DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.55202#0037
THE RULERS OF ALL EGYPT IN THE ELEVENTH DYNASTY I 7
over from the city and in their findings recorded that “the pyramid
of King Son of Ref In-[yotef] the Elder, L.P.H., which is north of the
house of Amun-hotpe of the Court, L.P.H., and whose pyramid has
been removed from it, but its stela is still fixed in front of it and the
figure of the king stands on this stela with his dog named Behek
between his feet. Examined this day: it was found intact.”18
Three thousand years later Mariette found the lower part of this
stela in i860; but he left it where it lay, and the natives broke it up
on the spot. Then in 1882 Maspero ran across it again, and finally
Daressy gathered up what he could find, and the pieces are now in
the Cairo Museum. It is interesting to know today that there were
five hounds shown, each with a Libyan name and an Egyptian in-
terpretation beside three of them. We may render them “the Ga-
zelle,” “the Black,” and “the Cook-pot (?).”
Unluckily, we know very little about the actual arrangement of
the royal tomb. We do know that it was the second great saff,
counting Seher-towi’s to its north as the first, and that it stood with
befitting modesty just a little back of the burial place of the first of
the dynasty (Pl. 33). Chip excavated from it has been piled up
around it to make it look deeper than it is; and, while it may be a
little narrower than the tomb of his father, it has a length back into
the desert somewhere between 180 and 200 meters.
However, there appears today to be no trace of a pyramid above
its end as there was at that of Seher-towi, and it is possible that we
should take literally the tradition that Mariette found the stela at
some point in the saff floor. From his all too brief notes we learn that
it came from a brick pyramid about 15 meters square, in the center
of which there was a chamber with the stela let into its back wall
and visible from the door. Where the burial chamber may have been
Mariette did not know; but, to judge from the plan of a contempo-
rary tomb at Abydos, it should have been under the pyramid
proper.19 Norman de Garis Davies was told in 1917 by a native
that, when the canal was dug some quarter of a century before, the
pyramid was destroyed, from which one would infer that it had been
well toward the front of the saff and that the plan of the monument
differed from that of Seher-towi with its pyramid base over the back
of the saff and even differed from the first plan of the tomb of Neb-
18 Papyrus Abbott, Col. II, 1. 8; Breasted, AR, IV, par. 512. Peet, The Great Tomb Rob-
beries, p. 38.
19 Peet, Cemeteries of Abydos, II, p. 35.
over from the city and in their findings recorded that “the pyramid
of King Son of Ref In-[yotef] the Elder, L.P.H., which is north of the
house of Amun-hotpe of the Court, L.P.H., and whose pyramid has
been removed from it, but its stela is still fixed in front of it and the
figure of the king stands on this stela with his dog named Behek
between his feet. Examined this day: it was found intact.”18
Three thousand years later Mariette found the lower part of this
stela in i860; but he left it where it lay, and the natives broke it up
on the spot. Then in 1882 Maspero ran across it again, and finally
Daressy gathered up what he could find, and the pieces are now in
the Cairo Museum. It is interesting to know today that there were
five hounds shown, each with a Libyan name and an Egyptian in-
terpretation beside three of them. We may render them “the Ga-
zelle,” “the Black,” and “the Cook-pot (?).”
Unluckily, we know very little about the actual arrangement of
the royal tomb. We do know that it was the second great saff,
counting Seher-towi’s to its north as the first, and that it stood with
befitting modesty just a little back of the burial place of the first of
the dynasty (Pl. 33). Chip excavated from it has been piled up
around it to make it look deeper than it is; and, while it may be a
little narrower than the tomb of his father, it has a length back into
the desert somewhere between 180 and 200 meters.
However, there appears today to be no trace of a pyramid above
its end as there was at that of Seher-towi, and it is possible that we
should take literally the tradition that Mariette found the stela at
some point in the saff floor. From his all too brief notes we learn that
it came from a brick pyramid about 15 meters square, in the center
of which there was a chamber with the stela let into its back wall
and visible from the door. Where the burial chamber may have been
Mariette did not know; but, to judge from the plan of a contempo-
rary tomb at Abydos, it should have been under the pyramid
proper.19 Norman de Garis Davies was told in 1917 by a native
that, when the canal was dug some quarter of a century before, the
pyramid was destroyed, from which one would infer that it had been
well toward the front of the saff and that the plan of the monument
differed from that of Seher-towi with its pyramid base over the back
of the saff and even differed from the first plan of the tomb of Neb-
18 Papyrus Abbott, Col. II, 1. 8; Breasted, AR, IV, par. 512. Peet, The Great Tomb Rob-
beries, p. 38.
19 Peet, Cemeteries of Abydos, II, p. 35.