Beneath the Sands of Egypt

by Donald P. Ryan, PhD

  Despite the hardships, we managed to clear the floor of Tomb 21’s burial chamber, which was frustratingly sparse in any artifacts that might shed light on the tomb’s occupants or even the nature of their burial provisions. A few painted fragments of wood could be matched together, including some that bore the text of a routine funerary inscription. Par for the course in our experience, the portion of the inscription that would normally contain the name of the deceased was not present. As in the case of KV 60, no artifacts in the tomb would reveal the identities of its owners, except in the broadest of terms.

  The little side room was both a treat and a nuisance. Working in its relatively tight confines was a bit of an annoyance, and the reality of the shattered pots all around was dismaying. The pots’ contents were strewn about the floor, and, interestingly, much of those contents seemed to be soiled linen rags and little tied-up bags of natron, the white dehydrating agent used in the mummification process, no doubt leftovers from the embalming of the tomb’s occupants. Within the mix were several seals bearing the stamp of the royal necropolis: a recumbent jackal poised over nine bound captives, representing the traditional enemies of Egypt. They had once been used to seal some of the large pots, whose style established the date of the tomb’s use between the reigns of Hatshepsut and Thutmose IV in the Eighteenth Dynasty.

  Mark Papworth had the gruesome task of dealing with what was left of the two women. In a strange procession that included a box of hands and feet, a linear plastic bag containing leg and arm pieces, and two cartons, each containing a torso, the workmen transferred the various bits and pieces from Tomb 21 to a large table set up in KV 19. Papworth was barely fazed. His years of viewing such things as a coroner and crime-scene investigator, though usually with fresher material, of more recent vintage, had prepared him for performing the inevitable sorting of the body parts. Each component was laid out and then matched with other fragments. The end result was unpleasant. One had a tragically damaged face and a bashed-in chest cavity, and the other was missing its head. And all that was left of the long hair Belzoni described were a few curly locks. One of the mummies smelled like dirty socks.

  Intriguingly, the left hand of each of the women was clenched in a manner that some would argue is characteristic of a royal female pose of mummification, much like the mummy in KV 60. Papworth was convinced, too, that when the flesh and wrappings of the left arm of one of the mummies was articulated with its fragments, it was bent at the elbow. This is a clue that might address one of the many big questions in Egyptian archaeology: Where were all the burials of the many known women from the Eighteenth Dynasty and other eras of the New Kingdom? Could some of them have been buried right under everyone’s noses right there in the Valley of the Kings? The name “Valley of the Kings” is actually a later Arabic appellation and doesn’t define its complete history. We already know that a few royal family members and favored friends or officials were also buried there.

  The horribly damaged remains of the two female mummies recovered from KV 21.

  PLU Valley of the Kings Project

  KV 21, too, which in many respects resembles a small royal tomb, might also fit into such a scenario, and I would suggest that the valley does have a broader component of occupants, including royal women—queens and/or princesses—buried in the midst of the pharaohs with whom they were associated.

  As he had done with the lady in KV 60, Papworth designed a wooden coffin to accommodate the remains of the KV 21 women. The local carpenters did a nice job, and as the heavy box was carried through the valley on the shoulders of several workmen and maneuvered down the tomb’s steps, we couldn’t help to think what a rare scene this must be, something not witnessed for thousands of years: someone actually putting burial apparatus into a tomb here rather than taking it out. The nameless mummies were returned to KV 21. One would lie on the box’s floor, while the other would reside on a shelf above. “Bunk beds,” we joked, but it was actually quite sad when we carefully laid out the pathetic fragments of each in their approximate anatomical order and then closed and locked the lid.

  I often imagined Belzoni looking over my shoulder as I investigated KV 21. The valley must have been quite desolate in his time, except for a dozen or so gaping tomb entrances, resembling more a rocky canyon than a royal cemetery. Finding additional tombs in such an environment would require a real sense of the landscape and good archaeological deduction. Belzoni had both and was indeed successful, but after uncovering just five tombs, he offered the following surprising conclusion: “It is my firm opinion, that in the valley…there are no more [tombs] than are now known, in consequence of my late discoveries; for previously to my quitting that place, I exerted all my humble abilities in endeavouring to find another tomb, but could not succeed.”

