Tomb No. 3471_ from the Reign of Djer

Tomb No. 3471 from the Reign of Djer

 

Emery discovered the tomb No. 3471 dating to the reign of Djer in a far worse state of preservation than that of the one dating to the reign of Hor Aha. While the tomb is almost the same size as that of No. 3357, it is more elaborate in design, and the subterranean chambers are hewn considerably deeper into the bedrock. The burial chamber is also larger and deeper than the surrounding storerooms, and there is no passage to them. The substructure had been set afire, probably not much later than the 1st Dynasty, perhaps to hide its plunder by thieves. Within the mastaba superstructure were 29 magazines that only contained scattered and fragmentary stone and pottery vessels.

There was a vast collection of copper vessels, tools and weapons found in this tomb, mostly in one of the seven subterranean chambers, including a fine, gold handled flint knife. The seventy copper ewers, bowls, dishes and jars were worked using a hammer, and the spouts and handles were joined by copper rivets. They represented seven distinct types of containers, and their forms were similar to the stone vessels of the first two dynasties. There were also hundreds of copper knives, saws, adzes, hoes, chisels, piercers, bodkins, needles and rectangular plates that may have originally been contained in wooden boxes. other items included copper, leather and ivory bracelets, game pieces, scrapers, a few ivory vessels and some fragments of wooden furniture. Finally, there were some roughly rectangular stone palettes, including one with a figure of the king raising a mace in his hand above an enemy, perhaps Libyan, and to the right the forepart of a lion.