Beneath the Sands of Egypt

by Donald P. Ryan, PhD

  I was anxious for Larry to take a look at the objects stored in Tomb 60, and it was exciting to reopen the tomb. I was aware that the tomb had been entered at least once in the last year or so. I saw as much on a National Geographic television program during which Zahi Hawass and company explored its interior and marveled at the mummy housed in a wooden case we had built. The tomb, as expected, was much as we had left it, although we were surprised to find something that resembled a human body covered with a sheet lying atop the mummy’s box. “Darn that National Geographic!” I yelled. “They were too lazy to put the lady back into her box!” Much to my surprise, though, such was not the case. When I pulled back the sheet, there lay another mummy, that of a bald young boy whose battered chest lay ripped open. I recognized the fellow. He used to reside in the nearby tomb of Thutmose IV, where I had seen him in a couple of different chambers in previous years. Apparently he was moved to KV 60 for safekeeping with the opening of KV 43 to tourists. Our royal woman was still inside, and National Geographic was absolved.

  The 2007 field camp outside the entrance of KV 21. The canopies provide shade and a nice fresh-air working environment.

  Denis Whitfill/PLU Valley of the Kings Project

  Larry scrutinized many of the artifacts from Tomb 60 and the others, with the informed eyes of a curator who has had a lifetime of experience with a wide variety of Egyptian objects, and Brian was helpful in examining and cataloging our many previous finds. Perhaps the biggest highlight of our new field season was the arrival of Salima Ikram, whose effusive personality has made her the darling of many an international lecture or television appearance. Salima wrote her Ph.D. dissertation on the topic of meat and butchering in ancient Egypt, a surprisingly fascinating subject with many tangents. She was naturally interested in the several small wrapped mummy packages we had recovered from Tomb 60, whose contents remained unknown. Salima suspected that they were “victual mummies”: preserved birds and chunks of meat that served as food provisions for a tomb’s occupant. There was one way to find out. Salima had brought with her a portable X-ray device, which she and an assistant set up with practiced efficiency in the burial chamber of KV 21. True to form, she bubbled with enthusiasm as she knelt down clad in her protective lead apron to position each object and plate of film.

  We did not have to wait long for answers. The kind scholars at Chicago House assisted in the development of the X-ray film, and within a day Salima came to my hotel room bearing the results. Holding the exposures up to the light streaming through a sliding glass door, we could see that Salima’s suppositions were correct. Revealed there were the little desiccated remains of small birds, wrapped in oval packages, and substantial chunks of meat, still attached to the bone, including an impressive rack of beef ribs.

  The return to the Valley of the Kings proved a wonderful success with only a few drawbacks, including some health issues. Much to my surprise, I experienced twelve different afflictions during the month we worked, including the typical predictable illnesses, along with headaches and even a sprained ankle. Apparently, some of the immunity I once believed I possessed had worn off in the years since my last visit. On the bright side, we were working in the fall rather than the summer. It was a very welcome and sensible change from the brutally hot conditions we had experienced during our first four field seasons.

  Egyptologist Dr. Salima Ikram operating her portable X-ray unit in the burial chamber of KV 21.

  Denis Whitfill/PLU Valley of the Kings Project

  In the more hospitable season of fall, there were plenty of other archaeologists around from all over the world working on tombs, temples, and other projects. There was even a bit of a social life, featuring occasional parties, dinners, and lectures, along with informal get-togethers with other Egyptologists. Very generously, Chicago House made its wonderful library available for use by visiting scholars. Overall, I returned home encouraged and excited, with hopes of future field seasons to come. Not only had my dreams of returning to Egypt been fulfilled, they had far exceeded my expectations.

