17 - 23 May 2001
Issue No.534
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Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 17 - 23 May 2001 Issue No.534 |
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Forty years and still digging
The Czech Archaeological Institute in Cairo has been working at Abu Sir since the 1960s, but their remarkable discoveries have remained in the background. Jill Kamil toured the site to view their work of four decades
The necropolis of Abu Sir, which rises above the fertile fields of the village of the same name, has never received the attention of its more famous neighbours, Giza to the north and Saqqara to the south.
The crumbling pyramids of Abu Sir, with the pyramids of Giza lying to the north in the background. The name Abu Sir derives from the Ancient Egyptian, Per Wsir, 'Place of Osiris'
"It is at the very centre of the pyramid field of Memphis, but Abu Sir has always remained at the periphery of archaeological interest," mission head Miroslav Verner told me as he showed me round.
The plan of Abu Sir is extremely difficult to make out. Even armed with a copy of Ludwig Borchardt's theoretical reconstruction of the cemetery, showing the three pyramid complexes of the 5th dynasty Pharaohs Sahure, Neferirkare and Niuserre -- each with pyramid, mortuary temple, causeway and valley temple -- it is difficult to recognise this as one of the major archaeological sites in Egypt.
Trailing after Verner, I caught his words on the wind. "In the mid-1970s, the Czechs gained a major archaeological concession which gave us access to what had previously been archaeologically almost untouched territory," he said. It included the southern part of the Abu Sir field right down to the northern edge of the Saqqara cemetery. The Czech mission set out to survey, clean, excavate and restore the monuments. The rewards have included the discovery of pyramids, tombs and temples of different periods.
We had reached the summit of the pyramid plateau. The pyramids are much smaller than those at Giza. Stripped of their casings, they resemble no more than heaps of rubble.
Verner caught me looking at Borchardt's 100-year-old reconstruction. "Borchardt was working for the German Oriental Society at the time, and he declared that the site was thoroughly excavated, that there was nothing left to discover," he said. "Few archaeologists were inspired to investigate after that, and it was not until the 1960s ... that the first Czech Egyptological project started at Abu Sir."
There was little competition. Archaeological missions were vying for concessions in the neighbouring areas, and by 1985 there were 14 missions working at Saqqara. At Giza, excavations have continued virtually non-stop. Since no one showed much interest in Abu Sir, the area of the original Czech concession was ill-defined. By the 1970s it had extended to include the hitherto almost untouched southern part of the Abu Sir pyramid field, as far as the northern end of the Saqqara necropolis. This larger concession changed the overall concept of the project. "The sheer extent of the area made it possible, in fact essential, to change the working methods and research goals we had established up to that point," Verner said.
South, beyond Saqqara, I could just make out the Bent pyramid of Dahshur. The Giza pyramids were clearly visible to the north. The Czech concession is indeed large.
A major discovery of the 1980s was the small pyramid complex of Queen Khentkaus II, "Mother of two kings," consort of Neferirkare.
"The monument was thought by Borchardt to be another mastaba, and it was, consequently, not given priority in his research," Verner said. "Nor did subsequent excavators pay attention to it, because it was almost totally obscured by sand. However, not too long after our mission started excavating the monument, we realised that it was no mastaba but a previously unknown pyramid complex -- and that it was built for the king's wife, Khentkaus."
The queen is depicted on one of the standing pillars in the mortuary temple. She is seated on a throne holding the wadjet, the sceptre of kingship, in one hand, and with the royal uraeus on her forehead.
By mid-afternoon, we had reached the mastaba of Ptah Shepses, excavated in the early 1980s and ranking among the most important of Old Kingdom monuments. Many important officials of the 5th dynasty bore names compounded with that of Ptah, the god of Memphis. One of these was Shepses, Chief of Craftsmen, High Priest of Ptah, who held a responsible position in the earliest Sun Temple of Abu Sir. When the Czech mission started excavating his huge mastaba, it was buried under layers of rubble up to eight metres thick which took seven seasons to remove. "What eventually emerged was a remarkable structure which had no parallel in its time" Verner said
The chosen site, east of the pyramids of Sahure and Niuserre, dominates the necropolis. Ptah Shepses was a man of non-royal birth who gained extraordinary honour, due as much to his ability as to his connection with the royal family through his marriage to Niuserre's daughter, Princess Khemerernebty, who is depicted kneeling at her husband's feet. Other reliefs show the tomb owner overseeing workers in the fields and workshops, boat-building and bearing funereal offerings. Majestic reconstructed lotiform columns resemble sheaves of lotuses with closed buds, tied beneath the capitals with cord. Each is carved from a single piece of fine white limestone. Verner said his workers called them batn el-baqara, "cow's belly," because that was what the smooth stone reminded them of. This beautiful monument is the highlight of a visit to the pleateau.
At the so-called "unfinished pyramid" nearby, the Czech mission has solved a mystery. Their dig confirmed this was the tomb of Neferefre, son of Neferirkare, who died unexpectedly when the first step at the core of the pyramid was under construction, and before the subterranean chambers had been cut. At that stage, the monument resembled a truncated pyramid: it was hastily completed and faced with limestone.
