El Kab Part 2

A much disturbed group of _majur_ burial (178) is important as giving a dated object together with one of these _majurs_, the copper (?) cylinder of User-kaf (PL. XX, 30). These _majurs_ were probably within the area of a mastaba, but so little of the brickwork remained that it was not possible to say whether the mastaba was made over the graves containing the _majurs_, or the graves cut through the brickwork of the mastaba. On the floor of the square well lay a fragment of a flint bracelet, and some pieces of green felspar, alabaster, and malachite. In the filling were fragments of Old Kingdom pottery, of a broken pottery cist, and of the rude pottery bars. In the small chamber to the south were three alabaster vessels of the usual shapes (X, 16 and 44), and a skeleton, contracted and lying on the left side. This well was presumably that of the mastaba of which the few patches of brickwork near were the remains. Just to the south of it lay the irregular grave in which the cylinder was found. Close to the surface lay two skeletons and a _majur_, the pot was to the north; the two skeletons, both in the contracted position, and with heads to the north, faced one another. Below these was another skeleton, lying upon its right side, with head to the east; below it, and to the west, another, the skull of which lay crown downwards, the line of the body north and south. This was the only skull that could be got out unbroken; it was very weak, and in spite of very careful packing, was broken before it reached England. Below this were parts of two more skeletons, and there was another in the large _majur_; further, leaning in the south-west corner at the bottom of the grave, was a sandstone slab, behind which was yet another contracted burial; the skeleton was on its left side, with the head to the north. The cylinder was below the first pair of skeletons. The other objects in the tomb were a IVth dynasty pot (35), an ivory comb and spatula, a sh.e.l.l and some green paint. This grave had evidently been to some extent disturbed, and it is just possible that the cylinder and the burials are not contemporaneous, but the simplest explanation is that they are, and that the grave was cut through the early mastaba. When I was clearing this tomb, Mr. (now Sir William) Richmond was sitting on the edge watching me, and we were both struck with the singular shape of the unbroken skull, the strong projection of the cheekbones reminding us of the Mongol type. No great weight can be attached to this observation, as measurements of the skull could not be taken, but I mention it as showing how important it may be that any unbroken skeleton found in a _majur_ should be preserved. The early date of these burials can hardly be doubted, but it has not yet been determined whether they belonged to the same race as do the ordinary Neolithic graves, the _majur_ being a cheap subst.i.tute for the wooden roof of the earlier time, or whether they belonged to some other element in the population, as the presence with them of the two illegible black cylinders would suggest.

The burials in pottery cists, not hitherto mentioned, may now be taken. These cists were found at Ballas both in "stairway" tombs and in open Neolithic graves. At El Kab they have been already mentioned as occurring in mastaba wells. The cists are short coffins, about 3 feet in length, made of a coa.r.s.e and porous red ware, and are generally without lids.

In one instance (174) the cist was found between walls and beneath a roof of sandstone blocks. The skeleton, which was young, as the epiphyses were not united, lay on its left side, facing east, the head north. A small sh.e.l.l, with chips of malachite, was before the face. In another, the cist lay at the bottom of a square well, the body again on its left side, with the head to the north, the knees brought up before the face; the left elbow was by the side of the left hand before the face, while the right arm lay over the head. There was a little decayed linen cloth in the cist, and, near the hips, a sh.e.l.l.

In tomb No. 249 a _majur_ and two cists lay upon the sloping bottom of a long (370 m.) well; the _majur_ was at the southern end, which was lower by 60 cm. than the northern. In both cists the body lay as in the two last-mentioned graves; one contained a sharp-edged shallow bowl of red ware.

Another cist (316) lay at the bottom of a shallow well near the large group of mastabas (150 m. by 110 m. by 160 deep). The sides of the cist were broken down, and many of the bones were disturbed, but a part of the spinal column and the legs sufficed to show that the body had lain with the head north, but on its right side.

No. 312 has been already mentioned among the mastabas. The cist lay in a small chamber, the body on its left side, with head to the north.

CHAPTER II.

DATE OF THE "NEW RACE" REMAINS.

