The Evolution of Funerary Architecture From Predynastic to the Mastaba

8/13/2019 The Evolution of Funerary Architecture From Predynastic to the Mastaba

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The evolution of funerary architecturefrom the Predynastic pit-grave, through

the development of the mastaba tomb, upto (but not including) the pyramidcomplexes of the 4th Dynasty.

BY

MARA JOS AMOR MARTNEZCCE Fist YearMANCHESTER Comentario [J1]: You need to read theinstructions for submission carefully you

need the add your student number and theplagairism clause to the front page. Also,Word 2003 and compress your images,please.


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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-Butophase reflects the distinct cultural trajectories of Lower and UpperEgypt at this time, they were immediately distinguished fromcontemporaneous Naqada I-IIB cemeteries in the Nile valley, largelyon the grounds of what was absent from all the goods that werenormal to find in the other cemeteries.

There is a special feature in the Maadi-Buto cemeteries, accordingto Wengrow, David The archaeology of Early Egypt:

Comentario [J7]: Where does thisinformation come from it needs areference.

Comentario [J8]: These quotations aretoo long the essay has to be in your ownwords.


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This structure is the sole in the entire Egypt and has itscorrespondence with the area of Beersheva (Abu-Matar) that showsthe 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 2thintermediate period. In Midant-Reynes words:

Clear social distinctions existed between elites and non elites asfar back as the Badarian period.


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The most important impediment in the study of the first interment

is the extensive plundering of graves most other, predynasticcemeteries but beside, the modern cultivations that begins to giveaway to the low desert making impossible an extensive excavation.

There is a classic criterion to determinate the degree of evolutionof the first cemeteries, which is the presence of elites: special tombswealthier than the most common. That is particular evident whenfinding a child tomb with a rich funerary deposit (prestige goods)because it is very difficult for a child to deserve them, he had no timeenough 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 newforms of reading the evidences like David Wengrow in The Archeologyof Early Egypt Cambridge University Press, 2006:

The predynastic cemeteries are concentrated in a few areas:

Hierakompolis is one of the sites that represent the mostextensive burials.

Naqada is a very important place excavated by Petrie and

providing the material for his relative chronology of the predynasticperiod.

Abydoss , the most important place for predinastic royalinterment.

A typical badarian-period tomb is a shallow (five to six feet indepth) unroofed oval pit big enough for a body (sometimes two orthree) in a fetal position head to south and face to west.

Comentario [J9]: Hierakonpolis

Comentario [J10]: Abydos


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Burial goods include pottery which contains food and offerings for

the passage to the afterlife. Some vessels, jewellery and slatepalettes.

The body is wrapped in a skin and a reed mat. Most commonlythere is a triple layer of coverings: cloth next to the body, then skin orleather, outside which is a wide mat:

From http://www.digitalegypt.ucl.ac.uk
http://www.digitalegypt.ucl.ac.uk/http://www.digitalegypt.ucl.ac.uk/http://www.digitalegypt.ucl.ac.uk/http://www.digitalegypt.ucl.ac.uk/


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Burial customs in the Naqada I period are still quite similar to the

Badarians although the size of the tombs becomes slightly larger andrectangular.

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 deads abode ofeternity with the same needs that the dead had when living: if the deadis poor, he would have only a chamber with very little offerings but ifrich then the abode grow and more than one chamber could be full offood and precious things.

Comentario [J11]: Interesting butnot particularly relevant to the essay.


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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 societybecome structured with the raise of an elite social class, then bigdifferences occurs. The point is that the tomb of a poor man has littleevolved with time; in fact, nowadays a tomb of a worker of the IVDynasty at Giza has been recently discovered and there is nodifference with the predynastics tombs of the poor.

After Naqada I period, fundamental changes arrived and aquestion arises: were they the result of a evolution, a revolution, orfrom outer invader? Beatrix Midant-Reynes is very conc lusive: This

developments, however, took place not at the margins of the culturebut in its Amratian heartland: in essence they can be regarded as anevolution rather than a sudden break after The Oxford History of

Ancient Egypt.

Of course Petrie had different opinion but since he was wrong indating the period it looks like everything was wrong in his mind aboutthat. But, in my opinion and basing on the evidence of the substantialdifferences of the remains of burial pottery and rites involved is quitepossible that other people took over the place. Probably, a new nomad

people from the oasis of Sahara that decides established because ofthe growing drought. That is no so weird at these times.

At cemetery of Naqada Petrie found new features in tombs nevershown that led him to think about a new race, warrior immigrants thattook over the place. Well actually the presence of a new race in notaccepted anymore but the fact is that there was a break: a greatchange between the features of the previous tombs which correspondto 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 areference please.

Comentario [J13]: There is absolutelyno evidence for this if you are going toargue that there was an unknown invasionat this time, you need to give some proofto suppoer your argument.


