Valley district

Valley district in hieroglyphics
Early empire	Ḥwt-k3 Ka House / House of the Ka
From the Middle Kingdom	Ḥwt-k3 Ka House / House of the Ka
Horus name of the Ninetjer to the right of the Ka house of his predecessor Hetepsechemui (2nd dynasty).

The Shunet El-Zebib with a well-preserved niche facade.

As valley district or burial district , Egyptologists refer to a walled enclosure of ancient Egypt , especially the early period (beginning of the 1st dynasty to the end of the 2nd dynasty ). The ancient Egyptians referred to this building complex as " Ka house " or "House of the Ka soul" (ancient Egypt . Hut-ka ). However, they did not differentiate between the enclosure and the Ka House as a building, but instead named the entire complex Hut-Ka . One of the valley districts was the historical, cultic such asarchitectural forerunner of the later pyramid complexes and the actual Ka House was the predecessor of the later death and valley temples .

Pictography

The pictographic representation of the Ka House appears in a fixed form on clay seals, vases and stone vessels from the 1st Dynasty . It appears as a combination of the hieroglyphic characters D29 ( Ka on god standard) and O6 (house with courtyard). You can see a usually upright, rectangular frame with “boxes” in the lower right corner. The frame stands for the enclosure , the “box” for the actual Ka house and the Ka symbol is emblazoned in the free center . On the clay seals, however , valley districts with a Ka house are extremely rare.

On many stone vessels of the late 1st and the entire 2nd dynasty , the district walls are depicted as smooth walls, although their walls actually had wall niches on the outside. Often the name of the deceased ruler Horus was added without serech over the Ka symbol. Next to the Ka house you can often find the Horus name of a successor (this time with Serech). This image program is intended to express that the king and Serech visited the Ka house of a predecessor. Ink inscriptions on clay and stone vessels name the Ka House since the end of the 2nd dynasty and the names of the officials and priests who were responsible for supply and maintenance in the valley district, such as Inichnum and Maapermin .

story

The earliest surviving valley districts are found near Abydos near Umm el-Qaab , the earliest archaeologically preserved example so far are the three valley districts of King Aha (early 1st dynasty ). At Abydos there are also the valley districts of the kings Djer , Djet and (presumably) Qa'a , all rulers of the 1st dynasty. Another valley district near the Shunet El-Zebib and with some certainty from the 1st Dynasty could not yet be satisfactorily assigned. The actual mastaba tombs of these rulers are about 1.8 km northeast near Umm el-Qaab. In Abydos there are also the cult areas of the kings Peribsen and Chasechemui from the 2nd dynasty. Another enclosure from the 1st or 2nd dynasty was located under the former Coptic monastery Deir el-Sitt Damiana (founded around 700 AD). It has also not been assigned to any early dynastic ruler and could possibly even be of a much more recent date. Chasechemui seems to have possibly even owned a second valley district near Hierakonpolis . Interestingly, the valley districts of King Aha already seem noticeably “standardized”, so that some Egyptologists suspect that the tradition of the valley districts might not be a bit older than previously assumed.

Under King Djoser , the alleged founder of the 3rd dynasty , the concept of the free-standing valley district was abandoned and the so-called pyramid district was introduced instead. Under King Sneferu , the presumed founder of the 4th dynasty , the mortuary temple and the valley temple finally came into fashion. Mentuhotep II , 6th regent of the 11th dynasty ( Middle Kingdom ), was the first king to own a Ka house again after the collapse of the Old Kingdom.

architecture

Enclosure and courtyard

The valley area was part of the royal cemetery , a cult area in the form of a scale model replica of the royal palace with the palace courtyard, devotional chapels , sacrificial altars and statue shrines . As was customary for the Early Empire, every early dynastic ruler owned a mastabagrab and a nearby valley district, but the two were spatially and geographically separated from each other.

The valley area consisted of a rectangular enclosure in the form of a smooth inside wall made of burnt mud bricks and blended outside . The axis of the enclosure was oriented from east to west or from southeast to northwest and was oriented towards sunrise and sunset. The thickness of the walls varied, their original height can no longer be determined today. Only the enclosing walls of the Shunet El-Zebib des Chasechemui can be estimated with some certainty at an original height of approx. 12 m. Each valley district had its main entrance on the eastern corner and a slightly smaller second entrance on the northern corner. Recent studies have shown that the second entrance was actually just a so-called false door , bricked up and therefore only a ritual decorative element . The enclosure of the Peribsen (now known as the “Middle Fort”) had three entrances (north corner, east corner and south corner) and the Shunet El-Zebib finally had four (a portal in each wall; two false doors and two “real” gates). At Peribsen and Chasechemui the east gates were the main entrances, at Chasechemui the south gate was actually a usable second entrance. The Shunet El-Zebib even had a two-room entrance hall at the north main entrance.

