The Khentkawes Town (KKT) - Ancient Egypt Research Associates

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lowest point of the concavity more to the south side. The
intent appears to have been that rainwater would flow
both east and toward the south side and this is evidenced
by runnels and drains that run closer to the south side.
One possible channel shows in the alluvial mud paving
that Hassan exposed, running roughly parallel to the
southern wall of the Ramp and about 75 cm north of that
wall (fig. 15).
House and Fairman exposed two other channels in a
shallow trench, 2 m wide, that they excavated across the
width of the Ramp to look for successive paving layers,
and to get the stratigraphic connections north and south.
Running water might have cut the northernmost of these
two channels, which trends northwest-southeast. The
southern channel in this surface, 20 cm lower than the
Ramp surface that Hassan exposed, is better prepared. It
is oriented slightly more northeast-southwest. At 30 cm
wide, it is reminiscent of the Main Street channel in the
settlement south of the Wall of the Crow (Abd el-Aziz
2007: 123–125), flanked by a thin alluvial mud render and
similarly composed over crushed marl limestone.
These channels could be clues to the meaning of the
great cut or trench along the southern side of the ramp
(see below).
Massive Foundation
We saw the foundation for the upper, western end of the
Ramp in a deep excavation (NEH, fig. 16), which someone
made long before our time at the northeast corner of the
GIII.VT. Ana Tavares supervised the clearing and recording
of this prior excavation (given the AERA feature number
[29,810]) during our 2008 season.
The roadbed of the Ramp continues past the entrance
into the second vestibule and to the edge of the previous
excavation [29,810], which cut through the Ramp and
exposed layers of limestone rubble of 2.46 m combined
thickness that are either an accretion holding back other
material, or, more likely, the very foundation layers
that people dumped to build up the Ramp (fig. 17). We
investigated this point farther by dissecting these layers.
The large limestone rubble of the lower layer is similar to
layers filling 4 th Dynasty construction ramps elsewhere at
West-facing
section
Figure 16. View to east showing the west-facing section of the NEH hole [29,810] at the northeast corner of the GIII.VT through the
massive limestone rubble foundation of the Ramp. The mudbrick casing and limestone core blocks of the northeast corner of the
GIII.VT show at lower right. The ramp passes the Vestibule entrance (upper center) and along the northern side of the GIII.VT (left).
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Giza Plateau Mapping Project Season 2008 Preliminary Report