Beneath the Sands of Egypt

by Donald P. Ryan, PhD

  Belzoni’s plan of KV 21 (which he here refers to as “Tomb No. 3”) is accurate and evidence of his insight and skill as an early archaeologist. The plan was published with his Narrative in 1820.

  Donald P. Ryan

  A couple of other early visitors to KV 21 likewise offer interesting tales of mummies and pots. James Burton mapped the tomb in 1825, and provided the following comments: “A clean new tomb, the water not having got into it. Two mummies remaining nearly whole—females—some hair on the heads—distorted hand and foot—mummies in small chamber—vases entrails stopt with earth—large—common red pottery all broken.”

  The tomb was also visited by Edward Lane (c. 1826), who wrote:

  This might easily escape observation being surrounded by rubbish rises higher than the top of the entrance. It is on the same plan as most of the others; but without any sculpture; being unfinished. We first descend[ed] a sloping passage then a flight of steps and next another sloping passage at end of which is a square chamber with square pillar. Upon the ground were lying two female mummies quite naked. On the east of this chamber same side as the entrance is another chamber, smaller and containing many broken jars…

  Of course, these descriptions were all written before John Gardner Wilkinson came about and marked the valley’s tombs, thus initiating the present numbering system. Belzoni merely referred to his new discovery as Tomb 3, and Lane and Burton used their own designations: Tomb 5 and Tomb T, respectively.

  Elizabeth Thomas’s comments about the tomb in her Royal Necropoleis of Thebes likewise encouraged my interest, and in 1983 I began a file housed in a blue folder bearing the title “Tomb 21 Project.” I pursued every avenue of inquiry, including the archival notes of those who visited the tomb in Belzoni’s wake and the comments of the Theban Mapping Project. I typed letters to museums and individual scholars and kept a record of responses, enjoying every bit of related data, no matter how trivial or ancillary. I envisioned that KV 21 would be the centerpiece of what would someday become the Pacific Lutheran University Valley of the Kings Project, and if it weren’t for the unexpected rediscovery of KV 60, it might have been.

  In 1989, with our hands thoroughly busy with Tomb 60, I nonetheless decided to at least locate the entrance of KV 21. At best a small shallow depression less than a meter in diameter could barely be discerned in the right lighting. In keeping with the unanticipated theme of that summer of surprises, I was able to locate the long-buried entrance of KV 21 in about ten minutes with the astute application of my trowel. With the depression serving as a subtle clue, I approached the edge of the hillside where a tantalizing bit of exposed bedrock beckoned me to initiate my search. Within a few minutes, I exposed what appeared to be an artificial right-angle cut and, shortly thereafter, the ultimate definitive confirmation of hopes: the number 21, painted in red by none other than Wilkinson himself during his 1827 survey. So there it must be, somewhere beneath my feet.

  While the careful work of documenting and clearing KV 60 continued, I set a crew to removing the tons of flood debris that deeply obscured the entrance to Tomb 21. Prevented by tradition (along with practicality) from participating in the physical labor myself, I had to content myself with watching while seated on a wooden chair just meters from the action. My boom box nearby played a mix of Egyptian pop music and Edvard Grieg, the latter’s Piano Concerto in A Minor being a favorite, as the sun arose in the valley, the concerto’s opening chords embellishing the beauty of the sunlit cliffs. Howard Carter’s hill of excavation debris, “the Beach,” also proved a wonderful vantage point, especially when one was emerging from the dramatic confines of KV 60.

  It took the team of at least ten workmen about a month to reveal the entrance to the tomb. Typically, one or two would wield crude local hoes to pull dirt into rubber baskets clenched between their feet. Once full, the baskets would then be passed to a line of workers stationed a few feet apart, who would in turn pass the burden down the line until it was ultimately sifted and dumped. The empty baskets would then be thrown back into the pit, making a series of steady clunks, their soft sides rarely annoying the diggers who were routinely struck by the flying receptacles.

