Download Palaces and Residences in Ancient Egypt

Palaces and Residences in Ancient Egypt: Reaching
beyond the State of the Art
Abstracts
Felix Arnold
A Palace of Snofru at Dahshur
Manfred Bietak
The Hyksos and early New Kingdom Palaces at Tell el-Dab´a (Avaris and Peru-nefer)
At the site of Tell el-Dab‘a – ancient Avaris – several palatial structures have been revealed which all
reflect a typical architectural history for the time of their construction.
From the early 13th Dynasty a mansion of over 1400 m2 was uncovered which displayed palatial
features, with its four columned reception rooms, an oversized sleeping room 14m in length on the
east side and a further side room. In front were a colonnaded courtyard and two more apartments.
There were gardens in front and behind the building. Lastly, another structure was begun east of the
first mansion, however, it was never finished. The first mansion was walled up and abandoned,
probably due to political turmoil.
A big palace of very different kind was constructed during the Hyksos period in the centre of the
town. It was connected by what looks like a processional road to a temple of the same period. It
seems to replace an older palatial building which was burned down and which dates to the time
shortly before the Hyksos period. The structure, not yet completely excavated, differs in its plan
from Egyptian palaces. It is an additive complex with courtyards and magazine blocks in juxtaposition
and it has altogether a squat layout. The entrance gate with two portals encompassing a plaza is
similar to the palace of Mari and a southern courtyard displays features very similar to the
contemporary palace Q of Ebla. There is also a well of Near Eastern typology. Seal impressions
reveal that the late phase of the palace dates to the time of Hyksos Khayan.
It seems that in the late Hyksos period, another palace situated further to the north-west, replaced
this precinct. The new palace included a buttressed enclosure wall and enormous gardens. A sizeable
water supply system shows installations for a big household. The palace itself seems to have been
widely destroyed 100 years ago by the construction of the El-Sama‘ana canal and the asphalt road
leading to El-Husseiniya.
In the extreme west of the ruins of Avaris, on top of the late Hyksos palace, a big palatial precinct of
13 acres was constructed during the 18th Dynasty . This precinct consisted of a main palace with an
attached public building, a ceremonial palace and a small third palace. All were constructed on
elevated platforms accessible by ramps. The two bigger palaces were both embellished with wall
paintings by original Minoan master painters. These paintings included motifs which are otherwise
found only in the palace of Knossos, such as a split rosette frieze, a maze pattern and emblematic
griffins, which represent royal status. This precinct dates to the reigns of Thutmose III and
Amenhotep II and there is little doubt that they represent the royal residence at Peru-nefer, the
major naval base of Egypt during this period. It was equipped with a nearby sizable harbour basin,
suitable to moor hundreds of ships.
Manfred Bietak & Eva Lange
The so-called ‘Governor’s Palace’ at Bubastis
The Middle Kingdom Palace at Bubastis was discovered and excavated by Shafiq Farid, later
continued by Ahmed Essawy and Mohamed I. Bakr, and is considered to be the seat of a
governor/mayor. This conclusion was reached because of the square elite cemetery added to the
east of the palace with the same orientation. The palace is situated at the northern part of the tell in
keeping with the traditional position of palaces in Egypt in order to escape the smoke and odours of
a town with the help of the steady northerly wind.
At the invitation of the Ministry of Antiquities and the University of Würzburg, the Austrian
Academy of Sciences moved in to continue the fieldwork in this vast compound in cooperation with
these two institutions. The first season took place from 28th of February till 30th of March. The
setting of the palace within the general stratigraphy of Bubastis was clarified. The first strategic aim
was to assess the size of the building which covered at least 14,000 m2. It turned out that the
compound was significantly larger than originally anticipated, but the northern part was destroyed
before the work of Shafiq Farid by levelling the northern part of the tell for building projects. It
turned out that one quarter of the remaining part of the palace is not yet excavated.
The plan of the palace is unusual. Its entrance is not to the north but to the south and is positioned
asymmetrically at the right side of the façade. This seems to be a feature taken from the Egyptian
domestic architecture, since palaces normally have a central entrance. The columned staterooms are
accommodated in the right half of the building and were accessed in a double-bend axis. Besides the
entrance, the southern part of the building incorporates extensive magazines and a domestic area
with ovens in the south-western region. At least four big apartments are accommodated in form of
houses west of the staterooms. The continuation to the north has still to be clarified by excavation.