  Just a few months after I left, a startling announcement came out of Egypt. A new tomb had been found in the Valley of the Kings, the first since Howard Carter’s discovery of Tutankhamun in 1922. I knew it was coming. My friend Otto Schaden had told me as much the year before. Otto had been working for years clearing the debris out of the lengthy corridors that constituted the Twentieth Dynasty tomb known as KV 10, which belonged to the Nineteenth Dynasty ruler Amenmesses. While digging outside the tomb’s entrance, Otto uncovered what appeared to be the edges of a pit and very much looking like the top of a tomb shaft. In what seems to be almost a cosmic tradition in archaeology, the discovery was made just a few days before he was finishing up his field season. A new tomb would surely be an incredible discovery, but there was also an excellent chance that this was just a shallow pit full of rubble, perhaps a false start to a shaft leading to nothing. With such tantalizing prospects, it must have been an agonizing year of anticipation while he waited for the next field season, when the truth would be learned.

  A shaft it was, leading to a sealed single chamber packed with seven coffins and numerous sealed white jars. It was an amazing scene to behold, but opening tombs of course soon leads to the reality of dealing with their contents. In the case of this new KV 63, Otto was presented with the horrifying fact that most of these wooden coffins had been chewed nearly to sawdust by termites and were seemingly held together by their painted surfaces. And, incredibly, the coffins held no mummies but contained a strange variety of mummification materials, ancient stuffed “pillows,” floral wreaths, and other funerary equipment.

  The situation with the artifacts was a conservationist’s nightmare. Otto remained in Egypt for months until the tomb was properly documented with everything in situ. As was the case with the discovery of Tut, official and unofficial visitors, including the press, were a constant distraction, but the tomb’s contents were successfully removed to the nearby KV 10 to await further study. What did Otto find? Is it actually a tomb if no bodies are found? Or is it more proper to see it as a cache of funerary objects? Can these objects be associated with individuals known or unknown? Like so much in archaeology, the extent of the answers we seek might never meet our expectations, but even so, mysteries can keep us interested and motivated.

  It was another long year of anticipation for me, too, as I prepared my application for another field season. This time I would include archaeologist Paul Buck, who taught me how to wield a trowel during our formative first field experiences in Egypt as graduate students. Paul, unable to accompany me on my very first year in the valley, was now a professor and researcher in Las Vegas, and he was eager to participate. With his vast field experience in Egypt and elsewhere and his hilarious sense of humor, Paul was a very welcome addition to the team. Additionally, Denis Whitfill, a longtime adventure buddy who had worked with me and Thor Heyerdahl on Tenerife, would serve as our photographer and archaeological technician. Larry and Salima would return, and our team would be rounded out by Barbara Aston, whose expertise in interpreting ancient pottery was extremely desirable.

  Our focus in 2006 would be the rubble-choked Tomb 27, a daunting task that at least superficially guaranteed no great results from what would be our substantial efforts. It was an intimidating process. Although we had earlier removed some of the upper layers of flood debris in a couple of the tomb’s four chambers, there were literally tons more before we would reach the floors where we expected to uncover whatever was left of the original burial.

  On the day we were to begin, our local work crew’s documents had not been completely processed, and, anxious to start, Paul, Denis, and I decided to commence excavations without them. A couple days of moving rocks and buckets up a ladder extending down the shaft left us with sore backs and an even greater appreciation for the hard work of our employees who would soon arrive. Eventually the shaft was completely cleared, and we found at its bottom the remains of mud bricks that had
originally sealed the tomb’s door. The first chamber that followed was reminiscent of the sole room constituting KV 28. There was plenty of modern garbage about, and soot tarnished the doorway and ceiling. Surprisingly, we found very little here, although a suspicious layer of plaster in the floor brought temporary excitement with thoughts of a sealed shaft having escaped the destruction wrought upon the rest of the tomb. Alas, it turned out to be a sort of floor repair squaring up a short ramp leading to a large adjacent chamber we designated C.

  Even though encumbered with flood debris, Chamber C was curiously interesting. A channel dug through the dirt leading to a pit nearly reaching the tomb’s floor remained from either Mariette’s initial probe or from subsequent tomb robbers. Our own test pits in the room’s corners to determine its architectural plan had already revealed a small collection of pottery and the skeletal remains of a headless torso. Against one wall, too, was a tall, wide niche with no discernible function, resembling an unfinished start to what in other tombs would be a staircase.

