7.1 A Cultural Landscape Forever in the Making
This book set as its main aim the study of the Memphite necropolis at Saqqara through the New Kingdom (ca. 1539–1078 bce). Grounded in the biographical approach to landscape (Chapter 2), the life-history of this cultural geography is conceived as a never-ending process of growth and ageing, and the making of the necropolis viewed as a work forever in progress—its making continuing with every new day. The entanglement of people and landscape (re-)creates material traces, meanings, identities, and memories of entire communities over many generations.1 People moved through and acted in this landscape amidst all that had been made before. Every subsequent present moment contributed to the continual process of increasing the past, thus creating a layered landscape. The landscape of our study area has been very actively in the making since the New Kingdom, the period under study. It means that today we are witnessing and experiencing an emphatically different landscape from that seen and experienced by the inhabitants of ancient Memphis at any one particular time during the c. 461 years of what Egyptologists refer to as the New Kingdom. Despite the myriad of (geo-)archaeological tools at our disposal to try to overcome this methodological problem, all attempts at re-constructing the ancient landscape(s) will always be partially successful. This is all the more so for the New Kingdom desert-edge cemeteries on the elevated plateau west of Memphis. It was thoroughly excavated by antiquities’ collectors and dealers in the 19th century, who often left no records of their work and left no material remains at the site. Systematic exploration of the site has so far only started to scratch the surface of an incredibly extensive city of the dead that was, perhaps paradoxically, first and foremost a place for the living.
The living in the city of the dead experienced (and contributed to) this (spatially, temporally and perceptually) growing landscape. By placing them centre stage, the necropolis is treated as having city-like qualities. Exploring the necropolis as an urban space is not entirely new. In 1899, Victor Loret was one of the earliest excavators to view the individual tombs at Saqqara as forming part of a larger unit, and imagined how people would experience the built cemetery environment. He thus drew a comparison between the layout of the Old Kingdom cemetery at Saqqara centred on the so-called Rue de tombeaux,2 a ‘street’ between the mastaba-shaped tombs built for high officials of the 6th Dynasty (see Fig. 69), and a city with its streets and public spaces:
Tout un quartier de necropole est sortie de terre, avec ses rues, ces carrefours, ses places publiques. Il y aura la, quand tout sera repare, nettoye et rendu accessible, comme un coin de Pompei a visiter. Et ce ne sera pas, pour les touristes, le moindre attrait d’une visite a Saqqarah.3
In a way, Loret was very close to imagining how the cemetery would have been experienced by the ancient Egyptians. The built infrastructure, such as ‘streets’, ‘crossroads’ and ‘public spaces’, facilitated the living with access to certain places and spaces in the cemetery. It allowed them to socialise with each other and with the(ir) ancestors. The movement of people in the past is embodied in the fabric of the cemetery, with its specific layout, its paths and tracks. To analyse how people moved through the fabric of the ancient landscape(s), it is first necessary to find out what the place actually looked like in terms of layout, and how it changed over time. This point again touches on two of the main problems researchers face when working with the New Kingdom ‘layer’ of the place. First, Saqqara is a scattered necropolis existing for a large part outside the Memphite necropolis (and even outside Egypt). The second problem directly follows from the first, and pertains to the biased view of Memphis in Egyptological literature. The present study cannot change the scattered nature of the necropolis; however, the sources for the many lost tombs have been collected, categorised, made accessible, and, where possible, spatially re-contextualised. It makes the archaeologically complex site more easily accessible to researchers working outside (and inside) the Memphite study area. It is hoped that this will in turn contribute to lifting (or at least somewhat balancing) the existing bias, and bring the Memphite New Kingdom on a more equal footing with the Theban New Kingdom, which traditionally has been the focus point of Egyptian mortuary studies of various types.
In the following, the main findings of this study are synthesised, focusing on the two main clusters of tombs at Saqqara, 1) the Unas South Cemetery, and 2) the Teti Pyramid Cemetery and Cliff of Ankhtawy.