  History of course would show that Belzoni’s personal assessment of the valley was well off the mark, as close to forty more tombs would be discovered in the years ahead. His early documentary efforts are clearly to his credit, and he should rightfully take his place as a genuine pioneer of Egyptology and a protoarchaeologist who stood, both figuratively and literally, above his peers. The carnival’s loss was archaeology’s gain.

  NINE

  THE DIGGER’S LIFE

  TOMBS 60 AND 21 WERE wonderful to explore and very provocative in their own ways, but there were four other tombs in our project zone that likewise required attention. Tombs 28, 44, and 45 were each known to be tombs of a design and size that were about as simple as it gets in the Valley of the Kings: a vertical shaft leading to a single, simple room. In comparison to what we had previously experienced, they appeared to be relatively easy to clear. They were each, though, in their own way, intriguing if not problematic, and we took all on with great interest. KV 27, with a shaft and four chambers choked by flood debris, would eventually prove to be the most time-consuming and difficult of them all.

  The entrance to KV 28 was clearly visible, with a big red number readily noting its presence. Like so many other, similar tombs in the valley, its shaft was clogged with garbage, some of it windblown but much of it obviously deposited by employees of the old rest house on the other side of the hill. (The rest house is now long gone, and under the present conservation plan this kind of convenience dumping is absolutely forbidden and fortunately now rarely occurs.) I first entered the tomb by wading through a mass of cartons, newspapers, bottle caps, and entrance tickets dating back decades. Scorpions and snakes were certainly on my mind as I tumbled into 28’s chamber, an almost spacious rectangular room about 9 by 5.5 meters (about 30 by 18 feet) with walls precisely cut into the limestone. Fortunately, no venomous creatures were to be found—that I noticed, at least—and I was amazed that the tomb somehow seemed to have been previously excavated. Its chamber was nearly free of flood debris, but for a layer of boulders and other smaller stones. Shiny black soot on the ceiling indicated that someone had been lighting fires within, perhaps to burn garbage or even to keep warm during a cold winter’s night.

  In terms of artifacts, there really wasn’t much inside—a few pieces of wood, including one with some unreadable, incised hieroglyphs. There were bones, though, constituting the remains of three individuals, along with quite a mess of mummy wrappings. Curiously, we found a funerary cone mixed in the tomb’s debris. These cone-shaped ceramic objects are typically found associated with the tombs of bureaucrats in the huge New Kingdom cemetery located on the other side of the cliffs from the valley. Their flat ends would be stamped with hieroglyphic inscriptions bearing the names and titles of the deceased, and their pointed ends were stuck in mortar above the tomb’s entrance façade. Most of these exterior structures were made of mud brick and thus have collapsed through time, scattering thousands of cones here and there in the vicinity. They are quite valuable, as their inscriptions give us information about who might be buried in the cemetery, and, intriguingly, there are many cones associated with tombs that have yet to be discovered. They are also very portable and could be carried from
place to place to be offered for sale (now illegal) to wandering tourists wherever they may be found among the monuments of Thebes, including the Valley of the Kings.

  Tomb 28, then, in modern times had taken on a new role as a little storage depot for the souvenir hawkers of the twentieth, if not the nineteenth, century. Neighboring KV 27 served a similar function. One day I walked by that tomb’s entrance and noticed Mark Papworth apparently engaged in a spirited conversation with himself. Such was not the case; he was just having a friendly chat with two local entrepreneurs inside, who had been napping away in the limited space between flood debris and ceiling, escaping the heat between bouts of relentless sales confrontations involving postcards, small stone carvings, and the other usual fare.