  There were a few false alarms. At one point I was convinced that the tomb’s doorway was imminent, as the vertical rock surface we were following began to indent inward. But we were not even close. This feature of natural rock, though, eventually evolved into an artificially planed surface that continued downward. At the same time, we began to reveal steps, steps of which Belzoni himself seemed unaware. Eventually eighteen would be exposed, fourteen of which were carved into the bedrock and an additional four added in the rubble above. As we dug deeper, it became necessary to build support walls on either side of our excavation to protect us from cave-ins. We also began to notice that we seemed to be excavating an earlier trench dug to the tomb’s entrance sometime before and whose outline seemed to appear on an old photograph. By chronologically following a deepening debris trail of windborne newspapers and other material that refilled this trench, we were able to date the tomb’s last intrusion to around 1895.

  As stated, it took about a month to reveal the top of the doorway with the continual efforts of a basket brigade. The tomb’s door, surprisingly, was blocked with stones, no doubt the efforts of a post-Belzoni protoconservationist, and there the digging stopped. Mark Papworth and I had a conference. Well occupied and obsessed with KV 60, should we enter KV 21 or wait till the following year to explore its interior? The discussion was very short. Papworth was all for it, and with weak resistance from me, the decision was made: We should take a look inside so we would at least have an idea of what we might need to plan for in the following field season. Only enough stones from the crude stone wall were removed to allow the passage of a single archaeologist, namely me.

  Entering KV 21 was indeed a remarkable experience. Here was the tomb that had originally inspired my interest in working in the Valley of the Kings. Here was the tomb that had haunted my sleep, including one memorable dream in which I finally entered the tomb, only to find a cache of Kent Weeks’s surveying equipment safely stowed. “Time to take a dive,” offered Papworth. “Go get it!” In great anticipation, with Belzoni’s description running through my head, I stuck my arms through the small gap between the stones and began to crawl within. Papworth captured the moment on film, with only the heels of my boots visible as I slithered into the tomb’s intimidating interior.

  Local workmen uncover the ancient steps leading down to the doorway of KV 21. Note the “21” painted on the wall, the result of John Gardiner Wilkinson’s tomb-numbering system in 1827.

  PLU Valley of the Kings Project

  I recall a very odd sensation. Although my flashlight was on full beam, my surroundings appeared dim and disturbingly gloomy as I proceeded to crawl forward. I yelled nervously back at Mark but then discovered the cause: In all my enthusiasm for entering the tomb, I had neglected to remove my sunglasses. Once I’d done so, the surroundings became somewhat more inviting and interesting. The first few feet involved crawling over a tapering pile of flood debris that within several yards allowed me to crouch, stoop, and eventually stand up. I knew from Belzoni’s description what I should expect ahead, and, just as described, the tomb’s walls showed no sign of decoration. Of course I hoped to reach the burial chamber and find the mummies he’d described, in place and intact. Sadly, such was not the case. Before I even reached the end of the first corridor, I noticed something that almost resembled a coconut in the dusty debris. It was the back of a mummified head attached to a partial torso. This was an initial portent of what I would soon find beyond.

  Following the first sloping corridor was a set of stairs, steep and covered with rubble. I carefully descended its right-hand side, clutching the walls while I checked the uncertain footing, my light casting limited, mostly opaque views through the haze of kicked-up fine dust. Splayed out on the steps were more clues to the desecration: a mummified human leg attached to a portio
n of pelvis. The stairs led to another sloping corridor, whose floor was littered with boulders, a clear sign that Belzoni’s clean tomb had suffered significant flooding since 1817, and at the hall’s end some crushed mud bricks, indicating that at some distant time the chamber beyond must have been sealed as telltale traces of plaster around the door confirmed.

  My first glimpse of the burial chamber confirmed what Belzoni and the early-nineteenth-century visitors had described: a rectangular room dominated by a single pillar. Along two of its walls were long niches resembling shelves, an unusual characteristic in the valley’s many tombs. While the room’s white limestone walls, speckled with natural flint nodules, were bare and unprepared for decoration, there were swaths of the ceiling bearing the marks of crack repairs, with the handprints of the ancient workmen still visible in the plaster. The floor was a different matter altogether, it being blanketed with the shattered, randomly scattered, decayed remains of burial equipment. The fine silt on the floor and the stain of a “bathtub ring” from flooding several centimeters deep around the chamber’s perimeter told the story. Sometime after the time of Belzoni, the tomb had taken on rain-or floodwater, which turned this room into a slowly evaporating lake and woefully damaged whatever might have survived. And as for the two women described by Belzoni, I continued to find their body parts here and there. Most disturbing was a pile of hands and feet, gathered together by whom and for what purpose I did not know.