7.2 Unas South Cemetery
The Unas South Cemetery grew in three ways, and stages can be characterised as 1) colonising the ground, 2) lateral expansion, and 3) internal filling of spaces. All three could be seen simultaneously at work in different localities of the cemetery. The contemporary city of Akhetaten (Tell el-Amarna) offers an urban parallel for this growth. At the heart of the social organisation of the city’s neighbourhoods lay a patron-client relationship. I would argue that, to a certain extent, the growth and spatial organisation of the cemetery at Saqqara mirrored the social organisation of the contemporary neighbourhoods of the living, such as observed at Amarna.4 It should be acknowledged, however, that it is not at all certain how the social organisation of the living at settlement sites such as Amarna and Memphis translated to its cemeteries.
7.2.1 Beginnings Shrouded in Mist
The current state of the archaeological evidence does not allow for a comprehensive assessment of how the cemetery grew before the Amarna period. Archaeological evidence for early New Kingdom use of the site for burial is extremely scanty, mainly due to very limited systematic archaeological research in this area. After all, our understanding of the growth of the cemetery is based on only a relatively small part of the necropolis, as covered by modern exploration since 1975. By linking the archaeological evidence with information gathered from decontextualised tomb elements excavated by the early 19th century explorers and antiquities collectors now housed in museum collections, a more complete (albeit still sketchy) image of the cemetery emerges.
The earliest New Kingdom building activity at the site is represented by the excavated portion of a wall of massive proportions. It is made of mud bricks stamped with the prenomen of King Amenhotep II, Aakheperure. The combination of the stamped bricks bearing the name of a king and the monumental dimensions of the wall strongly suggest that it was a royal building of some sort. What purpose it may have served is difficult to tell, but a temple would be a safe guess.
The earliest archaeologically attested and well documented burials are two pit-graves containing one anthropoid coffin each and dated to the reign of Amenhotep III. It is presently unclear how these burials relate to the now-lost tombs of the contemporary high priests of Ptah and viziers of the North, known by their decontextualised tomb stelae now held in museum collections.
The reign of Amenhotep III witnessed a development towards monumentalising tomb architecture. The evidence mainly revolves around the inscribed and decorated stone elements deriving from the tomb of the Chief Steward of Memphis, Amenhotep Huy (141/usc). The tomb was excavated in the 1820s, and although its exact location has subsequently been lost, a description given by Giuseppe di Nizzoli combined with the find-spot of a tomb stela reused in the monastery of Apa Jeremias strongly suggests that it must be sought in precisely this part of the necropolis. Whether we should imagine it as a completely freestanding structure or as a rock-cut tomb (which may have had a freestanding part added to it), cannot be ascertained. The fact that no relief-decorated blocks deriving from the tomb are known today, provides an indication that it differed somewhat from the so-called temple-tombs so well-known from the (post-)Amarna period at Saqqara.
7.2.2 (Post-)Amarna Expansion
We are much better informed about the cemetery from the time of Akhenaten onwards. The Amarna and immediate post-Amarna period tombs are concentrated in the area currently under excavation by the Leiden-Turin archaeological expedition. Among the earliest tombs are those built for the High priest of the Aten, Meryneith (032/usc), the Royal Butler, Ptahemwia (025/usc), and the Chief Steward of Memphis, Iniuia (009/usc). The construction and decoration of these tombs involved multi-year projects. Work continued, on and off, well into the reign of Tutankhamun. The present state of the evidence suggests that this king’s reign marked an accelerated growth of the cemetery, which coincided with a significant change in the concept and architectural layout of the tombs. This development is not only attested archaeologically, it is also reflected in the quantity of decontextualised tomb elements now held in museum collections, where much more material becomes available compared to the earlier 18th Dynasty.
7.2.3 A Spacious Cemetery for Tutankhamun’s Courtiers
The cemetery’s ‘growth spurt’ in the reign of Tutankhamun could likely be connected with the process of abandoning Amarna early in the king’s reign. Officials who had built, or were in the process of building—as in the case of May(a) (028/usc)—rock-cut tombs at Akhenaten’s capital had to start all over—or continue, as in the case of Meryre alias Meryneith—, at Saqqara (or elsewhere). With the abandonment of Amarna, Memphis became an even more prominent centre of administration,5 in modern terms: the ‘administrative capital’. The key administrators of Tutankhamun’s tenure chose to build their tombs in this part of the North Saqqara plateau. The cluster of tombs include those of Horemheb (046/usc) and Maya, who ruled the kingdom practically in tandem. The other tomb owners were also in one capacity or another closely associated with the king and his court.