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The tomb T-5 had no sign of having been plundered, everything isin its original positions , the bones were heaped in one pile, and theeight jars on the northern part of the tomb, were filled with grey ashesof wood and vegetable matter. According to Petrie investigation thisashes are different from the pits full of ashes at Gurob under the floorsof the houses in which personal possessions of the dead weredestroyed. In this case a great burning took place at a funeral and theashes of the vegetable matter and even the burnt sand beneath it,were gathered up and buried in the grave:


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Another class of jar, the wavy-handled stood around the south or

head-end with fat, or its ceremonial substitute mud. In the earlygraves, with the well formed wavy handles, the jars were full ofstrongly scented vegetable fat, in the middle period, when the wavyhandles deteriorate, the fat gradually decreases and a layer of mudfills the jar, apparently to prevent the fat losing its odor; in the latestforms, 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 vertebraeattached and a sixth skull lay at the south end upon a brick. Amongst

these skulls were three stone vases, eighth flat bases and pierced forsuspensions and one oval vase with sharp edge.

These vases were all of the largest size usual in such hardmaterials, porphyry or syenite, the forms were of the finest type. In onevase were hardstone beads a necklace having probably been placedin it. In another was a brown pebble which was an object constantlyfound with the slate palettes. Beneath the vase were chips ofmalachite, which was the material generally ground on the slatepalettes.

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 Petriesuggest a new peoples settlement. Changing settlement used to be anormal way of living at the beginning of Neolithic period because thefield are not systematically cultivated and people live trend to anomadic style of live.

In general terms the burial places of the predynastic period arevery simple: normally shallow oval or circular holes and marked bylittle more than low mounds of sand or grave above the burial pit thissecond type is larger and more rectangular shaped the graves aresometimes elaborated with wooden linings and roofs while high statusexamples are lined with brick and divided into two compartments by awall. The first known decorated tomb was from Hierakonpolis(Hierakonpolis 100) where the mud-brick walls of the tomb werecovered with a layer of mud plaster and then by a coat of yellow ochre.

Comentario [J14]: Reference.


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This scenes foreshadow the most typical Egyptian composition.

The battle depictions might reflect a actual historical struggles or just astereotypical images of martial prowess. In the first case a kind ofinvasion cannot be ruled out. It seems that later chieftains moved theircemetery of bricked lined tombs 2km to the west of the tomb 100 upthe Wadi Abul Suffian where had lain an earlier Naqada I cemetery.

Here the tombs were slightly larger and with preserved traces of asuperstructure of wood and reeds but we cannot tell if othersuperstructures existed because they have not survived. With a similarsubstructure lie tombs in Cemetery U at Abydos forming part of the

Umm el-Qaab necropolis.

According to Dodson and Salima : These were almost certain thetombs of the men whose immediate descendent would unite thecountry for the first time after The Tomb in Ancient Egypt.

The root of the Egyptian monarchy is in the Naqada II elite orchiefdom 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 veryconcentrate: only two places: Hierakonpolis and Abydos and only at

Abydos the interments continues without break until the unification ofthe country and even later.

The Naqada III culture saw a more general elaboration of burialplaces, the standard now is the rectangular shape and there is a cleardifference between the ruler class and the mass class. Stratification ofsociety 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 referenceplease. Including page number. Ikram , notSalima.


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Apparently, a low mound was constructed directly above the roof

of the substructure representing the primeval mound on the Creatorfirst manifested himself when the mound emerged from the Chaos.

In addition to these modest memorials back in the desert, a newelement was added from the reign of Aha in the form of largerectangular brick enclosures nearly 2 km away, close to the desertedge. The outer walls of these mortuary complexes were decoratedwith brick paneling and at least some had a small chapel in thesoutheast quadrant.

They may have contained temporary ritual buildings and formedthe prototypes for a long series of royal mortuary chapels thatcontinued through the New Kingdom and beyond.


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On the other hand the enclosures do not seem to have been

intended as permanent monuments, as at least some show signs ofhaving been dismantled within a fairly short time of the funeral. Twelvewooden boats, found in individual mud-brick tombs, appear to havebeen associated with the enclosure of Djer, third ruler of the 1stDynasty. Casual boats are intermittently associated with royal burialsuntil the Middle Kingdom.

The use of mudbrik in constructing subterranean chambers, firstpracticed at a handful of sites in late Naqada II times, was adopted asvirtually standard feature of high status burials during the early Naqada

tombs are documented at numerous cemeteries from Ninshat AbuOmar in the north to Hierakonpolis in the south, with notableconcentrations in the region of Memphis (Tarkhan, Tura and AbuRawas) and at Abydos in Upper Egypt.

At Abydos a series of brick lined tombs, some with multiplechambers were built around the margins of the predynastic cemetery Uat the beginning of Naqada III period.

The Tomb in the First Dynasties


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The Predynastic tumulus finally evolved into a enormous

rectangular bench that is a mastaba the culmination of the previousarchitecture.

