Entangled Ritual and Architectural Practices at North Saqqara

Abstract

This doctoral dissertation challenges some prevalent assumptions about ancient Egyptian funerary architecture. Using the cemetery of North Saqqara as a case study, I question the idea that ancient Egyptian tombs were only built to bury the dead, and show evidence that the elite mastabas of the earliest dynasties were used for rituals before interment took place. The structures were eventually transformed for the funeral, which required changing fundamental aspects of the buildings. In their previous shapes, the structures included spaces large enough to gather crowds, and doubled accesses that enabled the circular movement of people. While the North Saqqara plateau was one of the most important sites during the Early Dynastic Period of Egypt, our understanding of it has been hindered by the limited documentation available to the scientific community. This doctoral dissertation contextualizes the unpublished archives of the archaeological excavations carried out at the site in the 20th century, which contain information about more than 160 excavated but unpublished structures. I complement the documentation of Cecil M. Firth and Walter B. Emery with data gathered in two season of topographic survey at the site. Using a high accuracy GNSS receiver and digital photogrammetry, I undertook a detailed topographic survey. As a result, I was able to trace the whereabouts of many of the structures whose plans were kept in the archives, succeeding in reconstructing a sizable portion of the missing plan of the site. In the last part of the dissertation, I suggest a method to research the function of the spaces of the mastabas in their various stages of construction and use. In view of the very limited evidence about the rituals, I suggest studying the agency of the structures to affect the sensorial perceptions of the people involved in the rituals as an avenue to inquire about how the spaces could have been used. Specifically, I provide a series of case studies where I researched how four structures built during the First and the Second Egyptian dynasties shaped sound in certain ritual scenarios. Sounds produced in the mastabas were transformed as they traveled through space, from their source to their full dissipation. How sound was heard depended on the frequency of the sound emitted, as well as on the specific shapes and construction materials used in the structures.