The evolution of funerary architecture
from the Predynastic pit-grave, through
the development of the mastaba tomb, up
to (but not including) the pyramid
complexes of the 4th Dynasty.
BY
MARÍA JOSÉ AMOR MARTÍNEZ
CCE Fist Year
MANCHESTER
Comentario [J1]: You need to read theinstructions for submission carefully – you need the add your student number and the plagairism clause to the front page. Also, Word 2003 and compress your images, please.
During the preparation of this essay I have read many books and articles. The more I read the more confused I felt. The prehistoric and predynastic period of the history of Egypt is just getting out from the dark and theories upon the dates arise everywhere. Of course, there are authors who are serious and others more creative, but even among the first there is not a conclusion. Egypt has always been seen as a country of gold and mystery and all kind of adventurers arrived there for excavating and finding treasures. It is only during the last century that serious and well organized excavations have been performed, not only looking for gold and master pieces for museums but for information about the beginnings of history.
Egypt is in fact two lands: the North and the South. Even after the unification every king was conscious about existent duality: two different crowns. Unification does not mean a mixture or mingling but equilibrium of forces expressed through the lotus for the South and the papyrus for the North from the very outset.
Concerning excavations there is an important difference between these two lands because the South is dry and deserted and tends to conservation and the North is a Delta, so the soil is dumped which means conservation and therefore, excavations are more difficult.
From Delta we have mostly discovered settlements but very little interments and from the South just the contraire because the desert renders special conditions for conservating the deads.
All these factors render little information about burying in the Delta land but enough for giving insight of different customs in funeral architecture from people of High Lands.
A quick summary from the Neolithic burial is required to establish the outline.
Neolithic in Egypt appears very late compared with the other important ancient cultures of the world. It has been speculated that the soil was so rich that there was no need for cultivation. Hunting, gathering, fishing and herding cattle as nomads was enough for such a rich country, that´s why they settled so late as civilization.
Comentario [J2]: I agree with much of
what you say here. But you need to be careful with your words, as you have only 2500. So maybe this introduction could have been a bit shorter.
Comentario [J3]: And damp/wet. In
fact we discover very little from the Delta compared to the south.
Whatever the reasons were, the point is that once stablished, in spite of all the coincidences about the way of life, there were differences between the style of interment and, hence, the believes.
And there is another question, Midant-Reynes states that Petrie believes that the transitional period between Naqada II and de 1st Dynasty (identified by Petrie as Semainean) meant a complete break because of the invaders of the East. But in fact, Petrie in the conclusions of 'Naqada and Ballas' states:
So it is from the west that this aggressive immigration might come and that is not so untried because the terrible drought which affected the Sahara since 5000 ac becoming the desert that it is nowadays. The fertile Nile valley became a meeting point to the most diverse cultures becoming a kind of melting pot and the result was the Old Egyptian civilization. So it is very difficult to know if there was an evolution or revolution time will tell.
Note: Toby Wilkinson in “Early Dynastic Egypt” pg. 14 states:
Comentario [J5]: But this is Petrie
writing almost a century ago. No one now believes in the “new race” or agressive immigration and you don’t even need to think about this. This is explained in the course notes, and in Wilkinson. Plus, none of this is relevant to your essay.
Comentario [J6]: Please use proper
Radio carbon-based chronology recognizes four absolute periods in the Nile Valley:
1.- The Early Predynastic (ca. 5000-3900B.C.) 2.- Middle Predynastic (ca. 3900-3650 B.C.) 3.- Late Predynastic (ca. 3650-3300 B.C.) 4.- Terminal Predynastic (3300- 3050 B.C.)
These periods are roughly equivalent to the Badarian, Nagada I (Amratian), Nagada II (Gerzean) and Nagada III (Protodynastic).
Maadi-Buto
In the early fourth millennium a period now termed as Maadi-Buto phase reflects the distinct cultural trajectories of Lower and Upper Egypt at this time, they were immediately distinguished from contemporaneous Naqada I-IIB cemeteries in the Nile valley, largely on the grounds of what was absent from all the goods that were normal to find in the other cemeteries.