The immediate post-Amarna period tombs were built as freestanding structures, each located at a small distance from the others. A number of the tombs’ burial shafts were reused from pre-existing Old Kingdom mastabas. As such, the spatial patterning of the old tombs played a role in the spatial distribution of the New Kingdom tombs. Open space available all around the tombs enabled the expansion of the buildings at later stages, as happened for example with the tombs of Iniuia, Pay (017/usc), and Horemheb. The open spaces also made the tombs easily accessible from all sides by the living.
7.2.4 Lateral Growth and Filling In of Open Spaces
After the 18th Dynasty, the cemetery grew laterally to the north and west (as observed in the archaeologically surveyed area), and probably also to the east. The highest administrators resident at Memphis continued to build their monumental tombs each at a small distance from those of their peers. At the same time, the ‘old’ cemetery transformed also. Taken together, the continuously growing structures, large and small, led to the gradual decrease of space available between the individual tombs. In some cases it even led to the blockage of ‘streets’ between tombs, which then required people to recalibrate their regular walking routes over the cemetery. This happened for example when Raia (042/usc) built a forecourt to the tomb of his father, Pay. The pre-existing pyramid of their eastern neighbour, Ry (038/usc), formed the eastern limit of the annex. Suddenly, passage between the two buildings was no longer possible, and people arriving from the south heading north (or the other way around) needed to take a detour. Towards the end of the New Kingdom, in the 20th Dynasty, the western side-mass of the pyramid, which touched on the forecourt of Raia, was cut away, which goes to show that people were also capable creating routes by adjusting the extant structures by force.
Over time, the building of variously sized tomb chapels all around and in between earlier structures led to the further decease of open space.6 As a result of this process it was made increasingly difficult to traverse the cemetery. It transformed the orderly cemetery into a true labyrinth. Some of the newly introduced chapels may have been built to form a unity with certain bigger tombs, for example to accommodate descendants and/or (other) dependents of the initial tomb owner, as exemplified by the memorial chapels made for priests serving the offering cult of Maya.7 This development marks the gradually changing social demography of the cemetery. What appears to have been an exclusively high-elite cemetery at its beginnings, soon changed to accommodate a more balanced cross-section of society. At the same time, the larger tombs continued to function, in the sense that new interments were intermittently introduced, either in the subterranean burial spaces accessed from the main tomb shaft, or in burial chambers accessed from one or more of the subsidiary shafts. This practice is exemplified by the burials in the newly added forecourt to the tomb of Tia (057/usc). It shows that the tomb of a very senior official was not for his exclusive use; his dependents benefited from it also. As such, a single tomb complex came to serve as a lieu de memoire8 for multiple generations of people from different families and from diverse walks of life. They represent the continuously expanding eternal social network of dependents of a single powerful patron.
As signalled above, the process of filling in the open spaces between the larger tombs unfolded simultaneously with another development: the lateral expansion of the cemetery. To date a substantial part of the northward expansion of the cemetery has been excavated by the Cairo University expedition since the late-1970s. The tombs unearthed in this area date from the very beginning of the 19th Dynasty until the end of the New Kingdom. The last remaining, monumental stone-built mastaba of the Old Kingdom still stands tall at the centre of the otherwise exclusively Ramesside-period cemetery. The fact that smaller chapels also dot the map in this northern extent suggests that here too the phase of ‘colonising’ the ground was followed by the filling in of available space between tomb structures.
