Tomb S3503

Creators/Contributors

Creator	Sullivan, Elaine A.

Bibliographic information

ORIGINAL OWNER OR SPONSOR OF STRUCTURE (Owner/Builder)	Title Unknown (3503)
TYPE OF MONUMENT (Type)	Title Mastaba
TEMPORAL PERIOD OF ORIGINAL CONSTRUCTION (First Period)	Title Early Dynastic Period
DYNASTY OF ORIGINAL CONSTRUCTION (First Dynasty)	Title Dynasty 1
ROYAL REIGN OF ORIGINAL CONSTRUCTION (First King)	Title Unknown
SITE	Title Saqqara
MODERN SCHOLAR/EXPLORER FIRST DOCUMENTING STRUCTURE (Discoverer)	Title Emery
YEAR OF REDISCOVERY IN MODERN TIMES (Years)	Title 1953.0
TYPE OF STRUCTURE (3D Model Type)	Title Custom model
DATE OF MODEL CONSTRUCTION OR UPDATE (3D Model Date)	Title 2013.0
NAME OF 3D MODELER	Title Aria Klucewicz
SOFTWARE USED FOR MODEL BUILD	Title SketchUp Pro
COPYRIGHT (Copyright)	Title UC Regents, 3D Saqqara Project
SOURCES/REFERENCES FOR 2D BASE DATA (Citation)	Title Polygon data from Bresciani and Giammarusti (2003) added to and emended by GIS Supervisor and Senior Surveyor Emanuele Brienza (2010)
DESCRIPTION – ORIGINAL HEIGHT OF STRUCTURE IN METERS (Height Original(m))	Title 6.1 (estimated), 2.2 (preserved)
DESCRIPTION – ORIGINAL LENGTH OF STRUCTURE IN METERS (Length Original(m))	Title 42.6
DESCRIPTION – ORIGINAL WIDTH OF STRUCTURE IN METERS (Width Original(m))	Title 16.0
SOURCES/REFERENCE USED AS BASIS FOR 3D MODEL CONSTRUCTION (3D Data Source)	Title Walter Emery, Great Tombs of the First Dynasty, Excavations at Saqqara 2 (Cairo: Government Press, 1954), 128–38
DESCRIPTION – ORIGINAL EXTERIOR DECORATION	Title Painted, plastered, niched façadeEmery reported that the exterior façade was originally painted in red, green, black, and yellow; the painted facade ended .75m above floor level and a dado of red and black was situated below the painted area. Surrounding the main block of the superstructure was a stamped mud pavement colored in with red and blue; this decoration is not included in the 3D model.
DESCRIPTION – ORIGINAL ENCLOSURE WALL DIMENSIONS	Title .65 thick, only one side preserved
DESCRIPTION – ORIGINAL EXTERIOR MATERIAL (3D Texture)	Title Mud-brick; white plaster
UNCERTAINTY LEVEL FOR 3D MODEL CONSTRUCTION	Title 2.0
Elevation - placement in model ASL IN METERS	Title 55.0
Discussion of virtual reconstruction and interpretative choices	Title Exterior niching size and form based on the plan of the tomb in Emery (1954: pl. 38). Emery did not suggest a reconstructed height for the superstructure but noted that the base dado of the painted design ended at 0.75m above ground level (which implies that the design extended much higher), and that the "vast quantity" of collapsed brick around the pavement suggested "the collapse of a structure of considerable height" (1954: 140); the model reconstruction thus visualizes the superstructure to ~6m. None of the the upper portions of the mastabas with exterior niching were preserved at Saqqara; the design of this part of the monument in the model is highly hypothetical, based on Early Dynastic palace facade imagery that shows some type of flat panel between the most deeply recessed niches, with the shallower niched areas extending higher, as visualized more elaborately in Emery (1954: pl. 39). The subsidiary burials that surrounded the superstructure consisted of pits with wooden roofing; their shape and height was based on the reconstruction drawing of Emery (1954: pl. 39).The tomb included a boat burial located to the north, the boat situated parallel with the north side of tomb. The preserved superstructure of the boat burial measured 17.75m x 4.25m x 0.8m (high).In Dynasty 5, the mastaba (as well as all the Dynasty 1 mastaba tombs) is replaced in the model by a deflated ruin; any elaborate niching, polychrome paint, and enclosures are replaced by a solid rectangular structure, shorter than the original, to represent the possible melting and collapse of the brick structure. The exact dating and duration for this process is unclear, but Emery’s excavations show that, in Dynasties 2–3, new tombs were already built against and even over the earliest structures, suggesting that the deflation process was rapid and certainly took place before the end of the Old Kingdom.
Part of publication	Title Sullivan, Elaine A. Constructing the Sacred: Visibility and Ritual Landscape at the Egyptian Necropolis at Saqqara, Redwood City: Stanford University Press 2020, http://doi.org/10.21627/2020cts
Location	https://purl.stanford.edu/nf877xr5093

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Copyright

Stanford University, 2019.

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial No Derivatives 4.0 International license (CC BY-NC-ND).

Collection

Constructing the Sacred Archive

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