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The First Intermediate Period and Middle Kingdom in Abusir Centre

Publication at Faculty of Arts |
2022

Abstract

Abusir is considered a site where the influence of developments at the very end of the Old Kingdom and during the First Intermediate Period and the Middle Kingdom is not very evident. However, it seems that we should start to change this view.

Until the beginning of the work of the archaeological expedition of Charles University, they were only the results of the excavation work of the German expedition in the area around the Niuserre and Neferikare mortuary temples that attested both the continued burying and the continuation of the cult of the king Niuserre as the local saint Iny. However, further information has been provided by discoveries at the Raneferef and Khentkaus II mortuary temple and, more recently, at other sites in the royal necropolis made by the Czechoslovak and then Czech expedition.

This paper seeks to put these recent finds in the context of our understanding of the development of Central Abusir between the Twenty-second and Seventeenth Centuries BC. In addition to that, the article also deals with the question of the Lepsius "pyramids" no. 16 and 28.