Abstract
The development of Qobet El-Hawa site: the problems and the proposed solutions.
Dr. Ossama Abd El-Maged
Director General of childern Museum-Cairo.
The island of Elephantine (ancient Abu) lies in the middle of the Nile immediately adjacent to the modern city of Aswan (ancient Swenet/Syene). During the Sixth Dynasty period local nobles gained significant degrees of personal power and wealth associated with their positions as the 'Keepers of the Southern Gates': guarding the frontier with Nubia; and undertaking trade, quarrying and military missions in the name of the king. Faced with the desire to perpetuate their existence through the construction of a tomb, these influential men had two options open to them: building within a mastaba field on the isle itself; or excavating rock-cut tombs on the west bank of the mainland.
The Elephantine mastaba field was located in an area immediately around and to the north of a small step pyramid built under Huni or Snefru in the south-western section of the island. This necropolis was employed from the Fifth Dynasty to the end of the Middle Kingdom but its mastabas have survived in a ruined state and almost nothing remains of their superstructures or decorations.While a natural granite quarry, Elephantine Island lacked any rises of workable stone in which a 'shaft and chamber' tomb might be cut and thus during the Sixth Dynasty, when the elite of the Elephantine Nome increasingly desired such structures, their attentions were turned to the west bank of the Nile. There, however, their choice of sites was limited. For much of its length the bank falls sharply to the river's edge in sand and loose rocks. Only opposite the northern tip of Elephantine Island, at a place now known as Qubbet el-Hawa (the 'Dome of the Wind' named after the cupola erected atop the cliff ), does the sandstone core of the bank offer any prospect for excavation. The stone here is of generally poor quality and limited quantity, the better sections forming conspicuous horizontal bands towards the top of the slope. As one might expect, these positions were the first used. The right to construct tombs within this necropolis appears to have been reserved strictly for the most high ranking of Elephantine's inhabitants.
In addition to the rock-cut tombs of the escarpment mastaba burials were also made on the west bank during the late Old Kingdom period. To the north of Qubbet el-Hawa on low, sandy slopes nearby the New Kingdom period burial of Ka-kemkew a series of mud brick tombs with vaulted burial chambers (which were presumably covered by mastabas made of similar material) were uncovered in modern times but the findings of excavators have not been officially recorded. An apparently similar burial was revealed beside the modern stairway leading to the tomb of Khunes in 1992. This tomb appears to have once comprised of a rectangular mastaba built of sun-dried mud bricks resting above a shaft leading, via a door, to an undecorated subterranean burial chamber with a vaulted roof. The labour and expense required for the construction of such mud brick mastaba burials was obviously far less than that needed for contemporaneous rock-cut tombs in the Qubbet el-Hawa necropolis. This fact, and the relatively simple nature of the burial and grave goods found in this most recently discovered burial of its type, strongly suggest that the west bank mastaba cemetery served as the burial site for citizens of Abu whose social position was below that of the nobles who tombs rose above them, and above that of the owners of more humble sepulchres of the Elephantine Island mastaba cemetery.
Of the many rock-cut tombs of the west bank necropolis at Qubbet el-Hawa which survive today, most are in a poor state of preservation. The low quality stone from which they were constructed has led to many collapsing, while others have been destroyed by human hands - all have been extensively looted. The first modern European to note the presence of these tombs was John Lewis Burckhardt in his descriptive journal, Travels in Nubia (1813). Early excavations at the necropolis were undertaken by Sir F. Grenfell and E.A. Wallis Budge in 1885-86 and by Lady W. Cecil in 1901-02.Unfortunately the plans, decorations and texts of only a few of the more grand and historically significant tombs have been published in full and only a handful of the tombs are currently open for public inspection.