  When we cleared the debris at the bottom of 28’s shaft, we recovered a fragment of a small limestone canopic jar (a vessel for holding the entrails removed during the mummification process) and the shards of a couple of shattered pots. The shaft itself also retained a fascinating feature: Along two of its walls were carved indentations that provided foot-and handholds for the ancient workmen. One day I decided to give it a try myself. The holds, though adequate, were minimal, and the ascent was accomplished with legs widely stretched from one wall to the other. My climbing skills gave me the confidence to climb up and out, but a slip would have surely involved breaking at least one leg. The nimble and practiced ancient tomb carvers could no doubt scramble up and down such shafts with ease and little care.

  Apart from its ancient history, there was also the question of the tomb’s archaeological history. Who had discovered and apparently “excavated” this simple tomb? A couple of astute contemporary Italian scholars, Patrizia Piacentini and Christian Orsenigo, seem to have found the answer. Just a few years ago, they came to the conclusion that both KV 28 and 27 were discovered and investigated in 1857, by the celebrated French Egyptologist Auguste Mariette. Mariette, who established both the Antiquities Service and the national museum in Egypt, apparently briefly excavated in the valley but left no known surviving record of his work.

  Despite the paucity of artifacts, KV 28 possesses its own austere fascination. Its location and architectural style appear to be Eighteenth Dynasty, as confirmed by its pottery. Interestingly, a single surviving fragment of a cartonnage coffin was recovered from the tomb’s interior. Cartonnage is a style of coffin made from the application of plaster to linen, which can then be beautifully decorated. Our fragment, bearing the painted image of a lovely lotus flower, is more than just pretty, it’s a major historical clue. Cartonnage coffins are characteristic of the post–New Kingdom era, very notably from the Twenty-second Dynasty, and suggest that the tomb had been reused well after the valley was abandoned as a royal cemetery.

  We next paid our attention to tombs KV 44 and 45, excavated in 1901 and 1902, respectively, the latter under the auspices of the American millionaire businessman and lawyer, Theodore Davis. Davis was allowed to conduct excavations in the Valley of the Kings between the years 1902 and 1914, and during that time he made some truly remarkable discoveries, including the virtually intact tomb of Yuya and Thuya, the in-laws of one of the great Eighteenth Dynasty pharaohs. Had the tomb been discovered today, it would have been a world sensation, but its undecorated walls and indirect association to a pharaoh made it just another interesting tomb in Egypt at the time. Davis did find some genuine royal tombs—all robbed, of course, but royal nonetheless. It must have been a good life. He spent winters in Egypt living in his own beautiful sailing houseboat on the Nile, where he was joined by his friends, later returning to his spectacular mansion in Newport, Rhode Island.

  Davis’s most memorable discovery remains a true Egyptological mystery: an undecorated single-chambered tomb with the assigned number 55. Inside were found a curious assemblage of burial materials that seem to be related to the era of Akhenaten, the so-called heretic king whose bizarre religious obsession temporarily upset the ancient status quo. There were pieces of a gilded shrine belonging to his mother, beautiful canopic jars that belonged to one of his secondary wives, and a damaged coffin with the name of its owner chopped out. The bones of the accompanying mummy have been debated as to age, and even gender, and some have argued that it is the body of Akhenaten himself. KV 55 is still controversial, and several books and numerous articles have been dedicated to its discussion.

  It was Davis’s practice to hire professional archaeologists. Howard Carter worked for him over the course of a few years and, among other projects, supervised the excavation of three tombs in our concession, KV 44, 45, and 60. Of the former two, we started our investigation first with KV 45. Carter’s published description in the Annales du Service des Antiquités de l’Égypte is as follows:

  It proved to have only a perpendicular shaft of about 3 metres deep, with a small chamber on the east side at the bottom containing a burial of the XXIInd dynasty completely destroyed by rain water. The burial was of a man and his wife, each having two coffins, two wooden ushabti boxes full of rough clay impression from moulds of ushabti figures and scattered remains of wreaths. The coffins had evidently been very fine, but they were so much decayed that it was impossible to remove anything excepting the face of the man’s mummy case. In carefully searching the debris of the man’s mummy, a small black limestone heart-scarab was found, bearing the following name and titles: Merenkhons, Doorkeeper of the House of Amun. On the mummy of the woman nothing was found. This was not the original burial: the chamber was a third full of rubbish and, on our clearing it out, fragments of limestone canopic jars belonging to the former occupant were found, their date being probably middle XVIIIth dynasty, bearing the following name: Userhet, Overseer of the Fields of Amun.

