Ann Macy Roth

Groups of part-time workers called phyles served in mortuary cults and work crews during the Old Kingdom in Egypt. This study clarifies their attributes and functioning in these and other institutions, based on the integration of textual and archaeological evidence from the Old Kingdom and the Archaic period preceding it. The arguments suggest that phyles originated in an upper Egyptian social organization dated to the predynastic period, and that they played a more important role than is generally realized in the stability of the early Egyptian state.

The Evolution of a System of Social Organization

Egyptian Phyles in the Old Kingdom

In the latter part of the Fifth Dynasty the necropolis that surrounded the Fourth Dynasty pyramids of Giza again became a popular site for the tombs of Memphite officials. A particular cluster of these mastaba tombs was excavated between 1936 and 1939 by George Andrew Reisner. Some of the tomb chapels were found to be decorated; others had anterooms with courtyards and porticoes. All of the inscribed tombs bore a title which Roth translates as "palace attendant". This publication presents the artifactual, iconographic and architectural results of the excavation in two parts. The first covers the architecture of the cluster as a whole; the second compares details of the individual tombs, and an extensive index lists mastabas, personal names, and Egyptian words, phrases, titles and epithets. This is a vast study, which leaves no Gizan stone unturned.

Including G 2084-2099, G 2230+2231, and G 2240

A Cemetery of Palace Attendants

Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, N.Y.)

Catharine H. Roehrig

Marianne Eaton-Krauss

Diana Craig Patch

Susan J. Allen

Renée F. Friedman

David P. Silverman

Emilia Cortes

Anna Serotta

"This catalogue is published in conjunction with the exhibition 'The Dawn of Egyptian Art' on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York from April 10 to August 5, 2012"--T.p. verso.

Dawn of Egyptian Art

Ann Macy Roth

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