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1) K. Myœliwiec, PAM X, Reports 1998, (1999), n. 2 for earlier bibliography; id., "Five Wives and a Girlfriend", DiscoveringArchaeology (July-August 1999), 54-67; id., "Nowe odkrycia przy najstarszej piramidzie œwiata", Œwiat Nauki 8 (1999), 28-37; id., "Vizir de Saqqara", L'Archéologue. Archéologie Nouvelle, 42 (juin-juillet 1999), 47-49; id., "Meref-nebef: Berater desPharaos", Spektrum der Wissenschaft (Dezember 1999), 54-60; id., "The New Discovered Tomb Hidden by the World's OldestPyramid" (in Japanese), Nikkei Science, vol. 30, no. 8 (2000), 48-58; id., "Saqqara: una tomba piena di misteri", Le Scienze,377 (2000), 76-85; id., "O Tafos tou Archierea ton Farao", Scientific American (Greek edition) (January 2000), 51-60; id., "Ladécouverte d'un vizir", Pour la science (avril 2000), 34-41; id. (with K. Kuraszkiewicz), Recent Polish-Egyptian Excavationsin West Saqqara, Saqqara-Abusir 2000, Prague (in print).2) K. Myœliwiec, New Faces of Saqqara (Tuchów 1999), figs. 39-41.

FUNERARY CHAPEL OF MEREF-NEBEFPreliminary report on the recording of the decoration

Kamil Kuraszkiewicz

The present report is a presentation of thedocumentation principles and the mostimportant problems that have beenencountered in the recording of the funer-ary chapel of the vizier Meref-nebef, whichthe Polish-Egyptian Archaeological Missionat Saqqara discovered in 1997 during exca-vations west of the funerary complex ofNetjerykhet.1)

The chapel had been cut in a ledge ofyellowish limestone, which is very soft andcrumbling. The monumental facade con-sists of three walls: the oblong eastern one,which has an extremely narrow entrance(60 cm wide) to the chapel in the middle,and the narrow, northern and southern lat-eral walls. The decoration of the easternwall of the facade is composed of three reg-isters. The topmost one (referred to asinner "lintel") bears the inscription anda representation of the deceased in sunkenrelief (c. 1 cm deep) with traces of bluepaint, having in its present state a greenishshade. The middle register consists ofa long inscription, and the lower one bearseight representations of the tomb owner,both executed in raised relief (up to 1 cm

high) and polychromed. The surface of therock ledge on either side and above thechapel facade, referred to as the outer"jambs" and "lintel", is covered with textsand representations in sunken relief (up to5 cm deep), but with no surviving traces ofpolychromy.

The chapel itself is a rectangular room,6.45 x 2.43 m (Fig. 1), cut in the rock anddecorated inside with inscriptions and rep-resentations, for the most part in raisedrelief (the exceptions being false doors,offering lists and a few inscriptions), thepolychromy largely preserved. The falsedoors inside the chapel were painted inimitation of red granite and decorated withinscriptions and representations in sunkenrelief, featuring blue paint.2) Considerablechanges with respect to the original ver-sion may be noted in the present state ofthe decoration.

The nature and structure of the rockforced the ancient artists to use differenttechniques. Some parts of the decorationwere cut straight in the rock face, coveredwith a thin lime ground and painted (e.g.most of the decoration inside the chapel).

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Other parts were made in a thick layer ofreddish, coarse-grained mortar that waslaid to even out the rock surface (southernend of eastern wall of the facade). In thefacade, where the quality of rock is partic-ularly poor, a missing part of the rock ofconsiderable size was filled in with a slab ofa much better quality stone bearing a relief(in the northern outer jamb, the insertedslab being the only fragment of this jambwhere the relief decoration is still pre-served).

Perhaps the same case occurred insidethe chapel where a part of the relief was

carved in blocks inserted in a rectangularniche in the wall (southern upper corner ofthe eastern wall).3) Here, the scenes are dif-ferent from the rest of the decoration, bothin their style and color range. It is possiblethat this fragment was made at a laterdate.4)

The damages to the relief decorationand the polychromy of the chapel are obvi-ously a consequence in part of the naturalweakness of the rock and its salinity.5) Thiskind of damage concerns mainly the plas-ter and paint layer (then the outlines of therelief are visible) as well as the mortar layer

3) Ibid., fig. 51.4) Myœliwiec, Kuraszkiewicz, Saqqara-Abusir 2000, op. cit.5) Z. Godziejewski, "Conservation work in the funerary chapel of Meref-nebef", PAM X, Reports 1998 (1999), 97-100.

Fig. 1. Funerary chapel of Meref-nebef. Plan(Drawing K. Kuraszkiewicz)

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Fig. 2. A damaged and overpainted inscription in the hunting scene on the eastern wall of the chapel, mentioning the pyramid and themrt temple of king Teti (Photo Z. KoϾ)

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covering the rock. In the latter case nega-tives in plaster are sometimes preserved oroutlines of the relief in the rock. However,the relief modeling was often made only inthe plaster.6) In some places (e.g. theinscription strip in the upper part of theeastern wall of the chapel), there is no reliefunder the layer of plaster, but sketchesmade in red and black paint can beobserved instead.7)

Certain parts of the damaged decora-tion were painted over (e.g. scenes in thebottom parts of the lateral walls in theentrance or some parts of the hunting sceneon the eastern wall of the chapel – Fig. 2).Since there is no evidence of intentionaldestruction (no traces of chiselling) indamages of this kind, it may be assumedthat they resulted from natural surface fri-ability and the overpainting was designedto mask the problem.

