Giza

The mass ceramic material discovered by the Russian Archaeological Mission of the IOS RAS during 22 years of research in the eastern part of the ancient Egyptian Giza Necropolis belongs to a significant chronological interval from the reign of the Dynasty IV (26th–25th centuries B.C.) till the 19th century A.D. It is an indicator of the chronological multilayeredness of Giza, allowing to recreate a phased picture of the life of this archaeological site – from specific functional features of the ancient cemetery through periods of robberies and creation of secondary burials to the use of tombs as dwellings by Christian and Islamic population of Egypt. The full history of the formation and existence of the eastern part of Giza Necropolis is thus about 4.5 thousand years.

I examine the bottom-up role of villages in low population density Old Kingdom Egypt, and later ancient Egypt,  against the top-down, planned, and centrally controlled Heit el-Ghurab urban site at Giza, which has been interpreted as infrastructure for pulsing people from provinces, towns, and villages through royal pyramid building works at the emerging core of the Egyptian state.

How large a footprint did the Great Pyramid make on the Giza Plateau when it was completed? It is not an easy question to answer, as most of the outer edge of the pyramid’s
base is long gone. Scholars have had to hunt for evidence of the ancient baseline and then extrapolate their findings to locate the original corners. Not surprisingly, the surveys
that have been conducted to date do not precisely agree. With the question of the Great Pyramid’s footprint still incompletely
resolved, another attempt seemed in order.

This is a companion paper to and reliant on “Diskerfery and the Alignment of the Four Main Giza Pyramids” (Douglas, 2019 [1]). Following the geometric alignments shown in that paper, we now present the astronomical design plan with 23 stars. There is a perfect alignment with three stars, very close alignment with others, and close alignment with other prominent stars in the area. We propose that this was done to provide a date for the construction of Giza. The alignment occurs at circa 55,550BCE.

This is a companion paper to and reliant on "Diskerfery and the Alignment of the Four Main Giza Pyramids" (Douglas, 2019 [1]). Following the geometric alignments shown in that paper, we now present the astronomical design plan with 23 stars. There is a perfect alignment with two stars, very close alignment with others, and close alignment with other prominent stars in the area. We propose that this was done to provide a date for the construction of Giza. The alignment occurs at circa 55,500BCE.

This study deals with the remains of metal objects from the settlement of workers living and labouring at the Egyptian site of Giza in the reigns of Dynasty 4 Kings Khufu and Khafra (c. 2500–2450 BCE). It provides the first detailed set of data on copper tools of the craftspersons working with wood, limestone, textile, etc., focusing on the major and trace element analyses, lead isotopes and microstructural description. Arsenical copper is again confirmed as a material practically used in the Old Kingdom, with arsenopyrite from Eastern Desert proposed as a source of arsenic. The CuAgAs needle 20966 has similar lead isotopes as two pieces of Predynastic Egyptian metalwork and litharge from late Uruk site Habuba Kabira (Syria), being probably a recycled specimen of earlier material connected to silver production. With 15 objects analysed in detail, it is for now the largest Old Kingdom corpus of metal objects from the settlement context.

I present a synopsis of a reconstruction of water transport infrastructure below the Giza Pyramids Plateau in the 4th Dynasty (c. 2500 MB) based on evidence from contours in the floodplain as of 1977, core drillings and trenches for the late 1980s AMBRIC project to install a waste water system, and subsequent excavations to make foundations for modern buildings. 4th Dynasty structures exposed by these interventions provide benchmarks for the level of the ancient floodplain (c. 12.00-12.5 m asl) and boundaries for waterways and basins. This study reverses the conclusion reached in the article, "Capital Zone Walkabout, Spot Heights on the Third Millennium Landscape," to the effect that waterways and basins filled with Nile water could not have reached the pyramid valley temples nor the base of the plateau. In 2009 the AERA team found the northern end of an artificial basin directly east of the Khentkawes Town and northeast of the Menkaure Valley Temple, with its bottom at least as low as the predictions for the level of the 4th Dynasty flood plain. In a consilience of discovery, German colleagues found an artificial basin east of the so-called Valley Temple of the Bent Pyramid at south Dahshur, about 1 km up the wadi from the floodplain. The evidence for the water transport infrastructure at Giza as here reconstructed will appear in more detail in a forthcoming article, "Lake Khufu, On the Waterfront at Giza: Modeling Water Transport Infrastructure at 4th Dynasty Giza.” In, Profane Landscapes, Sacred Spaces, M. Bárta and J. Janák, eds.,  (Sheffield: Equinox). Modeling in three dimensions with actual values above sea level allows us to visualize floodplain infrastructure during low Nile (c. 7 m all) and during the annual flood plenitude (13.5-14 m asl).

In this paper, we identify those places on the Giza plateau where the Egyptians might have observed the solstices.  Our goal was to test the hypothesis that Giza might have functioned not only as a funerary complex to serve the dead king, but also to serve the living Egyptians as a platform for observing the solstices.