There is a special feature in the Maadi-Buto cemeteries, according to Wengrow, David “The archaeology of Early Egypt”:
Comentario [J7]: Where does this
information come from – it needs a reference.
Comentario [J8]: These quotations are
too long – the essay has to be in your own words.
This structure is the sole in the entire Egypt and has its correspondence with the area of Beersheva (Abu-Matar) that shows the enormous similarity between the culture of Delta (prior to the expansion of the South-North) and the Middle East.
But this indigenous culture was literally sweep off by the push of the South foreshadowing the situation at the end of the 2th intermediate period. In Midant-Reynes words:
Clear social distinctions existed between elites and non elites as far back as the Badarian period.
The most important impediment in the study of the first interment is the extensive plundering of graves most other, predynastic cemeteries but beside, the modern cultivations that begins to give away to the low desert making impossible an extensive excavation.
There is a classic criterion to determinate the degree of evolution of the first cemeteries, which is the presence of elites: special tombs wealthier than the most common. That is particular evident when finding a child tomb with a rich funerary deposit (prestige goods) because it is very difficult for a child to deserve them, he had no time enough lived to award them. So it was his relationship with a special chief or ruler that determines his „status‟ that is elite.
By contrast, there are others recent opinions searching for new forms of reading the evidences like David Wengrow in „The Archeology of Early Egypt‟ Cambridge University Press, 2006:
The predynastic cemeteries are concentrated in a few areas: Hierakompolis is one of the sites that represent the most extensive burials.
Naqada is a very important place excavated by Petrie and providing the material for his relative chronology of the predynastic period.
Abydoss, the most important place for predinastic royal interment.
A typical badarian-period tomb is a shallow (five to six feet in depth) unroofed oval pit big enough for a body (sometimes two or three) in a fetal position head to south and face to west.
Comentario [J9]: Hierakonpolis
Burial goods include pottery which contains food and offerings for the passage to the afterlife. Some vessels, jewellery and slate palettes.
The body is wrapped in a skin and a reed mat. Most commonly there is a triple layer of coverings: cloth next to the body, then skin or leather, outside which is a wide mat:
Burial customs in the Naqada I period are still quite similar to the Badarians although the size of the tombs becomes slightly larger and rectangular.
Petrie (Naqada and Ballas) described one of them full of details:
Petrie and Quibell described a local method of building with water-jars instead of brick:
From the very beginnings, a tomb was the dead´s abode of eternity with the same needs that the dead had when living: if the dead is poor, he would have only a chamber with very little offerings but if rich then the abode grow and more than one chamber could be full of food and precious things.
Comentario [J11]: Interesting – but
Before a social structuring appears, there was no high difference between the tomb of a poor or a rich but when time go on and society become structured with the raise of an „elite‟ social class, then big differences occurs. The point is that the tomb of a poor man has little evolved with time; in fact, nowadays a tomb of a worker of the IV Dynasty at Giza has been recently discovered and there is no difference with the predynastics tombs of the poor.
After Naqada I period, fundamental changes arrived and a question arises: were they the result of a evolution, a revolution, or from outer invader? Beatrix Midant-Reynes is very conclusive: “This developments, however, took place not at the margins of the culture but in its Amratian heartland: in essence they can be regarded as an evolution rather than a sudden break” after „The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt.
Of course Petrie had different opinion but since he was wrong in dating the period it looks like everything was wrong in his mind about that. But, in my opinion and basing on the evidence of the substantial differences of the remains of burial pottery and rites involved is quite possible that other people took over the place. Probably, a new nomad people from the oasis of Sahara that decides established because of the growing drought. That is no so weird at these times.
At cemetery of Naqada Petrie found new features in tombs never shown that led him to think about a „new race‟, warrior immigrants that took over the place. Well actually the presence of a „new race‟ in not accepted anymore but the fact is that there was a break: a great change between the features of the previous tombs which correspond to Naqada I period and this one that belongs to Naqada II period.