However, certain elements (the wordnswt in the formula imAxw xr nswt(cf. Fig. 4), the figures, names and titles oftwo or three sons of Meref-nebef) wereintentionally chiseled out in ancient times(there are clear traces of a chisel with a cut-ting edge of c. 9 mm). While the previ-ously described damages show definite carein their masking, no effort was made toconceal parts that had been chiseled out;they were neither painted nor covered withplaster. Solely in the scene on the southernwall of the entrance the word smit waspainted in black in a place where the orig-inal nswt had been chiselled out.Nonetheless, the surface had not beenevened out, the damage was not concealedand the painted hieroglyphs themselves arequite careless (Figs. 3-4).

All of the decoration of the funerarychapel has been recorded in drawing, pho-tography and description.

In 1997 the decoration of the southernouter "jamb" and outer "lintel", the inner"lintel" and a few scenes from inside thechapel were recorded. A system for num-bering the scenes was also introduced,starting from the top and from theentrance, going down and toward the axisof the eastern wall of the chapel, first in thenorthern, then in the southern part(cf. Fig. 1). In 1998, all the scenes insidethe tomb were recorded in drawing. Therelief decoration on the northern andsouthern walls of the facade was not drawn,because this would have required the dis-mantling of a provisional wall that hadbeen erected against the facade at the endof the 1997 season to protect the decora-tion until a shelter had been built abovethe tomb in 1999. Once this wall wasremoved in 1999, the drawing documenta-tion was completed. The ready drawingswere collated and the descriptions finished.

In 1997, the drawings were made ini-tially by placing transparent film directlyon the decorated surface. This materialproved, however, too heavy, soft and exten-sible, forcing us to use cut sheets 50 x 50cm in order to minimize distortions. Themethod would have also been potentiallydestructive, as it was impossible to avoidsome loading of the decorated surface.Consequently, the remaining drawingswere made on graph paper, based on obser-vation and measurements, in 1:1 scale.8)

After the campaign, copies of the drawingson film were reduced to 1:4 scale, whichhas been adopted for all the documentation

6) Myœliwiec, New Faces of Saqqara, op. cit., figs. 30 and 31. 7) Myœliwiec, "Nowe odkrycia", op. cit., photo on p. 37, top.8) This part of the work was repeated in 1998 using the improved drawing-on-film method.

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Fig. 3. Copy in drawing of scene 25 on the southern wall of the entrance to the chapel(Drawing K. Kuraszkiewicz)

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Fig. 4. Fragment of the inscription in scene 25: the chiseled out word nswt in the formulaimAxw xr... and the word smit painted in its place (Photo Z. KoϾ)

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of the chapel and inscribed objects of larg-er size, and subsequently copied onto trac-ing paper.

In 1998, a lighter, thinner and stiffertransparent film was used. A specialportable frame was designed to hold thefilm at a regulated height, in order to pro-vide a perfectly flat surface at an even dis-tance from the decorated surface. Thismethod permitted the decoration to becopied without actually touching the stoneand large sheets of film to be used withoutdanger of distortion resulting from thematerial's extensible properties.

The adopted method of reducing thedrawings to 1:4 scale allows film sheets upto 90 cm wide to be used. Thus, the partlysuperimposed drawings of fragments of thedecoration have to be merged after reduc-tion and transferred to tracing paper. Thescale that has been adopted for all thechapel documentation has retained theclarity of the drawings, while permittingwhole walls to be drawn without divisioninto smaller fragments.9) The resultantdrawings constitute the final documenta-tion to be used in the forthcoming publi-cation (cf. Fig. 3).10)

In the case of the chiseled out frag-ments of the reliefs, the nature of chiseling

– the chisel marks filling exactly the sur-face within the outlines of the relief – per-mitted a theoretical reconstruction of thedestroyed fragments and inscriptions. Theparts that were destroyed naturally consti-tute a much more difficult problem – mostof the time reconstruction of the missingparts is possible only by analogy to othersources.

The condition of the polychromy onthe inscriptions in the chapel of Meref-nebef is such that the coloring of particu-lar signs can easily be determined anda study of the paleography made. Data ofthis kind is helpful, for instance, in recon-structing texts based on preserved frag-ments of sign polychromy. It proved par-ticularly helpful with respect to theinscriptions on the facade. The descriptionof colors using AGFA color codes was car-ried out in 1999 in preparation for a fullstudy of the tomb.

A complete, professional photographicdocumentation of all the reliefs decoratingthe tomb was also made, both in color andblack-and-white.

The documentation of the chapel ofMeref-nebef was completed in 1999.Currently, a study of the material is inprogress.

9) The sole exception being the longest, eastern wall of the chapel, which has been divided into two parts, and the east-ern wall of the facade, which is recorded in three drawings, following the structural divisions into the inner lintel and thetwo lateral walls of the entrance.10) Cf. also Myœliwiec, PAM X, Reports 1998, op. cit., fig. 1.