Kemp Hierakonpolis

Photographs of the Decorated Tomb at Hierakonpolis
Author(s): Barry J. Kemp

Source: The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, Vol. 59 (Aug., 1973), pp. 36-43
Published by: Sage Publications, Ltd.
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3856094
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(36)
PHOTOGRAPHS OF THE DECORATED TOMB
AT HIERAKONPOLIS
By BARRY J. KEMP
IN the summer of I966 the Library of Egyptology in the Faculty of Orien

the University of Cambridge had the good fortune to acquire the papers of
Green. These had remained at the family's house in Great Shelford, Ca
but with the sale of the house imminent Major F. C. Green contacted Profe
Plumley for his opinion on his father's papers. Professor Plumley subsequ
the house to examine them, and informed Major Green of their interest an
On hearing this Major Green agreed to present them all to the Library of
As a result of this magnanimous gesture they are now preserved her
liminary catalogue has been made.
F. W. Green travelled extensively in Egypt and the Sudan, mostly in the
of this century, and many of the documents are well-kept pocket boo
notes, sketches, and copies of inscriptions. Others contain notes made dur
visits to museums. But the principal body of manuscripts consists of f
plans of the excavations which he carried out in 1899 at Hierakonpolis
the Egyptian Research Account. It can be seen from them that the publish
Hierakonpolis, II, does less than full justice to the field record. Compa
records of some of his contemporaries, Green's notes are remarkably e
with a praiseworthy neatness, and replete with sketches which reflec
spent with the Egyptian Geological Survey as topographer and surveyo
The discovery of these records has come at an opportune moment. Mrs.
at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, and Mrs. Barbara Adams at the Pet
University College, London, have both done a great deal of work on the m
Hierakonpolis in these collections. At the same time it has been found that
at Cambridge contain considerably more material from the excavations th
suspected. It is already becoming evident that Green's manuscripts c
deal of information which will enable many of the objects in these col
related quite specifically to the circumstances of their discovery, and whi
hoped, lead to a much better appreciation of the stratigraphy and la
remarkable place.
In addition to the manuscript material is a large number of photographi
Although these have not yet been catalogued it has proved possible to
group from the Hierakonpolis excavations. They were taken on a quar
pack with nitrate base, and in each case have shrunk considerably and cur
In extreme cases they have come to resemble slender black cigarettes,
PHOTOGRAPHS OF THE DECORATED TOMB, HIERAKONPOLIS 37
condition making unrolling a difficult matter. Fortunately it was possible to obtain the
services of someone with the resources and skill to deal with them, in the person of
Mr. L. P. Morley, photographer to the Faculty of Archaeology at Cambridge. It is
entirely due to his care and patience that it has proved possible to rescue a set of prints
whose quality, in view of the age and condition of the negatives, is quite remarkable.
The three which have been chosen for this article represent the famous painted
tomb in the course of excavation. The field notes referred to are part of Green MSS.
205.2.
Photograph 1 (pl. XXIII)

Looking west-north-west, with excavation still in progress. In Hierakonpolis, ii, p. 20, Green
reports that the tomb had been recently robbed, and in this photograph a clear distinction can be
seen between the loose soft sand recently blown in which still fills the further chamber, and the small
section of much firmer, consolidated material which joins the partition wall to the south-west wall
opposite and must represent an ancient filling. The remains of objects I-7 can be seen in front of
this. The tomb walls are still thickly encrusted with compacted dust, but one of the painted boats
can be discerned on the left edge of the picture. On the partition wall the painting of the procession
of figures, of which two were preserved, is clearly visible, with the dark, blue-black dado beneath.
Photograph 2 (pl. XXIV)

Looking south-east, the clearance having now been taken further. All that remains unexcavated
is the small section of old compacted filling. In an angle between this and the partition wall a number
of pots, group 8-13, are still standing or lying. In the field notes (p. 2z0 n. 6) Green makes the follow-
ing observation: 'The tomb has been evidently open on the N side up to the partition for a long time
as that side of the pots is quite weathered through by sand blast process.' The chamber to the rear
seems to be empty, as the published plan suggests. Compacted dust can be seen still adhering to
the painted wall on the right, but the wall to the rear of the picture has been cleaned, and the white
coating above a dark dado can be seen to be blank. The wall on the left seems to have a deep scar
running from the top down to the partition wall. This might at first sight be taken to indicate that
the partition wall was originally built to the full height of the tomb. More likely, however, is that it
represents the fact that for anyone digging in the tomb, once the partition wall had been exposed,
this would be the easiest point to climb in and out, something which would easily bring about
damage of this nature.