The valley districts of the kings Aha, Djer and Djet owned so-called satellite graves of court servants, officials and priests, who in turn belonged to the family of the respective king. The first valley districts thus imitated the actual grave complexes, which were surrounded by a large number of secondary burials. King Aha even owned three smaller valley districts. The valley districts of the 2nd Dynasty were no longer surrounded by satellite graves.

Ka house and cult shrine

Each valley district has a cult building often integrated into the walls at its northeast entrance, the actual Ka House. The Ka houses of the 1st Dynasty were still of a very simple structure and contained only one or two rooms. The Ka house of Peribsen had three chambers, that of Chachesemui at least four. Another cult building, the cult shrine, was positioned free-standing near the eastern corner of the enclosure. Both the Ka House and the cult shrine were made of burnt mud bricks. And their interior structure was simple up to King Peribsen: an anteroom and two altar rooms. Peribsen's cult shrine comprised two antechambers and four altar rooms, that of Chasechemui had twice as many rooms.

Outstanding examples of valley districts

An outstanding example of valley districts is that of Queen Meritneith . She was very likely the wife of King Djer and verifiably the mother of King Den . It is already unusual that she has her own mastaba tomb at Umm el-Qaab, this privilege was actually only reserved for the king himself. Wives, family members, but also closest confidants and servants were actually traditionally ritually killed with the death of the ruler and buried in small secondary burials around the royal tomb. The fact that Meritneith had its own mastaba tomb and even its own valley district led Egyptologists and historians to the conclusion that the queen must have ruled like a pharaoh herself . Presumably she had taken over the throne when her son Den, the actual heir to the throne, was too young to do business.

The best-known and architecturally most advanced (and at the same time most complex) example of a royal valley district is the Shunet El-Zebib of King Chasechemui (presumably last ruler of the 2nd dynasty ) near Abydos. In addition to the “fort” in Hierakonpolis , it is, historically and chronologically , the last completed example of a cult district. After that, apparently no more cult areas were created, at least no completed cult areas from the time after Chasechemui could be exposed. Instead, pyramid districts with an integrated grave were created from now on. Due to the striking architectural and design similarity between Shunet El-Zebib and the pyramid complex of King Djoser (presumed founder of the 3rd dynasty ), archaeologists and Egyptologists consider the "Shuneh" to be the direct forerunner of the step pyramid complex . The stepped hill in the middle of the courtyard of Shunet El-Zebib is sometimes even viewed as a kind of "proto-pyramid".

position

A striking feature of the early Egyptian valley districts is that they have so far only been archaeologically proven with certainty in Umm el-Qaab. In view of the fact that the first kings of the 1st Dynasty were already buried in Abydos and their respective valley districts are about a mile away, the increased presence at Abydos seems only logical. However, according to the current state of knowledge, eight kings ruled during the 1st Dynasty and all eight mastaba tombs were excavated. But only four (or five) kings were able to uncover the corresponding valley districts, a valley district from the 1st dynasty is still anonymous. Either the missing valley districts were plundered and completely destroyed in antiquity , or they lie a little remote and undiscovered in the area around Umm el-Qaab.

About 260 m west of the pyramid necropolis of King Djoser in Saqqara is the enclosure of Gisr el-Mudir . Its circumference measures around 650 × 350 m and the walls and foundation are made entirely of hewn limestone . Although of rather poor quality, the Gisr el-Mudir is currently the oldest stone monument in Egyptian history. Because no trace of a grave or even a pyramid foundation has yet been discovered in the inner courtyard, a planned use of the enclosure as a valley area is considered to be fairly certain. However, the system remained clearly unfinished and the client could not be identified to this day. Only painted ceramic shards allow reliable dating to the transition period from the 2nd to the 3rd dynasty. This would mean both Chasechemui and Djoser as candidates. However, not too far from the Djoser complex, several rulers of the early 2nd dynasty were buried in underground gallery graves, including Hetepsechemui , Raneb and Ninetjer (possibly also King Sechemib ). The position of the gallery graves towards Gisr el-Mudir is very similar to that of the valley districts of Abydos and Umm el-Qaab. However, the stone construction speaks against the four aforementioned rulers: Stone monuments have only been safely occupied since King Djoser.

Cultic and religious meaning

Egyptology and archeology deal with the question of why the early dynastic rulers claimed two “cemeteries” for themselves and why the Mastabagrab and the valley district were geographically separated. It is proven that the actual tomb of the king, which was underground and hidden under the mastaba, was completely walled up after completion. So it could no longer be entered and this was certainly a punishable offense. Since mastaba graves did not have a sacrificial chapel on the outside at that time (at least such could not be proven), something had to be improvised . The valley district should offer supporters and successors of the late king the opportunity to commemorate their ancestors without disturbing the peace of the grave.

