Abu Roasch
Coordinates: 30 ° 2 ' N , 31 ° 5' E
Abu Roasch (also Abu Rawash or Abu Rowasch ; Arabic أبو رواش, DMG Abū Rawāš ) is a village in Lower Egypt not far from the Egyptian capital Cairo . The place is known because of the nearby ancient Egyptian necropolis .
Buildings
On the southern outskirts there is a large adobe structure, the so-called Lepsius I pyramid . It could not be clearly assigned to a pharaoh , nor is it clear whether it is really the remains of a pyramid. In the middle of the 19th century , 17 m high walls were still preserved, but today they have largely disappeared except for the natural rock core with the burial chamber . The crumbled clay bricks, called Sebach in Arabic , were used by the farmers for the expansion of the village of Abu Roasch and brought to the fields as fertilizer.
2 km west of the village and about 8 km northwest of the pyramids of Giza on the eastern edge of the desert is a rocky plateau that rises about 130 m above the Nile valley plain. The pyramid of the successor of Cheops, Radjedef ( Djedefre ), and the graves of his officials are located here. The site is also called Abu Roasch by archaeologists and belongs to the memphis cemetery .
The Radjedef pyramid was built from limestone and can still be seen from the Nile . It is unclear how far it was completed. Today the heavily destroyed ruins are only 11 m high. In the pyramid complex there are also the remains of a cult and a queen pyramid. Numerous statues of the king as well as one of the oldest sphinx statues were found in the vicinity of the pyramid area .
Remnants of the Radjedef pyramid
Excavation of the burial chamber of the Radjedef pyramid
Depiction of the ruins of the Lepsius I pyramid (1842)
About 1.5 km east of the Radjedef pyramid is a necropolis with large mastabas from the Old Kingdom above the village on a protrusion of the desert plateau . Further south, on a rocky ridge, there are graves of the 1st to 4th dynasties .
literature
- Karl Richard Lepsius : Monuments from Egypt and Ethiopia. Volume 1: Lower Egypt and Memphis. Hinrichs, Leipzig 1897, pp. 21-24 ( ULB Halle ).
- Adolf Klasens : Abu Roasch. In: Wolfgang Helck (Hrsg.): Lexikon der Ägyptologie (LÄ). Volume I, Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 1975, ISBN 3-447-01670-1 , Sp. 24-25.
- IES Edwards : Abu Roash. In: Kathryn A. Bard (Ed.): Encyclopedia of the Archeology of Ancient Egypt. Routledge, London 1999, ISBN 0-415-18589-0 , pp. 82-84.
Web links
- Abu Rawash - chufu.de ( Memento from April 30, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
Individual evidence
- ↑ Karl Richard Lepsius, monuments of Egypt and Ethiopia. Vol. 1 , 1897, p. 21.