Photograph 3 (pl. XXV)

Looking south-east, but from further away than photograph 2. This is the direction of local south,
thus the line of the cultivation would be on the left, with the main painted wall facing it, and beyond
would be the shallow wadi on the edge of which the tomb was situated. The scale can easily be
judged on the painted wall on the right, and two boats are now visible. This picture cannot, how-
ever, mark the final stage of excavation. Green's published section and note in Hierakonpolis, ii,
pi. LXVII and p. 20, make it clear that on a limited scale at least the filling behind the tomb walls,
between them and the sides of the pit in which the tomb was built, was removed. This must have
necessitated the removal of part of the surrounding dumps, an operation which might be expected
to have uncovered any remains of a superstructure. There is probably some positive significance,
therefore, in the fact that neither in the published report nor in the field notes is there a mention
of anything of this nature.
38 BARRY J. KEMP
The field notes also explain a slight discrepancy in the description of the tomb's
decoration published on p. 21 of Hierakonpolis, i. At the beginning of section 53 the
two larger painted figures from a procession are are scribed to wall E, which on the plan
(p. xvii) is the end face of the partition wall. At the end of section 53, however, these
figures are said to have been on wall F, which is the south-eastern face of the wall.
The notes show that the walls were re-lettered for publication, but the initial summary
of decoration at the beginning of section 53, largely copied from the field notes, was
not properly corrected. If we keep to the lettering of the published plan, the beginning
of section 53 should be corrected as follows: E should be read as F, F as G, and G as
H. In the field notes (p. 214) the end face of the partition wall is referred to as E and
the accompanying entry reads: 'dado & red line, white ground signs of decoration in
red'. On a separate sketch plan of the partition wall (dated I4.5.99) the following note
is given for this same end face: 'more men? probably', referring, of course, to a con-
tinuation of the procession of figures on wall F. This same plan also indicates the white
painted ground continuing for about a metre on wall D from the end face.
Concerning the original roofing of the tomb the field notes are slightly more explicit.
Initially, in the description of the main painted wall (AA) Green wrote (p. 214): 'signs
of arched roof but whether arch or corbel uncertain. Height of room from the brick
floor to spring of vault I'40.' This opinion he later altered, for on another (unnum-
bered) page comes the note: 'There has been no vaulting. There was a wooden roof.'
More notes and a sketch on this page then describe how the remains of yellow ochre
were found carried over the end of the slightly projecting brickwork at the top of
the wall which had first been thought of as the base of the vaulting. Since the main
decorated wall on the south-west (AA) seems to have been the only one painted in this
colour, it is probably to this wall that he is referring. The photographs do in fact
suggest a slight overhang at the top of this wall towards the south corner of the tomb.
Finally, amongst the manuscripts are two sketch maps (Green MSS. 5 and 23) which
locate the position of the painted tomb by means of triangulation exactly at the point
given on the map published in Hierakonpolis, ii, pl. lxxiii a.
The wall paintings of tomb I00 remain a unique survival from predynastic Egypt.
This is no longer true, however, of the tomb's general layout and construction. The
publication of Baumgartel's Supplement to Petrie's Naqada excavation' has drawn
attention to the fact that Petrie's surviving field notebooks contain details on the con-
struction of some of the Naqada tombs which did not find their way into the excavation
report. These show that Hierakonpolis tomb oo00, far from being unique in design,
in fact belonged to a class of brick-lined predynastic tombs which at Naqada were
grouped in cemetery T, suspected for some time to have been a royal cemetery.2
In Naqada and Ballas Petrie interpreted one of them, T 15, as an Old Kingdom
tomb re-used by his 'New Race' people in the First Intermediate Period. This
doubtless explains why details of other similar tombs at Naqada were played down or
omitted.
I E. J. Baumgartel, Petrie's Naqada Excavation. A Supplement (London, I970).
2 So H. Case and J. C. Payne in JEA 48 (1962), II and 15.
Fig. i is a map of cemetery T, re-drawn from Naqada and Ballas, pl. lxxxvi. A
number of fairly minor additions and corrections have been added from Petrie's field
20
o oBo N
25 717 2t-3 0
t o '411 O 4 0
132
6
nrust I '1 8
0 < 56
40
22 04 0 0
~~~~~54 05
0 O ^
Probably in this group,T 26
0 25 metres
FIG. I. Naqada cemetery
notebooks, for which I am gr

ment of Egyptology, Univer
size and design of these brick
scale. 'Local' north is more o
relate to fig. 2.