"What had been planned as a pyramid became a bench-like structure which later priests called 'the primaeval hill', a place of eternal birth, of life and resurrection," Verner said. A small limestone temple was erected in front of the east face of the tomb, later extended and modified by the Pharaoh Niuserre, Neferefre's younger brother and successor. "As a result, a huge and architecturally unique temple emerged, which has no parallel among pyramid complexes," Verner said.
The temple contains 10 large chambers, arranged in pairs and originally two stories high. Inside were more than 2,000 fragments of text. These proved to be temple archives, and included sections of papyrus scrolls containing royal decrees and the time-schedules of temple services.
The temple yielded two other surprises. One was the earliest known columned (hypostyle) hall, not found in any other monuments from the age of the pyramid builders. The other was the discovery of a large mud-brick building, the Sanctiary of the Knife, which proved to be a slaughterhouse for sacrificial animals.
The Czech mission has found its work enormously rewarding. Until relatively recently, Abu Sir was described as a 5th dynasty cemetery. The Czech excavations have revealed that its history was longer than hitherto supposed. And, Verner says: "It is by no means archaeologically exhausted."
From the start, the excavations were planned with military precision. It took several seasons to make a geophysical survey and conduct trial digs before three long-term projects began. The first was examining the pyramids not explored by the German team; the second concentrated on the large mastaba fields at the edge of the desert, where tombs dating from the 3rd to the 6th dynasties have been found; and the third was investigating the shaft tombs of the Saite-Persian period.
Shaft tombs
AT THE END of 1970, not far from the Abu Sir pyramid zone, the Czech mission found a group of large square-shaped structures, the so-called Persian shaft tombs.These fascinating structures date from the end of the 26th dynasty in about the 6th century BC. Their aim was to protect the mummy by burying the sarcophagus so deep beneath the surface of the desert that its entrance was invisible.
At Saqqara, two shafts were dug in the bedrock, one larger than the other, to an equal depth and a few metres apart. They were joined at the base by a passage. The tomb chamber, lined with limestone and decorated with reliefs, was made ready at the bottom of the larger shaft. The shaft was then filled with sand and the sarcophagus placed on top. Then, as workmen at the bottom of the second shaft removed the sand through the connecting passage, the sarcophagus slowly descended to its position. Finally, both shafts were filled with sand and rubble to the level of the desert.
But one tomb, that of Udjahorresnet, proved much more complex. "It consisted of a central shaft surrounded on all four sides by peripheral shafts linked at various levels by large apertures," Verner said. "The shafts had been filled with sand so fine that it flowed freely through the apertures. As it was progressively removed, the shaft had to be reinforced with beams and boards." The dig was disappointing, for when they reached the vaulted ceiling of the burial chamber, at a depth of 14 metres, the team found robbers had been there before them, gaining entry to the chamber by making a hole in the ceiling.
The next tomb proved more rewarding. At the bottom of a 22-metre-deep shaft, the team found a small, intact burial chamber. Inside was a huge limestone sarcophagus covered in hieroglyphic inscriptions naming the tomb as that of Iufaa, a lector-priest and Controller of Palaces. Nearby were four canopic jars in a rotted wooden chest topped with the recumbent jackal-god Anubis, and a complete set, 408 in all, of blue-glazed faience ushabti figures in two wooden chests.
"You can imagine how excited we were," Verner said. "But the euphoric atmosphere soon evaporated when we realised that the walls of the main shaft were cracking and crumbling. It was clear that once the tomb was opened and exposed to the sunshine and circulation of hot air, the soft and brittle tafla (rubble) of the main shaft would collapse into the shaft."
It was a race against time to save the burial chamber. The team quickly procured 400 cubic metres of concrete and 30 tons of steel rods and built a gabled coffer to protect the tomb. "It is not easy to find the words to describe the courage of the people involved, in particular our Egyptian collaborators, working at the bottom of the huge shaft whose walls threatened to crack and crumble at any moment," Verner said. "Thanks to all of them the monument of Iufaa was saved."
Opening the sarcophagus presented a problem. The team's engineer came up with an ingenious plan to raise the 24-ton lid with hydraulic and mechanical jacks. Once it was raised to a height of about a metre, four long wooden beams were inserted under the raised lid, and jacks were used to push the lid aside.
There, to the delight of those lucky enough to witness it, lay a beautiful anthropoid sarcophagus of greenish-black schist. It lay embedded in a mould in the limestone chest, the side walls of which bore finely-carved and coloured inscriptions.
"Interestingly, the sarcophagus was completely covered by a layer of crumbled mud-brick," Verner said. "The reason for this is not known. Perhaps it was intended to imitate burial in the earth, or to absorb the humidity infiltrating the limestone."
Iufaa's mummy was firmly bound with linen wrappings glued with resin, and there were traces of bright gilding on portions of the face. Over the body lay fragments of a net shroud of blue faience beads and figures of gods.
Iufaa has been moved to a laboratory in the Giza Inspectorate of Antiquities for X-rays and study. "Already we know he was 25 or 30 years old when he died," Verner said.
Iufaa's remains will eventually be returned to his tomb. Will he be left to rest in peace? Possibly not. Abu Sir is opening up to tourism and curious sightseers. The ancient priests and architects who hid his mummy so carefully have been foiled.
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