At first, however, 3D-scanns combined with stratigraphic investigations will produce the full
documentation of the already uncovered building.
Below the western part of the southern façade a series of substantial parallel walls in a different
orientation emerged from the ground during previous excavations. They seem to belong to a late
Old Kingdom palace, parallel to the Old Kingdom elite cemetery to the west of the palace area, just
south of the Middle Kingdom cemetery of mayors. It seems that this Old Kingdom compound is at
least the same size as the Middle Kingdom palace which gives us warning that a big project lies
ahead!
Günter Dreyer
Evidence for Royal Palaces of Dynasties 0-2 in Writing and Tomb Architecture
Apart from a monumental entrance to a 1st Dynasty palace, or its temenos, at Hierakonpolis, there
are no preserved archaic period remains of any royal residences. This gate is built from mud bricks
displaying an elaborate pattern of niches.
Early administrative inscriptions and pot paintings indicate the existence of royal residences since
Naqada IIIA1. They show the niched façade of an enclosure wall or a palace. Since late Dynasty 0,
this type of facade (serekh) was incorporated into the Horus name.
An impression of what a palace in Early Egypt looked like can be gained from the royal tombs at
Abydos and Saqqara which appear to be reproductions of the plan of palaces, or parts of their
architecture.
The earliest known example is tomb U-j in cemetery U at Abydos, which can be ascribed to King
Scorpion I (Naqada IIIA2, ca. 3200 BC). Attached to its burial chamber is a group of nine chambers
with small doors. The arrangement of the chambers and doors is in all likelihood a model of a small
palace consisting of the following elements:
1) a reception area, servants quarters, and store rooms
2) a central audience hall and administrative rooms
3) private quarters
In the tombs of Peribsen and Khasekhemwy (late 2nd Dynasty) the chambers around the king’s burial
chamber display similar layouts.
Small buildings at Abydos, with niched façades, are also found within what are called funerary
enclosures, which can be described as residences for the king in his afterlife.
The most elaborate model architecture appears in the huge rock tomb of king Ninetjer (early 2 nd
Dynasty) at Saqqara which seems to characterize a settlement and part of the royal residence: the
harem, comprising a servants room, several living rooms with mastabas for seating and sleeping,
dining rooms with benches, and restrooms.
The funerary complex of Djoser at Saqqara (early 3rd Dynasty) contains faux palaces with decorated
facades, doors, and windows, both above and below ground, the latter adjacent to the northern and
southern tombs.
Renée Friedmann & Richard Bussmann
The early Dynastic palace at Hierakonpolis
Ulrich Hartung
The Labyrinth-Building at Buto
During the last few years, the excavations of the German Archaeological Institute Cairo at Buto/Tell
el-Fara’in focused on the investigation of Early Dynastic settlement remains in the western part of
the site. In the late 1980s, in this area a part of a larger building had been excavated by Th. von der
Way which he labelled “Labyrinth-building” due to the angled arrangement of its rooms. Meanwhile,
the Early Dynastic levels were exposed on a much larger scale and provide – although still
preliminarily – not only a more complete picture of this building but also shed light on the preceding
Early Dynastic structures and illustrate the development of a building complex that most probably
served as a royal estate.
From the beginning of the 1st until the middle of the 2nd Dynasty, three main phases of construction
can be distinguished: The oldest occupation dates to the beginning of the 1st Dynasty (Naqada IIIC1)
and consists of simple rectangular houses accessible by narrow corridors or lanes which are
arranged beside a larger building comprising several round silos.
Subsequently, from the early 1st Dynasty on (Naqada IIIC2), this dense architectural lay-out was
transformed and a large courtyard was established in front of a larger building surrounded by rooms
of varying size. Fireplaces, ovens and other installations in the courtyard and in many of the smaller
rooms, as well as grinding stones and scattered bread mould fragments illustrate the agricultural and
household activities of the inhabitants. A large number of round silos points to the considerable
extent of the agricultural production.