Hierakonpolis 100 T 15
mrmn-L- I i
0 3 metres
T 23
^^'Jo _-uc u
7D
FIG. 2. Predynastic brick tombs at Hierakonpolis and Naqada.
T 20. A tracing from the field notebook. There is no mention of the words 'brick' or 'wall', nor
is a wall thickness indicated. However, the partition wall in the centre of the east side is an unmis-
takable indication that we are dealing with a brick-lined tomb, almost identical in plan to Hiera-
konpolis tomb I00. No dimensions are given, but Petrie's cemetery plan suggests a size very close
to that of tomb ioo, about 5 by 2 metres.
T 15. A photograph of Petrie's original drawing is reproduced on the frontispiece of Baumgartel's

Supplement. It is here re-drawn, using Petrie's measurements. The width of the interconnecting
doorway has to be estimated, and was here assumed to be about 60 cm., which fits Petrie's sketch
plan and is not particularly narrow by ancient standards. The design seems to be more advanced
than that of T 20, in that it allows for access from outside. In front of the gap in the brickwork in
the north-east corner Petrie drew an arrow pointing in, and in an accompanying note referred to a
'door'. One should probably interpret this as a sloping descent cut from the desert surface down
to the floor level of the tomb at this point. The depth of the tomb is given as 60 in. (compared to
55 in. of Hierakonpolis tomb Ioo). In the notes on T 15 in Naqada and Ballas, 24, Petrie wrote:
'In the pit a vaulted brick chamber has been built, with door at E. end of N. side, opening into a
smaller space, which was doubtless the well of access.' The introduction of the term 'vaulted' could
well have been a presumption by Petrie, and a very reasonable one in view of his interpretation that
T I 5 was a re-used Old Kingdom tomb. The field notebook makes no reference to vaulting, and the
absence of a reference to the external 'door' only adds to the feeling that this statement should not
be taken as anything but a hasty and impressionistic note.
T 23. On the right in fig. 2 is a tracing from the field notebook. Beside it is an interpretation,
using Petrie's measurements. At the top of the page in the field notebook Petrie has written a cryptic
note, of which an attempt at reproduction has been made here. I would read it as 'brick arch in'.
This, and the shape of the plan, suggest a single brick chamber built in a pit, dug to be longer than
the chamber so as to leave a well of access in front of the door. The thickness of the walls beside the
doorway, at 20 in., is close to that of T 15, 22 in., and the very fact that Petrie measured it suggests
that it was more than just a more regular version of T 25 (for which see the frontispiece of Baum-
gartel's Supplement). If one envisages, however, the same thickness all the way round, one has then
to choose between a narrowing of the original pit in front of the door, or an error in Petrie's measure-
ments since only 20 in. is given as the difference in width between well of access and interior of
chamber. For this reason the thickness of walls has not been definitely indicated. No depth is given.
The note 'brick arch in', if correctly read, presumably refers to the doorway. Its width can only be
guessed at, but can scarcely, to judge from the plan, have been more than a metre. In the reconstruc-
tion of figure 2, as with T 15, a width of some 60 cm. has been assumed, which would be appro-
priate if the tomb were no deeper than T 15, thus about 60 in. (I'53 m.). A rough brick arch over a
door of this size should not conjure up anything spectacular in the way of building technique. Nor
need it imply that the chamber was vaulted.
At least one other tomb in cemetery T had seen the use of mud brick. This is T io. The brick-
work was confined to a pair of walls lining the long sides, doubtless to provide firmer support for
the roofing timbers. The field notebook gives the dimensions (in inches) as 'I20X 78 less 12 ins.
bricks', with a depth of 50 in.
It will have been noticed that in the case both of Hierakonpolis tomb Ioo00 and these
Naqada tombs the subject of brick vaulting has arisen, firmly denied by F. W. Green,
though remaining ambiguous in Petrie's work. The question is not so much whether
it might be considered feasible for the Egyptians of this period to have erected brick
D 141 E
42 BARRY J. KEMP
vaults-this is something which one hopes will become clear from future fieldwork on
early town sites-as to whether one regards it as appropriate for tomb chambers. All
that we really have to guide us is the fact that the builders of large brick tombs of the
First Dynasty, including the royal tombs on the Umm el-Qa'ab at Abydos, chose to
employ flat roofs supported on timber beams, the same method as that probably used
in the case of Hierakonpolis tomb I00. It should also be noted that in historic times,
when vaulted brick burial chambers were built in pits, Abydos providing many in-
stances, the vaulting commenced its curve more or less at floor level so that its highest
point would remain below ground level. If the Naqada tombs were found with their
walls standing upright, or with a slight batter-and Petrie's notebooks certainly leave
this impression-then the vaulting would have projected above ground level.
