Naga ed-Der in the First Intermediate Period

Beginning in 1901, George A. Reisner conducted a number of excavating campaigns in the neighborhood of the modern village of Naga ed-Deir in Upper Egypt, opposite the ancient city of Thinis, at first for the Hearst Expedition of the University of California (up to 1905) and thereafter for the Harvard University-Boston Museum of Fine Arts Expedition. Naga-ed-Dêr is important because of a series of ancient cemeteries extending in time from the Predynastic period to the Middle Kingdom. These cemeteries run for about six kilometers from Sheikh Farag on the north to Mesheikh on the south and form parts of a single large cemetery of the Thinite nome UE 8. In the course of the excavations at Naga-ed-Dêr, Reisner discovered in addition extensive remains of the First Intermediate period-decorated tombs, steles, and inscribed coffins-belonging to the period extending from the end of the Sixth to the Eleventh Dynasties. The Predynastic, Early Dynastic, and Old Kingdom material from Naga-ed-Dêr has been studied and published by Reisner and Arthur C. Mace and by Albert M. Lythgoe and Dows Dunham. Dows Dunham published seventy-five steles from Reisner's excavations in 1937.



This volume endeavors to date the material found by Reisner, including the inscribed stones published by Dunham, with a view to elucidating the history of the site in the period between the Old and Middle Kingdoms. Furthermore, a number of steles seen on the art market or in museums or private collections which, by their style, belong clearly to Naga-ed-Dêr, have been added as supplementary material.

Tohfa Handoussa (1937-2017) was professor of ancient Egypt and Egyptian archaeology at the Faculty of Arts, Department of Archaeology, Cairo University from 1987, where she served as head of the Egyptology Department from 1988 to 1994 and as vice-dean of the Faculty of Archaeology from 1994 to 1997. Her career has been honored by colleagues and former students in a two-volume tribute, The Realm of the Pharaohs: Essays in Honor of Tohfa Handoussa (Cairo, 2008). Edward Brovarski is an adjunct research scholar, devoting his time to the publication of the excavations of the Harvard University-Boston Museum of Fine Arts Egyptian Expedition at Giza and Naga ed-Der. He has previously held curatorial positions in the Department of Egyptian and Ancient Near Eastern Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, from 1974. He became curator in 1984 and research curator of Egyptian Art in 1988.