This is a descriptions from Naqada and Ballas:
Comentario [J12]: More deatils and a
reference please.
Comentario [J13]: There is absolutely
no evidence for this – if you are going to argue that there was an unknown invasion at this time, you need to give some proof to suppoer your argument.
The tomb T-5 had no sign of having been plundered, everything is in its original positions , the bones were heaped in one pile, and the eight jars on the northern part of the tomb, were filled with grey ashes of wood and vegetable matter. According to Petrie investigation this ashes are different from the pits full of ashes at Gurob under the floors of the houses in which personal possessions of the dead were destroyed. In this case a great burning took place at a funeral and the ashes of the vegetable matter and even the burnt sand beneath it, were gathered up and buried in the grave:
Another class of jar, the wavy-handled stood around the south or head-end with fat, or its ceremonial substitute mud. In the early graves, with the well formed wavy handles, the jars were full of strongly scented vegetable fat, in the middle period, when the wavy handles deteriorate, the fat gradually decreases and a layer of mud fills the jar, apparently to prevent the fat losing its odor; in the latest forms, where the jar became a cylinder and the handles disappeared, nothing but solid mud was found in the jars.
In the middle of the tomb were five skulls without any vertebrae attached and a sixth skull lay at the south end upon a brick. Amongst these skulls were three stone vases, eighth flat bases and pierced for suspensions and one oval vase with sharp edge.
These vases were all of the largest size usual in such hard materials, porphyry or syenite, the forms were of the finest type. In one vase were hardstone beads a necklace having probably been placed in it. In another was a brown pebble which was an object constantly found with the slate palettes. Beneath the vase were chips of malachite, which was the material generally ground on the slate palettes.
And that is a new way of interment and implies new funeral rites. Perhaps it is a development of the previous type or perhaps as Petrie suggest a new people´s settlement. Changing settlement used to be a normal way of living at the beginning of Neolithic period because the field are not systematically cultivated and people live trend to a nomadic style of live.
In general terms the burial places of the predynastic period are very simple: normally shallow oval or circular holes and marked by little more than low mounds of sand or grave above the burial pit this second type is larger and more rectangular shaped the graves are sometimes elaborated with wooden linings and roofs while high status examples are lined with brick and divided into two compartments by a wall. The first known decorated tomb was from Hierakonpolis (Hierakonpolis 100) where the mud-brick walls of the tomb were covered with a layer of mud plaster and then by a coat of yellow ochre.
This scenes foreshadow the most typical Egyptian composition. The battle depictions might reflect a actual historical struggles or just a stereotypical images of martial prowess. In the first case a kind of invasion cannot be ruled out. It seems that later chieftains moved their cemetery of bricked lined tombs 2km to the west of the tomb 100 up the Wadi Abu´l Suffian where had lain an earlier Naqada I cemetery.
Here the tombs were slightly larger and with preserved traces of a superstructure of wood and reeds but we cannot tell if other superstructures existed because they have not survived. With a similar substructure lie tombs in Cemetery U at Abydos forming part of the Umm el-Qaab necropolis.
According to Dodson and Salima: “These were almost certain the tombs of the men whose immediate descendent would unite the country for the first time” after “The Tomb in Ancient Egypt”.
The root of the Egyptian monarchy is in the Naqada II elite or chiefdom nucleated around few cities or proto-states, three maybe four (at the Upper Egypt) as city states. From them, on Naqada III period, unification occurred.
The distribution of the cemetery in Naqada III period are very concentrate: only two places: Hierakonpolis and Abydos and only at Abydos the interments continues without break until the unification of the country and even later.
The Naqada III culture saw a more general elaboration of burial places, the standard now is the rectangular shape and there is a clear difference between the ruler class and the mass class. Stratification of society means progress (on the contraire of our nowadays believes) depending on de status of the dead the tomb would be more or less complex and compartmented and the goods more valuable.
