Organising Old Kingdom bodies: An investigation of landscape, memory, and identity through looking at Qubbet el-Hawa’s regional placement and the locational relationships between and within its tombs

Abstract

Qubbet el-Hawa is an élite cemetery that has been the subject of numerous studies since its first ‘systematic’ excavation by the British over 130 years ago. During the late Old Kingdom, it was located on the far southern reaches of Egyptian state control just north of the First Cataract near Elephantine, the first nome’s capital. As an élite cemetery located away from Memphis, it is a mortuary landscape that provides an arena for investigating the construction of Egyptian landscape, memory, and identity. Since its first excavation though, there has been little done to examine the emergence and development of Qubbet el-Hawa to consider how location was critical for understanding the cemetery’s organisation. As a result, this thesis’s focus is to consider the role that location and the associated locational relationships had on the overall creation of the cemetery from its inception in the late Sixth Dynasty to its initial decline in the early First Intermediate Period. In addition, this thesis uses these relationships to look at the local élite’s connection to their landscape, memory, and identity. The cemetery is a multivariate landscape which emerged as both a practical and religious phenomenon for the local élite. The interplay between practical and abstract processes pulled together elements of the environment to establish the significance of the landscape for the local Egyptians, by its physical placement. Within the cemetery itself, it is evident that commercial, political, familial-filial, and religious relationships were important factors that affected the organisation of the tombs in Qubbet el-Hawa. The initial cemetery formed around commercial relationships before Qubbet el-Hawa divided into two separate burial areas, one in the north and one in the south. The first burial area developed around commercial, religious, and familial-filial relationships, while the second burial area was more complex covering a larger territory. The numerous intrusive burials have also been found to indicate the living continued to interact with the wider mortuary landscape. All this evidence demonstrates how Qubbet el-Hawa is a landscape of memory that the locals interacted with the cemetery to create their identity