In this article, we derive new estimates for the size and orientation of the Great Pyramid using data compiled by Mark Lehner and David Goodman in 1984. We can fix the locations of the casing corners to within ten centimeters. The Lehner/Goodman estimates for the location of the casing’s corners proved to be remarkably close to Flinders Petrie’s estimates.

In this article I relate the Heit el-Ghurab (HeG, Wall of the Crow) 4th Dynasty settlement site to the idea that long-term pyramid towns did not originate in temporary workers settlements. Components of the HeG settlement fit attributes of both types of settlement, which Egyptologists infer from texts and archaeological information from other sites. During its time, people may have called the HeG the Southern Tjeniu (bank settlement) of the Pyramid, Great is Khafre (§njw rcj Wr ¢a.f Ra). Under this name, the HeG comprised a kind of proto-pyramid city. Its counterpart, the Northern Grg.t (settlement), may have been associated with the Khufu Pyramid. But overall, the HeG settlement fits neither worker’s town nor pyramid town. I review the hypothesis that the HeG belonged to a major Nile port. As such, it serves as a footprint of a formal expeditionary force composed of apr-gangs and crews for either building or seafaring, or both. I hypothesize a possible match between gangs, phyles, and divisions and the Gallery Complex, the central component of the HeG. Certain officials may have administered functions of the HeG during its heyday in the mid to late 4th Dynasty, as reflected in titles they inscribed in their tomb chapels during the early to mid 5th Dynasty. One such official was Nesut- nefer, who held the title Administrator (aD-mr) of the Southern Tjeniu of Khafre. By the time these officials made their chapels, people had abandoned the HeG when the royal house moved to Saqqara and Abusir for building the king’s memorial complex. Those who stayed at Giza settled closer to the riverbank, or near the valley temples in pyramid towns named after the kings and their pyramids.

The paper discusses a recently discovered painting from the rock cut tomb of Perseneb at Giza (GE
20-22). Described by Lepsius (LG 78) and Mariette, the tomb has been sporadically referred to in
Egyptological publications mainly because of an unusual number of rock cut statues prepared for the
owner. A routine architectural and epigraphic survey of the tomb brought to light a new important feature
of its decoration – fragments of a polychrome painting over a thin layer of white plaster covered with a
thick layer of the 19th century soot. The remaining colors made it possible to reconstruct the original
composition of the painting characterized by a rare combination of standard scenes (a marsh scene,
agricultural scenes, a naval scene, figures of the owner and his wife). A careful study of the remaining
iconographic features made it possible to date the painting to the second half of the Fifth Dynasty. The
tomb of Perseneb presents a rare example of a painted rock cut chapel for almost all other paintings on
plaster known from Giza chapels, except for those in the tomb of Mersyankh III, come from contemporary
mastabas.

The book is the first complete publication of a relatively small but interesting collection of Old Kingdom monuments in the State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg. Twenty-two pieces are reproduced as black-and-white photographs and line drawings. Among them are two statues, fourteen reliefs and relief fragments, five offering stones and a fragment of an ointment tablet; several objects in museums of Cairo, Copenhagen, and Cambridge belonging to the same people are published as well. Most of these monuments were never published or are known only through books and periodicals in Russian that usually are not available in Egyptological libraries. Although the Hermitage pieces were acquired at antiquities dealers without any documentation, their modern history is traced and in a half of cases either their provenance is reconstructed or related monuments are found. A limited number of monuments allowed the author to discuss them to a much greater extent than it is common in museum publications and, thus, the book in spite of its structure of a catalogue virtually is a detailed study of various problems of Old Kingdom history and ideology.

The builders of the Great Pyramid of Khufu aligned the huge monument to true north to within six minutes of arc, or one tenth of a degree.  How they managed to do that has long been debated.    In this article we will examine four prominent theories, test one, and compare and contrast the others.

The Old Kingdom viziers bore the composite title tAyty TAty (n) zAb. Further hieroglyphic signs, such as the phallus-sign and the addition mAa, were appended in some cases to this title. The form of the vizier’s title with the phallus-sign occurred frequently in a limited period of time. For the understanding of the usage of the phallus-sign in the vizier’s title, contextualization is crucial. Analysis and comparison of the title sequences of both, the viziers with the phallus-sign and those without, brought proof of clear distinction in the structure of titles between these two groups and indicated that the occurrence of the phallus-sign within the highest administrative title coincides with the social change regarding the state administration and royal family.

Remote sensing can be a helpful
adjunct with its indirect look below the
surface based on geophysics. In the fall of fall
2003 we put some remote sensing techniques to
the test in a pilot season of the Giza geophysical
survey, sponsored by the National
Geographical Society.

The construction eras of all eleven Pyramids on the Giza Plateau are precisely calculable from each Pyramid’s location relative to the position of the center to the ‘Eye of Re’, to what is now termed as the latitude of the Tropic of Cancer. Combining the GPS coordinates of the Giza Pyramids’ latitudinal extents with the established historical locations for the oscillating line of the Tropic provides results accurate to the day for the beginning and end of construction on the Khufu and Khafre structures and to the month for the Menkaure.

