Statuary from the tomb of Rawer (Giza, Central Field)

Slawomir Rzepka, Institute of Archaeology, Warsaw University

The tomb of Rawer, excavated and published by Selim Hassan, yielded an unprecedented number of statues (the original number of them can be estimated for ca. 100). As his tomb was constructed in several (at least 3) phases, it is quite plausible that also his statuary program was created gradually, in a number of phases. In my communication I try to identify statues belonging to various stages of the tomb’s history, to compare them and to trace any logical patterns in the process of creation of the huge ensemble of Rawer’s statues. In my analysis I include a number of statues, photos of which were never published (these are statues found by Mariette and only described by Borchardt in CG without any photos). Thanks to the permission from Director of the Cairo Museum, I had the opportunity to study those statues and to make a photographic documentation of them.