14. The greatest interest of El Kab lay in the light that it shed on the same civilisation which had been disclosed two years before at the cemeteries of Naqada and Ballas. In these we had examined 3000 graves of a type till then unknown, and as different from the graves of the historic Egyptians as if they had come from China or Peru. The most obvious characteristic of these burials was the position of the body, which always lay in a contracted att.i.tude, with the head to the south, never at full length, as in all other Egyptian interments. All the furniture of the graves--beads, slate palettes, green paint, ashes, flint knives and pottery--were of novel types, and without any admixture of the mirrors, ushabtis, scarabs, or any of the other furniture of ordinary tombs. Hieroglyphic inscriptions were also absent. The results of the excavations were published in "Naqada and Ballas," and the main conclusions there set forth were that these graves were the interments of a foreign race, differing from the Egyptians of the dynastic periods in physical features and in habits; that they were probably a white race akin to the modern non-Semitic inhabitants of North Africa; and, further, that they invaded Egypt at the close of the Old Kingdom, and were again expelled by the rising strength of the Xth and XIth dynasties.

[These people were at first called by Dr. Petrie "the New Race," but they have received other names. M. de Morgan, in his Ethnographic Prehistorique, has attributed this cla.s.s of monuments to the Neolithic period, and called the men of the contracted burials "les indigenes."

The name "Libyans" has also obtained some vogue; it emphasises the undoubted distinction of race between this people and the historic Egyptians, and may perhaps be used as a general name for the people of the contracted burials until a clearer distinction than is now possible be made between (_a_) the Neolithic period before the advent of the dynastic Egyptians; (_b_) the time between the Egyptian arrival and the consolidation of the kingdom under Menes; and (_c_) the first three dynasties.]

15. The conclusion that these people differed from the Egyptians has not been much disputed, but the above dating has been opposed, and the evidence from El Kab convinced me that we were wrong, and that M. de Morgan was right in attributing the bulk of this civilisation to the praedynastic period. Of this dating, the remarkable finds of M.

Amelineau at Abydos, and those of M. de Morgan himself at Naqada, have given very strong proof; but the more fragmentary evidence of El Kab, which led me independently to the same conclusion, may retain still a certain interest.

M. Amelineau's excavations at Abydos began at the end of 1896--the winter after our Naqada campaign--and many of the objects he found are already exhibited at Ghizeh, others are at Paris, and a few have found their way to England. Among them are many pots and stone bowls of undoubted late Neolithic type, with whole cla.s.ses of objects which did not occur at Naqada, stelae, inscribed scarabs of limestone, and clay seals stamped with the Ka names of kings. The long pots on which these inscribed clay seals still fit are of a type found once at Ballas, and so prove some connection of the Ka names with the contracted burials.

This year Sethe's important paper (A. Z. x.x.xV, 1) identifying three of Amelineau's names with known kings of the Ist and IInd dynasties, has brought a new precision into the whole question, but this, of course, was not known to us at El Kab. Yet Amelineau's a.s.sociation of the Libyan pottery with inscriptions of an archaic style, which would most naturally be dated long before the IVth dynasty, made our later dating of the pottery improbable, and necessitated a re-examination of the evidence. The crucial case at Ballas was the secondary burial of a Libyan found in one of a group of stairway mastabas. The mastabas were believed to be of the IVth dynasty, because the fragments of pottery and of alabaster bowls found in them were similar to IVth dynasty objects from the cemetery of Medum.

16. This dating of the alabaster was, as we now think, rather too late, but the interment certainly proved that one Libyan died when a tomb of the early Old Kingdom had already been plundered, and lay open, affording an easy means of burial. But not only was this intrusive burial found in one stairway tomb; green paint and stone vases with horizontally-pierced handles, were found in others of the same group. These Libyan traces were also interpreted as the remains of secondary interments, but when at El Kab, I saw the same Libyan remains in the stairway tombs there, it immediately became clear that the malachite, vases, etc., more probably belonged to the original interments, not to secondary ones, that the stairway tombs (perhaps, also, the other mastabas) were but another form of Neolithic burial, and that the earlier Neolithic tombs were anterior to the Old Empire.

