El Lahun (Arabic: اللاهون El Lāhūn, Coptic: ⲗⲉϩⲱⲛⲉ alt. Illahun, Lahun, or Kahun (the latter being a neologism coined by archaeologist William Matthew Flinders Petrie) was a workmen’s village in Faiyum, Egypt. El Lahun was associated with the Pyramid of Senusret II (Greek: Sesostris II), which is located near the modern town, and is often called the Pyramid of Lahun. The ancient name of the site was rꜣ-ḥn.t, literally, “Mouth of the Canal”.
Location of El Lahun
Al-Lahun lies southwest of Al-Fayyūm near the southward turn of the Baḥr Yūsuf canal in Al-Fayyūm muḥāfaẓah (governorate). Al-Lāhūn was the location of a Middle Kingdom (1938–c. 1630 BCE) pyramid and a workmen’s village on approximately the same date.
Overview
Like the other Twelfth Dynasty pyramids in the Faiyum, the Pyramid of Lahun is made of mudbrick, but here, the Pyramid’s core consists of a network of stone walls filled with mudbrick. This approach was probably intended to ensure the stability of the brick structure. Unusually, despite a Pyramid Temple on the east side, the entrance to the Pyramid is on the south. The archaeologist Flinders Petrie nevertheless searched for it on the east side. He discovered the entrance only when workers clearing the nearby nobles’ tombs found a small tunnel at the bottom of a 40-foot shaft leading to the royal burial chamber. The original workers on the burial had used their legitimate activity as a cover for digging this tunnel, which enabled them to rob the Pyramid. Once in the burial chamber, Petrie could work backwards to the entrance.
On the north side, eight rectangular blocks of stone were left to serve as mastabas, probably for the burial of personages associated with the royal court. In front of each mastaba is a narrow shaft leading down to the burial chamber underneath. Also on the north side is the Queen’s Pyramid or subsidiary pyramid. The Pyramid stands on an artificial terrace cut from sloping ground.
The most remarkable discovery was that of the village of the workers who constructed the Pyramid and then served the funerary cult of the King. The village, conventionally known as Kahun, is about 800 meters from the Pyramid and lies in the desert a short distance from the edge of cultivation. When found, many of the buildings were extant up to roof height, and Petrie confirmed that the proper arch was known and used by the workers in the village. However, all the buildings found were demolished in the process of excavation, which proceeded in long strips down the length of the village. When the first strip had been cleared, mapped and drawn, the next strip was excavated, and the spoil was dumped in the previous strip. As a result, there is very little to be seen on the site today.
Petrie excavated the village in 1888–90 and again in 1914. The excavation was remarkable for the number, range, and quality of objects of everyday life (including tools) found in the houses. According to Dr Rosalie David’s Pyramid Builders of Ancient Egypt, “the quantity, range and type of articles of everyday use which were left behind in the houses may indeed suggest that the departure [of the workmen] was sudden and unpremeditated” (p. 199). Among the curiosities found were wooden boxes buried beneath the floors of many of the houses. They contained the skeletons of infants, sometimes two or three in a box, and aged only a few months at death. Petrie reburied these human remains in the desert.
Also found in the town were the Kahun papyri, comprising about 1000 fragments covering legal and medical matters. Egyptian archaeologists re-excavated the area in 2009 and revealed a cache of pharaonic-era mummies in brightly painted wooden coffins in the sand-covered desert rock surrounding the Pyramid.
The site was occupied into the late Thirteenth Dynasty and again in the New Kingdom when there were large land reclamation schemes.
El Lahun layout
The town was laid out in a regular plan, with mudbrick town walls on three sides. No evidence was found of a fourth wall, which may have collapsed and been washed away during the annual inundation. The town was rectangular and was divided internally by a mudbrick wall as large and robust as the exterior walls. This wall divided about one-third of the area of the town, and in this smaller area, the houses consisted of rows of back-to-back, side-by-side single-room dwellings.
The larger space, which was higher up the slope and thus benefited from whatever breeze was blowing, contained a much smaller number of large, multi-room villas. The houses ranged from 2,520 square meters for the elite homes to 120 square meters for tiny houses. Petrie compared the village to a Welsh mining village, where the workers lived in terraces in the valley while the mine owner and overseers lived in larger houses up the hill.
A significant feature of the town was the so-called “acropolis” building. This was an important building, as indicated by column bases. Petrie suggested this may have been the King’s residence while visiting construction work. The building seems to have been out of use and derelict before the end of the occupation.
Other records show many Semitic enslaved people in Egypt during the Twelfth Dynasty. Interestingly, some villas were constructed of mudbrick layers separated by reed matting layers, a technique used in Mesopotamia. Furthermore, burial beneath the living quarters of a house was a custom noted at Ur by Woolley. It is possible that the workers who were so carefully guarded by the village wall and separated from the overseers by an equally strong wall were Semitic (Asiatic) enslaved people not trusted by their overseers.
Discoveries
The Supreme Council of Antiquities announced on 26 April 2009 that an anthology of pharaonic-era mummies in vividly painted wooden coffins was uncovered near the Lahun pyramid in Egypt. The sarcophagi were decorated with bright green, red and white hues, bearing images of their occupants. Archaeologists unearthed dozens of mummies, thirty of which were well preserved with prayers to help the deceased in the afterlife. Once enveloped in slabs of white limestone, the site revealed that it could be thousands of years older than previously thought.
Experts think that a new understanding of Egyptian funerary architecture and customs of the Middle Kingdom to the Roman era could be learned from exploring the dozens of tombs encompassing the site near the Lahun, Egypt’s southernmost Pyramid. “The tombs were cut on the rock itself, and they vary in architectural designs,” said archaeologist Abdel Rahman El-Aydi, head of excavations at the site. Some of the tombs were erected on top of gravesites from earlier eras. Ayedi told reporters: “The prevailing idea was that Senusret II, the fourth king of the 12th Dynasty, had established this site. But in light of our discovery, I think we will change this theory, and soon we will announce another discovery.” He said that teams had discovered an artefact dated earlier than the 12th Dynasty but did not include any specifics on the item and promised an official statement would be made within days.
Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities announced on 23 May 2010 that 57 ancient Egyptian tombs were discovered in an area close to Lahun. Most of the graves contained an ornamental wooden sarcophagus with a mummy inside. Some tombs date to the Egyptian First and Second dynasties, as far back as 2750 BC. Several sites were decorated with hieroglyphics that the ancients believed would help the deceased travel through the afterlife.
Twelve tombs belonged to the 18th Dynasty, which ruled Egypt during the second millennium BC. Egyptologist Zahi Hawass said the mummies that date to the 18th Dynasty are covered in linen decorated with religious texts from the Book of the Dead and scenes of ancient Egyptian deities. The discovery might help experts better understand the ancient Egyptian religion. Some of the tombs are decorated with religious texts that ancient Egyptians believed would help the deceased cross over to the underworld, said Abdel Rahman El-Aydi, the project’s chief archaeologist. El-Aydi said one of the oldest tombs is almost entirely intact, with all its funerary equipment and a wooden coffin containing a mummy wrapped in linen.
In 31 tombs, dating back to around 2030–1840 BC, archaeologists found scenes of different ancient Egyptian deities such as Horus, Amun, Hathor, and Khnum decorated on the tombs during the Middle Kingdom era.
