The Identification of Tomb B1 at Abydos

Egypt Exploration Society

The Identification of Tomb B1 at Abydos: Refuting the Existence of a King Ro/Iry-Hor Author(s): Toby A. H. Wilkinson Reviewed work(s): Source: The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, Vol. 79 (1993), pp. 241-243 Published by: Egypt Exploration Society Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3822169 . Accessed: 08/02/2012 09:54 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

Egypt Exploration Society is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology.

http://www.jstor.org

241

BRIEFCOMMUNICATIONS The identification of Tomb Bi at Abydos: refuting the existence of a king *Ro/*Iry-Hor The epigraphicand ceramicevidence from Tomb B I at Abydos is re-examined,yieldinga date for the tomb of the reign of Narmer.The identityof the owner of B as a king is refuted;the group of signs previously identifiedas the name of a king *Iry-Horis reinterpretedas a markof the royaltreasury. THE identification of Tomb B i in the royal cemetery at Abydos has generally followed Petrie's

own conclusions, as stated in Abydosi.1The tomb contained several large pottery vessels inscribed with a device consisting of a Horus-falcon standing on the mouth hieroglyph (r/Ro).2 Petrie interpreted this device in the following way: 'Considering that this group is... formally cut on a seal, and often drawn on pottery, I think we are justified in seeing in it... the ka name of a king, Ro'.3 This interpretation, largely unchallenged,4 ignores a crucial fact: nowhere is such a 'royal name' found enclosed in a serekh;in contrast, the names of the other known kings before Aha (Scorpion,) Ka, Narmer) are generally found enclosed in a serekh, particularly when incised on pottery vessels.6 Indeed, the serekhas a symbol of royalty is attested for anonymous kings, perhaps even earlier than those of Dynasty o already mentioned (e.g. the inscriptions on jars from el-Beda,7 the rock-cut inscription from Gebel Sheikh Suleiman8). It would therefore seem very strange indeed to find a king's name, on inscriptions from a tomb supposed to be that of the king himself, written consistently without a serekh.Yet, in accepting Petrie's identification of the inscriptions and thus of Tomb B I, that is precisely what has to be believed. In accepting the existence of a king *Iry-Hor (their preferred transliteration of the falcon-andmouth device), Kaiser and Dreyer explain the absence of the serekhby placing *Iry-Hor before the other known kings of Dynasty o;9they thus implicitly put forward the theory that the serekhdid not ' W. M. F. Petrie, Abydos,I (London, 1902), 4-5. The position of the grave is shown on Petrie'splan:id., TheRoyal Tombsof theEarliestDynasties,ii (London, 1901), pl. Iviii:Tomb B is situatedjust above the final letterof the word BENERAB;also pl. lix. For recentplans of CemeteryB, and its relationshipto CemeteryU, see W. Kaiserand G. Dreyer,MDAIK38 (1982), 211I-69, fig. i; G. Dreyer,MDAIK46 (1990), 53-90, fig. I. 2Petrie,TheRoyalTombsof theFirstDynasty,I (London, 1990),pl. xliv, 2-4, 7-9. 3Petrie,Abydos1,4. 4 Although Sethe accepted only Narmer and Aha as kings;Reisner specificallyexcluded 'Sema',Ka and 'Ipuw'but made no mentionof *Ro/*Iry-Hor.See Kaiserand Dreyer,MDAIK38, 2 I 2, nn. 8-9. ' The identificationof the serekhspaintedon cylinderjars from Tarkhanas those of Scorpion is disputed by Dreyer ('Horus Krokodil,ein Gegenk6nigder Dynastie o', in R. Friedmanand B. Adams (eds.), The Followersof Horus(Oxford,1992), 259-63). Nevertheless,an incised serekhon a potteryvessel from Minshat Abu Omar is almost certainlythat of Scorpion:see Kaiserand Dreyer, op. cit. 267 n.(u).This serekhis illusVorbericht trated in K. Kroeper and D. Wildung, Minshat Abu Omar:MiinchnerOstdelta-Expedition. I978-I984 (Munich, I985), 74 fig. 213, top row second from left; also Kaiser and Dreyer, op. cit., fig. 14. 34.