Finally, in the course of the second half of the 1st Dynasty (Naqada IIIC3/IIID), the entire area was
levelled and a large, well-planned building complex (the “Labyrinth-building” mentioned above) was
erected on top of the earlier structures. The complex comprises representative rooms, workshops
(e.g., for the production of stone vessels) and magazines arranged in distinctive compounds, but also
rooms probably used for private and cultic purposes. A large room in the centre of the complex was
most likely the reception area. Visitors had to pass a long and angled corridor to enter this room – a
feature well-known from later palaces and elite residencies.
In combination with the different other functional areas, but also considering the considerable size of
the complex and its well-planned and careful construction, there is no doubt that the building
complex represents a Royal estate or Early Dynastic palace with economic and administrative
functions. Additionally, the building might have temporarily housed the king and his followers when
they visited the region.
Large parts of the complex were given up around the middle of the 2nd Dynasty after they had been
destroyed by a heavy fire. During the late 2nd and the beginning of the 3rd Dynasty the building
complex was already completely abandoned and its ruins were then only used as a source for mud
brick material and as a rubbish dump.
Clara Jeuthe
The Governor’s Palace in Ayn Asil/Balat
Balat, at the eastern edge of Dakhla Oasis, has been under investigation by the Institut français
d’archéologie orientale au Caire (IFAO) since 1978. The Pharaonic site contains the necropolis,
including the burials of the governors (Qilac el-Dabba) and the occupation area (Ayn Asil), whose
main features are two enclosures: the so-called (northern) “fortress”, dating back to the earlier 6th
dynasty and with enforcement under Pepi I. Although the northern enclosure has only been
excavated in different sondages, it seems clearly to contain a residential area of the governors. That
might characterise that enclosure as a palace as well.
The southern enclosure, the so-called “Governor’s Palace”, is only slightly less old and was founded
under the reign of Pepi II. Its main parts have been excavated and the span of use can be divided into
three main levels of occupation, dating to the late Old Kingdom, the First Intermediate Period and
the beginning of the Middle Kingdom. The original complex contains the residence, different
magazine areas and the Hut-Ka chapels with their adjunction complex in the northern half of the
palace as well as other well-organized areas of provisions and/or occupation in the southern part. In
addition to the burials of the governors, these functional elements, as well as the architectural and
epigraphic records clearly prove its character as a palace. Being re-built and partially modified,
several of these features are also attested during the First Intermediate Period, while Ayn Asil was
still the capital of the Oasis. However, a significant change may have taken place in the last level of
occupation during the 11th Dynasty. Still, the building units show a well-organised arrangement,
clearly under official control and administration but with fewer indications of a palatial character as
before.
Being newly founded in 6th dynasty and without the limitation of already existing building structures,
the enclosures in Ayn Asil might very well match the “ideal” composition and maybe even layout of a
provincial palace in late Old Kingdom, surviving until the early Middle Kingdom.
Peter Lacovara
Patterning and Purpose: The design and function of New Kingdom “Palace Cities”
This paper will explore the broad context of settlement systems in New Kingdom Egypt, specifically
with regard to palace-cities and how they evolved and were designed. Beginning with the site of
Deir el-Ballas, at the close of the Second Intermediate Period we see a prototype for this unique
facet of Egyptian urbanism that manifests itself in a number of ways and suggests that the city of Tell
el-Amarna, was not the unique phenomenon that has been traditionally posited. Other settlements
and palaces can be fitted into this continuum illustrating the development of this peculiar subset of
pharaonic urban design including the sites of Gurob, Malqata and Memphis. The layout and plans of
the settlements and of the palace buildings specifically, reveal both a subtle patterning indicative of an
idealized, though very flexible concept of urban planning and the symbolic and practical functions of
the royal residence.
The Joint Expedition to Malqata
Eva Lange
Palaces: Textual record versus the archaeological evidence
Rarely addressed in the scholarly discussion in general are the options for, but also difficulties of,
combining textual evidence concerning the location, architecture and administration of ancient
Egyptian royal palaces with the archaeological evidence.
Even the terminology for “palace” provides the investigator with serious obstacles: several words
(pr-aA, stp-sA, pr-nsw.t, Xnw) exist, indicating that several types of palaces existed, and it is still
debated which term refers to which kind of palace or perhaps even concepts of palaces. Moreover,
the autopsy of the respective texts shows that the usage of the terms is not always definite and,
moreover, the meaning of several terms seems to have changed or at least shifted to other
underlying aspects through the course of time.
