spurs south and east of the pyramid. Figure 2 is traced from Fisher’s sketch of December 20, 1910.31 Lines “x” and “y” delimit the area of his initial trial excavations from spur A to the east side of the Layer Pyramid. The “tomb” labelled “G” is probably the vertical shaft of the pyramid substructure. By January 5, Fisher had also given letter designations to the spurs and hillocks to the north where he had exca-vated tombs on B and C, as shown in fig. 3, his next sketch map of the site.32 Since in his later notes Fisher repeated the letter B, by which he referred to the spur southeast of the pyramid and that to the northwest, I have given the latter the designation BB (fig. 1). Similarly, Reisner orig-inally designated the area immediately northeast of the pyramid as C which he also used to refer to the semi-circular hillock to the north, which I have labelled CC. Fisher designated as T the flat terrace north and east of the pyramid.
30 Box 2. Diary II is titled: “Giza, Mesaeed, March 29 to May 2, 1910; Zawiyet el-Aryan, Dec. 18, 1910 to Feb. 11, 1911.” Box HH 12 contains a collation of typed diary and note-book excerpts (referred to as the “Cut Diary”) relating to Z500. Box HH 11 contains a typed transcription of the Red Notebook. The tomb cards are kept separately.
31 Diary II, p. 51.
32 Diary II, p. 68.
Fig. 2. Fisher’s sketch of Zawiyet el-Aryan, December 20, 1910, from Diary II, p. 51.
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An understanding of the overall development of the cemeteries needs a thorough reading of the records, and the plot of the survey data.
In his diary entry for March 24, 1911, Fisher indicated the following pattern:
We had already our tombs to the N. with Dynasty I names, the Dynasty II group to the N.E., the Roman graves to the E. Now, in the rest (?) work south we have a XVIII Dyn. Cemetery.33
Dunham quotes an unpublished statement of Reisner:
Excavations at Zawiyet el-Aryan covered three periods in time. There were three cemeteries from three successive dynasties (I–III). Although the three cemeteries were in the same district north and east of the pyramid, they were clearly distinguished in position, in types of tombs, and in types of funerary furniture. . . . South and southwest of the pyramid there was a large cemetery of the New Kingdom, and mixed with this on the southeast there were a few late graves of the Roman period.34
The early layout of this part of Zawiyet el-Aryan—a Dynasty 3 step pyramid located south–southwest of an Archaic cemetery which devel-oped along the northern edge of the plateau—bears some resemblance to Saqqara, where the Dynasty 2 royal tombs and the Netjerykhet Step Pyramid were built southwest of the Archaic Period cemetery along the northern escarpment.
Z500: The Unpublished Record
A review of the records of the Harvard–MFA Expedition’s work at Zawiyet el-Aryan makes it certain that Z500 is a mastaba tomb with its own substructure located at the far north end of the ridge. The first hint of mastaba Z500 comes in an entry in the Red Notebook (Fisher’s pocket notebook) for January 5. Fisher did a cursory sketch of mounds B, C, and D showing “a long mudbrick wall” between C and D. His following note states:
Only 3 graves in C. The N. wing of mound contains no graves. To E. of the mound is a square rock shaft & to N. a long wall of mudbrick is coming out.
In line with this wall & hill C is another hill D, the end of the series.
33 Diary III, pp. 30–31.
34 Dunham, Zawiyet el-Aryan, p. iii; see also Reisner, Development of the Egyptian Tomb, p. 136.
Fig. 3. Fisher’s sketch of mounds B, C, and D at Zawiyet el-Aryan, January 5, 1911, from Diary II, p. 68.
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Mark Lehner, Z500 and The Layer Pyramid of Zawiyet el-Aryan
The wall is shown on the sketch map that Fisher drew in his diary entry of that same day (fig. 3). This proved to be the west wall of Z500.
The next we hear of the mastaba is Fisher’s diary entry just before Feb-ruary 4, one of several entries for Z500 that Dunham did not include in his publication, perhaps because it had been omitted from the typed
“Cut Diary” collation of material pertaining to Z500:
Work has now (?) been begun on the mudbrick mastaba lying between hills C and D (cf. sketch plan on page II. 68; Jan. 5 [fig. 3 here]), a portion of the W. wall having been found in the beginning of January. There are 8–11 courses of mud brick in situ, resting on debris and not on the rock surface. The courses are laid as headers and as stretchers, all those in a single row being laid the same, but the courses not alternating regularly.35
Next is the Red Notebook entry dated February 4, which is the first of Dunham’s excerpts (see above) about the dividing walls. Dunham erred in inserting the parenthetical reference to the Zawiyeh Pyramid after “Mound C” in that excerpt. “Mound C” refers to the natural hill
Next is the Red Notebook entry dated February 4, which is the first of Dunham’s excerpts (see above) about the dividing walls. Dunham erred in inserting the parenthetical reference to the Zawiyeh Pyramid after “Mound C” in that excerpt. “Mound C” refers to the natural hill