Author Description

English summary: Cemetery U is an excavation site directly north of the early dynastic necropolis at Umm el-Qaab near Abydos, Egypt. This site contains 600 simple, brick-walled graces dug deep into the ground which dates to the late Pre-Dynastic Period and represent Old and Middle Naqada culture (Naqada I and II, ca. 3900- 3350 BCE). The inventory of grave goods uncovered during the excavation from the site enable conclusions to be made about the funerary customs of the Naqada culture. The large number or richly outfitted graves and the long period of time during which the cemetery was used are unrivaled by any other cemetery excavations in Egypt. The studies in this volume document the ceramic inventory from the excavations undertaken by the German Archeological Institute Cairo and they represent the chronological phases of use on the basis of combined archeological methods. An investigation into the number and quality of the ceramic grave goods from the graves of men, women, and children yields new evidence about the social stratification of the population that exist during the earliest Naqada culture and throws new light onto the process of state-formation in ancient Egypt on the basis of scenes depicted on the goods (such as hunting and representations of imprisonment) that anticipate the later pharaonic iconography. Compared with other cemeteries of the Naqada culture in Upper Egypt, the finds from Cemetery U enable it to be analyzed in a superregional context. The grave inventories are thoroughly described and illustrated with pictures in the catalog section of this volume. German description: Unmittelbar nordlich der fruhdynastischen Konigsnekropole von Umm el-Qaab gelegen, umfasst der Friedhof U neben ziegelausgemauerten Grabern der spatpradynastischen Zeit etwa 600 einfache, in den festen Wustengrund eingetiefte Grubengraber der alteren und mittleren Naqadakultur (Naqada I und II, ca. 3900-3350 v.Chr.). Erhaltene Reste ihres Beigabeninventar