One of the most impressive is at Umm el Qaab and designated U-j it dates roughly century before the unification of Egypt:
Comentario [J15]: Proper reference
please. Including page number. Ikram , not Salima.
Apparently, a low mound was constructed directly above the roof of the substructure representing the primeval mound on the Creator first manifested himself when the mound emerged from the Chaos.
In addition to these modest memorials back in the desert, a new element was added from the reign of Aha in the form of large rectangular brick enclosures nearly 2 km away, close to the desert edge. The outer walls of these mortuary complexes were decorated with brick paneling and at least some had a small chapel in the southeast quadrant.
They may have contained temporary ritual buildings and formed the prototypes for a long series of royal mortuary chapels that continued through the New Kingdom and beyond.
On the other hand the enclosures do not seem to have been intended as permanent monuments, as at least some show signs of having been dismantled within a fairly short time of the funeral. Twelve wooden boats, found in individual mud-brick tombs, appear to have been associated with the enclosure of Djer, third ruler of the 1st Dynasty. Casual boats are intermittently associated with royal burials until the Middle Kingdom.
The use of mudbrik in constructing subterranean chambers, first practiced at a handful of sites in late Naqada II times, was adopted as virtually standard feature of high status burials during the early Naqada tombs are documented at numerous cemeteries from Ninshat Abu Omar in the north to Hierakonpolis in the south, with notable concentrations in the region of Memphis (Tarkhan, Tura and Abu Rawas) and at Abydos in Upper Egypt.
At Abydos a series of brick lined tombs, some with multiple chambers were built around the margins of the predynastic cemetery U at the beginning of Naqada III period.
The Predynastic „tumulus‟ finally evolved into a enormous rectangular bench that is a „mastaba‟ the culmination of the previous architecture.
The rectangular body of the mastaba is decorated on all four sides by a complex design niche. The whole thing is enclosed by a powerful wall and a series of subsidiary tombs calls „saty‟ by Petrie. The burial chamber is underground with a roof supported by beams and a mound which is covered by the roof of the mastaba.
The whole thing was intended to reproduce the early environment of the decease because it is his home for eternity: the burial chamber is the bedroom and all the magazines around it are the supply for food, games for entertainment and even a kind of room for the visit which is the false door, where friends and people passing by could stop and pay a visit. The mastaba is the culmination of an architectural development that had begun with the predynastic tumulus covering the pit in which the deceased was buried.
This tumulus was more or less derived from the idea of the original mound on which the solar creator had first appeared according to the Heliopolitan theologians.
The tumulus must framework of wooden planking. The deceased was placed below the tumulus in an oval or rectangular pit which gradually evolved during the prehistoric period, although its purpose always remained fundamentally the same: a place in which the owner of the tomb was deposited together with the means to reach the afterworld and survive there.
The body was most often laid in a contracted position on its side, sometimes on a reed mat or wrapped in a shroud. With the mastaba, the superstructure includes a center for the cult and as a representation of a man´s earthly domain. The cult aspect of the tomb took the form of niches containing stelae which served as a basic record of the name of the deceased from the tombs of the Thinite kings onwards. At the first, only the king had access to the afterlife (the king and the retainers buried in the famous subsidiary „saty‟ tombs).
But from an early date, the high court officials appropriated this practice and eventually to the common people with the exception of the actual symbols and attributes of royalty. In the course of its development the funerary stele also went through a process of elaboration: beyond simply naming the tomb´s owner, it actually described the offerings which had to be brought to the deceased as a virtual „menu‟ offered to the beneficiary or more exactly to the Ka of the beneficiary what is means his vital force his cosmic energy.
The dead has a lot of needs. First at all he needs to be in the memory of the living and then, he needs his Ka with him and the Ka needs to be fed. The combination of the stele and false door (the „false door stele‟) was a response to the ka´s needs and further on become a focal point of the tomb chapel, and the mural decoration were arranged so as to converge on it.
