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This pedestal, found tucked in a closet in the courtyard of the AA-S house, is the best preserved example we have found to date. 3D image created by Kirk Roberts

Ever since we uncovered the first pedestals on the Heit el-Ghurab (Lost City of the Pyramid Workers) site, we have puzzled over their function. The first pedestals were found in 1988 in what came to be known as the Pedestal Building and had tops that were completely eroded and revealed little about their purpose. Eventually we concluded that they probably supported some sort of storage device, such as a bin that straddled the space between two pedestals.

Since that initial discovery, we’ve found many more pedestals in various configurations: both large groups & small sets, in closets & out in the open, isolated & aligned in rows in institutional structures — but always with a gap, or slot, between pedestals.

One big clue to the pedestals function came in the 2006-2007 seasons when we discovered a row of pedestals at the southern end of the Pedestal Building with low mud partitions on top that appeared to define where bins may have rested. In front of some of the slots between the pedestals we found beer jars propped upright at the gaps, as if positioned to catch drips from whatever was stored above or perhaps to serve as standard measures for doling out the contents.

Another clue to the function of the pedestals comes from the many “peg and string” sealings discovered in the vicinity of the Pedestal Building. These sealings could derive from opening and closing the peg and string locks on the chests that may have straddled two adjacent pedestals.

The AA-S area showing the location of the pedestal structure, depicted above.

Then, in 2015, we discovered the best preserved example of a pedestal to date in the AA-S area, just south of the Pedestal Building, which has provided even more tantalizing clues. This entire pedestal structure was meticulously maintained with repeated repairs to the thick plaster. This layout assured that no one standing outside the pedestal closet could see the pedestals or observe whatever might be withdrawn from containers on them, especially if the walls were full height. This emphasis on cleanliness and privacy suggests that the stored goods were best kept in a clean, dry environment and perhaps needed to be secured or hidden from view.

In AA-S we also discovered that a variety of goods were stored above the pedestals, which required different types of containers to hold their contents below. Here, instead of jars, we found a large bowl and a hole that probably once held another bowl in front of the slots. These bowls may have supported baskets or skin bags, which could be filled with dry commodities or liquids stored above that drained into them, allowing a worker to ladle the substance into another vessel. This is in contrast to two other damaged pedestals we also found in 2015 in the building just to the west, where we again found jars positioned at the slots.

We’ve documented the well-preserved AA-S pedestal by using photogrammetery to create a 3D image of the entire pedestal structure. You can download an interactive 3D PDF of this image which will allow you to zoom in and rotate the image and see for yourself how it may have functioned.

Download a 3D PDF of the AA-S pedestal here.

If you browser cannot display the 3D PDF, try downloading the PDF & opening it directly in Adobe PDF Reader.

More information on the Heit el-Ghurab pedestals has been published in our newsletter:
AERAGRAM Vol. 16, no. 2: “Official’s House Emerges in Season 2015” (currently only available to AERA members)
AERAGRAM Vol. 15, no. 1/2: “A Return to Area AA: Informal Seals and Sealings of the Heit el-Ghurab”
AERAGRAM Vol. 8, no. 2: “Enigma of the Pedestals: 2006-2007 Season”

AERA’s work at the Lost City of the Pyramid Builders (also known as Heit el-Ghurab) is featured in the cover story of the November issue of Scientific American. This in-depth article discusses our recent work at the Lost City and how the construction of the Giza pyramids ultimately led to the creation of a social organization that changed the world.
Buy the current issue or read an excerpt online.

An article in the October issue of Smithsonian Magazine examines how the recent discovery of a port of Khufu at Wadi el-Jarf on the Red Sea coast helps to illuminate our own work on the Giza plateau.
Read the full text of this article online.

This year we returned to area AA-South, which is just just south of the Pedestal Building. We were on the lookout for evidence of beer brewing, but instead we found a large structure, which was probably an official residence, that is, an office and residence. What did this house’s residents administer? We still think it included brewing, but we are certain that production in this area including baking.

At the beginning of the season, we hypothesized that two circular mudbrick burnt-red structures in the south served as sockets for the large vats in which brewers heated malt soaked in water. Instead, these circles turned out to be ovens used for baking bread and three rooms in the north of the house served as kitchen/bakery areas. The second room featured a hearth, lined with broken stone and mudbrick, built into the northeast corner. An upside down bread mold formed a corner post, just as we have seen in hearths at other bakeries in the Heit el-Ghurab site. Bakers used these corner hearths for preheating the bread molds. A hole in the floor of the southwest corner of the chamber must have once held a dough-mixing vat. A worn, rounded, limestone boulder against the southern wall allowed someone to sit and turn left to reach into the vat, or right to stoke the hearth.

The most tantalizing find in this area though was another audience hall, with pilasters and a southern niche, similar to the pilaster-and-niche chamber that we found this year in Standing Wall Island. This find substantiated our hypothesis that in AA-S we were excavating another official’s house.

This discovery of yet another large house adds to a picture of the houses of prominent people as organizing nodes of the Heit el-Ghurab proto-city. High-status administrators probably had their houses built as the first, core structures of the neighborhood. These houses served as their official residences and offices when they came to Giza to be on the job at the site of the royal building works.

The level of preservation in this part of the site is excellent and we were able to identify staircases, blockings, and wall decorations. In one room, a black band projected forward from pink mortar just above. These bands probably belonging to a dado, once topped by strips of red and white, similar to images depicted in tomb scenes of domestic settings, for example, in the scene of Wa’etetkehthor and Mereruka on their bed.

Thank you to all our members for helping to make this season possible. We look forward to returning to this area in 2016 to further investigate this house and its surrounding neighborhood to see what else we find!

RTI specialist Sarah Chapman at work in the lab photographing the Horus amulet seen below

Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI) is a technique that lights an object from many different directions to better bring out surface detail and create an interactive 3D image. To produce an RTI image, a specialist takes a series of digital photos of the subject with a stationary camera. For each shot, light is projected from a known direction, resulting in a set of photos with different highlights and shadows. RTI software then synthesizes the lighting information to create a mathematical model of the surface of the object.

Once the data is processed the image can be opened in a RTI vieweing software, allowing researchers to re-light the object interactively with “virtual” light from any direction. Computations carried out by the RTI software enhance shape and color attributes, allowing the researcher to see detail not seen with direct observation. Additionally, RTI software can produce 3D imagery that allows a viewer to rotate an object 360°.

This season, RTI specialist Sarah Chapman of the University of Birmingham, UK, introduced AERA to RTI and its potential by photographing objects and sealings from our storeroom in Giza. The minutely detailed imagery she produced allowed our sealings specialist, Ali Witsell, to work on this season’s sealings from her home in the United States. To learn more about this season’s RTI work, please see the article in AERAgram 16.1.