6For an incised serekhof Scorpion,see n. 5. Incised serekhsof Ka from Helwangraves I627 H.2 and 65 I H.2: Z. Saad, Royalexcavationsat SaqqaraandHelwan(I94I-I945)(ASAE Supplement3; Cairo, 1947), pl. Ix; also Kaiser and Dreyer, op. cit., fig. 14. 23-4. Incised serekhsof Ka from the Umm el-Qarab:Petrie, Royal Tombs,ii, pl. xiii; also Kaiserand Dreyer,op. cit. fig. 14. 25-33. For incised serekhsof Narmersee Kaiserand Dreyer,op. cit.,fig. 14. 35-4I. 7J.Cledat,'Les vases de El-Beda',ASAE 13 (194), I I9 figs. 3-4, 120 fig. 6, pl. xiii. SW. J. Murnane,'The Gebel Sheikh Suleiman Monument:EpigraphicRemarks',JNES 46 (I987), 285 fig. iA. 9Kaiser and Dreyer, op. cit. 233-5.

BRIEF COMMUNICATIONS

242

YEA79

come into general use for royal names until after the reign of *Iry-Hor.10However, this placing of the owner of Tomb B I runs completely contrary to the internal evidence from the tomb, which, it must be remembered, is the only source of the so-called 'royal name' of *Iry-Hor. Three independent pieces of evidence led Petrie to date Tomb BI after the reign of Ka (whose name is always found enclosed in a serekh):ll i) 'the presence of a great jar,12which is usual later, but does not occur in the tomb of Ka'; 2) 'the style of the sealing [with the falcon-and-mouth device], which is more like those of Narmer or Mena [i.e. Aha] than like the very simple one known of Ka';13 3) 'the clay [of the sealing], which is yellow marl like later sealings, and not black mud like the Ka sealing'. From evidence in the tomb of Ka, it is reasonably certain that Narmer was Ka's immediate successor.14 If Tomb B is dated after the tomb of Ka, as seems probable in light of the above evidence, then there is no room left for its owner to have been a king.15Further evidence to reject the identification of the falcon-and-mouth device as a royal name is the total absence of such a 'name' from anywhere other than Tomb BI at Abydos.16 Even Ka, who is a fairly obscure king in the contemporary records, is attested by name from Tarkhan and Helwan. A sealing from a tomb at Zawiyet el-Aryan has been identified by some as showing the name *Iry-Hor;l7the style of the sealing, however, clearly dates it to the reign of Narmer or later, and Kaplony interprets the sealing as bearing the name of an official Wer-ra.18 A crucial piece of evidence, which would seem to prove that Tomb B i does indeed date to the reign of Narmer, seems to have been overlooked by Kaiser and others: a fragmentary inscription from Tomb B I19 quite clearly shows a serekh containing the catfish-i.e. the name of Narmer. As Petrie himself commented on the inscription, 'this tail of a fish seems to be part of a ka name'.20 The presence of Narmer's name in Tomb Bi makes it impossible that the tomb belonged to an earlier king. The pottery from Tomb B I also confirms such a dating. The 'great jar' mentioned by Petrie2' is of type 76b in his Protodynastic Corpus. As was shown by Kaiser in his comparison of pottery associated with early serekhs,22and as recent evidence from Minshat Abu Omar confirms,23 this "0However,in apparentcontradictionof this, Kaiser and Dreyer place the anonymous serekhsincised on jars from el-Beda,etc., earlierthan *Iry-Hor.We are thus asked to accept the unlikely hypothesis that the serekhwas introducedto denote the royal name before the reign of *Iry-Hor,abandonedduring his reign, and subsequentlyre-introducedby his successor. i Petrie,AbydosI, 5. 12Illustratedin Petrie,RoyalTombsi, pl. xxxiX. 2. 13Illustratedin Petrie,RoyalTombni,pl. xiii. 89. 14Theonly dated object in Tomb B9 at Abydos, one of two chamberscomprisingKa's funeraryinstallation, was a sealing of Narmer (illustratedin Petrie, RoyalTombsIn,pl. xiii. 9I). (A sherd bearingthe incised serekhof Ka was found recentlyin the area to the east of B7/9: illustratedin Kaiser and Dreyer, op. cit., pl. 58d.) From the epigraphicand ceramicevidence,Kaiser(ZAS 91 (I964), 95) firmlyestablishedthe sequence Ka-Narmer-Aha. Kaiser originallyplaced Scorpion before this sequence of Thinite kings (ibid. 104) but more recently(MDAIK46, 289 fig. i) places ScorpionbetweenKa and Narmer,in apparentcontradictionof his own arguments. 5See n. 14. Consideration of the pottery directly datable to each king confirms the sequence Ka-Narmer-Aha. 16This fact is remarkedupon by Kaiserand Dreyer, op. cit. 26I. 17D. Dunham,Zawiyetel-Aryan:The Cemeteries Adjacentto theLayerPyramid(Boston, 1978),pl. xvi b; also illustratedin P. Kaplony,DieInschriften derAgyptischen Friihzeit(Wiesbaden,1963), III,fig. 13. 1 Kaplony, op. cit. 1i, I 092. 19Petrie, Royal Tombs i, pl. xliv, i; the left half of this inscription was found recently by the German

expedition (Kaiser and Dreyer, op. cit., fig. 14. 40) in the adjoining chamber B2, which seems to have formed, with B I, a single funerary installation. 20 Petrie, Royal Tombsi, 29. 21See nn. I , 12. 2Kaiser, 23K.

