Bet Khallaf is a Third Egyptian Dynasty (2686-2613 BC ca.) necropolis located on the west bank of the Nile at 26° 19’ North, 31° 47’ East in the desert zone bordering on the crop cultivations, 20 km north of Abydos necropolis (Umm el-Qa’ab), site of the first royal burial place of the first Egyptian kings (Ist Dynasty 3000-2890 BC ca.). The site includes a five hectares area, where five mudbrick mastabas (rectangular mudbrick tombs with underground apartments) were discovered in May 1901 by John Garstang, as a mission for the Egyptian Research Account, which received no further attention from the scholars. The most prominent tomb, K1, was believed to be an Old Kingdom (2686-2160 BC ca.) fortress, while the locals identified it as a ‘Deir (sacred place)’. Nevertheless, the possible royal character of the mastaba K1, already documented by Garstang and confirmed by the PhD research conducted by the lead researcher of this project, may suggest a new interpretative hypothesis for the site. In fact, its ‘royal’ elements would fill the architectural gap between the Thinite royal tombs (brick mastabas with distant cultic enclosures) and the first building phases of the Step Pyramid at Saqqara (a massive stone mastabas within a rectangular enclosure), as supported by several scholars. This project is, therefore, aimed at getting new insights into this hypothesis, based on the first systematic study of all the funerary equipment deriving from the site, today kept in several museum institutions.
Dr. Ilaria Incordino, archaeologist and Egyptologist, is the lead researcher for this Shelby White and Leon Levy Program project. She has conducted some archaeological surveys at the site of Bet Khallaf and several documentation missions at different museum institutions where the funerary equipment from the site is currently kept. She will coordinate the contribution of researchers to develop the database and open access publication of the material, as well as the editing of the final monograph.
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