Ahmose pyramid
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 Ruins of the Ahmose pyramid (in the foreground)
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The Ahmose pyramid was built at the time of the ancient Egyptian king Ahmose I between 1550 and 1525 BC. Chr. In the temple complex of Abydos erected pyramid . It was the only royal pyramid that was planned from the beginning as a cenotaph (mock grave ) and not as a tomb . The Ahmose pyramid was also the last royal pyramid in Egypt, because like Ahmose I, all successors were no longer buried in pyramids. Today it is in ruins and only appears as a flat hill of rubble.
exploration
The complex was first explored by Arthur Mace and Charles T. Currelly between 1899 and 1902 on behalf of the Egypt Exploration Fund , who identified the rubble mound as a pyramid. However, the work remained fragmentary and only provided a rough overview of the facility and its structures. Excavations focused on the pyramid temple. Mace also dug a tunnel under the pyramid to find an existing substructure. Currelly continued researching the area until 1904.
Since 1993, Stephen P. Harvey undertook new excavations on the complex, which, among other things, revealed a large number of relief fragments and clarified the nature of the Tetisheri Chapel as a pyramid. During these excavations, the ruins of several structures in the temple complex were also uncovered.
Construction circumstances
After his victory over the Hyksos , who had ruled Egypt for a period of more than 100 years, Ahmose I gained complete government power over the entire country ( Upper and Lower Egypt ) and thus founded the New Kingdom . The driving force behind the efforts to unify the empire seems to have been Ahmose's grandmother Tetisheri .
Although Abydos has been an important site for cult and tomb structures since the early history of Egypt, the pyramid of Ahmose was the first great pyramid to be built there. However, various rulers of the 17th dynasty owned tombs there in the form of small pyramids, which, however, did not exceed a base length of 10 m. The structure of the pyramid and temple complex of Ahmose differed fundamentally from all earlier pyramid complexes, as the typical scheme of valley temple , access road , pyramid temple and pyramid was not adhered to here. With the terrace temple and the Osiris tomb , new elements were introduced into the structure of the pyramid complex.
The actual, original tomb of Ahmose, which has not yet been located, was probably in Dra Abu el-Naga . It is possible that it is a small pyramid discovered by Herbert E. Winlock in 1913, but this tomb is also attributed by other researchers to Ahmose's predecessor Kamose or his possible son Ahmose Sapair . His mummy and that of his grandmother Tetisheri were found in the cachette of Deir el-Bahari , where they were taken in the 22nd Dynasty to protect against grave robbers.
The Ahmose cult around this pyramid and temple complex is proven by a stele over a period of about 300 years up to the time of Ramses II . The inscription testifies that a processional boat of the Ahmose cult served the residents as an oracle of the deified king.
pyramid
The pyramid had a base length of 52.5 m (corresponds to 100 royal cells ) and consisted of a boulder and sand core, which was clad with fine limestone. The loose core was kept in shape by the cladding stones and had no stability of its own. During excavations, Mace found two layers of facing stones from which an inclination angle of about 60 ° could be derived, making it significantly steeper than the pyramids of the Old and Middle Kingdom . The pyramid reached a reconstructed height of 45 m.
After the cladding layer became a victim of stone robbery in later times, the loose core lost its cohesion and collapsed into what is now a cone of rubble, which is only 10 m high. The core material may have come from the overburden of the underground Osiris tomb in the southern area of the complex.
A crescent-shaped mud brick structure between the north side of the pyramid and the pyramid temple could be identified by Harvey's work as the remnant of a building ramp .