7.2.5 An Urban Parallel: Observations from Akhetaten (Tell El-Amarna)
The way in which the Unas South Cemetery at Saqqara grew in the New Kingdom finds a parallel in the urban context at Amarna, ancient Akhetaten, generally regarded as our most complete example of an ancient Egyptian city.9 The city was founded in year 5 of King Amenhotep IV/Akhenaten, and most of the population abandoned the place shortly after the king died twelve years later (early in the reign of Tutankhaten/amun). Thus, the city accounts for a ‘life’ of no more than 16 or 17 years.10 The archaeological remains of the suburban areas outside the Central City with its ‘state’ buildings provide a glimpse into the social mechanisms underlying urban growth. Amarna was founded as a new royal city and served as the centre for the cult of the Aten. One would perhaps expect that the personal involvement of the king in this state-planned, high-stakes project would somehow be reflected in the layout of the city as a whole. In reality, however, planning was largely confined to the official buildings. This observation led Barry Kemp to characterise Amarna as “the antithesis of city planning”.11 The layout of the two main housing areas located to the north and south of the Central City lacked a grand unitary design. Instead, they are reminiscent of a series of joined villages with clearly distinguishable clusters of houses forming complex patterns that created idiosyncratic neighbourhoods. These neighbourhoods are not unitary in the sense that they contain only one type or size of houses; to the contrary, both big and small houses (representing the ‘rich and poor’) are intimately mixed.12 Despite the fact that the city was so short-lived, it is possible to observe in the archaeological remains how the city grew after its foundation.13 The first stage saw the colonising of the desert fringe north and south of the Central City with large urban villas. The houses were built for members of the highest echelons of society. They settled conveniently close to (and along all) the main north-south axis of the city and close to the Nile, its source for fresh water. The city subsequently grew in two ways: laterally towards the east, spreading across the desert, and by filling of spaces in between the large urban villas belonging to the first phase of colonising the desert plain. According to Kemp, the distinct phases of colonisation and later development indicate that there was no ‘masterplan’ for the new city. The city grew organically, which resulted in a fuzzy layout. It is quite likely that the neighbourhoods were modelled after the ‘traditional’ urban neighbourhoods elsewhere in Egypt; the hometowns and villages of the people who resettled to Amarna—which for an unknown number of people meant Memphis. People organised themselves according to what they were accustomed to, taking local traditions and uses to the new capital. The patron-client relationship (which structured ancient Egyptian society at large) lay at the heart of the city’s neighbourhoods.14
The present study merely scratched the surface of the social organisation of necropolis sites, and deserved a much more detailed analysis in the future. The urban parallel also deserves much more attention.
7.3 Teti Pyramid Cemetery and the Cliff of Ankhtawy
The northern section of the North Saqqara plateau was in use as a cemetery from the early 18th Dynasty onwards—a use that continued from the Old Kingdom, when this area witnessed large-scale construction works on pyramid complexes and their associated private necropolises. The earliest evidence for New Kingdom burials found in this part of the plateau consists of shallow pit burials. These may have occupied a much larger surface of the plateau than currently visible in the archaeological record. This form of burial continued until the very end of the New Kingdom, which means that, in total, thousands of individuals belonging to the lower echelons of Memphite society were buried here. If we compare these numbers to the estimates calculated for the cemeteries at contemporary Akhetaten,15 in use for not much more than 17 years, it is likely that the northern section of the North Saqqara plateau represents just one of a number of burials sites for the masses of the non-elite. Other burial sites have remained unidentified.
The late 18th Dynasty introduction of above-ground tomb chapels in the large field of pit burials (around the time of Amenhotep II–Thutmosis IV), indicates that the cemetery facilitated a rather diverse social demography. Individuals who were part of the upper levels of society, bearing titles that associate them to the upper ranks of the administration, had the financial means to build above ground markers for the burials of themselves, their family, and their household. The highest ranking court officials made their tombs in a separate part of the cemetery, at a distance from the burial field for the ‘lower and middle classes’, in an area with a distinctive topography. These officials built their rock-cut tombs in the Cliff (dhn.t) of Ankhtawy. The archaeological evidence suggests that the pronounced southern cliff was first used for making rock-cut tombs in the mid-late 18th Dynasty, perhaps as early as Thutmosis III, although with more certainty from the time of Thutmosis IV–Amenhotep III onwards. The peak of its popularity lay in the reign of Amenhotep III; the later post-Amarna rock-cut tombs are fewer in number and their owners are generally of lower rank compared to the former senior palace officials. The choice place of burial of individuals of senior rank shifted to the Unas South Cemetery, which in the post-Amarna period attracted the kingdom’s top officials.16
In the Amarna and post-Amarna period, the Teti Pyramid Cemetery becomes markedly ‘populated’ with tombs built for individuals engaged in ‘the arts’. The steep increase of tombs built for overseers of craftsmen, goldsmiths, etc. at this time could perhaps be linked to the changed status of Memphis at the beginning of Tutankhamun’s reign, when the short-lived capital at Akhetaten entered a process of abandonment. The (re)building of palaces, temples, and monumental tomb structures for the elite (such as in the Unas South Cemetery), required large numbers of skilled artists. They were resident at Memphis, and built their houses of eternity in the shadow of the pyramid of Teti, who, from at least the reign of Amenhotep III onwards, was locally known as Teti-Meryptah, ‘beloved of Ptah’. Ptah was not just the prime city god of Memphis, but also a patron deity of artists, craftsmen, etc.17
The late 18th Dynasty reign of Amenhotep III also saw the redevelopment of the burial site for the Apis bulls—the living manifestation of the god Ptah—, later known as the Serapeum.18 Even though we do not currently know the extent of the 18th Dynasty forerunner of the Serapeum, with its temples and accessory buildings as we know it from Classical authors and archaeological remains,19 it is possible that the formal royal interest in the old, local Memphite sanctuary had its effects on the wider landscape, including the paths, tracks, and more formal processional ways that connected it with the settlements of the living, thereby crossing the city/cities of the dead.
