Preliminary report of the 2002 campaign of the Belgian mission to Deir al-Barsha

Abstract

As regards the plateau with the Middle Kingdom nomarchal tombs, the report concentrates on work undertaken in and around the tomb of Djehutihotep (17L20/1). Clearance in front of the entrance to the burial appartment resulted in the find of numerous remains probably of the original funerary equipment of the nomarch and, below it, the openings of four of the five tomb shafts discovered in the area by Daressy (17L10/1-3 and 16L19/1). Excavations here and in the courtyard area have shown that the courtyard was originally fronted by a low wall in stone masonry. Some large relief blocks found close to the tomb entrance of Djehutihotep suggest that there was once a wall carved from the rock, of which the decoration can be partly reconstructed. In zone 4, lower on the northern wadi slope, twelve new sectors were opened with the aim of clarifying the types of rock-cut tombs occurring here. The square and longitudinal tomb shafts probably represent Old Kingdom/First Intermediate Period and Middle Kingdom occupation respectively, although Old Kingdom remains are not particularly prominent. Other large shafts slope down. Although most were severely disturbed, a notable result is that the cemetery was extensively reused in the Second Intermediate Period or early New Kingdom, and again in the Late and Graeco-Roman periods. Work in zone 9 concentrated on the excavation of several tomb complexes of which the existence was disclosed by last year's magnetometric survey. The tomb complexes are surrounded by walls, in the centre of which occur brick-lined tomb shafts. One of these (early Middle Kingdom) tombs (10O2.2/1) was reused in the early New Kingdom, and it produced an undisturbed burial of that date. Complex 10O13 contained three brick-lined shafts. One of the burial chambers was excavated and contained a large amount of remains of the tomb equipment. Surrounding the three shafts, but within the same enclosure wall, a number of tombs of smaller sizes occurred. Work in the quarries continued, and was focused on the one hand on continued recording of the demotic and pictorial graffiti in the Nectanebo quarries in the Wâdî Nakhla, and on the other on surveying the quarries north and south of it. This resulted i. a. in the discovery of quarries inscriptionally dated to years 10 and 11 of Akhenaten, and of a large graffito depicting Egyptian and Greek or Phoenician ships.

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