Ancient Mayor’s Dwelling Discovered in Egypt

A luxurious house under excavation in an ancient Egyptian town belonged to its mayor and is the first such house ever found, an archeologist says.

“It’s comparable in scale to a pharaoh’s palace of the period,” said Josef Wegner, an assistant curator of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. “We know about mayors from ancient Egyptian texts, but never before has the home of a mayor been positively identified.”

“We only have a few places where we can learn about daily life in [ancient] Egypt,” said William S. Arnett, a professor of ancient history at West Virginia University and author of a book about the origin of hieroglyphics. “It could open up new vistas for us in terms of daily life and public administration.”

Wegner said he and other researchers identified the building as the mayor’s house this summer in the ancient town called Enduring- Are- the- Places- of- Khakaure- Maa- Kheru- in- Abydos, which dates from the Middle Kingdom, 2000 BC to 1700 BC. The structure, discovered in 1994, dates back 3,700 years.

Researchers in 1997 found thousands of seal impressions, similar to those made with sealing wax, made by ancient Egyptians using clay. The seal impressions gave the names of four mayors, and other seals now illegible may have borne the names of two more mayors, Wegner said.

The town, like many in ancient Egypt, was set up to take care of a pharaoh’s mortuary temple, in this case that of King Senwosret III, also known as Sesostris III, who ruled from 1878 BC to 1841 BC. The idea was to create a place that would last forever, dedicated to worship of the dead king. It lasted about 200 years, Wegner said.

“Sesostris III was one of the greatest warrior kings of ancient Egypt, probably one of the greatest warrior kings of antiquity,” Arnett said. “His administration was at a peak of prosperity.”

For that reason, it’s not surprising that the mayor of a town set up to take care of his mortuary temple would have such an elaborate home, he said.

Wegner said the house, about half of which has been excavated, is well preserved for such an old building. In addition to the many seals that indicate heavy written correspondence, fragments of toys and games also were found in the house.

Wegner said the house was built of brick, plastered throughout, and had a broad front hall with 14 columns running the entire width of the building. Fragments of statuettes, cosmetic kohl pots, jewelry and mirrors with ebony and ivory handles show that the mayor had an affluent lifestyle, Wegner said.

The back part of the house was a massive granary capable of storing great quantities of rations, in which wheat has been identified, Wegner said. The granary was not merely a food storehouse but likely also the town’s treasury, he said.

“Grain was essentially the money of ancient Egypt,” Wegner said.

Wegner said the clay seals revealed that the first mayor was a man named Nakht. Arnett said Nakht was already known to be a prominent figure in that period of Egyptian history.

Mayors were responsible for serving as the high priest of the nearby temples, administering the major economic activities of the town and serving as a judge to settle disputes, Wegner said. Temples owned endowments of land and mines, so people were employed to work in those commercial ventures to keep money coming in.

“The temples were really like the corporations of ancient Egypt,” Wegner said.