The Tomb of Anedjib (Tomb X) is in Abydos,

Egypt Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia via a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediter ...

, in the

Umm el-Qa'ab Umm El Qaʻāb (sometimes romanised Umm El Gaʻab, ar, أم القعاب) is a necropolis of the Early Dynastic Period kings at Abydos, Egypt. Its modern name means "Mother of Pots" as the whole area is littered with the broken pot shards of of ...

necropolis. Anedjib was a ruler of the

First Dynasty of Egypt The First Dynasty of ancient Egypt (Dynasty I) covers the first series of Egyptian kings to rule over a unified Egypt. It immediately follows the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt, possibly by Narmer, and marks the beginning of the Early Dyn ...

, who reigned around 2900 BC. To date, the tomb has only been excavated once, by

Flinders Petrie Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie ( – ), commonly known as simply Flinders Petrie, was a British Egyptologist and a pioneer of systematic methodology in archaeology and the preservation of artefacts. He held the first chair of Egypt ...

between 1899 and 1900. This is unlike the other tombs in the necropolis, which were excavated before Petrie by the Frenchman

Émile Amélineau Émile Amélineau (1850 – 12 January 1915 at Châteaudun) was a French Coptologist, archaeologist and Egyptologist. His scholarly reputation was established as an editor of previously unpublished Coptic texts. But his reputation was destroy ...

and subsequently by the

German Archaeological Institute The German Archaeological Institute (german: Deutsches Archäologisches Institut, ''DAI'') is a research institute in the field of archaeology (and other related fields). The DAI is a "federal agency" under the Federal Foreign Office of Germany ...

. The tomb is relatively small. There is a burial chamber (7 x 4.5 metres), consisting of two rooms and is accessed by a stairway from the east. The walls of the chamber are more than a metre thick. The smaller of the two chambers contained several

cylinder seal A cylinder seal is a small round cylinder, typically about one inch (2 to 3 cm) in length, engraved with written characters or figurative scenes or both, used in ancient times to roll an impression onto a two-dimensional surface, generally ...

s and was probably a storage chamber. The burial chamber was made of wooden planks set in the desert sand without any other foundations. Some of these planks were well-preserved. The roof of the chamber was held up by wooden posts, one of which was found still intact by the excavators. Ivory inlay from the tomb of King Anedjib (Abydos, 1st Dynasty) (8549009652)

Ivory inlay from the tomb of King Anedjib (Abydos, 1st Dynasty) (8549009652)

Sixty-five chambers are grouped around the tomb, most of which should be interpreted as ancillary burials, though one of them was probably a storage chamber. Some of the chambers contained large numbers of ivory carvings.W. M. Flinders Petrie, Francis L. Griffith: ''The royal tombs of the earliest dynasties: 1901. Part 2'' (= ''Memoir of the Egypt Exploration Fund.'' Band 21, ). Egypt Exploration Fund u.a., London 1901, S. 39, Tafel XLII
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.

Bibliography

* Eva-Maria Engel. "The Royal Tombs at Umm el-Qa'ab," In: ''Archeo-Nil'' 18 (2008), p. 39. *

William Matthew Flinders Petrie Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie ( – ), commonly known as simply Flinders Petrie, was a British Egyptologist and a pioneer of systematic methodology in archaeology and the preservation of artefacts. He held the first chair of Egypt ...

. ''The royal tombs of the first dynasty: 1900. Part I'' (= ''Memoir of the Egypt Exploration Fund.'' Volume 18, ). Egypt Exploration Fund, London 1900
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pp. 12–13.

References

{{Landmarks of Abydos First Dynasty of Egypt Tombs of ancient Egypt Abydos, Egypt sites