  Chamber C would prove to be quite a challenge as we systematically brought the level of debris down to the floor. Here we expected to find whatever might be left of the room’s contents, and in this we were more than well rewarded. Our careful excavation revealed a great mass of pottery, all shattered into a jumbled mess, many of the pots being similar to the large white jars we had examined in the side chamber of Tomb 21. It seemed impossible to determine how many there once were, but by counting the surviving hard mud jar stoppers, we were able to arrive at a number for at least the large pots. There were other types of pottery as well, including little plates and bowls. Though damaged, they would prove to be the key in dating KV 27’s use.

  The huge quantity of shards was imposing, and we hoped to be able to match up a few vessels at least as a sample. A thick cluster of broken ceramic bits and pieces was examined and collected from a pile against the wall in hopes that we might find a complete collection of joining fragments. To our disappointment, this little deposit contained an almost random selection of shards from several different vessels, but this in itself was quite instructive. It now became easy to imagine what had happened here. The room had been used to store a large number of vessels, including perhaps thirty white pots containing embalming leftovers or grave goods. Piles of dishes, some perhaps loaded up with food for sustaining the deceased, were likewise placed or stacked on the floor. One day a catastrophe happened, on a date that remains undetermined. Either the force of a massive flood broke down the tomb’s door or, more likely, the tomb had already been breached, pilfered, and left open, and churning brown water poured down the tomb’s shaft, carrying with it rocks and boulders.

  The powerful surge was not kind to any of the tomb’s four chambers. The ceramic contents of Chamber C, for one, were violently slammed against the floors and walls and buried deeply in the muck during the first of what would be many flood events to damage the tomb. Whatever else that might have been in this room suffered a similar fate. Anything organic had scant chance of long-term preservation. The skeletal torso we had previously uncovered represented a mummy whose wrappings had likely rotted away quickly. Like the pottery, it, too, had been slammed against the wall, probably losing its head in the process. We found very little of the rest of it, other than a few small skull fragments, and we even entertained the notion that perhaps the mummy had washed in from another chamber in the tomb.

  The pottery provided us with an Eighteenth Dynasty date, but unfortunately no names or any other sort of writing was attached to them. The tedious removal of the debris from Chamber C continued, and one day a nice surprise was discovered: a fragment of a limestone canopic jar with two lines of inscriptions. I was off working on a television program, and Denis could hardly wait to report the news. This is exactly the sort of information we had hoped for that might tie the tomb to actual individuals who lived and died in Egypt around thirty-four hundred years ago. That night Denis brought the images up on a laptop computer, and I could see the clearly cut hieroglyphs, but excitement soon turned to disappointment. There were two lines of inscriptions, all right, with a funerary inscription. Such inscriptions, though, often contain four lines, ending with the name of the deceased, and the essential part was missing from our fragment. So close, I thought, but so typical of our experience working in these undecorated tombs, as they don’t give up their secrets easily.

  Lucky for us, it would be only a few days until an adjoining piece of the canopic jar was recovered—with the missing two lines of text! And yes, there was a name, that of “the god’s father, Userhet.” “God’s father” was probably an interesting job in the New Kingdom. Although it sounds as if it could be applied to the father of a pharaoh, it actually seems to be a kind of priestly title for one with specific religious duties. The name Userhet is certainly known for several high-ranking individuals of the Eighteenth Dynasty, but there was something oddly familiar, if not suspicious, about this particular combination of name and title.

  Pottery restorer Mohammed Farouk holds a reconstructed pot from KV 27, the result of weeks of work sorting through innumerable fragments.

