Table Of ContentMUSEUM OF FINE ARTS· BOSTON
NAGA-ED-DER STELAE
OF THE
FIRST INTERMEDIATE PERIOD
BY
DOWS DUNHAM
Associate Curator of Egyptian Art
PUBLISHED FOR THE
MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS· BOSTON· U.S.A.
BY THE
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
LONDON : HUMPHREY MILFORD
1937
PRI:\TED 1:\ GREAT BRITAIN
AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, OXFORD
BY JOHN JOHNSON
PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY
NAGA-ED-DER STELAE
OF THE
FIRST INTERMEDIATE PERIOD
PREFACE
T HIS study, undertaken at the suggestion of Professor George A. Reisner, was
originally intended to deal solely with the stelae of the First Intermediate
Period found during his various excavating campaigns in the Naga-ed-Der group
of cemeteries. That object has remained the primary purpose of the work, and the
book includes all the stelae found by him and his assistants in sufficiently good
preservation to warrant reproduction. In one case (stela from Sheikh Farag,
Tomb 5005) a stone has been omitted because when found its surface was quite
illegible through decay, and in a number of other instances fragments of broken
and incomplete stelae have not been included because they showed only small
portions of stereotyped text or parts of figures without noteworthy features.
On the other hand I have added, as supplementary material, a number of stelae
in American museums which, by their style, belong clearly to the Naga-ed-Der
group. These, eleven in number, are listed separately in the Introduction, and are
included at the end of the main body of the work under the numbers 77 to 87. I
have thought it desirable to include these monuments, partly because they have
not been published elsewhere, and partly because there seemed to me a certain
advantage in studying these stones in conjunction with the larger body of material.
It should be made clear, however, that this study makes no claim to being an
exhaustive catalogue of the known stelae of this class: that has not been its purpose,
and such a task would have entailed travel and research which I have not been in
a position to undertake. I have little doubt that there are more than a few monu
ments in the museums and private collections of Europe and America which
might properly find a place in such a catalogue. I give here a few instances which
have come to my notice during the course of the work, but which, for one reason
or another, I have not been able to publish.
Rijksmuseum, Leiden, No. F. 1902/7, I (Aeg. Sammlung, II, PI. I, I).
PeIizaeus Museum, Hildesheim, No. 1884.
Nelson Gallery of Art, Kansas City, D.S.A., a stela referred to in Commentary
A 4 of my stela No. 12.
Collection of Dr. Jacob Hirsch, New York, Nos. 634 and 635.
I wish here gratefully to acknowledge the valuable and generously given help of
a number of scholars. Dr. Alan H. Gardiner and Professor Battiscombe Gunn have
both contributed liberally of their time and knowledge regarding numerous points
of difficulty in the texts, and Professor Hermann Ranke has given me his counsel
with some of the names, and has kindly allowed me to examine advance proofs of
v
PREFACE
parts of his Die agyptischen Personennamen. I am much indebted to the authori
ties of the Semitic Museum of Harvard University and the Metropolitan Museum
of Art, N ew York, for permission to publish the stones belonging to those
museums, and for the excellent photographs of their stelae which they have pro
vided. The late Professor James H. Breasted, Director of the Oriental Institute
of the University of Chicago, most generously placed at my disposal the nine
stones belonging to that institution published at the end of the series, and I am
greatly in debt to him, and to the members of the Egyptological Staff of the Insti
tute for their collations of the texts on these stelae. I take pleasure also in express
ing my thanks to Dr. J acob Hirsch of New Yark for allowing me to examine
photographs of two stones in his collection. Finally to my friend and teacher,
Professor George A. Reisner, I owe not only permission to use this material and
encouragement in the enterprise, but the invaluable advantage of his unsurpassed
knowledge of the funerary practices of the Old Kingdom, which has been a strong
influence in my interpretation of certain formulae.
D.D.
MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS,
BOSTON.
31 January 1936.
VI
CONTENTS
I~TRODUCTION I
THE STELAE 12
INDEX OF NAMES
109
INDEX OF TITLES 1I6
CONCLUSIONS AND CHRONOLOGY
VII
INTRODUCTION
BEG I::\::\I::\G in 1901 Professor George A. Reisner has carried out a number of
txc3.\"3.ting campaigns in the Naga-ed-Der district (opposite modern Girga in
the TI~:!1ite ::\ome), at first for the University of California (up to 1905), and there
after for the I-Iarvard University-Boston Museum of Fine Arts Expedition. In
the cour~e of these excavations there have been found a considerable number of
limestone funerary stelae of the period from the Sixth to the Twelfth Dynasties, of
which t\yenty-three pieces are now in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Professor
Reisner has asked me to make a study of these monuments, and has placed at my
disposal the Expedition's negatives, not only of the material in Boston, but also
of that nO\\- in California and that which was retained by the Cairo Museum. This
material, although physically dispersed across half the world, belongs properly
together since it all comes from a single site and a single period.
