Articles

The building corner marks in the shafts of the late Dynasty V and Dynasty VI at Giza: notes on the preliminary planning of the Egyptian rock-cut tombs of the Old Kingdom

Vostok/Oriens '2016, №3

 
A number of rock-cut shaft graves, both in the Giza Necropolis and Saqqara Necropolis, have corner protrusions of the small size. Foreign researchers have already paid attention to these architectural elements, but their exact appointment remained unclear. The paper gives arguments in favour of the belonging of corner protrusions to the “marks” which are consciously left by workers at different stages of construction for fixing of amounts of completed work. The main data were obtained from a large number of the similar elements which are found by the Russian Archaeological Mission at Giza. The building marks in corners of shafts relating to fixing of the amounts of works executed by workers can help to understand staging of construction, preliminary planning of construction works, and in some cases to find connections between constructive details of a shaft and a status of a buried person.

Keywords: Ancient Egypt, Old Kingdom, Giza, architecture, rock-cut tombs, shaft graves, building marks, corner protrusions

Pages: С. 46–62