Tarchan

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Tarchan (Egypt)
Helwan
Helwan
Tarchan
Tarchan
Edfu
Edfu
Qustul
Qustul
Map of Egypt

Tarchan (English Tarkhan ) is the modern name of a large burial ground in Egypt . The cemetery is about 50 km south of Cairo near the towns of Kafr Ammar and Kafr Turki . In the excavation publications, the tombs of the ancient Egyptian 1st dynasty are referred to as Tarchan , under Kafr Ammar, all later, although the burials of all epochs are on the same burial ground.

Discovery and dating

Tarchan was excavated by Flinders Petrie from 1911 to 1912 , who found over 2000 graves. A very large number of them date to around 3000 BC. Chr. There are burials of the Old Kingdom , the first Meanwhile , the third Meanwhile , the late period and the Greco-Roman period . The Middle and New Reich , on the other hand, were only represented with individual graves.

Details

Seal imprint with the name of Narmer , from Tarchan, grave 414

In Tarchan there were three large mastabas with a palace facade, which date to the 1st dynasty and numerous rather simple burials from the time shortly before the 1st dynasty. It can be assumed that there was once a large city nearby, which flourished especially at the beginning of Egyptian history, but lost its importance during the 1st Dynasty.

Most of the tombs were simple pits in the earth. Most of the dead were buried as stool funerals. There were also some vessels, jewelry for women, weapons and tools for men. The conservation conditions for organic materials are relatively good on site and so there were many wooden coffins, some of which were quite simple, but also furniture or vessels made of wood. In one of the large mastaba tombs, a burial hideaway was discovered that mainly contained linen. This is where perhaps the oldest garment in Egypt comes from.

Some undecorated mastabas come from the Old Kingdom. A temple was built here in the late period, but it is undecorated and therefore cannot be assigned to any god. A mummy portrait comes from Roman times .

Individual graves

Grave 414

Vessel named Narmer from grave 414

Grave 414 dates from the transition to the 1st Dynasty. The burial chamber is about 1.67 × 3.55 × 1.8 m in size and was clad with adobe bricks. It is the largest grave in Tarchan from the beginning of the 1st Dynasty and should have belonged to an important person. There were no remains of a superstructure. The burial chamber was robbed, but there was still a large vessel inscribed with an incised inscription and numerous seal impressions. The name of King Narmer appears on them , so that it can be assumed that the owner of the grave died under this ruler. A seal shows a palace facade crowned with a cattle head. Crocodiles are shown next to this burrow. Günter Dreyer saw in it the seal of a king crocodile . This interpretation is not recognized by all Egyptologists and it is believed that this is the seal of the Sobe temple .

Mastaba 1060

This is the largest and oldest mastaba in Tarchan, which may have been built under King Wadji . The building is 34 × 15.6 m in size and shows about 10 niches on the long sides, this number being an estimate because the mastaba is not well preserved at the ends. Inside there are 14 rooms in which grave goods may have been housed. In the middle is the underground burial chamber, on the narrow sides there are two side chambers that were without a door, but had symbolic doors in the burial chamber. The niches of the palace facade were once painted red, only one niche was unpainted, here there was a wooden floor. Perhaps there was once a stele here, in any case it is definitely a sacrificial cult site. There was a wall around the mastaba. The name of the original owner is unknown.

Importance in Egyptology

Tarchan is still the largest published cemetery from the time of the unification of the empire.

literature

  • WM Flinders Petrie , GA Wainwright, AH Gardiner : Tarkhan I and Memphis V. London 1913.
  • WM Flinders Petrie: Tarkhan II. London 1914.
  • WM Flinders Petrie: Heliopolis, Kafr Ammar and Shurafa. London 1915 online .
  • CJ Ellis: Kafr Tarkhan (Kafr Ammar). In: Kathryn A. Bard (Ed.): Encyclopedia of the Archeology of Ancient Egypt. Routledge, London 1999, ISBN 0-415-18589-0 , pp. 389-90.
  • Wolfram Grajetzki : The architecture and the signification of the Tarkhan mastabas. In: Archeo-Nil No. 18, Paris 2008, pp. 103-112.

Web links

Commons : Tarchan  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Heliopolis, Kafr Ammar and Shurafa
  2. Flinders Petrie, Wainwright, Gardiner, Litt .: Tarkhan I. p. 9.
  3. ^ Günter Dreyer: Horus crocodile, a counter-king of the dynasty 0. In: Renee Friedman, Barbara Adams: The Followers of Horus. Studies dedicated to Michael Allen Hoffman, 1949–1990. Oxford 1992, pp. 259-263.
  4. ^ Toby Wilkinson: Early Dynastic Egypt. Routledge, London 1999, pp. 295-96, ISBN 0-415-18633-1
  5. Flinders Petrie, Wainwright, Gardiner: Tarkhan I and Memphis v. 13–20, Plates XV – XX, XXX.

Coordinates: 29 ° 30 ′ 0 ″  N , 31 ° 13 ′ 30 ″  E