Kaga-ed-Der is a village on the east bank of the Nile opposite Girga where
there are important ancient cemeteries extending in time from the Predynastic
Period to the IVliddle Kingdom. These cemeteries run for about six kilometres
from Sheikh Farag on the north to lVIesheikh on the south, with Naga-ed-Der
itself about one and a half kilometres south of Sheikh Farag. The whole area is
loosely known to our Expedition as Naga-ed-Der (N.), and there is no dividing
line between Naga-ed-Der proper and Sheikh Farag (S.F.). Mesheikh (Mes.),
lying well to the south, is separated from Naga-ed-Der by the site of Mesa'eed,
with which we are not here concerned, but, for the purposes of this study, the
subdivisions of the site may be disregarded as they all form parts of a single large
cemetery of the Thinite Nome.I
The material at my disposal consists of the following stones excavated by
Professor Reisner and his assistants in the N aga-ed-Der cemeteries:
23 stelae in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Nos. 1-23 (lVl.F.A., 12. 1475 &c.).
29 stelae at the University of California, published by Dr. Lutz;2 Nos. 24-52
(Lutz, 18 &c.).
12 stelae in the Cairo Museum which I have examined ; Nos. 53-64 (Cairo,
37737 &c.).
I The work done on earlier graves of the site has mid Age, Naga-ed-Der, Ill.
been published in the University of California 2 Henry F. Lutz, Egyptian Tomb Steles and
Egyptian Series as follows: G. A. Reisner, Early Offering Stones of the l11"lIsellm of Anthropology and
Dynastic Cemeteries of Naga-ed-Der, I; A_ C.lVlace, Ethnology of the University of California, Univer
Early Dynastic Cemeteries of Naga-ed-Der, Il; sity of California Publications, Egyptian Archaeo
G. A. Reisner, A Provincial Cemetery of the P)'ra- logy, vo!. IV, Leipzig, I927.
B
INTRODUCTION
12 stelae which I have been unable to locate, but presumed to be unregistered in
Cairo, the publication of which is based solely on Expedition photographs;
Nos. 65-76 (N. 235 &c.).
To these I have added, as supplementary material, the following stelae in
American museums, all of which I believe to be from the Naga-ed-Der district, and
none of which have been previously published:
stela in the Semitic Museum, Harvard University; No. 77 (Semitic Museum,
I
2354)·
stela in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; No. 78 (Metropolitan
I
Museum, 25 :2 :3).
9 stelae in the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago; Nos. 79-87
(Orinst., 16951 &c.).
The stelae, all of which are of limestone, are in most cases quite irregular in
over-all dimensions, although the effective field enclosed by borders is almost
universally of approximately rectangular form. The stones are also uneven in
thickness although the inscribed faces are relatively flat. These conditions arise
out of the manner in which the stones were used. The tombs of the First Inter
mediate Period at Naga-ed-Der were excavated practically without exception in
the extremely bad rock of the river slope and side wadys. The offering rooms,
which contained examples of the stelae under discussion, were usually found with
their roofs collapsed. The walls were roughly hewn and in no case, as far as could
be ascertained, bore any decoration other than the stelae themselves, set against
or in the walls. The burial places were sometimes pits in the floor of the offering
chamber and sometimes tunnels in its back wall. In the former case the stela was
generally set up against, or in a shallow recess in, the wall of the offering chamber
near the burial pit; in the latter it was commonly set into the blocking of the tunnel
entrance. PI. I, and Fig. show an example of the former practice, with two
I I
stelae (no. 63 on the left and No. 14 on the right) set against the east wall (S.F.
5106). PI. I, 2 and Fig. 4 show a less common type of tomb, a small mud-brick
ma$taba, mud-plastered, with the stela set into a niche in the centre of the face.
In this tomb (S.F. 5005) the stela was so rotten with salt as to be illegible, and it has
not been published. PI. I, 3 and Fig. 5 show stela No. 7I (N. 38°4) in position, set
in the mud-plaster blocking the mouth of the entrance to the burial chamber. As
these illustrations show, many of the stelae were imbedded in mud-plaster so that
their irregular form was hidden and only the rectangular field and its framing
border was exposed to view.
In most of the tombs the stela was found displaced in the offering room, and its
original place was only indicated by a recess or by the remains of mud-plaster on
the walls. Where a tunnel tomb had been plundered practically no evidence of the
2
INTRODUCTION
SHEIKH FARAG 5106
t
1:50
FIG. I
-::- : :,:tion of the stela was left. But in a certain number of tombs the stelae were
: ·.:::-,d in place, and I give here the descriptions of six tombs in order to show their
~:~~5 and the proved positions of the stelae.
3