The pyramid is the only one of the larger pyramids that does not have a substructure, which means that it cannot function as a tomb. Mace drove a tunnel from the north side under the ruins in 1902 in order to find hidden passages. Even later investigations could not discover any substructure under the pyramid. Corridors in the pyramid corpus can be excluded due to the loose structure of the gravel and sand construction of the core.
complex
A structure that had never been used in pyramid construction was chosen for the complex. While the usual structure consisted of a valley temple in the area of the vegetation boundary and a pyramid further in the desert, the pyramid here with the associated temples was arranged at the valley-side end of the complex near the flood limit of the Nile . Further in the desert were a smaller cenotaph pyramid as well as an Osiris tomb and a terrace temple. The structure of the elongated complex is reminiscent of the Osiris tomb, the Sesostris III. in Abydos. The components are arranged along a line and were probably connected by a straight road, which, however, is no longer detectable. A surrounding wall, as is common in earlier pyramid complexes, could not be found.
Temple complex
The pyramid temple was on the north side of the pyramid, but not adjacent to it. The building had thick walls and a passage to a courtyard in the middle, at the back of which there might have been a colonnade of columns. There were two pits next to the entrance, each of which may have been planted with a tree. Harvey found over 2000 painted relief fragments in the temple area, which show motifs from Ahmose's fight against the Hyksos and adorned the temple. The pictures show the oldest known representations of horses with chariots in Egypt.
Another small temple ("Temple A") was located on the northeast corner and was used to worship Ahmose and his wife and sister Ahmose Nefertari . This building was mistaken for a cult pyramid by some researchers due to its location . Immediately to the east of this are the remains of another temple ("Temple B"), to which Ahmose is assigned. A larger temple ("Temple C") is located to the north of it and borders the pyramid temple, which is attributed to Ahmose-Nefertari.
Adjacent to the east are the ruins of a commercial or administrative building. However, the eastern parts of the building complex are overbuilt by a modern Muslim cemetery and therefore not accessible for exploration.
Tetisheri pyramid
Halfway between the Ahmose pyramid and the terrace temple are the remains of a brick structure with the basic dimensions 21 m × 23 m, which was originally identified as the shrine of Ahmose's grandmother Tetisheri based on inscriptions found there . Likewise, a stele (CG 34002) was found in the ruins in 1902 , which refers to the pyramid and the temple of Tetisheris. On the inscriptions on it, Ahmose informs his wife about plans to erect a memorial pyramid for his grandmother, who was buried in Thebes .
“It is I who think of my mother's mother (Ahhotep I) and my father's mother, of the Great King Wife and Queen Mother, Tetisheri, blessed. She still has her burial chapel on the earth of Thebes and Abydos. My Majesty wishes that a pyramid and a mortuary temple be erected near my monuments in the sublime land. The lake of the mortuary temple was dug, the trees were planted and offerings made, it was enfeoffed with fields and provided with flocks. "
At the time the stele was found, it was assumed that the name pyramid would only be symbolic, as the ruins were not yet identified as a pyramid structure at that time. According to the inscription, the garden and the man-made lake located by the pyramid have not yet been proven archaeologically.
More recent work by Harvey has shown that the structure is actually a pyramid. What is unusual, however, is that it was built on a foundation of mud brick casemates filled with rubble . A corridor extends to the middle of this casemate foundation. During these excavations, fragments of the pyramidion were also found, with which the proof of a similar angle of inclination as in the Ahmose pyramid was possible. These finds made it possible to explain the name of the pyramid for this building in the text of the above-mentioned stele. In addition, an enclosure made of adobe bricks measuring 90 mx 70 m around the small pyramid was also found. There were several small buildings within the enclosure, the purpose of which has not yet been clarified.
Osiris tomb
In the southern quarter of the complex was Ahmose's Osiris tomb. This represented a symbolic tomb of the god of the dead Osiris , whose body, dismembered in ancient Egyptian myth , was spread over the whole country. Likewise, it can be seen as a symbol for the underworld.
The Osiris tomb was like that of Sesostris III. similar, but very carelessly and roughly executed. The entrance pit was very inconspicuous and hardly differed from the grave of an ordinary citizen. The winding underground passage was roughly hewn out of the rock below. Shortly after the entrance there were two small side chambers. In the middle of the course the corridor reached a hall with 18 pillars left standing out of the rock, the height of which only corresponded to that of the corridor. Behind the hall the corridor sloped more steeply to a simple grotto. The walls of the chambers and corridors were neither smoothed nor decorated. The Osiris tomb is aligned across the orientation line from the pyramid to the terrace temple, on which the buildings of the complex are arranged.
