Khasekhemwy Enclosure (Shunet el-Zebib)

• Funerary Temple of King Khasekhemwy, last king of the Second Dynasty, dating to c. 2700 BCE

• One of the oldest surviving built monuments in the world, known today as the Shunet el-Zebib (Arabic for “House of Raisins”)

• Precursor to Old Kingdom pyramid construction

• Only surviving cultic enclosure for the ritual performance of divine kingship during Dynasties 1-2, it remained a sacred ancestral space untouched for sixteen centuries until the end of the New Kingdom

• Watch “The Short Life and Many Afterlives of the Shunet el-Zebib at Abydos,” by Matthew D. Adams (Institut français d’archéologie orientale du Caire, 2023)

• Explore the open access Shunet el-Zebib Documentation and Conservation Archive

• Read the final Documentation and Conservation Report published in 2007

Photo (1) Interior of the Khasekhemwy Enclosure, Abydos Archaeology © 2012 , (2) Mapping the architecture of the Shunet el-Zebib, Abydos Archaeology © 2010, (3) Second Dynasty seal impression of King Khasekhemwy, Abydos Archaeology © 2019