The closely-knit core cemetery of mid-late 18th Dynasty tombs north of the pyramid of Teti grew laterally to the north, west, and south. To the present date, excavations have only just touched upon the later, 19th and 20th Dynasty cemetery. The cemetery of the Ramesside period is presently best documented in the area in between the pyramids of Teti and Menkauhor. At the same time, the sparsely available spaces in between the extant 18th Dynasty tombs is filled by new structures. In general, the owners of the Ramesside tombs are middle-ranked administrators and priestly officials.
The construction of the stone-paved Serapeum Way, which led from Memphis to the Serapeum, resulted in the disappearance of New Kingdom tombs in this area, because the builders quarried the extant tomb structures for stone material. The monumental Serapeum road may possibly have been paved for the first time in the Late Period. It is known that it was completely reconstructed in the 30th Dynasty, and further embellished in the Ptolemaic and Roman periods.20 Quibell excavated a small portion of the paved Serapeum Way above and to the west of the mastaba of Mereruka.21 The c. 1.2 km long paved desert road connected the Serapeum to the Anubieion situated at the edge of the escarpment. Roman burials and larger cult installations were all neatly oriented on the road.22 This study shows that the situation was very different in the New Kingdom. The distribution pattern of the tombs reveals that the Greco-Roman Serapeum Way had no New Kingdom predecessor, in the sense that it was probably not as formalised. The tombs in this area of the necropolis are not oriented on an existing road, even though it is very likely that this area of the plateau served as the point of access towards to Serapeum from at least the late 18th Dynasty onwards. One of the stelae associated with the burial of the Apis in the reign of Amenhotep IV (Akhenaten) is at least highly suggestive.23 The round-topped stela is divided into two registers. The scene in the lower register represents the realm of the living. It depicts the dedicator of the stela, May, servant of Apis (bꜣk Ḥp nṯr ꜥꜣ) and servant of Amun (bꜣk n.y I҆mn), kneeling in adoration before the living Apis bull. The scene in the upper register represents the realm of the gods. It depicts King Teti and Horus, son of Osiris, both standing before Osiris, Lord of the West, seated, flanked by Isis and Nephthys, standing. Thus, in this stela, the deified King Teti features as one of the gods active in this sacred landscape centred on the living Apis becoming an Osiris-Apis. As a deity, Teti was rather accessible, because his cult place stood in the private cemetery. Being buried in the shadow of this powerful local deity, who acted as an intermediary between the living and the gods, meant that one could remain forever in his presence and benefit from his powers. The living who visited the cult place of the living Apis and who participated in the successive bulls’ funerals passed through this private cemetery, which meant continued attention from the living for the monuments of the dead.24 The absence of a formalised processional way crossing the necropolis in the New Kingdom suggests that the route from the edge of the escarpment to the Serapeum was much less pronounced at this time. Moreover, its exact course may have shifted regularly because every newly built tomb could potentially have contributed to rearranging the tangle of paths and tracks, which in turn encouraged people to take alternative routes to reach their destinations. This situation differs from that observed at Abydos, the sacred landscape associated with Osiris. In the Middle Kingdom, the processional route that ran from the temple of Osiris on the edge of the cultivation, through a wadi and towards the god’s burial at Peqer (Umm el-Qaab), was kept clear from tomb building by royal edict (see Chapter 2.5).25 The situation in the Teti Pyramid Cemetery shows that the threat of tombs encroaching over a sacred processional route would have been very real indeed.