Terrace temple
At the southern end there was a terrace temple in front of the sheer wall of the cliffs . Buried votive offerings in the form of ceramic vessels, models of boats and stone vases were found at this temple . The temple could be entered via a staircase consisting of several stairs and trapezoidal rooms. Above, a corridor led south to a small chamber, which presumably contained a statue of a ruler placed on a pedestal.
meaning
The age of the royal pyramids in Egypt ended with the Ahmose pyramid. While the resumption of pyramid construction in the Middle Kingdom resulted in a number of follow-up buildings, in the New Kingdom there was only one single pyramid construction. Such a building project could not be proven for any of the rulers who followed Ahmose I. Only the Nubian kings, who ruled Egypt in the 25th Dynasty , still built pyramid- shaped tombs . However, these were located outside of the empire area traditionally belonging to Egypt. In Egypt itself, in the New Kingdom, private graves were provided with small pyramid-shaped structures.
literature
Generally
- Mark Lehner : Secret of the Pyramids. ECON, Düsseldorf 1997, ISBN 3-572-01039-X , pp. 190 ff.
- Hermann Schlögl : Ancient Egypt. Beck, Munich 2008, ISBN 3-406-48005-5 .
Preliminary reports on the excavation
- Stephen P. Harvey: Abydos. (Full text as PDF; 484 KB). In: The Oriental Institute 2002-2003 Annual Report. The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, Chicago 2003.
- Stephen P. Harvey: Pyramid Construction at Abydos. ( Memento of June 7, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) ( MS Word ; 2.3 MB). In: Tenth International Congress of Egyptologists. University of the Aegean, Rhodes 2008, p. 113.
- Julia Budka : The Oriental Institute Ahmose and Tetisheri Project at Abydos 2002-2004: The New Kingdom Pottery. ( online ).
- Stephen P. Harvey: Report on Abydos, Ahmose and Tetisheri Project, 2006-2007 Season. ( online ).
Web links
- Alan Winston: Ahmose Pyramid at Abydos
- Jimmy Dunn: The Last Royal Pyramid in Egypt - An Update on the Pyramid of Ahmose
- William Harms: Abydos: A place with many ancient stories to tell
- Pyramid of Ahmose I at Abydos
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e f g Mark Lehner: Secret of the pyramids. Düsseldorf 1997, pp. 190-191: Ahmose in Abydos.
- ↑ a b c Stephen P. Harvey: Pyramid Construction at Abydos. Rhodes 2008.
- ↑ a b c d Stephen P. Harvey: Abydos. In: The Oriental Institute 2002-2003 Annual Report. Chicago 2003.
- ↑ Mark Lehner: Secret of the pyramids. Düsseldorf 1997, pp. 188-189: The pyramids of the New Kingdom.
- ↑ Claude Vandersleyen: Iahmès Sapaïr: Fils de Seqenenre Djéhouty-Aa (17e dynasty) et la statue du Louvre E 15,682th saffron, Brussels 2005, ISBN 2-87457-002-8 .
- ↑ Nicholas Reeves, Richard H. Wilkinson: The Valley of the Kings. Bechtermünz, Augsburg 2002, ISBN 3-8289-0739-3 , p. 196.
- ↑ Hermann Schlögl: The ancient Egypt. Beck, Munich 2008, p. 183.
Remarks
- ↑ a b dating from Jürgen von Beckerath , older investigations put him between 1530 and 1504 BC. Chr. (Helck) or 1539 to 1514 BC Chr. (Krauss)
- ^ Catalog Général 34002, Egyptian Museum, Cairo
Coordinates: 26 ° 10 ′ 32.6 ″ N , 31 ° 56 ′ 16 ″ E