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Reisner, George Andrew
The development of the Egyptian tomb down to the accession of Cheops — Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Pr. [u.a.], 1936

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https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.49512#0188
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i54 TOMB TYPES OF DYNASTY III
deep stairway type with rock-cut underground chambers, on a complex plan in the larger tombs and with
one chamber in the smaller. The one royal tomb of the latter type, the Zawiyet-el-Aryan step pyramid,
had elaborate underground chambers of a somewhat different plan. With Dyn. Ill the capital was
definitely moved to Memphis and the Memphite types began to dominate the whole country. For
convenience I give here the subdivisions of type IV:
Type IV A (i): Deep stairway tomb with two or more chambers; rock-cut at Memphis, gravel-cut
in Upper Egypt.
Type IV A (2): Deep stairway tomb with single chamber; rock-cut at Memphis, gravel-cut in
Upper Egypt.
TypelVB(i): Stairway + shaft tomb with two or more chambers; rock-cut and gravel-cut as
above.
Type IV B (2): Stairway + shaft tomb with single chamber: rock-cut and gravel-cut as above.
Type IV C: Stepped shaft tomb with single chamber; rock-cut and gravel-cut as above.
3. PRIVATE TOMBS AT MEMPHIS IN DYNASTY III, TYPE IV
a. Large Tombs of Type IV B (1)
In Dyn. Ill it was only the king who could make full use of the mastery over stone. The super-
structures even of the tombs of great men were as before exclusively of c.b. The two-niched type of
Dyn. II was improved by the addition of protected chapels, and the most important of these was the
interior cruciform chapel which amounted in effect to the withdrawal of the southern or chief niche
within the mass of the mastaba. The substructures continued as before to be excavated in the solid
rock, but passed through a development which affected two factors, the number of apartments and
the form of the approach to the apartments. Complexes of rooms occur frequently in large mastabas,
but the tendency during the latter part of the dynasty was towards the single large burial-chamber,
which became the dominant form of Dyn. IV. The old stairway approach, which originated in a con-
struction stair or construction slope, continued in use but was generally modified through the stair +
shaft to a vertical shaft type, which prevailed after the reign of Sneferuw. The earliest shaft graves
are probably the two excavated by Firth in the Zoser complex and believed to be the tombs of princesses
or perhaps queens. These great square shafts with single chambers descended vertically in the rock
and were, of course, well within the powers of the royal workmen who excavated the great open
trenches of the step pyramids at Saqqarah and Zawiyet-el-Aryan.
The distinctive type of substructure used at Memphis in large tombs of Dyn. Ill was type IV B (1),
which has a stairway ending in a shaft which descends to a complex of rock-cut underground chambers.
In the archaic cemetery at Saqqarah the tombs of this type are situated in general behind the line of tombs
of Dyn. II, and two of them are dated. In the underground chambers of Hesy-ra (QS 2405) a sealing
was found with the name of Netery-khet (Zoser). In FS 3043 a sealing of Khasekhemuwy dated that
tomb to the end of Dyn. II. As has been explained elsewhere, the reign of Khasekhemuwy was marked
by a change in the corpus of stone vessels, and by other changes which indicate that it introduces the
archaeological group characteristic of Dyn. III. In accordance with this conclusion it is clear that the
stairway + shaft type of substructure (IV B) was introduced in this reign. In addition to the two
mastabas just mentioned, there are four other large tombs of type IV B (1), QS 2309, 2407, 2429, and
FS 3030 (?). By position QS 2407 is earlier than the Hesy-ra tomb and probably contemporaneous
 
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