An Official Seal from Kom Ombo – the Earliest Attestation of the Ancient Name of the Town

Since 2017 the Austrian Archaeological Institute/Austrian Academy of Sciences, Cairo in cooperation with the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities (MOTA) is working at the town of Kom Ombo, in southern Egypt. Excavations have uncovered part of a cemetery and a large administrative building of the First Intermediate Period containing silos north of the modern temple enclosure wall. While this administrative building dates to the later First Intermediate Period/early Middle Kingdom, the cemetery has a longer use, and is built on top of a town quarter from the Old Kingdom. Some of the most interesting and numerous finds from the recent work in both domestic and cemetery contexts are sealings, which shed a new light on the importance of the town of Kom Ombo in the Old Kingdom. In
this paper we discuss an official seal issued under Neferirkara, reconstructed from three seal impressions, which provides evidence for a pr-šnꜥ installation at Kom Ombo – probably connected to the “royal repast” – in the 5th Dynasty. Apart from its economic significance, its historic value lies in being the earliest attestation of the ancient name of Kom Ombo currently known.