Polish Archaeology in the Mediterranean (17.2005(2007))

SAQQARA

EGYPT

SLOPING PASSAGE

The explorations ol the sloping passage,
completed this season, yielded huge quanti-
ties of pottery, mostly beer jars, mixed with
limestone chips. Two archaeological contexts
were identified in this passage running
under the mastabas of the late Old King-
dom. The northern part of the passage and
the lower part of the fill in the southern part
contained pottery of the late 6th Dynasty
originating from phase III of the func-
tioning of the necropolis, while the upper
part in the southern end of the passage was
filled with beer jars typical of phase I.10
Among the finds from phase I, which
comprised mainly beer jars of forms 1 and 2,
there was a rim that fitted a jar of Levantine
Combed Ware (SQ 1035) found in the
burial chamber of Shaft 51 already in 2001,
located a few meters east of the sloping
passage.11 Hence, it may be assumed that
the pottery, possibly at least a part of the
ceramics found in a context dated to phase I
originating from the passage, may have
originally come from this burial shaft.12
As for the phase III fill, it consists
mainly of beer jars of forms 7 and 8. Some
of them, such as SQ 1624, were filled with
ashes from offerings burnt during the
funeral. SQ 1624 is a beer jar of form 7 with
wide, distinct shoulders, spindle-shaped
body and pointed bottom {77/g. 31- Its
shoulders bear traces of an outer sealing.
The fill yielded upper parts of outer

sealings: conical (SQ 1530) and conical with
rounded knob at the top, as well as very
numerous pieces of no longer determinable
shape. Other beer jars were found to contain
mud, which is supposed to imitate the beer
in these jars, as well as numerous loose
fragments of such false fillings well fitted to
the inside of actual vessels.
A few other jars from the phase III
deposit merit attention. One is a medium
large, slender jar with spindle body and flat
base (SQ 1650, form 15), wheel-made of
Mixed clay P.60. Another is a large, tall jar,
also of Mixed clay P.60 (SQ 1691, form 19,
cf. Fig. 3); the upper part was wheel-turned,
while the lower part handmade — the
bottom by pinching, the walls by coiling.
The neck and rim are missing, but parallels
from the necropolis13 leave little doubt that
the mouth was narrow (Dia. c. 9 cm) and
the rim modelled on the outside, sharp-
angled and triangular in section. Finally, the
third jar (SQ 1659, form 22, cf. Fig. 3) is
wheel-turned, made of Mixed clay P.60. It is
a medium-sized tall jar with rounded rim,
medium-high neck, ovoid body and
rounded bottom.
These jars from the sloping passage
correspond to a general characteristic of
phase III pottery, one feature being that an
increasingly larger number of vessels,
compared to earlier phases, was made of
Mixed clay P.60. The shape repertoire of

10 T.I. Rzeuska, "Saqqara. The pottery, 2004", PAM XVI. Reports 2004 (2005), 174-175. On the phases of the functioning of
the necropolis to the west of Netjerykhet complex in Saqqara, see the contribution by K.O. Kuraszkiewicz in this volume.
11 Originally, this jar was identified as an import, cf. T.I. Rzeuska, "West Saqqara. The pottery, 2001", PAM XIII, op. cit.,
153-155, Fig. 2. Petrographic analyses later revealed that it was made of Nile silt, cf. id., "Some remarks on third
millennium Levantine pottery found in Saqqara", in: Acts ol the Third Central European Conference of Young
Egyptologists, Egypt 2004: Perspectives of Research, Warsaw 12-14 May 2004, in press.
12 The pottery from the offering deposit in Shaft 51 seems to have been thrown outside by robbers. It slipped west because
of the sloping lie of the land in this area and fell into the sloping passage. The ceramics found in 2001 in Shaft 51
confirm this hypothesis; they consisted mainly of Phase I beer jars of type 1; cf. Rzeuska, PAM XIII, op. cit., 153-155.
13 Rzeuska, Saqqara II, op. cit., Fig. 33, nos. 131-138.

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