Tomb 3506

Description

Type of resource	three dimensional object

Creators/Contributors

Creator	Sullivan, Elaine A.

Bibliographic information

Contained on project page	Title Model Metadata: Dynasty 1
ORIGINAL OWNER OR SPONSOR OF STRUCTURE (Owner/Builder)	Title Unknown (3506)
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 1955.0
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, Elaine Sullivan
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 4 (estimated), 2 (preserved)
DESCRIPTION – ORIGINAL LENGTH OF STRUCTURE IN METERS (Length Original(m))	Title 47.6
DESCRIPTION – ORIGINAL WIDTH OF STRUCTURE IN METERS (Width Original(m))	Title 19.6
SOURCES/REFERENCE USED AS BASIS FOR 3D MODEL CONSTRUCTION (3D Data Source)	Title Walter Emery, Great Tombs of the First Dynasty, Excavations at Saqqara 3 (London: Government Press, 1958)
DESCRIPTION – ORIGINAL EXTERIOR DECORATION	Title Niched façade; painted?Emery stated that paint was not preserved on the superstructure, although the palace façade may originally have been painted (portions of the substructure retained paint), so the model was left white without painted color
DESCRIPTION – ORIGINAL ENCLOSURE WALL DIMENSIONS	Title 67m x 28.5m x 0.9 (high)
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 (1958: pl. 40). Emery did not suggest a reconstructed height for the superstructure; in the model it is estimated at ~4m to match with the hypothesized height of similarly sized monuments. Emery did not provide an exact height for the enclosure wall, so his scaled cross-section drawings were used to approximate the height at 0.9m. 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 façade 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). Emery’s drawing (1958: pl. 45) showed that the superstructure over one of the subsidiary burials (3506-01) was 20cm high, with a rounded top and flat sloping sides, so this was used as a general model for all the subsidiary tombs, although other examples may have been shorter. A boat burial to the north was described by Emery as a “low tumulus,” 22.15m long, which he reconstructed to its maximum height) as standing ~1.2m tall, with a rounded brick superstructure (1958: pl. 41), so these dimensions were used for the visualization of the boat burial.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/sx048rk6876

Access conditions

Use and reproduction

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons license. The material is made available for non-commercial, research purposes. Any third party material may need to be permissioned separately for reuse.

Copyright

Stanford University, 2019.

License

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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