In the last sense there is no difference between a house, a temple or a tomb because the tree functions are already covered by a Egyptian tomb.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Hoffman, Michael; ‘Egypt before the Pharaons‟, 1980. Kemp, Barry J. “Anatomy of a Civilitation”,2006.
Wengrow David; „The Archaeology of Early Egypt‟ , London, 2006. Dodson, Aidan &Ikram Salima; „The Tomb in Ancient Egypt‟,
London, 2005.
Grimal, Nicolas; „ A History of Ancient Egypt‟, Australia, 1992. Midant- Reynes, Bèatrix; ‘The Prehistory of Egypt‟, Paris, 1992
translated by Ian Shaw.
Adams Barbara and Cialowicz, Krzysztof; ‘Protodynastic Egypt‟, 1997.
Schulz Regine & Seidel Mattias; „Egipto, el Mundo de los Faraones‟ Colonia, 1997.
Petrie, Flinders & Quibell, J. E.; „ Naqada and Ballas‟, London, 1895;
http://www.archive.org/deatils/cu31924028748261
Petrie, Flinders; „The Royal Tombs of The First Dynasty‟ , Part I, London, 1900.
Petrie, Flinders; „The Royal Tombs of The Earliest Dynasties, Part II, London, 1901.
Savage, Stephen; „Some Recent Trends in the Archaeology of Predynastic Egypt,‟ 2001.
Randall-Maciver, M.A.&Mace, A.C. ; „El Amrah and Abydos‟, London, 1899-1901.
Murray, M. A. ; „Burial Customs and Beliefs in the Hereafter in Predynastic Egypt‟, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3855127 Digital Egypt for Universities; http://www.digitalegypt.ucl.ac.uk
Wilkinson, Toby; „Early Dynastic Egypt‟, USA, 1999.
Comentario [J17]: This should be in
proper Harvard format, and in alphabetical order.
MARKING SUMMARY
All marks are expressed as percentages and are characterised as follows:
70% + = A very good piece of work indeed 60% + = A good piece of work
50% + = An acceptable piece of work 40% + = Pass, some improvement required 39% - = Fail
Marks in the middle of a band indicate work that is typical of the grade; marks towards the top or bottom of the band suggest affinity with the grades above or below but not enough to warrant a different grade.
Criteria Summary feedback A: ARGUMENT
Does the work answer the question set by the essay title?
Yes very well
Yes Barely
No
Is the argument clear and well structured?
Yes very well
Yes Barely
No
Does the work demonstrate appropriate skills of analysis for the assignment level?
Yes very well
Yes Barely
B: USE OF SOURCES
Range of sources?
Very good Appropriate
Limited
Are the sources accurately reported and understood?
Exceptionally well
Yes
Barely
Serious misunderstandings
C: PRESENTATION
Spelling, grammar and punctuation Good Adequate Below standard Referencing of sources Excellent Good Adequate Below standard
Is the work of appropriate length?
Yes
Too long
Too short
Maria,
Well done. You have obviously put a lot of work into this essay. You have done a lot of reading, and you have obviously thought deeply about the subject . Your English is good, and I like the way that you give your own opinions. However, you do have to be careful when reading Petrie. His fieldwork is still important, but many of his ideas are not. You also have omitted any detailed description of the step
Now you need to consider the following, to improve your mark:
The first sheet must have the word count, the plagiarism clause and your student id.
The essay MUST NOT be longer than 2500 words including all your quotes – this is far too long and so cannot get a good mark
The references in the text must be Harvard references – and you need more of them.
You must only give quotations from other authors where they are stating something important or original. Do not simply take large extracts from their work.
You MUST stick to the subject of the essay. There is a great deal within this essay which has absolutely nothing to do with the essay title. None of that attracts any mark.
I am sure that, if you read this list of suggested improvements carefully and you stick to the word length, your mark for the next essay will be much higher.
First Marker 41%
Second marker: Agreed.
A really promising start to essay writing for this course. With the advice above taken on board, things should pick up fast.
