DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.49516#0111
CHARACTERISTICS AND DATE OF THE EASTERN CEMETERY
67
(i) First of all there is the well-known communal vault in which bodies were placed from time
to time until the vault was stacked to the roof. Such is one of the common Mohammedan
forms of burial for poor people. Exactly similar vaults full of carefully wrapped bodies
have also been found of the Coptic Period. Farther back, the custom was even more
common, because the bodies had been mummified and the opening of the vault was not
so disagreeable as it is under other methods of preparing the body for burial. In the
Nubian Archaeological Survey, it was unusual to find a rock-cut tomb or a mud-brick
vault of the Ptolemaic-Roman Period with only one mummy. Earlier still, in the New
Kingdom, I have seen at least one large communal grave of this sort in every cemetery
I have excavated. In these the coffins were stacked up in the room or vault, the place
having been opened for each burial, and reclosed. The characteristic feature of the
communal grave is the poverty of each burial.
(ii) Then there is the family tomb of the Middle and Old Kingdoms. In the Middle Kingdom,
this sort of tomb consists of a common offering-room or chapel from which shafts or
passages lead to small chambers, each containing a single burial. In the Old Kingdom,
these family tombs are in a mastaba-form with a separate pit for each burial.
(iii) A third kind is that in which several bodies are buried in a single shaft, but with each body
in a separate chamber. These are known to me in the Old Kingdom mastabas at Giza,
the Middle Kingdom tombs of Naga-’d-Der, and in New Kingdom shafts at several
sites in both Egypt and Nubia.
(iv) A quite different type of multiple burial from any of the above is that which occurs in better
class graves of the Middle Kingdom in which we find two or three coffins of different
members of the same family in the same burial chamber. In these cases the extra bodies
are usually wrapped as the chief body and were buried dead.
(v) Merely for the sake of completion, I mention the executioner’s trenches which I found at
Shellal.1
Now of these types of burial which I have just mentioned, (i)-(iii) are well known and
easily explicable as separate burials made at different times, while (v) is sui generis; (iv) is
also well known and has hitherto been supposed to be a family communal burial in which
the coffins were inserted at different times. The Kerma burials are entirely different. The
extra bodies are not stacked on top of each other as in the communal burials; they are not
wrapped as mummies; they are not separated by wooden walls as in the greater part of the
Egyptian multiple burials, a separation which makes the re-use of the grave possible; and
they are not in separate chambers. With some few exceptions, they all lie on the floor
touching one another, in many cases in such a way that it is impossible to escape the con-
clusion that they were buried at the same time as was the chief body.
(c) The sacrificial character of the multiple burials at Kerma-satt:
In the result, then, we have a type of burial in which a chief body clothed in ordinary
garments, accompanied by personal adornments and weapons, was laid on a bed on the
south side of the grave and lies always in the same fixed attitude, while around him other
human beings and also rams lie on the ground. 1 recall only two facts that present a
parallel — the multiple burials of the Predynastic Period in Egypt (Naga-’d-Der) and
those of the Early Dynastic Period in Nubia. But for the whole remaining period of Egyp-
tian history, nothing similar has been found. In the two cases just mentioned I had never
1 Cf. Nub. Arch. Sur. Report, 1907-8, Pl. 9b, c, p. 73.
67
(i) First of all there is the well-known communal vault in which bodies were placed from time
to time until the vault was stacked to the roof. Such is one of the common Mohammedan
forms of burial for poor people. Exactly similar vaults full of carefully wrapped bodies
have also been found of the Coptic Period. Farther back, the custom was even more
common, because the bodies had been mummified and the opening of the vault was not
so disagreeable as it is under other methods of preparing the body for burial. In the
Nubian Archaeological Survey, it was unusual to find a rock-cut tomb or a mud-brick
vault of the Ptolemaic-Roman Period with only one mummy. Earlier still, in the New
Kingdom, I have seen at least one large communal grave of this sort in every cemetery
I have excavated. In these the coffins were stacked up in the room or vault, the place
having been opened for each burial, and reclosed. The characteristic feature of the
communal grave is the poverty of each burial.
(ii) Then there is the family tomb of the Middle and Old Kingdoms. In the Middle Kingdom,
this sort of tomb consists of a common offering-room or chapel from which shafts or
passages lead to small chambers, each containing a single burial. In the Old Kingdom,
these family tombs are in a mastaba-form with a separate pit for each burial.
(iii) A third kind is that in which several bodies are buried in a single shaft, but with each body
in a separate chamber. These are known to me in the Old Kingdom mastabas at Giza,
the Middle Kingdom tombs of Naga-’d-Der, and in New Kingdom shafts at several
sites in both Egypt and Nubia.
(iv) A quite different type of multiple burial from any of the above is that which occurs in better
class graves of the Middle Kingdom in which we find two or three coffins of different
members of the same family in the same burial chamber. In these cases the extra bodies
are usually wrapped as the chief body and were buried dead.
(v) Merely for the sake of completion, I mention the executioner’s trenches which I found at
Shellal.1
Now of these types of burial which I have just mentioned, (i)-(iii) are well known and
easily explicable as separate burials made at different times, while (v) is sui generis; (iv) is
also well known and has hitherto been supposed to be a family communal burial in which
the coffins were inserted at different times. The Kerma burials are entirely different. The
extra bodies are not stacked on top of each other as in the communal burials; they are not
wrapped as mummies; they are not separated by wooden walls as in the greater part of the
Egyptian multiple burials, a separation which makes the re-use of the grave possible; and
they are not in separate chambers. With some few exceptions, they all lie on the floor
touching one another, in many cases in such a way that it is impossible to escape the con-
clusion that they were buried at the same time as was the chief body.
(c) The sacrificial character of the multiple burials at Kerma-satt:
In the result, then, we have a type of burial in which a chief body clothed in ordinary
garments, accompanied by personal adornments and weapons, was laid on a bed on the
south side of the grave and lies always in the same fixed attitude, while around him other
human beings and also rams lie on the ground. 1 recall only two facts that present a
parallel — the multiple burials of the Predynastic Period in Egypt (Naga-’d-Der) and
those of the Early Dynastic Period in Nubia. But for the whole remaining period of Egyp-
tian history, nothing similar has been found. In the two cases just mentioned I had never
1 Cf. Nub. Arch. Sur. Report, 1907-8, Pl. 9b, c, p. 73.