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El-Lahun

 
El Lahun

 
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El-Lahun
 
 
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Located in the Faiyum
Al Fayyum

Faiyum is a city in Middle Egypt and the capital of the Faiyum Governorate. It is located 130 Km southwest of Cairo and occupies part of the ancient site of Crocodilopolis....
, Egypt
Egypt

Egypt is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Western Asia. Covering an area of about , Egypt borders the Mediterranean Sea to the north, the Gaza Strip and Israel to the northeast, the Red Sea to the east, Sudan to the south and Libya to the west....
, Kahun is the workers village of the pyramid
Pyramid

A pyramid is a building where the outer surfaces are triangular and converge at a point. The base of pyramids are usually quadrilateral or trilateral , meaning that a pyramid usually has four or five faces....
 of Senusret II
Senusret II

Khakeperre Senusret II was the fourth pharaoh of the Twelfth dynasty of Egypt of Ancient Egypt. He ruled from 1897 BC to 1878 BC. His pyramid was constructed at El-Lahun....
. It is located in the modern village of el-Lahun , and is often referred to by that name.

The workers there both constructed, and were then part of, the funerary cult of the king to sustain the king in the afterlife.

It is located about 800m from the pyramid, on the edge of cultivation.






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Pyramid At Lahun
Located in the Faiyum
Al Fayyum

Faiyum is a city in Middle Egypt and the capital of the Faiyum Governorate. It is located 130 Km southwest of Cairo and occupies part of the ancient site of Crocodilopolis....
, Egypt
Egypt

Egypt is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Western Asia. Covering an area of about , Egypt borders the Mediterranean Sea to the north, the Gaza Strip and Israel to the northeast, the Red Sea to the east, Sudan to the south and Libya to the west....
, Kahun is the workers village of the pyramid
Pyramid

A pyramid is a building where the outer surfaces are triangular and converge at a point. The base of pyramids are usually quadrilateral or trilateral , meaning that a pyramid usually has four or five faces....
 of Senusret II
Senusret II

Khakeperre Senusret II was the fourth pharaoh of the Twelfth dynasty of Egypt of Ancient Egypt. He ruled from 1897 BC to 1878 BC. His pyramid was constructed at El-Lahun....
. It is located in the modern village of el-Lahun , and is often referred to by that name.

The workers there both constructed, and were then part of, the funerary cult of the king to sustain the king in the afterlife.

It is located about 800m from the pyramid, on the edge of cultivation. Not much of the structure remains, as it was constructed of mud-brick
Mudbrick

A mudbrick is a firefree brick made of clay, or mud mixed with a binding material such as rice husks or straw.In warm regions with very little timber available to fuel a kiln, bricks were generally sun dried....
, and is now covered by drifting sand. Some buildings were removed when a railway was built through the area.

It was excavated by Petrie
William Matthew Flinders Petrie

Professor Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie Fellow of the Royal Society , known as Flinders Petrie, was an England Egyptology and a pioneer of systematic methodology in archaeology....
 (in 1888-90 and again in 1914). His excavations found many household objects (and tools), and these are thought to be a good indication of daily life in C12 BCE. Also found in the town are the Kahun papyri
Kahun Papyrus

The Kahun Papyrus is as an ancient Egyptian text discussing mathematical and medical topics. Its many fragments were discovered by Flinders Petrie in 1889 and are kept at the University College London....
, made up of about 1000 fragments, covering legal and medical matters.

The site was occupied into the late Thirteenth Dynasty
Thirteenth dynasty of Egypt

The Eleventh , Twelfth, Thirteenth and Fourteenth Dynasties of ancient Egypt are often combined under the group title, Middle Kingdom of Egypt....
, then again in the New Kingdom
New Kingdom

The New Kingdom, sometimes referred to as the Egyptian Empire, is the period in ancient Egyptian History of Ancient Egypt between the 16th century BC and the 11th century BC, covering the Eighteenth dynasty of Egypt, Nineteenth dynasty of Egypt, and Twentieth dynasty of Egypt....
, where there were large land reclamation schemes in the area.

Town Layout

The town was laid out in a regular plan, with mudbrick town walls on 3 sides (no evidence of a 4th wall), and the town might have been open to the Nile
Nile

The Nile is a major north-flowing river in Africa, generally regarded as the List of rivers by length in the world.The Nile has two major tributary, the White Nile and Blue Nile, the latter being the source of most of the Nile's water and silt, but the former being the longer of the two....
. It was rectangular in shape, with about 1/3 of the town walled off by an internal wall. The houses in this section are larger, and this may indicate a wealthier quarter. In the rest of the town, the houses are smaller and rougher.

A major feature of the town was the so-called ‘acropolis’ building. This was an important building, as indicated by the presence of column bases. Petrie suggested that this may have been the King’s residence whilst he was visiting construction work. The building seems to have been out of use and derelict before the end of occupation.

Bibliography

  • G. Brunton:, Lahun I: The Treasure (BSAE 27 en ERA 20 (1914)), London 1920.
  • A.R. David: The Pyramid Builders of Ancient Egypt: A Modern Investigation of Pharaoh’s Workforce, London, Boston en Henley 1986.
  • B. Gunn: The Name of the Pyramid-Town of Sesostris II, in JEA 31 (1945), p.106-107.
  • B. J. Kemp: Ancient Egypt: Anatomy of a Civilization, London 1989.
  • W.M.F.Petrie, G. Brunton, M. A. Murray: Lahun II (BSAE 33 en ERA 26 (1920)), London 1923.
  • W.M.F.Petrie, F. Ll. Griffith, P.E. Newberry: Kahun, Gurob, and Hawara, London 1890.
  • W.M.F.Petrie: Illahun, Kahun, and Gurob, London 1891.
  • S. Quirke, Lahun Studies, New Malden 1998.
  • S. Quirke: Lahun: A Town in Egypt 1800 BC, and the History of Its Landscape, London 2005.
  • A. Scharff: Illahun und die mit Königsnamen des Mittleren Reiches gebildeten Ortsnamen, in ZÄS 59 (1924), p.51-55.
  • K. Szpakowska: Daily Life in Ancient Egypt: Recreating Lahun, Malden, Oxford, Carlton 2008 ISBN 978-1-4051-1856-9
  • H. E. Winlock: The Treasure of el Lahun, New York 1973.


See also

  • Lahun pyramid


External references