The Pyramid Complex of Senwosret I

As a result of The Metropolitan Museum of Art's renewed excavations in Lisht, the Egyptian Department published The Pyramid of Senwosret I by Dieter Arnold in 1988, followed in 1990 by The Control Notes and Team Marks by Felix Arnold. The first volume examined the main pyramid and its related mortuary installations, while this third volume, The Pyramid Complex of Senwosret I by Dieter Arnold, discusses the monuments and objects found within the outer enclosure wall of the royal pyramid, mainly the nine subsidiary pyramids and other tombs belonging to members of the royal family and their households. Although the pyramids and their surrounding installations are much destroyed and the burials pillaged, it has been possible to reconstruct, to some degree, the architecture from these ruins. Such a reconstruction is particularly important, as no other pyramid enclosures of the Middle Kingdom, and very few of the Old Kingdom, have ever been so thoroughly excavated and published. The results of this enterprise provide an important contribution to our understanding of the structure and development of the royal funerary complexes of the Middle Kingdom.

As with the other volumes on the Museum's excavations, this publications provides complete information and archaeological context for a number of important objects from Lisht that were given to the Museum as a result of the division of finds, and are now displayed in the Egyptian Galleries of the Metropolitan Museum. Also significant is the discovery of timbers from one or more ancient ships, described in the appendix. When these vessels were no longer thought to be seaworthy, they were disassembled and their timbers embedded in roads used during the construction of the pyramid complex.

Future publications on Lisht South will discuss the reliefs associated with the funerary complex of Senwosret I, private tombs that surrounded the pyramid complex, and texts associated with these tombs.

(This title was originally published in 1992/93.)