House of Ranefer 2003

Barry Kemp
The investigation of Ranefer’s house continued (supervised by John MacGinnis and Paul Buckland), uncovering more of the underlying house and also extending the excavation in to the adjacent grounds on the north side. The deposits in several of the rooms of the upper house were removed to reveal the floors and walls of the lower house. Beneath the floor of Ranefer’s outer hall (room 1) part of the northern external wall of the earlier house was located. In rooms 3 and 4/7 the outside eastern wall of the lower house was exposed, and a small area of well preserved mud-plastered ground from the outside courtyard. In room 5 the western outside wall of the lower house was exposed, and a larger area of the mud-plastered ground. This was interrupted by the sides of two circular granaries with slightly sunk floors which had been cut in two by Ranefer’s later house wall. Also in room 5 the remains of the earlier house included an internal area of solid brickwork built against the outside wall. From its position it is likely that it is the foundations for a staircase to an upper floor. From what has now been recovered of the earlier house it looks as if it followed the plan of a smaller version of Ranefer’s later house. This conclusion helps to explain groupings of bricks and marks on the mud-plaster also found beneath Ranefer’s outer hall: they must belong to the outer end of an entrance staircase to the house, similar to the one later built by Ranefer further to the north.

	Plan of the Phase I house at the end of the 2003 season
	Plan of the Phase II house at the end of the 2003 season

The northern part of the earlier house itself lay over more deeply buried deposits which must fill a large hole dug into the desert when the site first came to be occupied. This hole extends for an unknown distance to the north, beyond the limit of the later house. As a first step in exploring this aspect, an area of courtyard on the north was cleaned of its covering of sand. This revealed that the courtyard had been paved with mud-bricks in its later phase. However, where a hole had later been dug a thick wall of an earlier period is exposed, running east-west. This could be the remains of the courtyard enclosure wall of the earlier house. If so, this might imply that the northern part of Ranefer’s later courtyard was also built over ground belonging to another older house.

Aerial view of the House of Ranefer, towards the close of the 2002-3 season. East is to the top of the image.

The lower floor is revealed beneath room 2 of Ranefer’s House. Facing west.

The earthy layers separating the two periods of building were sieved for the recovery of organic material as well as for small artefacts. The latter included another natural pebble bearing a short hieratic text, several small fragments of polished gypsum plaster also bearing hieratic, perhaps derived from the surface of a writing board, and small pieces of vitrified clay which contain particles which seem to be derived from copper working.

Part of a circular granary wall belonging to the Phase 1 house, buried beneath the Ranefer complex.

View from the central room of Ranefer’s House (room 2), with the phase 1 floor partially exposed, into Ranefer’s Front Hall (room 1). Facing north-west.