Tomb of qaa
Coordinates: 26 ° 10 ′ 26.4 ″ N , 31 ° 54 ′ 28.6 ″ E
The tomb of Qaa is in Umm el-Qaab in Abydos . Qaa was an ancient Egyptian king who lived at the end of the 1st Dynasty, around 2900 BC. BC, ruled. The burial complex with the modern designation Q consists of the burial chamber in the center and around it 18 storage rooms and 21 side burials. The whole building measures around 30 × 20 m. The burial chamber is 10.5 × 5.5 m in size and about 4 m deep in the ground. The entrance to the tomb is in the northwest. A staircase leads underground here. There are two pantries each on the left and right. The actual burial chamber was once covered with wood. The whole building is made of adobe bricks. It is not known whether there was once a superstructure and what it looked like.
The tomb was robbed. The stele of the official Sabef was found in one of the side burials. Numerous stone vessels with inscriptions probably come from here. A stele with the name of the Qaa comes from here and is now in the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archeology and Anthropology (Museum Inv.Number E6878).
The grave has been the target of archaeological research three times. Émile Amélineau dug here at the end of the 19th century. Flinders Petrie excavated the complex with large parts of the cemetery in 1900 and 1901 again. Further investigations have been taking place since 1977 under the direction of Werner Kaiser and Günter Dreyer .
literature
- Eva-Maria Engel: The Royal Tombs at Umm el-Qa'ab. In: Archeo-Nile. Volume 18, 2008, p. 39.
- Eva-Maria Engel: The grave of Qa'a: Architecture and inventory (= archaeological publications of the German Archaeological Institute. Volume 100). Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 2017, ISBN 978-3-447-10876-8 .
- William Matthew Flinders Petrie , Francis Llewellyn Griffith : The royal tombs of the First Dynasty. 1900: Part 1. (= Memoir of the Egypt Exploration Fund. Volume 18, ISSN 0307-5109 ). Offices of The Egypt Exploration Fund, London 1900, pp. 14-15, panels LX, LXVI, 5-6 ( digitized version ).