The necropolis at Tell el-Farkha reconsidered

Works on the necropolis at Tell el-Farkha have reached the 9th season and resulted in locating over 100 burials. In this situation, almost every succeeding campaign was bringing such a number of new data that preliminary statements were continuously being changed almost year by year. Numerous analyses of pottery, stone vessels, architectural details and stratigraphy, finally, seem to lead to some more profound conclusions. According to them, all graves at Tell el-Farkha have been divided into 3 main chronological groups. Group 1 is the oldest one. It is dated back from Naqada IIIB phase to the middle of Dynasty 1. People buried in the graves of this group represented wealthy society, and they also experimented, trying to reach a perfect grave form. The process is the best explanation of the presence of so many “strange” structures and differences in position of the deceased, but on the other hand, also numerous elements of typically early dynastic burial custom (e.g. niche façades or subsidiary burials) seem to emerge in that time. Tombs belonging to the group 2 come from the middle of Dynasty 1 to late Dynasty 1 or even to early Dynasty 2. Main social features they express are stressing of wealth inequality and presence of clearly definite and quite strictly obeyed rules of burial ritual. However the graves of the younger group are clearly a continuation of the older custom and so the origin of both societies must have been similar, the changes in orientation of tombs as well as examples of younger burials cutting into older ones suggest that both groups were divided by short break in occupation of cemetery. The final phase (group 3) of the cemetery at Tell el-Farkha was surely separated from the previous ones by a much longer period of time. The tombs representing phase in question are distributed only in the highest part of the tell, and may be dated on the basis of stratigraphic observations to the beginning of the Old Kingdom. They characterise of very simple burial custom (all the bodies were found resting in simple pits) and are hardly equipped with any objects.