Egyptian Dreams

[Osiris II]

I remember waaaaay back in my first visit to Egypt (I think it was in 1985) the pits were not completely excavated as they are now. It was much safer for the tourist in the Unis area. They had a smaller hole dug down to the Persian tombs, with access by a long, winding spiral stair-case. I'm slightly disabled, and walk with a cane. It was fairly easy for me to go down the stairs, but coming back up--I was sure I would die and become a skeleton for the excavators to discover! When I FINALLY reached the top, I think I kissed the ground!

Saqqara is a great area just to wander around in and explore! It's really unbelievable how very much in there. There is hope for us all--there's years and years of excavation work to be done!

[kmt_sesh]

Daughter_Of_SETI wrote:

[kmt_sesh]

Osiris II wrote:

[carla]

[Daughter_Of_SETI]

[kmt_sesh]

carla wrote:

[carla]

Ochytoe is back from Egypt and was in Saqqara and made pictures of the Mastaba ( or what is left) from Unas-Ankh

He will put them at the forum himself soon, he promisted
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[kmt_sesh]

That's great newsd, carla. I'm so excited to see the photos!
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[Ochytoe]

Sorry for the delay, my computer crashed (again ).

First I post the photo with the view of the area. The arrows and numbers show the directions of my photographs.



1. The entrance of the tomb


2. To rhe right the entrance of the tomb, on the left the tomb of Nebet


3. The first entrance to the left is the tomb of Iynefert, the second to the left is Unas Ankh. Further to the left is the complex of Djoser.


4. The grey/white square left of the centre of the picture is on the roof of the tomb of Unas Ankh. The tomb in the centre of the picture is that of Iynefert.


5. The rectangular in the centre of the picture (with the grey/white square in the lower left corner) is the tomb of Unas Ankh. The "tent" is on the roof of the tomb of Idut.


I hope you have an idea of where the tomb is located. i have also have some pictures of surrounding area that I can post if you want.

[kmt_sesh]

Thanks so much for the wonderful photos, Ochytoe! I appreciate the time you took to shoot them.

We have the mastaba of Unis-Ankh reconstructed at the Field Museum, but I've never been sure if the reconstruction is meant to be accurate or more conceptual. I can see some discrepancies right off--it looks like most of the mastaba still have its roof, for instance. The reconstruction at the Field does not have the roof, giving one the impression that it has collapsed. The entrance of the reconstruction also has Unis-Ankh's name and titles inscribed in hieroglyphs, but I can see the real tomb entrance doesn't have that. I've always suspected as much.

I do have a question about your Photo 5, although I'm not sure if you can answer it. Just off to the right side of the "tent" on the roof of Idut's tomb are a couple of hollow cavaties where the roof is missing. Do you know if these hollow areas are part of Unis-Ankh's mastaba? Do you know if there's any kind of doorway leading from the hollow areas into the roofed mastaba of Unis-Ankh?

At the Field we do have the actual antechamber and offering chapel (with the huge false door) as part of the reconstruction, so I'm wondering if these hollow areas are where the two actual rooms used to be before they were shipped overseas in the early 1900s. The antechamber is a very small room, but the offering chapel is long and fairly wide and would seem to fit within the longer hollow space, closer to the tent.

[Ochytoe]

[kmt_sesh]

Thanks for replying, Ochytoe. Your help is greatly appreciated and I wasn't really expecting you to know particulars about the tomb, but I thought I'd ask.

The Field Museum's website does have photos of the mastaba reconstruction but they're not going to help you much with understanding its layout. However, I prepared this diagram for a website I used to have:



The plan is not to scale, mind you, but it's fairly accurate. The entrance of the reconstruction does face south, as the actual tomb does in Saqqara, but most of the rest of it is probably mostly conceptual to give visitors the idea of how mastabas look, in a general sense. The parts of the plan marked "Antechamber" and "Offering Chapel" are the real parts of the tomb that were brought to Chicago around 1908. About all I know of the real Saqqara tomb is that it does not contain a serdab, although the reconstruction does--again, just to show visitors this common feature of Old Kingdom tombs.

I think you're right that the hollow, roofless space to the immediate north could be the original location of the offering chapel. This room and the antechamber were definitely once part of the tomb but, having never seen the remains of the real tomb, it's hard for me to judge size and space in the photos. I do believe that the way they're laid out in the reconstruction at the Field (see my plan above), is how they were laid out in the real tomb. Maybe it's possible that both the antechamber and offering chapel were in that hollow space to the north, if there's enough room there.

On your Photo 5 there's that short, narrow room coming off the longer hollow space and pointing straight toward the north, and I'm not sure how that relates to Unis-Ankh's tomb, if at all.

About the only other thing I can post is a couple of archival photographs. They were taken a hundred years ago and it's tough to make sense of them spatially, but they're scenes of the excavation of the prince's mastaba and, if nothing else, are pretty neat to look at.





Both of these photos are of the excavation of the offering chapel. In the first photo the large and slightly recessed stone at the right end is the top of the false door (it's actually seven feet tall). It's hard to tell in the photos but all the walls in the room are elaborately carved, as are the walls in the antechamber--I believe these were the only decorated portions of the tomb. In the second photo you can see the false door dislodged and off to the right, all wrapped up and bundled with rope. Comparing these old photos with those provided by you and carla, it's hard to believe this is the same site.
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[carla]

Nice pictures Och I can see now that the picture I placed with my friend the camel, is right behind the Mastaba of Unas-Ankh.

I can't waite to go back to Saqqara Can't we arrange a Forum meeting there ??
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[kmt_sesh]