the Intef cemetery in Thebes

Thebes, the so-called Intef cemetery

Some tomb groups	two stelae found

Background information:

The cemetery was 1908-1909 excavated by Petrie. It is divided by a wadi into two halves. The northern part Petrie called A, the southern part B. Cemetery A belongs entirely to the Eleventh Dynasty, while B was much reused in the 22nd-24th Dynasty.

The Petrie description of the cemetery is brief. He only published the pottery and a few other finds, without describing individual tombs or providing a plan or map of the cemetery. On the plates in his publication (Petrie 1909: pl. XIII-XXI) are written the tomb numbers next to each object, which Petrie found. From these it is possible to reconstruct the contents of 98 tombs. Seidlmayer 1990: 69-105 uses this method to provide a seriation of the pottery of the cemetery. This pottery is important since one of the big tombs belong to a king. The whole series is therefore precisely datable. Most of the tombs belong to the Eleventh Dynasty (mostly before unification of the country under Mentuhotep II); but some tombs are later. Some further information is recorded in the note books.