The resulting tentativeness of translations continues to be evident in the terms for specific parts of
palaces as well as to single architectural elements, leaving us often with quite provisional and
unsatisfying suggestions where we would wish to have clear pictures.
The paper aims to highlight the current problems and emphasise the potential scope of the
comparison between the archaeological record and those hints about architecture and layout of
Egyptian palaces found in written sources, by contrasting the textual with the archaeological record,
and considering the newest available data. Here, it may be possible to identify types of palaces in
respect to specific functions as well as exploring site and period related adaptations.
Manuela Lehmann
The Apries Palace and other Casemate Structures in the Late Period
Casemate structures are a common feature in Late Period architecture. They form an architectural
type that is constructed by a system of mud brick walls often arranged in a grid system. The outer
wall is broader and builds a frame while the inner walls are smaller and abutted to the outer walls.
The gaps between the walls – mainly square or rectangular – are then filled with sand and rubble.
The advantage of this building technique is the saving of a lot of building material. This principle had
already been used for a long time in Egyptian architecture. First attempts can be found in the
Pyramids of the Middle Kingdom. Casemates as the foundation of buildings were used already in
palaces of the Hyksos Period and also of the New Kingdom. In the foundation of buildings they form
a very solid substructure for the ground floor and potential upper floors.
Apart from palaces, this building technique is developed further, and in the Late Period it is used for
many different building types; not only palaces but also administrative buildings and normal domestic
houses can have a foundation of casemates as well. Casemate structures can be also found in
temples or forts from the New Kingdom onwards.
Since the foundations are often quite high, unfortunately often the upper walls and floor layers of the
building are not preserved anymore, which makes it difficult to identify the original use of the
architecture. However, differences in size as well as other surrounding features sometimes enable an
interpretation.
The capitals of the Late Period were mainly situated in the Delta. Due to the lack of stone in this
area and therefore the frequent reuse of any stone material, many buildings have long been robbed
and are not preserved today. The mud brick walls were also often removed by Sebbakhin as fertilizer
for the fields. This and other circumstances make further research into late capitals extremely
difficult. The layout of these late settlements is almost always only partly known.
However, one palace from the Late Period – the Apries Palace in Memphis - is at least partly
preserved and gives a good idea about this architecture type in this time.
It was mainly excavated in 1909 by W.M.F. Petrie, followed by a short re-examination by
B. Kemp in 1976. Recently in the year 2000 a Portuguese team started to work at this important site
again, introducing modern methods, e.g. 3D scanning and ground penetrating radar. 3D
reconstruction of the building has also been done.
Therefore it is worthwhile to compare this palace with other palaces and also with other casemate
structures of the Late Period.
Mohamed Abd el-Maksoud
The Commander’s Residence at Tell Hebwa
Jan Picton
Gurob: a royal town or a royal production centre?
Gurob presents a case study of an integrated royal town incorporating walled elite residential
‘harem’ quarters, a supporting non-elite settlement and industrial community, with both
archaeological and textual evidence for the socio-economic infrastructure that maintained the
settlement. Over eight field-seasons, (six of survey and surface collections, two of excavation), the
Gurob Harem Palace Project has attempted to contextualise over a century of work at the site. The
question remains: do we know what a ‘palace’ or a ‘harem’ is?
Dietrich Raue
The Governor’s Palace at Elephantine
The centre of the city of Elephantine, the southern border town of Egypt, is occupied by a vast
building unit dating to the 6th dynasty. This structure was described as a “palace” in the past. Even
though major parts were destroyed by sebbakhin diggings, a number of rooms are still preserved and
were investigated between 2000 and 2006. A sequence of strata from the late 5th to the early 12th
Dynasty allows for a description of functions, administrative procedures and crafts. In addition, the
contact with the trade partners of the Egyptians in Nubia is attested among the finds.
Kate Spence
House and Palace
Alexander Tzonis
The Idea of the palace in Ancient Cultures: Theory and Reality
The Palace is one of the most significant human-made structures. Masses worshipped it, warriors
desired to capture it, archaeologists to discover it, document it, and decode it, and crowds of
tourists yearn to consume it.
Of course the Palace captivates because – like the other human-made structure with which it shares
pre-eminence, the Temple, (Cathedral or Church) – it embodies supreme power, and power
attracts.
