Polish Archaeology in the Mediterranean (12.2000(2001))

WEST SAQQARA

EGYPT

EASTERN SECTOR

The explorations were extended in the
direction of the pyramid with the purpose
of studying the relation between the Old
Kingdom (lower stratum) and Ptolemaic
Period (upper stratum) cemeteries and the
western enclosure wall of the pyramid.
Sector I of the previous campaign2) was
expanded 15 m eastwards. Longitudinally,
it is also 15 m long, being limited on the
south by the wall of a small storeroom,
which cannot be undermined, if its
integrity is to be maintained.
Below the layer of pure sand constituting
the thick upper stratum in the area, at c. 50-

70 cm, that is, close to the present surface,
there was an irregular sequence of white
limestone blocks (Fig. 1). Varied in size and
form, anepigraphic, they seem to be blocks
reused from the enclosure wall of the step
pyramid. Their location traces a longitudinal
line suggestive of a destroyed wall that
would have been parallel to the wall
discovered in 1998 just behind the mastaba
of Meref-nebef,2 3) erected, like it, on a layer of
sand without any foundations. A similar
assemblage of limestone blocks, lying on
a mudbrick platform in the south of sector I,
was discovered in 1999- All of them may


Fig. 2. Excavations in sector I. Fragment of the pyramid enclosure (in situ)
(Photo J. Sliwa)

2) K. Mysliwiec, PAM XI, Reports 1999 (2000), 91, fig. 2.
3) Id., Polish-Egyptian Archaeological Activities in West Saqqara, Acts of the 8th International Congress of Egyptologists
(Cairo 2000), note 25 (in print).

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