The Saqqara Necropolis through the New Kingdom

Abstract

This book is the product of a years' long interest in the New Kingdom necropolis at Saqqara, probably ignited during a lecture offered to prospective Egyptology students at Leiden University way back in 1999. The sixteen-year old me had to wait another two years before enrolling in (Near Eastern) Archaeology in 2001, and it was not until 2007 that I could finally participate in the excavations at Saqqara organised by the Leiden Museum of Antiquities (rmo) and Leiden University. My deep interest in the site ultimately led to a PhD research proposal, which was awarded with an iprs research grant by the Australian government, and an mqres grant awarded by Macquarie University. It allowed me to conduct my doctoral research at that university in Sydney, Australia (2012)(2013)(2014)(2015). The thesis-by-publication model that I adopted resulted in a number of academic journal articles that mainly focused on various monumental tombs built for the Memphite elite in the 2nd millennium bce. These tombs were accessed by early-19th century explorers and antiquities diggers, and had since been lost under the shifting desert sands of the North Saqqara plateau. My study combined the information available through these early explorers, such as mid-19th century photographs capturing now-lost monuments, tomb elements dispersed over public and private collections around the globe, and the actual archaeological data excavated in the last half a century or so. Still, many questions remained unanswered after finishing my research. For one thing, up to that time, there had been no studies that aimed to contextualise the known tombs in their environmental setting. The present publication aims to fill this lacuna.This book is the outcome of a study conducted within the research project entitled 'The Walking Dead at Saqqara: The Making of a Cultural Geography' , funded with a vidi Talent Scheme research grant awarded by the Dutch Research Council (nwo), dossier no. 016.vidi.174.032, and hosted at the Leiden University Institute for Area Studies (lias). Lara Weiss (National Museum of Antiquities, Leiden) conceived the idea of writing the research proposal at around the time of the 'Abusir and Saqqara in the Year 2015' conference held in Prague. We then combined forces with Ramadan Hussein (Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen) and wrote the proposal in fruitful collaboration. Unfortunately, we did not succeed in securing funding at our first attempt, so we decided to rework the proposal and re-submit it the next year. All extra efforts paid off, and the project, led by Lara Weiss, was officially started in autumn 2017. Due to Ramadan's obligations on another successfully funded project of his, the third position within the research team was then taken up by Huw xvii of Amenhotep ii. After Lacher-Raschdorff, C. (2014), Das Grab des Königs Ninetjer in Saqqara: Architektonische Entwicklung Frühzeitlicher Grabanlagen in Ägypten, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, pl. 42f. Image © Dai Cairo / Claudia Lacher-Raschdorff 92 The structure of Amenhotep ii ne...

Funerary Objects and an Intact Secondary Burial in the Early Ramesside Tomb of Iurokhy at Saqqara

“…For a concise overview of the history of the exploration of the site, seeStaring 2023: 84-88. 5 El Aguizy 2007 Leclant 1978: 278.…”