  It was necessary to tread lightly as I explored this depressing room and then made my way over to a large square aperture in one wall: the anticipated side chamber. Peering inside, I was relieved to see that the elevated sill of the entrance had protected the chamber’s contents from water damage. Unfortunately, other forces of destruction had been at work. The floor of this little room was covered with the well-preserved remains of a couple dozen large, handsome, ancient white storage jars, all shattered, their contents scattered about the floor. A big, heavy rock found in the midst of the shards told the story. It had been intentionally heaved into the mass of pots, perhaps in a spontaneous act of immature delinquency, accompanied by a rare and short concert of shattering intact Eighteenth Dynasty ceramics. Some graffiti on the chamber’s ceiling ambiguously suggested a culprit: Scrawled in black, twice, was ME! accompanied by the date 1826. Whether these letters are the initials of a certain M.E. or merely a childish self-reference remains a mystery. We do know from the notes of Burton and Lane that the tomb was still accessible at that time, and any number of visitors might have made the descent with the possibility of unrestrained pilfering or vandalism. The torn-up mummies, the shattered pots, and the graffiti certainly demonstrated a profound lack of respect, and yet another agent of destruction, bats, had left deposits of their guano here and there as a kind of final, natural insult.

  I clambered out of the tomb and described my experience to Papworth, who had been eagerly awaiting my return above. The two of us visited the interior of the tomb again the next day. Papworth was as dismayed as I was at the natural and human degradation of the tomb, and we both agreed that KV 21 would be a handful to clear and document. With a reasonable idea about what we might expect to deal with in the future, we installed a metal door, blocked it with stones, and returned our attention to KV 60

  The beautifully decorated Twentieth Dynasty tomb of Montuhirkhopeshef (KV 19) served as our “office” during the first two seasons of fieldwork in the Valley of the Kings.

  PLU Valley of the Kings Project

  The excitement of that first year in the Valley of the Kings was irrepressible, and I couldn’t wait to return yet again, the beastly heat and the array of annoyances forgotten within weeks. Papworth remained excited, and I added others to the team for our second field season, including two students and an art professor from Pacific Lutheran University. The students would be invaluable in piecing together shattered pots and coffin fragments, and the artist, Lawry Gold, would produce exquisite drawings of our rare decorated items. Our small team arrived in Luxor in May 1990 and I once again set up our office and laboratory in KV 19, the nearby beautiful tomb of Montuhirkhopeshef.

  With much of the work in KV 60 completed, our efforts that year were concentrated mostly on KV 21. Additional digging was required to clear off and reveal 21’s steps, and the members of our workforce, evenly spaced on the steep incline, passed their baskets, often in rhythm to some of their traditional work songs. It soon became clear that the tomb’s ancient exterior steps would need to be protected, as they certainly wouldn’t be able to stand the wear and tear that would be exacted upon them as we began to excavate its interior.

  Papworth, who possessed the building skills I do not, designed a set of wooden stairs that would fit directly over the originals. The local carpenters, operating from what resembled a medieval workshop, skillfully produced the steps, which fit perfectly and were still intact nearly twenty years later. Papworth likewise would soon order up another set for the interior stairs, which not only preserved their friable limestone edges but were an important safety measure for the constant traffic that would soon materialize as we cleared the burial chamber. I was delighted to discover one day that Papworth had installed a sign on top of these steep steps reading SPEED LIMIT, 70 MPH, NO PASSING NEXT 2 MILES.

  Another improvement was the installation of electric lighting throughout the tomb. A line of cable was run along the tomb’s walls, and, with the help of the resourceful valley electricians, light-bulbs were spliced in at intervals, providing a wonderfully well-lit environment for working. The cable extended for a hundred yards across the landscape, where it was tied into another tomb’s electrical system.