The rectangular body of the mastaba is decorated on all four sidesby a complex design niche. The whole thing is enclosed by a powerfulwall and a series of subsidiary tombs calls saty by Petrie. The burialchamber is underground with a roof supported by beams and a moundwhich is covered by the roof of the mastaba.

The whole thing was intended to reproduce the early environmentof the decease because it is his home for eternity: the burial chamberis 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 isthe false door, where friends and people passing by could stop andpay a visit. The mastaba is the culmination of an architecturaldevelopment that had begun with the predynastic tumulus covering thepit in which the deceased was buried.

This tumulus was more or less derived from the idea of theoriginal mound on which the solar creator had first appeared accordingto the Heliopolitan theologians.


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The tumulus must framework of wooden planking. The deceased

was placed below the tumulus in an oval or rectangular pit whichgradually evolved during the prehistoric period, although its purposealways remained fundamentally the same: a place in which the ownerof the tomb was deposited together with the means to reach theafterworld 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 arepresentation of a mans earthly domain. The cult aspect of the tomb

took the form of niches containing stelae which served as a basicrecord of the name of the deceased from the tombs of the Thinitekings onwards. At the first, only the king had access to the afterlife (theking and the retainers buried in the famous subsidiary saty tombs).

But from an early date, the high court officials appropriated thispractice and eventually to the common people with the exception ofthe actual symbols and attributes of royalty. In the course of itsdevelopment the funerary stele also went through a process ofelaboration: beyond simply naming the tombs owner, it actually

described the offerings which had to be brought to the deceased as avir tual menu offered to the beneficiary or more exactly to the Ka of thebeneficiary what is means his vital force his cosmic energy.

The dead has a lot of needs. First at all he needs to be in thememory of the living and then, he needs his Ka with him and the Kaneeds to be fed. The combination of the stele and false door (the falsedoor stele) was a response to the kas needs and further on become afocal point of the tomb chapel, and the mural decoration werearranged so as to converge on it.

In the last sense there is no difference between a house, a templeor a tomb because the tree functions are already covered by aEgyptian tomb.

Comentario [J16]: When?


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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, Batrix; The Prehistory of Egypt, Pari s, 1992

translated by Ian Shaw.

Adams Barbara and Cialowicz, Krzysztof; Protodynastic Egypt,1997.

Schulz Regine & Seidel Mattias; Egipto, el Mundo de los FaraonesColonia, 1997.

Petrie, Flinders & Quibell, J. E.; Naqada and Ballas, London, 1895;http://www.archive.org/deatils/cu 31924028748261

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 ofPredynastic 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 inPredynastic Egypt, htt p://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 inproper Harvard format, and in alphabetical

order.
http://www.archive.org/deatils/cuhttp://www.digitalegypt.ucl.ac.uk/http://www.digitalegypt.ucl.ac.uk/http://www.digitalegypt.ucl.ac.uk/http://www.digitalegypt.ucl.ac.uk/http://www.archive.org/deatils/cu


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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 thetop or bottom of the band suggest affinity with the grades above or below but not enoughto warrant a different grade.

Criteria Summary feedbackA: ARGUMENT

Does the work answer thequestion set by the essaytitle?

Yes very well

Yes

Barely

No

Is the argument clear andwell structured?

Yes very well

Yes

Barely

No

Does the work demonstrateappropriate skills of analysisfor the assignment level?

Yes very well

Yes

Barely

No


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B: USE OF SOURCES

Range of sources?

Very good

Appropriate

Limited

Are the sources accuratelyreported and understood?

Exceptionally well

Yes

Barely

Serious misunderstandings

C: PRESENTATION

Spelling, grammar andpunctuation

Good

Adequate

Below standard

Referencing of sources

Excellent

Good

Adequate

Below standard

Is the work of appropriatelength?

Yes

Too long

Too short

Maria,

Well done. You have obviously put a lot of work into this essay. Youhave done a lot of reading, and you have obviously thought deeplyabout the subject . Your English is good, and I like the way that yougive your own opinions. However, you do have to be careful whenreading Petrie. His fieldwork is still important, but many of his ideas arenot. You also have omitted any detailed description of the steppyramid.


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Now you need to consider the following, to improve your mark:

The first sheet must have the word count, the plagiarism clauseand your student id.

The essay MUST NOT be longer than 2500 words including allyour quotes this is far too long and so cannot get a good mark

The references in the text must be Harvard references and youneed more of them.

You must only give quotations from other authors where they arestating something important or original. Do not simply take largeextracts from their work.

You MUST stick to the subject of the essay. There is a great dealwithin this essay which has absolutely nothing to do with theessay title. None of that attracts any mark.

I am sure that, if you read this list of suggested improvements carefullyand 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 adviceabove taken on board, things should pick up fast.

41% agreed.

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The Evolution of Funerary Architecture From Predynastic to the Mastaba