  Denis Whitfill/PLU Valley of the Kings Project

  I checked some images on my computer. Yes, I knew this Userhet. His name and title were found on the three canopic jars that Howard Carter had excavated in the ruins of KV 45, just around the corner from Tomb 27! We had found pieces of the fourth jar! Rather than finally having achieved the satisfaction of matching tomb to owner, we were instead met with a puzzle. Obviously, the jars belonged together, and something was clearly amiss. Was KV 45 indeed the original burial place of Userhet, with one of his jars taken elsewhere by tomb robbers or others? Could KV 27 actually be Userhet’s original tomb? Given a score of three to one, KV 45 versus KV 27, one might assume by sheer numbers that 45 wins. Perhaps, but the simplest explanations are not always the most accurate. Could the canopic jars have been washed from elsewhere into one or both tombs by the floodwaters that devastated each of their original burials? Maybe, but it seems far-fetched. Nonetheless, I prefer the explanation that the jar fragments in KV 27 are intrusive, and thus we are left where we were before, searching for answers that continue to elude us.

  Meanwhile our study of the artifacts from all six tombs in our concession continued. When we again reopened KV 60 to retrieve a few objects, we were met by a surprise: The wooden box holding the female mummy was gone, and so was the mummy. She had recently been taken to Cairo for study by Zahi Hawass and his team of experts. The questions concerning the death of Hatshepsut and the whereabouts of her mummy were still unanswered over fifteen years after the press had announced that I had in fact rediscovered her mummy. I maintained my position that the KV 60 mummy appeared royal to me, and I suppose Hatshepsut could be a candidate for its identity, but we had no way of telling.

  Zahi must have been thinking about Hatshepsut for some time, and identifying her mummy would be a worthwhile project that he was certainly capable of organizing. He was well aware of the mummy in KV 60 and was apparently very impressed when he first laid eyes upon her. She would certainly need to be included in any serious study.

  The author holds a fragment of an inscribed canopic jar from KV 27 belonging to Userhet.

  Denis Whitfill/PLU Valley of the Kings Project

  At the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, Hawass gathered together four unidentified female mummies, each of whom he believed had circumstantial reasons to be included in a short list of contenders who could possibly be the female pharaoh. Among them were the two mummies originally noted by Howard Carter in Tomb 60: the nurse named Sitre, still in her coffin that had been removed to Cairo around 1906, and the mummy we encountered when we rediscovered the tomb.

  The mummies were CT scanned in search of evidence that could provide any sorts of clues. The possibility of making a solid identification was slim, but it was at least worth a try. Along with the mummies, a few surviving objects related to Hatshepsut’s burial were brought out f
or examination, including a small wooden box bearing the pharaoh’s name. It had been found over a century before in the famous Deir el-Bahri mummy cache and had been used like a canopic jar, containing a mummified liver, presumably that of Hatshepsut herself. When the box was scanned, it was found to contain something else, something unprecedented. It was a tooth, and it must have been put into the mix during the mummification process. If it had fallen out during embalming, I can’t imagine that such an integral part of a pharaoh would be merely thrown away. So here apparently was Hatshepsut’s tooth, a revelation with profound implications. In reviewing the CT scans, it was found that there was one mummy missing the appropriate tooth, and, like Cinderella’s slipper, the tooth exactly matched the mummy I’d rediscovered from the floor of KV 60. It was the sort of rare discovery that will likely happen only once.

  In June 2007, Zahi announced the news that the mummy of Hatshepsut had been identified, and it was a media sensation. My phone rang constantly for days, with reporters from all over the world asking my opinion about the discovery. As I wasn’t directly involved in the project, there was not much I could say, other than that from what I knew, the identification was very compelling, if not completely persuasive, and I continue to believe that. A new state-of-the-art DNA laboratory exclusively for the examination of mummies has been set up in the basement of the Egyptian Museum, and Zahi hopes to bolster Hatshepsut’s identity by comparing genetic materials from the mummy with those of her relatives.

  Along with the identification, the CT scans revealed some fascinating information about Hatshepsut’s death. Some Egyptologists had suggested the possibility that she could have been murdered by her stepson and the rightful heir to the throne, Thutmose III. However, murder would have been unnecessary. Hatshepsut’s state of health was a disaster. She was extremely obese and had serious dental issues and cancer, all three of which might have caused or contributed to her demise.