Weni the Elder and His Mortuary Neighborhood at Abydos, Egypt
Weni the Elder and His Mortuary Neighborhood at Abydos, Egypt
Everyone who has studied ancient Egyptian history is familiar with the
autobiography of Weni the Elder, an enterprising individual who lived during
the 6th Dynasty of the Old Kingdom (ca. 2407-2260 BCE). His 
inscription, excavated
in 1860 from his tomb in the low desert at Abydos in southern Egypt, enthusiastically
describes his long service under three kings, culminating in his appointment
as "True Governor of Upper Egypt." Scholars have hailed it as
"the most important historical document from the Old Kingdom"
and have used it to illustrate the rise of a class of "new men"
in Egyptian politics and society--persons whose upward mobility rested in
their abilities, not in noble birth.
inscription, excavated
in 1860 from his tomb in the low desert at Abydos in southern Egypt, enthusiastically
describes his long service under three kings, culminating in his appointment
as "True Governor of Upper Egypt." Scholars have hailed it as
"the most important historical document from the Old Kingdom"
and have used it to illustrate the rise of a class of "new men"
in Egyptian politics and society--persons whose upward mobility rested in
their abilities, not in noble birth.
Discussions of the Weni text almost never treat it as an artifact with
physical properties and a context. In this regard, the Weni inscription
is a good example of a persistent split in Egyptology--between those who
study texts and those who focus on spatial organization and material culture.
Yet context coupled with content can enhance what a text can tell us, or
context can inform us about topics on which the text is silent.
Earlier Excavations
Since 1995, the Abydos Middle Cemetery Project, which I direct under the
aegis of the Kelsey Museum and the Pennsylvania-Yale-New York University
Expedition, has focused on the mysterious part of Abydos from which Weni's
inscription was known to have come. "Mysterious" because no one
had excavated there since 1870 (officially, at least), when Auguste Mariette,
the colorful first director of the Egyptian antiquities organization, flung
hundreds of workmen all across the North Abydos landscape.
Mariette was not known for meticulous field notes, and consequently there
is no detailed record of the findspots of Weni's inscription or those of
several other important officials found on "the high hill which gives
the middle cemetery its name" (Mariette's words, and among his most
detailed contextual comments!). A series of early twentieth-century campaigns
elucidated the areas surrounding this high hill--a "middle-class"
cemetery of thousands of modest shaft and surface graves--but all of those
excavators avoided the area worked over by Mariette's men.
The 1999 Season
Our interest has therefore been not only to resituate physically the individual
Weni the Elder but also to illuminate the character and spatial organization
of the late Old Kingdom cemetery as a whole, as well as its relationship
with the adjacent town and temple area during a pivotal period of Egyptian
history.
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During two short survey seasons in 1995 and 1996, we created a detailed
topographic map of the entire Middle Cemetery and completed an intensive
surface collection and ceramic analysis of the area most likely to be Mariette's
"high hill." The ceramic materials and large, ruined mudbrick
mastabas (surface chapels) found during these seasons indicated a strong
6th Dynasty presence. Armed with that information and a survey of Mariette's
finds in the Cairo Museum, we returned to the site in September 1999 for
a full-scale excavation season.
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The crew comprised myself as director; assistant director for bioarchaeology
Brenda Baker of Arizona State University; University of Michigan graduate
students Geoff Compton and Amanda Sprochi as well as undergraduate Jason
Sprague; and Arizona State University graduate students Scott Burnett, Anna
Konstantatos, Penny Minturn, and Korri Turner. Mr. Adel Makary Zekery of
Sohag graciously acted as Inspector for the project; we are grateful also
to Dr. Yahia el Sabri el-Misri and Mr. Ahmet el-Khattib for their support.
Finally, many thanks are due to Sharon Herbert and the staff of the Kelsey
Museum.*
Despite temperature extremes (scorching in September and October, freezing
in November and December), an armored vehicle in the Middle Cemetery, collapsing
tomb shafts, regular visits from horned vipers, and a dig-house typhoid
epidemic, the season produced phenomenal results. We gathered information
on previously unknown individuals and evidence for wholly unsuspected private
votive activity. Fresh facts also emerged regarding the career and family
of Weni the Elder and the design of his eternal residence in the Old Kingdom
cemetery. And finally, the excavations yielded data on the Late and Ptolemaic-Roman
period at the site. (One of the hazards of digging in periods as early as
the Old Kingdom is that they are inevitably overlain by meters of later
activity.) Space constrains me to focus here on Weni and the Old Kingdom
remains.
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Nhty's Complex
Two of the four broad areas in which we worked were the most important for
understanding late Old Kingdom mortuary patterning. The first of these was
a badly ruined mastaba that was initially the most visible chapel in the
Mariette area. In 1996 we had thought it was quite possibly Weni's chapel,
in part because it was so badly destroyed: the removal of limestone architectural
elements from their original emplacements usually necessitates the demolition
of the building in which they occur, and Mariette extracted several such
pieces inscribed for Weni.
Our excavation of this area revealed a large complex focused on the mastaba
and a number of subsidiary monuments constructed around it in the late Old
Kingdom, the First Intermediate Period, the Middle Kingdom, and the Late
Period. The primary mastaba did not, however, belong to Weni but was instead
the grave of a previously undocumented individual named Nhty, a prince,
mayor, sole companion, and chief priest.
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Nhty seems to have been an individual who commanded a long-lasting and
substantial respect: 50 centimeters above the original Old Kingdom use surface,
small mudbrick votive chapels aligned with Nhty's complex were constructed
in the Middle Kingdom, one of which still contained a basalt pair statue.
This discovery was completely unexpected, since the surface ceramic gave
no hint of Middle Kingdom activity.
