Umm el-Qa'ab at Abydos: Royal Cemetery of the First Pharaohs

Umm el-Qa’ab is the royal cemetery at Abydos in Upper Egypt where the first kings of Egypt were buried, from the late Predynastic period to around 2690 BC. Its brick-lined tombs reveal the beginnings of Egyptian kingship, writing and state ritual. Centuries later the site was revered as the burial place of the god Osiris and drew pilgrims for over a thousand years.

Location and name

The cemetery lies in the low desert about 1.5 km west of the cultivated land at Abydos, beneath a gap in the cliffs that Egyptians may have seen as an entrance to the underworld. Its Arabic name means “Mother of Pots”, after the vast carpet of potsherds left by later pilgrims.

Abydos lay in the Thinite region, the probable homeland of the family that unified Egypt. Although the kings ruled from Memphis, they chose to be buried among their ancestors here. The town later also gained the great temple of Seti I.

The royal tombs

The oldest part, Cemetery U, contains Predynastic graves. The most important is tomb U-j, dated to around 3200 BC, whose small bone labels carry some of the earliest known Egyptian writing, roughly contemporary with the invention of cuneiform in Mesopotamia.

Cemetery B holds the tombs of Dynasty 0 rulers, of Narmer and of Hor-Aha. Beyond them lie the larger tombs of the First Dynasty kings Djer, Djet, Den, Anedjib, Semerkhet and Qa’a, together with that of Queen Merneith. Two Second Dynasty kings, Peribsen and Khasekhemwy, returned to the site; Khasekhemwy’s tomb is about 70 metres long.

The tombs were pits lined with mud brick and roofed with timber, covered by low mounds and marked by pairs of stone stelae naming the owner. Den’s tomb introduced a stairway entrance and a granite floor, an early use of hard stone. Near the cultivation each king also built a mud-brick funerary enclosure; Khasekhemwy’s, known today as the Shunet ez-Zebib, still stands about 10 to 11 metres high.

What the tombs contained

Although robbed in antiquity, the tombs still yielded thousands of objects. Storerooms held wine jars sealed with clay stoppers stamped with royal names, as well as stone vessels, copper tools, furniture fittings of ivory and game pieces.

Small labels of ivory and ebony, once tied to jars and boxes, are especially valuable. Many name a year by an important event, such as a festival or a campaign, making them forerunners of the royal annals later carved on the Palermo Stone. A label from Den’s tomb, now in the British Museum, shows the king running in his jubilee festival, the sed.

Subsidiary burials

Rows of small graves surround the royal tombs and enclosures. Djer’s tomb alone was accompanied by more than 300 burials, many with stelae naming servants, officials and women of the court.

Many Egyptologists believe these people were killed to serve the king in the afterlife, because the graves appear to have been roofed at the same time as the royal tomb. Others urge caution. The practice declined towards the end of the First Dynasty and did not continue into the pyramid age.

Excavation

The French excavator Émile Amélineau dug at Umm el-Qa’ab from 1895 to 1898, but his methods were poor and many records were lost. Flinders Petrie followed in 1899-1901, recovering labels, seal impressions, jewellery and stone vessels missed by his predecessor. Among his finds was a linen-wrapped arm from Djer’s tomb wearing four bracelets of gold, turquoise and amethyst.

Since the 1970s the German Archaeological Institute in Cairo has re-excavated the cemetery, first under Werner Kaiser and then Günter Dreyer. Its work found tomb U-j in 1988 and seal impressions listing the First Dynasty kings in order.

The tomb of Osiris

By the Middle Kingdom, around 2000 BC, Djer’s tomb was believed to be the grave of Osiris, the murdered god who became ruler of the dead. Kings restored it, and an annual festival re-enacted the god’s death and resurrection.

A black granite bed showing Osiris lying on a lion-headed bier, now in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, was found in the tomb by Amélineau; it is usually dated to the 13th Dynasty. Pilgrims left offering pots here, especially in the Late Period, creating the mounds that gave the site its name.

Timeline

• c. 3200 BC: Tomb U-j is built, containing early inscribed labels.
• c. 3100 BC: Narmer is buried in Cemetery B.
• c. 3000-2900 BC: Djer, Djet, Merneith and Den build large tombs.
• c. 2690 BC: Khasekhemwy, last king of the Second Dynasty, is buried here.
• c. 2000 BC: Djer’s tomb is venerated as the tomb of Osiris.
• 1895-1898: Émile Amélineau excavates the site.
• 1899-1901: Flinders Petrie re-excavates and publishes the royal tombs.
• 1988: German excavators uncover tomb U-j.

Why it matters

Umm el-Qa’ab is the burial ground of Egypt’s founding dynasties and one of the places where Egyptian writing first appears. It also shows how memory reshaped history: the tomb of an early king became, for later Egyptians, the grave of a god.