As the digging went on, other sc.r.a.ps of evidence came to support this view. The coa.r.s.e pottery which lay in heaps over and near the mastabas of the IVth dynasty is identical with that found in some of the small Neolithic graves.

A vase of hard red ware found in Ka-mena's tomb, which was certainly of Sneferu's time, was almost indistinguishable from a Libyan form common at Ballas.

One of the incised bowls--a rare but distinctive species of Libyan pottery--was found in a stairway tomb at El Kab.

The small late-Libyan graves lay between the mastabas of the time of Sneferu, not interfering with them, or dug through them, giving the impression that all were approximately of the same date.

In one tomb there was found, with undoubted Libyan pottery, a green steat.i.te cylinder of a type known in the Old Kingdom.

In a walk taken one day over the cemetery of Kom el Ahmar, opposite to El Kab, I observed again the same mixture of Old Kingdom and Libyan pottery near a group of mastabas.

17. To this evidence must be added some considerations about the first cemetery of Naqada and Ballas, which were felt by us from the beginning as difficulties in the way of accepting the later dating to the VII-X dynasty.

The entire absence of distinctly Egyptian objects from so large a series of tombs, and even from the villages of the same period, was difficult to explain on the supposition that the Egyptians were already in the land.

The Libyans, too, as lovers of fine pottery, would surely have learnt the use of the wheel from the Egyptians, if they had come in contact with them at all; yet all the Libyan pottery (with the rarest exceptions) is handmade.

The Libyans habitually placed green paint among the other toilet articles buried near the head. The Egyptians of the early Old Empire are sometimes represented with green paint upon the face. It is more natural to suppose that this was a fashion inherited from the praedynastic times, than to suppose that so peculiar a mode of ornamentation was practised at two independent periods in the history of the country.

Lastly, there is the negative evidence from the mound of Nubt. Here Dr. Petrie found on the surface walls of the XVIIIth dynasty, with inscriptions and dated pottery; below them walls of the XIIth dynasty, with pottery again, and lower still, walls and layers of pottery of the Old Kingdom. But between these last two, no sc.r.a.p of the Libyan pottery occurred, though a Libyan town lay but a quarter of a mile away.

On an examination, then, of the whole evidence from our two cemeteries of Naqada and El Kab, I came to the conclusion that our first dating had been not early enough, that the latest type of tomb at Naqada was contemporary with the mastabas of the Old Empire, and that the earliest type (characterised by dissevered skeletons, very fine flint knives, great quant.i.ties of ashes, and a small number of red and black pots of good quality) must be attributed to a much earlier period.

Since then much more information has come to light. M. de Morgan's second volume of "Recherches sur les Origines de l'egypte" contains a summary of the discoveries made by M. Amelineau at Abydos, together with an account of the great royal tomb found by M. de Morgan himself at Naqada. M. Amelineau's finds are recognised as being chiefly of the first three dynasties, and on an ivory plaque from the royal tomb of Naqada, Dr. Borchardt has pointed out the name of Menes himself.

The objects from this tomb are now exposed in the museum at Ghizeh, and it is interesting to observe that the pottery, the slate palettes, and the flint knives are distinctly of the _later_ type of Ballas.

It has, then, become now fairly clear that the earliest known inhabitants of Egypt were a tall, fair race akin to the modern Kabyles. They buried their dead in a contracted position with the head to the south, and in the earliest times either mutilated the dead before burial, or kept the bodies for a long time before the final burial. The relative dates of the different varieties of their tombs can be made out, and the graves with mutilated bodies found at Naqada are much earlier than those at Abydos containing the names of I-II dynasty kings. At some period which we cannot yet date, even on the rough scale of Libyan pottery, another race or races entered the country, bringing with them writing, the practice of mummification, the art of building in brick with recessed panels, and perhaps, as M.

de Morgan suggests, metals. Thus was formed the Egyptian people of historic times.

18. A point that has not been explained is the different position of the bodies in the open graves and in the stairway tombs. In the former, the head lies south; in the stairways and in the graves of Medum, it is to the north.