Weni's Mastaba
North of Nhty's complex lies an even larger structure, and it was here that
we found the most compelling evidence for the final resting place of Weni
the Elder. In 1996, we had documented a mudbrick structure that was 16 meters
long on its north face; excavation revealed it to be a massive enclosure
29 meters on each side, 3 meters thick, and over 5 meters high.
The builders constructed a great burial shaft within this enclosure along
with two other smaller shafts, and the whole structure would have been filled
with clean sand and roofed in antiquity, to give the appearance of a solid
mastaba. This mastaba is situated at the highest point in the Middle Cemetery,
and its visual impact on inhabitants of the town below would have echoed
that of the great Early Dynastic (ca. 3100-2750 BCE) funerary enclosures
across the wadi in the Northern Cemetery. Like them, it is so large that
it is visible from the high desert cliffs more than half a mile away.
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Early in the season, we excavated a number of inscribed relief fragments
from this area, including two pieces that, when joined together, furnished
the name "Weni the Elder" and a fragment providing the title "True
Governor of Upper Egypt," the highest title recorded in Weni's autobiography.
Further evidence emerged supporting this association. The exterior face
of the north wall incorporates a large niche, and during excavations here
a damaged false door inscribed for Weni the Elder was discovered in situ.
Not only does this false door provide a nickname for Weni ("Nefer Nekhet
Mery-Ra"--Egyptian nicknames were often longer than birth names!),
but it also documents his final career promotion, a fact not recorded in
his autobiography: Chief Judge and Vizier.
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A series of shaft and surface burials lay north of the false door; ranging
in date from the late Old Kingdom to the First Intermediate Period, they
suggest that Weni's grave became the focus of a group cemetery--perhaps
a kinship network.
On the east face of the mastaba we discovered further evidence for Weni.
In surface fill, we excavated a limestone door jamb nearly two meters long
and inscribed for the same Vizier Iww documented in a tomb by Richard Lepsius
in 1840. On both sides of the jamb, male relatives present offerings to
Iww; one of these relatives is identified as: "his eldest son, the
governor of Upper Egypt Weni the Elder." So despite Weni's emphasis
in his autobiography on merit as the sole means of his upward mobility,
it is clear that he belonged to an already powerful family--although he
chose not to communicate this fact.
The Offering Chapel
A few meters east of the jamb, we excavated a small offering chapel constructed
directly onto the wall of the great mastaba. Entered through a narrow doorway
on its east side, the chapel was originally completely decorated with painted
low relief depicting offering bearers. Many of the blocks comprising this
decorative scheme were removed during some earlier excavation or plundering
episode, but several remained in situ on the walls and doorway, with
nine additional blocks lying tumbled on the floor. One exterior door jamb,
partially preserved, bears a standing representation of the tomb owner,
preserved from the waist down. Comparison of this relief with the top part
of a tomb owner named Weni the Elder in the Egyptian Museum suggests that
they originally belonged together.
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It seems clear that this half-destroyed chapel is the original context
of Weni's funerary furniture excavated by Mariette and currently in the
Egyptian Museum, and we can now propose the following reconstruction. Weni's
first false door was placed in the main niche of this chapel. The massive
slab of the autobiography was mounted on the exterior face of the chapel,
whose walls are sufficiently thick to have borne its undoubtedly great weight.
Such a placement would explain both the off-axial location of the chapel
entrance--which was pushed north to accommodate the 2.75-meter width of
the autobiography--and the autobiography's extremely weathered condition.
Two miniature obelisks bearing Weni's name would have been placed just outside
the entrance to the chapel.
Further Evidence of Weni
Upon Weni's promotion to Chief Judge and Vizier at the very end of his career,
he installed his second false door recording that fact on the north face
of his mastaba. Both false doors align with the probable location of Weni's
burial chamber, which lies north of the great shaft at a depth of more than
12 meters.
In the mastaba interior, a huge deposit of 6th Dynasty offering pottery--more
than 500 collared wine jars--lay in piles east and west of the shaft, as
well as in neat lines to the north. Situated among this deposit of pottery
were ten in situ coffin burials of the Late Period, indicating later
reuse of this space as a small cemetery.
The final connection to Weni came from a rectangular structure in the
southeast corner. This feature contained the deteriorated remains of more
than thirty wooden bases for statues and production scenes, plus several
disembodied elements such as arms, hands, animal fragments, and limestone
components of the production scenes, such as miniature basins capped with
basket strainers for the production of beer. The best preserved and most
significant artifact was a beautifully executed limestone statuette of the
tomb owner as a young boy, identified as "the count, Weni."
The Tomb's Significance
This combined evidence strongly suggests that we have found Weni's tomb,
the primary monument in an elite zone bracketed by a middle-class cemetery.
This tomb made a striking visual statement of access, wealth, and political
power, which may have mirrored a similar statement in the Old Kingdom town
at Abydos--a mysterious, massive building, which Matthew Adams, codirector
of the town project, has long suspected is a governor's palace. Given its
scale and the similarity of its construction techniques to Weni's tomb,
it is tempting to consider it part of Weni's building activities, bridging
living and mortuary landscapes.
The results of the 1999 excavations present a complex blend of elite
and nonelite burial and votive activity during the late Old Kingdom into
the Middle Kingdom, a time span when both political power and the importance
of Osiris were growing in this region. The physical resituation of an important
historical individual within that multidimensional picture allows us more
effectively to integrate textual and archaeological lines of evidence in
our reconstruction of ancient Egyptian political and social history. Much
work remains to be done; and the success of last season, thanks to a phenomenally
skilled crew, has provided us with a solid basis for future research at
the site.
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