Reisner, George Andrew: The early dynastic cemeteries of Naga-ed-Dêr (Band 3): A provincial cemetery of the pyramid age, Naga-ed-Der (Oxford: University Press by John Johnson, 1932)

THE two previous volumes on Naga-’d-Der dealt mainly with three communal cemeteries of
Dyn. I—III. The present volume deals with a fourth cemetery which formed the burial ground
of one of the same communities, that of Cem. N 1500, but during the succeeding age, Dyn. II-VI.
The chronology of the cemetery was clearly revealed by the succession of large tombs, by the relation
of the dependent small graves, and by the internal evidence found in the tombs. The cemetery yielded
a large number of tomb types, burial types, and types of objects which as a result of the established
chronology of the cemetery fall into a series of three archaeological groups: Dyn. II—III, Dyn. IV, and
Dyn. V-VI. The graves and the objects which presented these type-forms were the products of the
men of a provincial town or village of the great pyramid age of Egypt and altogether they give the outlines
of the provincial culture of this period.
When the first stone-roofed well-graves of Cem. N 500 were being made, King Khasekhemuwy, the
last king of Dyn. II, still reigned over Egypt from the old capital of the Thinite Nome just across the
river from Naga-’d-Der. When the first stairway mastabas were built, King Zoser was ruling at Memphis
or had only recently been buried in the Step Pyramid at Saqqarah. During his lifetime, his great
architect Imhotep had built the Step Pyramid and the magnificent temples within its precincts, and
thereby translated the old Egyptian architecture of crude brick and wood into fine white limestone.
With this achievement, Egyptian stone architecture was created, including most of the forms which
persisted to the end of ancient Egyptian civilization—over three thousand years. The man buried in the
shaft mastaba N 739 lived in the reign of Sneferuw, the first king of Dyn. IV, and his mastaba was
probably made for him while the great pyramid at Giza was being constructed by Sneferuw’s son, King
Cheops. The succeeding shaft tombs and the small tombs near N 739 were made in the reigns of
Radedef, Chephren, Mycerinus, and Shepseskaf, and the long pit graves of the upper end of the cemetery
belong to the time when the smaller pyramids of Dyn. V and perhaps VI were being constructed at Abu
Sir and Saqqarah. At Memphis during the period from Zoser to Pepy II, the stone architecture, the
sculpture, and in general the culture of Egypt reached its first and its greatest climax and began the
downward course towards the degeneration of the obscure period between the Old and Middle Kingdoms.
But if we had only the contemporary tombs and graves of Cem. N 500-900, we should know almost
nothing of this great development. In this provincial cemetery, stone was not used at all in masonry; no
reliefs or statues seem ever to have been present; and writing is exhibited by only a few rough gravestones
of Dyn. V-VI with rudely scratched hieroglyphics. Nevertheless the vessels, of stone, copper, or pottery,
and the beads and amulets present the same series of types as those which have been found in the
mastabas of Giza and Saqqarah. There can be no doubt, therefore, that the local community of Naga-
’d-Der, still bound by its lack of means to the use of the older crude brick in architecture and unable to
afford sculpture in any form, shared nevertheless in the general development of the common practical
things of daily life and belonged to the same cultural field as the inhabitants of the great cities of the
same age.
No objects of great value were found in Cem. N 500-900; nevertheless the number of stone vessels
is very large and they form a continuous series which extends from Dyn. II to Dyn. VI; and the collec-
tion of beads, amulets, and button-seals of Dyn. V is very full and characteristic. The pottery which is
always of the greatest archaeological value, especially for dating, is meagre as usual in Dyn. II-IV, but
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