Like the Temple, the Palace demonstrates its singularity by standing out and apart from the
surrounding settlements and environment through its physical design: its unique location, its size, its
structure, the rigorous geometry, the bilateral symmetry, the centrality, the proportions, the
topology of its spaces, its colours, the rarity and preciousness of its materials.
However, in addition to power, the Palace, in contrast to the Temple, contains many more functions
and activities that contribute to its significance but also its complexity as an object of study. Because,
while in the minds of many people ‘the Palace’ is an abstraction, an ideal type instantiated in particular
palaces erected in different times and in different places around the world, under closer scrutiny it is
difficult to identify it as a single, ideal building type that contains all this variety of concrete buildings
lumped together. Thus, although the imagined idea of the Palace has inspired the publication of many
attractive illustrated coffee-table books with titles such as ‘The Palace in History’ or ‘The World of
the Palace’, the collected buildings that one finds usually in these books share few common attributes
forming mostly fuzzy overlapping groups, what Wittgenstein called, ‘family resemblances’
(Familienähnlichkeit), linked by a single common attribute that like ‘a red thread runs through them
from end to end’, to use Goethe’s simile, power. Under such circumstances it is not easy to make
rational comparisons and generalizations that can produce new knowledge.
The difficulties one finds working with palaces are not very different from those working with other
buildings. However, what makes palaces particularly challenging as objects of research is their multifunctionality and the complexity of their form whose meaning is embedded in the period and place
they were construed and constructed.
Using anachronistic and a-historical categories to analyze them may suggest appealing similarities
between Eastern and Western, archaic and medieval palaces which are fictitious because they did
not exist in the minds of the original builders and users. And the reverse is also true. As Richard
Krautheimer demonstrated, building patterns that appear today radically dissimilar were seen by
medieval people as faithful imitations of the same building prototype.
Likewise, it is difficult to discern similarities from the outset between the form and function of
palaces of the Middle Ages – such as Charlemagne’s Palace in Aachen – and the palaces of
Constantine, the first Christian Roman Emperor, or other Roman imperial structures that served as
their prototypes. The similarities cannot be depicted unless the objects being analyzed are
understood as cogs of a conceptual system and a way of life of a society.
The versions of conceptual systems and ways of life, out of which palaces emerged as embodiers of
power, were driven by principles of purity, closed group solidarity, and, to use Luis Dumont’s term,
the values of Homo Hierarchicus. Productivist efficiency, market, and aesthetic criteria, not to mention
egalitarian beliefs, did not play an important role.
The kings or emperors that inhabited those Palaces as physical persons might have been dethroned
or assassinated but as mystical royal persons, ‘aeterni regis’ by grace, as Ernst Kantorowicz called
them, power embodied in the palaces, were only in exceptional cases put into question. Accordingly,
the practice common since the Middle Ages of recruiting elements from precedent royal or imperial
structures to incorporate them in new palaces was not so much to prop up the person of the king or
to justify the design of the palace as was to legitimize the new power demonstrating its continuity
and eternity by analogy to the old one incorporated in the precedent structure.
Up to the 17th century, the supremacy of precedents and their use as prototypes in the design of
new palaces were hardly ever disputed. However, with the ascendancy of one of the most powerthirsty and Palace-hungry monarchs in history, Louis the XIV, a famous debate, La querelle des Anciens
et des Modernes, commences in France centred to a high degree in the design of the new palace of
the Louvre. The quarrel, taken usually as being about the superiority of the ancient structures over
the modern ones, was in fact about a new dogma that was put together by the king in close
collaboration with his scholar advisers and courtiers: the right of the monarch to make his own rules
in the design of the new Palace without recourse to a higher authority.
At the risk of over interpreting the case of the Louvre, we can claim that what Louis XIV’s and his
first government were trying to carry out was an ambitious new program to rebuild an old Palace
replacing an archaic way of thinking and living, with a new one that was to be driven by efficiency, the
market, and the aesthetics of modern times, with the king at the wheel of power. However, soon
after, what followed was the Palace of Versailles, an altogether different story.
Krautheimer, R., ‘Introduction to an Iconography of Medieval Architecture’, Journal of the Courtald and Warburg
Institutes 5 London (1942)
Louis Dumont, Homo Hierarchicus Paris (1966)
Ernst Kantorowicz The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Mediaeval Political Theology, Princeton, (1957)