  As the exterior steps were cleared, the full extent of the doorway, which was mostly blocked with stone, was finally revealed, and we left the lower courses intact to the level of the sloping debris inside. At one point while I sat on the bottommost step examining the lower blockage, half of the remaining wall collapsed, just barely missing me, and, curiously, in its wake were revealed specks of gold flake, which, as in the case of KV 60, were likely residue from the work of ancient robbers.

  The first corridor was readily cleared, with only a few objects found within the debris, including a crude servant or ushabti figurine characteristic of the time of Rameses VI. Given that everything else about the tomb screamed Eighteenth Dynasty in date, this Twentieth Dynasty intruder must have come in with the exterior debris, a phenomenon not uncommon in the valley.

  From an archaeological standpoint, the second staircase and corridor were easy to deal with, the operation being mostly an exercise in removing a lot of stones either in baskets or individually on the shoulders of the sturdy workmen. The burial chamber, though, was another matter altogether. The floor was photographed and sketched and then the larger rocks removed. As in Tomb 60, Papworth measured out a grid of one-meter squares around the room using a spool of string and numbers marked on little slips of paper. Thus prepared, we addressed each square systematically in its turn, often seated in an adjacent, cleared spot or on our knees. With a brush, a dustpan, and a basket, any objects were collected and noted.

  It was actually a grueling task. Despite the fact that we were well underground, the temperature was often over ninety degrees Fahrenheit, slowing us down and contributing heavily to lethargy. More serious was the poisonous combination of the fine silt on the floor mixed with the pungent debris of bat guano. Dust masks were not readily available, and even when we had them, they made breathing so uncomfortable that they were often ignored. I preferred a cotton scarf wrapped over my mouth, but even that proved stifling in such conditions. The result was that twice during our clearance of KV 21, I awoke in my room at night with a severe and terrifying respiratory attack, my heart racing and my survival until daylight questionable. Fortunately, a large dose of asthma medication seemed to do the job, and the lesson was learned. All future tomb excavations would thereafter require dust protection.

  Safety on our projects is of course always a priority,
and although it was easy to talk our team of foreigners into taking various precautions, it was another thing to convince the local workmen. Some refused to wear shoes, even when swinging their heavy hoes precariously close to their bare feet, and the inevitable occurred on occasion. The effects of the substantial heat, too, were always a worry, and many of the workers preferred their heads bare. Part of that problem was solved by the issuing of baseball caps that were gratefully provided by Quaker Oats, then the makers of Gatorade. The previous year I had brought a few packs of powdered Gatorade with me to the valley, and when an Egyptian colleague passed out from the heat, we brought him to a cool place and mixed him up a small batch, which proved very effective in his revival and rehydration. When I returned home, I wrote a small testimonial to the company in hopes of obtaining a few free samples. I didn’t hear from them for months, until one day a truck appeared in my driveway and unloaded ten fifty-pound boxes containing large bags of the powdery substance. Five hundred pounds of Gatorade, perhaps enough to flavor a large swimming pool, accompanied by about a dozen hats with the product logo.

  Obviously, we wouldn’t be able to take the whole lot with us to Egypt, but I did distribute a number of the bags to my digmates to carry and also took the hats, which became a sort of collector’s item. One of my workmen, a gentleman from the village who was probably in his mid-sixties, had apparently given or traded away his cap and pleaded for a new one with a ridiculous story that could easily have been concocted by a crafty ten-year-old. A small mouse, he claimed, came into his house at night and carried it away. His tale was so seriously and dramatically presented, complete with hand gestures and expressions of surprise and dismay, that he had me laughing hard. He got a new hat. And the company generously furnished me with more the following year.

  The supply of Gatorade would last for years, and the workmen, with their well-developed sweet teeth, would occasionally mix it up in an earthen jar until it resembled a viscous syrup, which they claimed was utterly delicious. Some of my team had a difficult time watching as the green goo oozed out of the jar into clear cups cut from the plastic bottoms of mineral-water bottles. Nonetheless, our more diluted version of the drink served us well, its lemon-lime flavor greatly facilitating our consumption of the large quantity of liquids necessary to survive in such heat.