Sabu disk
ancient Egyptian stone artifact
The Sabu disk is an ancient Egyptian artifact from the First Dynasty, c. 3000 to 2800 BC. It was found by Walter Emery in 1936 in the north of the Saqqara necropolis in mastaba S3111, the grave of the ancient Egyptian official Sabu after whom it is named. The function and meaning of the carefully crafted stone vessel are unclear.
Description
The artifact is made of weakly metamorphic siltstone, and is in the shape of a shallow bowl with a diameter of 61 centimetres (24 in) and a maximum height of 10.6 cm (4.2 in). Its central hole has a diameter of about 8 cm (3.1 in), which is fitted with a socket whose height corresponds approximately to the depth of the bowl. From the slightly raised outer edge, three wings or lobes are folded inwards towards the central hole, with the outer edge remaining in the form of narrow arches that connect the non-folded parts with each other. When viewed from above, it therefore resembles a steering wheel with three very wide spokes.
History
Sabu's grave was discovered on January 19, 1936, by the British archaeologist Walter Bryan Emery. It is a mastaba tomb that consists of seven chambers. In Room E, the central burial chamber, the disk was found in a central location right next to Sabu's skeleton, which was originally buried in a wooden coffin.
“Sabu disk” enters the record as ancient Egyptian stone artifact. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Sabu, disk and ancient can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Sabu disk” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.