This paper aims to present the preliminary results of the 2021 season of the Djedkare Project mission (DJP), which is dedicated to the exploration and documentation of Djedkare’s royal cemetery at south Saqqara. The main focus of the article is the queen’s pyramid, situated to the north-east of the king’s pyramid and to the north of his funerary temple. The 2018 exploration of the area between the king’s temple and the queen’s pyramid not only revealed the name of the owner, Setibhor, but it also confirmed that the two pyramid complexes were not architecturally connected, as previously presumed, and that further work is needed to clarify the plan of the queen’s monument. In 2021, the investigations focused on the pyramid of the queen; its substructure had never been entered and documented in the modern period. Cleaning the substructure resulted in a detailed documentation of its inner rooms. It used to be accessed through a descending and horizontal corridor and it comprised a burial chamber and a so-called serdab. The innovated layout of Setibhor’s pyramid substructure apparently inspired later queens, who continued to follow this pattern in their monuments during the Sixth Dynasty.
The work that has recently been carried out at Djedkare’s royal cemetery at South Saqqara has brought to light new evidence from the pyramid complex of Queen Setibhor, the wife of King Djedkare. Located to the north east of the king’s pyramid, this monument is of particular interest for its unusual architectural fea tures. The newly uncovered evidence makes it possible to bring the discussion on this extraordinary queen slightly further, focusing not only on the monument’s architecture but also on the remains of its decorative programme. This article presents some of the newly uncovered relief fragments from the queen’s pyramid complex. The reliefs, which very likely come from the portico, belonged to a decorative theme showing the queen, whose figure is not preserved, with her female attendants and female offering bearers. Other similar depictions are attested in smaller fragments from other parts of the queen’s monument. Parallels to this de piction can be found in other monuments of Old Kingdom queens, indicating that such a decorative theme was one of the usual queenly decorative programmes. The relief fragments also provide new evidence on the titles and epithets of Queen Setibhor, above which a winged solar disc with two uraei was carved. This evidence further underlines the exceptional role played by Queen Setibhor in the late Fifth Dynasty.
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