The Other Abusir

This chapter discusses the change in how scholars view Abusir, in part due to the discovery of a cemetery with shaft tombs dating from the end of the Twenty-sixth and the beginning of the Twenty-seventh Dynasty—that is, from the end of what is known as the Saite Period and the beginning of the first period of Persian domination over Egypt. Until recently, Egyptologists and archaeologists looked at Abusir in a distinctly one-sided way. Thanks to the pyramids built in Abusir by the pharaohs of the Fifth Dynasty, the village was regarded as a relatively short-lived royal cemetery belonging exclusively to that period. The chapter first describes the archaeological excavations made by a Czech team in the newly discovered cemetery with shaft tombs in Abusir before examining the mystery surrounding Wedjahorresnet's funerary monument in Abusir. It also considers two shaft tombs, one belonging to Iufaa and the other to Menekhibnekau.