  Davis was present at the opening, and a couple of his companions left descriptions of the proceedings. One, Miss Jeanette Buttles, noted the recovery of a brightly painted wooden “mask” from a coffin, with inlaid eyes and eyebrows. Sadly, she notes that the mask soon lost its coloring and disintegrated not long after it was removed from the tomb. One of its inlaid bronze eyebrows fell out and was lost. An accompanying photo depicts Theodore Davis, decked out in a bow tie and walking stick, Miss Buttles in full Victorian dress seated in a chair next to the tomb and holding the described coffin face piece. Three other dapper gentlemen pose nearby. The foreman of the work crew stands tall beyond, a fez on his head and his men standing behind. The notebook entry and picture in many ways capture a prevailing attitude of a day in which a hobbyist could obtain permission to dig at will in a place such as the Valley of the Kings, employ an “excavator,” and amuse himself and his friends with the excitement of whatever might turn up.

  With this information at hand, we entered KV 45 anxious to see what sorts of leftovers might remain in the wake of Carter’s excavation. What we found both surprised and appalled us. The tomb’s floor was covered with a thick layer of dirt, and a large pile of debris remained heaped up against the walls. Protruding from this chaotic mess were human bones and lots of wood fragments, some bearing decoration. There was no visible sense of any sort of archaeological care. It was as if the excavation technique employed consisted of digging through the earlier flood debris, clearing half the floor, and then mounding up the dirt before reversing the process with the other half. The wooden pieces were no doubt fragments of the coffins, callously disregarded, as their preservation was in fact quite wretched. The jumble of bones represented the random mixture of the Twenty-second Dynasty man and woman, as well as the folks originally interred in the tomb during the Eighteenth.

  Piles of earth filled with human bones and rotted wooden coffin fragments covered the floor of KV 45’s only chamber.

  PLU Valley of the Kings Project

  The whole scene was dreadful, and we muttered more than a few disparaging comments about Carter’s field techniques. True, he was operating in the early twentieth century, but even Belzoni seemed to have taken more care. Twenty years later Carter would find King Tut’s tomb, and thankfully his skill l
evel and attention to detail by then had improved remarkably.

  We cleared KV 45, sifting every basket of debris passed up the steep ladder extending down the tomb’s shaft. Nearly every one contained something or other left over from the burials, including countless fragments of wood, reduced by the rotting effects of the flooding to crumbling bits of charcoal. A few chunks now and again bore traces of colored decoration, some showing smatterings of painted funerary texts. While the face piece from the man’s coffin had disintegrated as described by Miss Buttles, we were delighted to find the face from the woman’s coffin, decayed as it was but, with a little imagination, still showing signs of its former beauty. And as for the bronze eyebrow that had dropped out and was lost, we found the other one.

  Along with the rotted coffin fragments, we recovered over eighty small, crude mud ushabti figures pressed out of a mold and perhaps sun-dried rather than fired in an oven. These were the ones Carter mentioned in his report, and he apparently found them sufficiently ugly to abandon in a pile of dirt. I for one had never seen such things before, the majority of such items typically being made of faience (a kind of glazed ceramic), stone, or wood. Many were in fragments, and some seemed to retain a veneer of yellow paint. As servants to assist the dead, they seemed woefully puny and inadequate.

  We found the remains of five individuals in KV 45. Two of them, a male and a female, were preserved differently from the other three, so the assumption was that they were the Twenty-second Dynasty coffined occupants, while the others came from the original burial. Theodore Davis kept the three canopic jars of Userhet from the original burials, and their fragments eventually found their way to the Semitic Museum at Harvard University. These jars come in sets of four, so we wondered about the fate of the fourth. We would solve that mystery over a decade later—and in the process leave more questions than answers.