The tomb had been robbed. Fragments of one of the large, circular,
bowl coffins (XX, 5) were scattered through the earth all down the
shaft, and the great slab which had closed the door was thrown over
at the bottom of the well. The chamber was empty, but under the flat
stone were found fragments of a slate dish, of an alabaster table, and
of four diorite bowls. Of one of these, the largest I have seen (PL.
II, 1), more than two-thirds of the pieces remained; it was inscribed,
in neat, deep characters, _suten biti Sneferu_, the name of the king
being written without the cartouche. In this tomb was also one of the
coarse bars of pottery that I have found both in Old Kingdom and in
Neolithic tombs, the use of which is by no means clear. They were,
when complete, about 2 feet 6 inches long, and 4 inches thick; they
are flat on one side, rounded on the other. The sides of one Neolithic
tomb at Ballas were lined with bars of this kind. In another, the body
was sheltered by a large inverted dish resting upon several of them;
frequently fragments of two or three were found in a tomb. Perhaps
they were used as supports for the coffin.
In tomb No. 312, which was probably a mastaba, though the walls were
not observed, the well was but 2 metres deep. The chamber was at the
west, and was just large enough to contain the pottery coffin and a
few pots. The coffin was of the short type (3 feet long); the body lay
on its left side, crouched up, head to the N., and face E. One bone
from the foot lay outside the coffin at the foot end, where also lay
a small bowl of diorite, part of another in limestone, bracelets in
shell and horn, an ivory hairpin, and a shell containing green paint.
Through the earth in the tomb-shaft were scattered a large number of
coarse pots (PL. XII, two of 41, 45, 43, a hundred and four of 22,
more than a hundred of 31).
In tomb No. 318, the burial chamber lay to the west of the well, 2 m.
above the bottom of it, 3·7 m. from the top. The bones were scattered
and broken, but the chamber was so small that the burial must have
been a contracted one. There remained a diorite bowl (11 inches
diameter), a vertical alabaster jar, a smaller one containing green
paint, and part of a bowl in a good red ware, of the same open shape
as the bronze bowl of Ka-mena's tomb.
No. 315 contained a fragment of sculpture (XVIII, 55). No. 319 had the
regular group of alabaster table and small and large diorite bowl,
with two of the long egg-shaped pots (XI, 12), a vase with a spout
(PL. XII, 55), and one of the open red pottery bowls, as in No. 318,
and Ka-mena (PL. XII, 51).
Next comes a group of tombs with square wells, and chambers closed by
a large block of stone, which tombs are probably mastabas, although
the panelled brickwork was not found.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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