In either case, a projecting vault or a wooden roof at ground level, some form of
superstructure must have been necessary, just for protection. The plan of cemetery
T, however, also shows from the closeness of the tombs that superstructures cannot
have been of any great size. Here again a good parallel is provided by the Umm el-
Qa'ab at Abydos, where similarly the available space is too limited for anything very
large to be envisaged,' and where, in fact, for most tombs no trace of a superstructure
remained at all. Only in the case of the tomb of King Djet did enough survive to show
that it had been surrounded at ground level by a plain brick wall, probably to retain
a low mound of sand and gravel.2 This is the most helpful clue available for the above-
ground appearance of these predynastic brick tombs.
The little that has survived from the brick tombs of cemetery T to find a place in
Baumgartel's Supplement suggests a Naqada II date. The inadequacy of the data makes
it quite pointless, however, to attempt to determine whether they are earlier or later
than Hierakonpolis tomb I00. From their design and distribution in the cemetery one
might place them in the early-to-late order T 20, T 15, T 23. On the other hand, on
the grounds that the earliest of the identifiable royal tombs on the Umm el-Qacab, B o0,
B I5, and B 19, were single brick chambers without external access, the sequence could
well be reversed, and represent the abandonment of a practice which made the tombs
more vulnerable. But this type of argument can hardly be pressed. Yet on the grounds
of design Hierakonpolis tomb I00 is certainly far closer to T 20 than to the others,
being virtually identical in both lay-out and size.
From the very reasonable suggestion that Hierakonpolis tomb Ioo and its relatives
in Naqada cemetery T should be recognized as the burial places of predynastic kings,
it seems no less reasonable to proceed further and to suggest that these were some of
the kings of the prehistoric dynasties of which some recollection survived into historic
times, prefacing the more detailed king lists and annals, and which have been so care-
fully analysed by W. Kaiser.3 The tombs themselves provide a welcome antecedent to
the development of the royal tomb in dynastic times, with the larger single-chamber
I G. A. Reisner, The Development of the Egyptian Tomb down to the Accession of Cheops (Cambridge-Harvard,
1936), end plan.
2 W. M. F. Petrie, The Royal Tombs of the First Dynasty, i, 8-9, pls. 6 -4; also B. J. Kemp in JEA 52
(I966), I8 n. 8. 3 W. Kaiser in ZAS 86 (I961), 39-61; ZAS 91 (I964), 86-I25.
tombs on the Umm el-Qacab, B Io, B 15, and B I9, intermediate between them and
the more elaborate structures of the First-Dynasty kings. Perhaps, also, it is not too
fanciful to see in the burials in the large First-Dynasty tombs at Naqada,' aristocratic
descendants of the ousted prehistoric dynasty which had once originated and perhaps
ruled from there.
I For the existence of at least one neighbour to the 'royal tomb' at Naqada see B. J. Kemp in Antiquity 41
(1967), 24-5, note.
PLATE XXIII
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·-126

Kemp Hierakonpolis

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Photographs of the Decorated Tomb at Hierakonpolis

Author(s): Barry J. Kemp

PHOTOGRAPHS OF THE DECORATED TOMB

IN the summer of I966 the Library of Egyptology in the Faculty of Orien

Photograph 1 (pl. XXIII)

Photograph 2 (pl. XXIV)

Photograph 3 (pl. XXV)

Probably in this group,T 26

FIG. I. Naqada cemetery

notebooks, for which I am gr

FIG. 2. Predynastic brick tombs at Hierakonpolis and Naqada.

T 15. A photograph of Petrie's original drawing is reproduced on the frontispiece of Baumgartel's

THE DECORATED TOMB AT HIERAKONPOLIS

b v U W z r r -;%4ri0 j i ~ Z~ ~ -I:: l 'IftPPr'1 .w

THE DECORATED TOMB AT HIERAKONPOLIS

THE DECORATED TOMB AT HIERAKONPOLIS

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