The burials, too, under the large pots which we call _majurs_, are not understood, nor is their exact period known. As they were found in the later cemeteries of Ballas, El Kab, and Kom el Ahmar, but not at Naqada, it seems likely that they belong to the later division of the Libyan period, viz., after the Egyptian invasion, perhaps even after the time of Menes. But to which race, if to either, is not clear.

CHAPTER III.

MIDDLE KINGDOM CEMETERY.

19. Inside the town walls, never outside, were found a few examples of a distinct type of tomb, with underground brick arches, pottery akin to that of the usual XIIth dynasty, but not identical with it, and stone vases of distinctive shapes. The types of pottery are shown in PL. X, 1-28, the alabaster vases in X, 1-6.

In PL. XXIV some walls in broken line are seen which cut through the walls of three mastabas, which last are shown in dead black. The tombs in question lay parallel with these walls, some within the square chambers, some also outside; and the walls are, roughly, parallel with the great walls of the town. The method of construction seems to have been as follows: An oblong excavation, about 6 m. long by 2 wide and 3 m. deep, was made in the gravel. About half the length of this was needed for the tomb; the other half formed a rough sloping staircase for the workmen. The sides of the grave were built of brick walls, and these were covered by an arch of brick about 150 m. high. In this the body was laid at full length, on the left side, the head to the north; in front of the body was a great ma.s.s of pottery. The interest of this set of tombs lies in the bearing they may have on the question of the date of the wall, for if it be granted that these are probably of the early XIIth dynasty (as the pottery suggests), then we have early XIIth dynasty tombs inside, and tombs of the reign of Amenemhat III outside the walls. (There were, however, two tombs inside the walls in which the remains of the pottery were much like those in the tombs outside.) Now there is a stela from El Kab, to which Dr. Spiegelberg calls my attention (published in Stobart, Egypt. Antiq., PL. I), which states that Amenemhat III restored the walls at El Kab which Usertesen II had built. What walls these were the stela does not state, but the evidence from the pottery would support the idea that they were the great town walls. And if this be so, the common pottery of the Middle Kingdom can now be split into two sections, between which the reign of Usertesen II will form the dividing line.

20. _The tombs in detail._

In No. 203 there were only two pots and a marble vase. Traces of the roofing arch were found. The skeleton as it lay measured 180 m. long.

No. 205 contained pottery of shapes XIII, 2, 12, 27, 24, 20.

No. 216 contained four examples of XIII, 5, one each of 2, 19, 4, and about fifty of the small saucer, 12a.

No. 242 contained 26, 2, 3.

No. 255 contained a great ma.s.s of pottery of nearly all the shapes (2, 5, 4, 12, 9, 17), much of which lay at a higher level than the two bodies; of these, one lay upon its back, the other in the regular position. Before the face of the northern body was an alabaster vase (X, 4), a small sh.e.l.l and a fragment of bronze rod. Another alabaster jar (X, 3) stood by the hips of the southern skeleton.

No. 264 was in better condition than most, and contained a great number of pots, including more than fifty of the shape XIII, 22, and many of XIII, 20. Nearly all were, however, broken, for, as in all these tombs, the arch had fallen in. This tomb contained also a string of beads, barrel beads of lapis lazuli, carnelian and gold foil, and small discs of gold.

In No. 265 were found more than two hundred pots scattered in all directions; a few were nested in a recess halfway down the side of the tomb. All the shapes XIII, 1-28, except 16 and 22, were found in this tomb. There was no skeleton. A hole had been pierced in the base of every pot after baking.

One group of tombs of this period (_v._ PL. XXIV) had apparently been made at one time. In three of them the skeletons remained with two or three coa.r.s.e pots laid before the face. Outside the enclosure wall of another of these groups of tombs was a heap of saucers (like XIII, 12), painted inside with a rough cross of white paint. These are, by the fabric, probably of the same period as the tombs.

21. In the great XIIth dynasty cemetery outside the town the graves were of different construction, consisting of a long and narrow shaft from which, at both the north and the south ends, opened a chamber.