The Development of Funerary Architecture

The Development of Funerary Architecture

The cemeteries of the Old Kingdom (2700—2200 BC) in Giza, Abusir. Saqqara, and Dahshur are but parts of a single, great royal cemetery at Memphis where high officials of the Old Kingdom were interred next to their kings. They are home-to--tomb structures characteristic of the Old Kingdom. In the provinces tombs of a similar size only appear toward the end of the Old Kingdom, from around 2200 BC. While royal tombs developed into the pyramid, the tomb architecture of officialdom retained the form of the mastaba. But here, too, stone building techniques began to take on new dimensions at the beginning of the Fourth Dynasty (2640 BC); the first nonroyal tombs in stone replaced funerary complexes constructed from mudbrick. In spite of the new construction techniques, however, the basic conception of the tomb changed little from the old mudbrick methods. The tomb continued to have two main areas, one above ground and the other below The subterranean area was at first the more important one. It contained the burial chamber with an intricately fashioned sarcophagus of stone for the body of the deceased. In some tombs the exterior of these sarcophagi were formed like a palace (niche) facade. It seems likely that the person buried in it was to be identified as the inhabitant of a palace and this type of adornment indicated his personal rank.

At first, the sarcophagus below ground was surrounded by stored provisions. These were not intended for direct consumption by the dead but were to serve as reserves for eternity. Daily needs were met by the mortuary cult whose priests carried out their rites in the upper part of the tomb. Offerings were placed at a sacrificial site and taken up by the soul of the deceased. This cult site was marked by a “false door, which from the time of Cheops was protected by a tomb chapel that fronted the main structure. The walls of this tomb chapel were adorned with illustrations and texts whose primary representation was the deceased. He or she was shown either engaging in certain activities or as the focus of the actions of others. The individual nature of the scenes is evident from inscriptions containing the names and titles of the tomb owner.

Tomb decoration depicted themes suited to the deceased’s status. At the center of these were images of daily life. Because life in the hereafter was thought of in much the same way as mortal life, these images are uniquely able to depict the type of afterlife that the deceased imagined awaited him.

Further development of the range of images led to an increase in those depictions that applied themes from this life to the hereafter. The greater range of pictorial themes meant a greater need for rooms and wall space. This development temporarily came to an end with the tomb of the vizier Mereruka in Saqqara at the onset of the Sixth Dynasty around 2330 BC. The superstructure of his tomb consisted of a funerary palace of thirty-two decorated rooms, twenty-one of which, were intended for Mereruka, six for his wife and five for his son Meriteti.

From the second half of the Old Kingdom, decorated tombs had long since ceased to be the privilege of the upper class of the court. Monumental tomb structures arose in the provinces on the model of the capital’s necropolis. Because geography did not always allow for the building of a mastaba, tomb chapels were often designed as rock-cut tombs.