Polish Archaeology in the Mediterranean (9.1997(1998))

BURIAL 14 AT SAQQARA (PIT I/C)
The burial was located ca 10 m to the S-W from the entrance
to the vizier’s tomb, level - 8.04. It was a skeleton burial placed in
clean, wind-blown desert sand. Orientation, from the head to the
feet: W-E (fig. 1).
Length of the preserved body: 1.4 m. The skeleton from the
pelvis downwards is missing; however, the head of the right femur4 5
is preserved. There were no traces of disturbance in the burial area.
The skeleton of an adult male stretched out on his back, with
arms alongside the body. Ribs of the thorax were found dislocated
(fig. 1). The body was wraped in linen. Its fragments adhered to
the whole skeleton and the weaves were especially well preserved
on the skull (fig. 2).
Perforation was attested in the right humerus, in its lower part
(fossa ulnaris ossis humeri).' The skull was found with a swab in
the left eye socket (figs. 1 and 2), and a wooden stick, perhaps a
midrib of a palm leave, ca. 15 cm long, inside the spine at its
junction with the skull foramen magnum). The stick was installed
inside the holes of at least four cervical vertebrae (fig. 3).6
If these details bear witness to an intense medical treatment,
they would also explain why the lower part of this body is missing.
However, perhaps there could be also another explanation of the
reassembly of the dead body.
BURIAL I 407/1 AT ABUSIR
Interesting observations have been made on a skeleton found
in the secondary cemetery around the mastaba of Ptahshepses at
Abusir.7 The body of a juvenile male, buried in a wooden coffin,

4 After Rysiewski, o.c., Table 1.0, observation 37.
5 Rysiewski, loc. cit.
6 See also Szafranski, o.c., 31.
7 E. Strouhal and L. Bares, Secondary Cemetery in the Mastaba of Ptahshepses at Abusir,
Prague 1993, pp. 28, 47, 52, Plan 6, Pis. 15:3 and 26:1.

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