The living inhabitants of Memphis shaped the necropolis over many generations, and so the life histories of both the city and its necropolis were closely intertwined. The development of any necropolis—not just at Saqqara—was site-specific and its ‘life’ cannot be seen detached from its unique urban environment. Necropolis sites were bound up with the ebbs and flows of their cities of the living. Whatever happened to or at the city, whether it was its growing or diminishing (inter-)national prominence, times of wealth alternated with times of poverty, it effected its cemeteries one way or another. Any understanding of the city of the dead starts with the (city of) the living.
Cf. Papmehl-Dufay (2015).
Capart (1907).
Loret (1899), 100.
Unfortunately, we are not so well informed about the spatial and social organisation of the neighbourhoods of the living at New Kingdom Memphis.
Cf. Van Dijk (1988).
Compare to the diachronic development of the so-called nucleus cemetery in the shadow of the 4th Dynasty pyramid of Khufu at Giza: Der Manuelian (2006), esp. 228–229. See also Jánosi (2006).
Staring (2019), 221–223.
Term: Nora (1997).
Stevens (2016), for a concise overview.
Kemp (2012), 181. However, it should be emphasised that the life history or biography of the city continues to this day, of course.
Kemp (2012), 163.
This mix has also been observed in urban centres of the Old and Middle Kingdom: Moeller (2016), 378–379. See also Moreno-Garcia (2013) for e.g. patronage and informal networks that lay at the core of the organisation of ancient Egyptian society and which by definition led to the mixing of upper and lower strata of society.
Kemp (2012); Kemp/Stevens (2010), 473–516.
A clear example of the social organisation of such villages within the urban fabric is offered by the house of the High Priest of the Aten, Panehsy, and its ‘village of dependants’. See Kemp (2012), 43–44 with fig. I.15. Interestingly, his rock-cut tomb in the North Tombs group of Amarna (TA 06) was possibly associated with a large cemetery of pit-burials. If the cemetery is to be identified as a cemetery of dependents of Panehsy, it would corroborate the suggestion that social relationships translated in death. However, the cemetery of pit-burials is yet to be investigated archaeologically.
Stevens (2018), 112, estimates that at least 10,000–13,000 people were buried in the city’s east bank cemeteries. The population of Amarna has been estimated at up to 50,000 people: Kemp (2012), 271–272. Herzberg (2019b), 42 n. 16, estimates that the population of Memphis during the New Kingdom amounted to c. 29,575 people at any one time.
This image at Saqqara complements the image observed at Thebes, where the number of elite tombs dated to the reigns of Tutankhamun and Horemheb is surprisingly small compared to the earlier 18th Dynasty. It appears that the sort of officials that used to be buried at Thebes before the Amarna period moved to Memphis. See Pieke 2021.
Note that the high priest of Ptah held the title wr-ḫrp-ḥmw.w/ḥmw.t, ‘greatest of the directors of craftsmen/directorate of the arts’. See Te Velde (1982), with further references.
Vercoutter (1984).
See most recently Williams (2018), with a reconstruction of the sacred landscape in the Late Period to Early Ptolemaic period, and a thorough review of the available data.
Smith (1981).
Quibell/Hayter (1927), pl. 1.
Mathieson/Dittmer (2007), figs. 1, 9; Quibell/Hayter (1927), pl. 1.
Paris, Musée du Louvre E 3012 = im 5305 = S 1168. Excavated by Auguste Mariette, 1853, ‘tombe isolée’ B = C2: Mariette (1857), 11, pls 6–7, nos 1–2.
See, for example, the Appeal to the Living inscribed on the naos-shaped pedestal supporting the lower part of seated statue, probably of deified 6th Dynasty King Teti-Merenptah (Marseille, Musée de la Vieille Charité 211), dedicated by Amenwahsu (292/tpc), early 19th Dynasty (temp. Seti I), scribe of the altar of the king (sš wdḥ.w n.y nb tꜣ.wy). Interestingly, the relief decoration on the sides shows both Amenwahsu and his wife Henutwedjebu kneeling, in adoration of Teti, who is depicted standing inside his pyramid. See: pm III/2, 729; Nelson/Piérini (1978), 33, fig. 64; Naville (1887), 69–72.
Leahy (1989).