The primary aim of this case study is to offer a discussion of select archaeological contexts from the region of the Memphite necropolis that contained copper tools or their models. The selection is based on several main factors – primarily, the presence of both copper implements and chronologically relevant ceramic vessels from the same contexts. Thus, the primary focus is on the tombs of higher officials and members of the elite from Giza, Saqqara, Abusir and Meidum, presenting preliminary outline of development of burial customs concerning the pottery for the whole period of the Old Kingdom. The analysis shows that the study of ancient Egyptian pottery and its chronological development is a complex matter that cannot be easily summarized and simplified into a clear formula. There was no production of standardized ceramics during the Old Kingdom and even such close sites as Saqqara and Abusir may exhibit different types in the same period of time, attesting to the fact that unlike the copper tools and their models, most of the pottery was produced at a very local level and besides the technological experience of the given pottery shop, personal preferences of specific potters may have played a role in the creation of less common vessels.

In this paper, we identify those places on the Giza plateau where the Egyptians might have observed the solstices.  Our goal was to test the hypothesis that Giza might have functioned not only as a funerary complex to serve the dead king, but also to serve the living Egyptians as a platform for observing the solstices.

This paper summarizes the work and achievements of the Giza Archives Project at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, over ten years (2000–2011), supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Examples illustrate the value of the Harvard University–Boston Museum of Fine Arts Expedition’s massive archaeological archive for reconstructing aspects of Old Kingdom history. Some of the pitfalls for researchers arising from the Expedition records created by George Reisner and his staff are also highlighted. Current progress, the Giza Project at Harvard, includes ongoing archaeological efforts by an international Giza consortium, as well as new modes of presenting Giza in 3D as a research and teaching tool.

There is a band of about 40 miles wide spanning around the globe and a few ancient archeological sites such as Giza Pyramids, Machupicchu, ancient Sumerian city Ur and others are aligned on that band. Not many hypothesis were proposed by academic/research community to explain such alignment. One possible hypothesis is proposed in this article.

(WORKING PAPER). The announcement of the 'discovery' of a new 30m long (minimum) void space in the Great Pyramid of Giza in western Cairo, Egypt, made global headlines November 2017. Reports referenced the Nature article (doi:10.1038/nature24647) which described muon detection experiments carried out by the ScanPyramids team through 2017 to produce a data set which was presented. The article expressed little doubt regarding the conclusions that should be drawn from the results and the size and location of the proposed new space which they labelled the 'big void'.

Due the magnitude of the central claim made, the lack of comparanda for such a void in a similar location in any other Egyptian pyramid, and a significant number of recent cases in which archaeological data sets have been misinterpreted, the scans and the data set were reviewed to see if any other plausible interpretations could be identified. 2 As can be seen from the Nature report, the data collection was carried out with technical professionalism, however, it may be the case that there are additional plausible interpretations of the data set produced, and the initial interpretation may not have been the correct one. This article reports a different interpretation of the data set and proposes that the 'big void' may in fact be the result of two zones containing many small construction voids which flank the Grand Gallery (Fig. 1). Geometric calculations illustrated below (Figs. 2 and 3) indicate that the new features on the scans which were interpreted as produced by a single 'big' void viewed from two directions, located 40m out towards the north face of the structure, could in fact have been produced by two smaller void zones closer to the center of the pyramid, one on either side of the Grand Gallery structure. Due to the offsets of the two Nagoya nuclear emulsion detection plates from the center line of the Grand Gallery, which were of a similar magnitude (NE2 – 4 m west, and NE1-5.5 m east of the N-S center line), and the inward slope of the sides of the Grand Gallery structure, only one such void zone would be clearly visible on each Nagoya scan. On one side the small voids would be aligned with the detector and would form a zone that was almost a continuous void directed at the plate. On the other hand, the opposing void zone signals would not align with the detector and so the effect of the signals would not be cumulative. In addition, most of them would be hidden behind the signal of the main gallery structure. The attached diagram illustrates how the geometry of the pyramid's internal structure could have contrived to produce the results returned.

There have been many books and articles written with the purpose of trying to express an underlying master plan for the major pyramids of the Giza plateau. In this paper, a simple yet accurate geometrical layout, which also includes the Sphinx monument, is demonstrated with the aid of a well-known and widely used computer program. Furthermore, the positions of stars may be added to the same program, enabling the correlation of star positions to pyramids during the time frame of their construction to be determined with accuracy and simplicity.

This article describes a digital archaeological experiment to test a new hypothesis that explains the purpose and unusual form of the so-called Trial Passages at Giza. The enigmatic connected passages are carved into the bedrock on the east side of the Great Pyramid of Khufu and have been interpreted in various ways over the decades since they were first cleared. Based on a new analysis of their design, it is proposed here that they could serve very well as a place from which to observe the northern stars. Prolonged and accurate measurement of the stars of the circumpolar region of the northern sky could have been made from inside the main inclined passage, which rises from south to north. Accurate location of the Northern Celestial Pole (NCP) during these observations could have facilitated the accurate cardinal alignment of sides of the Great Pyramid. Other details of the architecture support this interpretation, and are set out here for consideration.