The deceased king was commemorated in the valley district and his name was honored. Sacrifices were made, prayed for, and processions were held. The Ka house contained a seated statue of the late king, in which, according to early Egyptian belief, the king's ka rested. The cult shrine in the eastern center of the valley district was similar in its function to a present-day devotional chapel. Specially trained priests , so-called worshipers , were responsible for exercising and observing the devotions and rituals . The individual processes during such devotions have not been handed down from the early days. It is also unknown how long these individual cults of the dead were cherished and practiced for the respective ruler; it was probably dependent on the fame and historical importance of the deceased. Small districts of briefly ruling kings were of course given up and abandoned more quickly than by kings with a long reign and great influence during their lifetime. In the case of so-called “lightning rulers” who only ruled for 1 to 4 years, it is not even certain whether they even had their own valley district.

Recent excavation campaigns have also revealed that the enclosures had been deliberately destroyed on at least one side. As buildings, they were not intended to last forever, in contrast to the actual royal tombs. This not only explains why certain entrance portals were bricked up immediately after the king's death and were only preserved as false doors, it also explains why ritually buried tools were left behind in some valley districts. Obviously, the valley districts themselves should be symbolically "buried" and in a sense follow their master into the hereafter. A similar phenomenon is known from the cult barques of the Early Empire.

literature

• Wolfgang Helck : Investigations on the thinite time (= Egyptological treatises. Volume 45). Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 1987, ISBN 3-447-02677-4 .
• Toby AH Wilkinson: Early Dynastic Egypt. Routledge, London 2002, ISBN 1-134-66420-6 .
• Laurel D. Bestock: The Development of Royal Funerary Cult at Abydos: Two Funerary Enclosures from the Reign of Aha. Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 2009, ISBN 978-3-447-05838-4 .
• Laurel D. Bestock: The Early Dynastic Funerary Enclosures of Abydos. In: ARCHÉO-NIL. 18th edition. Collège de France, Paris 2008, pp. 43–59.
• Kathryn A. Bard: An Introduction to the Archeology of Ancient Egypt. Wiley-Blackwell, Chichester 2015, ISBN 978-1-118-89603-7 .

Remarks

1. ↑ The Gardiner sign D29 (Ka on god standard) actually belongs in the Gardiner sign O6 (house with courtyard), which cannot be implemented here due to technical restrictions.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Ilona Regulski: Second dynasty ink inscriptions from Saqqara paralleled in the Abydos material from the Royal Museums of Art and History in Brussels. In: Stan Hendrickx, RF Friedman, Barbara Adams, KM Cialowicz: Egypt at its origins. Studies in memory of Barbara Adams. Proceedings of the international conference "Origin of the State, Predynastic and Early Dynastic Egypt", Kraków, August 28th - September 1st, 2002 (= Orientalia Lovaniensia analecta. Volume 138). Peeters Publishers, Leuven (NL) 2004, ISBN 90-429-1469-6 , pp. 953-959.
2. ↑ Wolfgang Helck: Investigations on the Thinite Time ... Wiesbaden 1987, p. 398.
3. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g} Toby AH Wilkinson: Early Dynastic Egypt. London 2002, pp. 229 and 323.
4. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g} Laurel D. Bestock: The Development of Royal Funerary Cult at Abydos ... Wiesbaden 2009, pp. 43–47.
5. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i} Kathryn A. Bard: An Introduction to the Archeology of Ancient Egypt. Chichester (UK) 2015, pp. 125-127.
6. ↑ Ludwig David Morenz: The time of the regions in the mirror of the Gebelein region: cultural-historical reconstructions. Brill, Leiden 2010, ISBN 9-0041-6766-8 , p. 150.
7. ^ Toby AH Wilkinson: Early Dynastic Egypt. London 2002, pp. 59-61.
8. ↑ Matthieu Bégonː Une probable représentation de la reine Meret-Neith en tant que régente du roi Den. In: Égypte Nilotique et Méditerranéenne (ENiM). 13th edition. Sorbonne - Faculté des Lettres, Paris 2020, pp. 211–215.
9. ↑ Silke Roth: The royal mothers of ancient Egypt. Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 2001, ISBN 3-447-04368-7 , pp. 296-300.
10. ↑ ^{a b c d} Laurel D. Bestock: The Development of Royal Funerary Cult at Abydos ... Wiesbaden 2009, pp. 60-62.
11. ↑ Laurel D. Bestock: The Development of Royal Funerary Cult at Abydos… Wiesbaden 2009, pp. 57–59.