Archaeological excavation of the mastaba of Queen Khentkaus III (tomb AC 30) in Abusir

During the autumn of 2014, the Czech Institute of Egyptology continued its archaeological research of the southern part of the Abusir royal pyramid necropolis. In Nakhtsare’s cemetery, tomb AC 30 was unearthed, which appeared to belong to a hitherto unknown queen, Khentkaus III. Much damaged by stone robbers, the tomb consists of a north-south mastaba, 16.12 × 10.70 m large THE MASTABA OF QUEEN KHENTKAU S I I I ( AC 30) PES XV/2015 41 with a rather simple layout, including an L-shaped chapel in the superstructure and a vertical shaft and a burial chamber in the substructure. In the tomb’s substructure part of the burial equipment was found (travertine model vessels, copper models of tools or fragments of wooden objects) as well as fragments of a mummified female skeleton, which might have belonged to the tomb owner. The identification of the previously unknown “wife of the king” and “mother of the king”, Khentkaus III, as the tomb owner was made thanks to the numerous masons’ inscriptions documented on the tomb masonry in the subterranean part of the tomb. This discovery opens new avenues into the investigation of the situation in the royal family at the beginning of the second half of the Fifth Dynasty. The analysis of the pottery used in the fill of the mastaba’s core masonry is methodologically very important as it has been used as the major dating criterion post quem.