ZAS 9 I (1964), 95.

Kroeper, 'The excavations of the Munich East-Delta Expedition in Minshat Abu Omar', in E. van den Brink (ed.), The Archaeologyof the Nile Delta: Problems and Priorities (Amsterdam, I988), 11-46. Type 76

I993

BRIEFCOMMUNICATIONS

243

type 76 does not appear before the reign of Narmer. In contrast, it is one of the most characteristic forms of vessel in the First Dynasty from the reign of Narmer onwards. The presence of a type 76 vessel in Tomb B i (indeed, it is this vessel that bears one of the clearest examples of the falconand-mouth device) thus precludes a dating before the reign of Narmer. The other vessel found in Tomb BI is of Petrie's type 75 (decorated with moulded or lightly incised bands of semicircles). This is found in association with serekhs earlier than Narmer, but disappears from the repertoire after Narmer's reign.24 The combination of these two pottery types in Tomb B i thus strongly suggests a date contemporary with the reign of Narmer. If Tomb BI at Abydos dates to the reign of Narmer, as I believe has been clearly demonstrated,25what should be the interpretation of the falcon-and-mouth device, and who was the likely owner of the tomb? I see no reason why the device should not be interpreted merely as a mark of the royal treasury. The inscriptions on the pottery jars would, therefore, indicate the royal provenance of the supplies contained therein.26 The tomb owner would thus have been an important member of the royal court of Narmer, who was granted the honour of royal supplies for his or her burial. The extensive court cemetery associated with the tomb of Aha at Abydos may be cited as a parallel. This simpler explanation of the ownership of Tomb B I at Abydos fits the evidence from the tomb itself, and dispels the theory of a King *Ro/*Iry-Hor altogether. TOBYA. H. WILKINSON

Blocks from the tomb of Shed-abed at Saqqara Publicationof two doorjambs originallyfound by Firthand Gunn near the pyramidof Tety, and recovered again in I987. The jambs are inscribedwith the titles of an officialnamed Shed-abedwho must have served the Memphiteking and the funerarycult of King Tety duringthe earlyFirstIntermediatePeriod. CLEARANCE around

the Office of the Inspectorate at Saqqara in the spring of 1987 uncovered a number of inscribed blocks including door jambs with the titles of an official named Shed-abed (pl. XXIII, 2, 3). These two particular blocks had been discovered originally near the pyramid of Tety by Firth and Gunn, along with a matching lintel, but were never published.1 According to Gunn's notes, another set of jamb fragments with a lintel, and another separate jamb piece, were found with them.2 In all, then, blocks from three doorways from the tomb of Shed-abed are known, although the tomb itself has never been found. appears for the first time in Group 4, the latest group of graves at Minshat, dated to the reign of Aha onwards. 24This distinctivetype is found in Groups 3a-c, but not in Group4, at MinshatAbu Omar. 25Kaiser and Dreyer themselves point out (op. cit. 232 n. 76) that in some of the examples of the falconand-mouthdevice, the sign under the falcon looks more like a ring than a mouth;the combinationof falcon and ring is attestedon an inscribedsherd from Zawiyetel-Aryan,where the device occurs above the serekh of Narmer (illustratedin Kaplony, op. cit. III,fig. 721; Kaiser and Dreyer, op. cit. fig. 14. 37). The close associationof Narmerwith the falcon-and-mouth/ringdevice is thus confirmed. 26The likely use of potmarksfor this purpose is discussed by KathrynBard,'Originsof Egyptianwriting'

in Friedman and Adams (eds.), op. cit. 297-306.

Gunn, MSS, R.I.I13,I4; R.6.I; xiv. 62; Notebook 9, no. 29. Dr J. Malek of the GriffithInstitutekindly suppliedme with copies of Gunn'snotes and permissionto publishthem. Listed in PM si,2566. 2Gunn, op. cit. xv 40-I; Notebook 9, no. 30; 12 no. II6.