The Golden Falcon

by David C. Clark

  “You both know about the serious water damage in the tombs of Hatshepsut, Ramesses II and III as a result of the 1914 flood? Ramesses III tomb was so seriously damaged, Burton made one foray into it but decided it was too dangerous to attempt any clearing of the new debris. He dug out some debris in the tomb of Ramesses II, noting that the inside temperature was much higher than normal. Elevated temperatures, combined with high humidity, do not help the integrity of tombs nor decorated surfaces. Destabilising factors were now at work.”

  “But this does not explain why we have such massive structural damage in so many tombs.”

  “Structural damage is inter-connected with water damage. First, understand that all natural rock formations, whether they are mountain ranges or sandstone reefs, are subject to external forces. Second, consider the nature of sedimentary rock. It was created by the laying down of successive strata of organisms cemented with calcium carbonate millions of years ago when Egypt was submerged under an ancient ocean. Limestone appears to be monolithic but it isn’t. The geological formation known as the Saharan Shield is constantly subjected to forces created in the earth’s crust and the Red Sea sits above a fault line. The edges of the two Red Sea tectonic plates are slowly grinding against each other though not as dramatically as the Pacific Plate along North America’s western coast but they are moving nevertheless.”

  “Shocks in the Red Sea plates reverberate through the stone mass of Egypt. Even though the tremors are slight, their effects are felt in the rock formation in the Theban Hills, especially in the specific fault line that runs along a north-south axis, one prosaically named ‘The Valley of the Kings Fault’. It is the single biggest threat to the Valley in the long term but nothing can be done to circumvent its impact as it is just too big a technical problem. This fault line transmits minute shock waves through the limestone, creating cracks. Some are only hairline, others quite pronounced. In time the rock fractures.”

  “But surely these geological processes have been an on-going factor in Egypt for millions of years? The Bent Pyramid at South Darshur had to be abandoned in late construction when the foundations collapsed.”

  “Yes, that’s correct but the failure was the result of an increasing load being placed on poor foundation material. Sneferu’s builders chose their site badly because the science of pyramid building was only in its infancy. The lessons learnt at Darshur were applied in the building of the pyramids at Giza as by then the builders knew how to identify solid ground. There are almost no signs of structural movement in any of the Giza pyramids other than cracks in the granite lintels above King Khafre’s burial chamber. These may be the result of an earthquake or the huge pressures placed on them from the mass of stone above. These pyramids are so colossal and heavy, a catastrophic failure in any is just about impossible.

  “Before we move away from rock mechanics, do not forget a simple dynamic. The weight of the rock over the tombs exerts a constant downwards pressure on the walls, pillars and ceilings. Returning to water. We know about the damage done to the Sphinx.”

  “The Aswan Dam again.” exclaimed Yousef. “Yes, I am afraid so.” I replied.

  “Dennis, the effects of the dam are only recent. However, the wall in Seti’s crypt and other tombs suffered damage after they were opened but well before President Nasser was even born and the dam built.”

  “You are again correct, my friend, but keep in mind the tremors from the Red Sea fault, the odd earthquake,the weight of the burden hanging over the tombs and hairline faulting in stone matrices, to which you have to add the effects of water seeping down through rock faults. These elements, working together, create the collapses and fractures we have to work with today. Over time, there will be more as the processes of nature are unstoppable. The long term effects of the Aswan Dam are unknown but every huge dam is a mixed blessing.”

  What is beyond dispute is the dam’s deleterious effect on the water table under the Nile Valley. Before it was built, the Nile Valley flooded every year with the positive effect of the flushing out of naturally occurring salts. This sweetened the soil and there was no little need to use artificial fertilisers as the silt deposited was naturally fertile.

  A vicious cycle developed after the dam’s completion. The population of Egypt kept growing. During pharaonic times, two to three million people lived on the fertile fields flanking the Nile. Today, over 80 million Egyptians live a crowded life along the river. The dramatic increase in population means more food has to be produced which forces the lifting of greater volumes of water from the river to irrigate agricultural land. As water seeps back into the Nile from the fields, it carries an increasing volume of naturally occurring salt and fertiliser and the effects are evident across a wide range of monuments. The Sphinx had suffered in a most alarming manner with the lower parts of its body and paws crumbling, necessitating constant repairs to the statue though the problem remains unresolved in the water table beneath the sandstone colossus.

  In the Valley, a thick belt of limestone overlays a deep layer of friable Esna shale, beneath which is a stratum of Dakhla chalk which lies either above or below the water table. For millennia, there existed a state of equilibrium between the three layers and, whilst the Nile’s annual flooding caused the water table to rise and fall within a reasonable horizon, the construction of the Aswan Dam led to the cessation of the cycle. This may have disturbed this natural balance in ways not as yet researched.

  Having made these observations I said “If all these elements, new and old, continue, we will be faced with another dynamic. The process of rock mechanics could be slowly evolving in novel ways and we can look forward to more subtle changes in the Valley’s rock structure and the resultant movement within the tombs.”

  “Well, Dennis” said Yousef, the irony heavy in his voice. “I am beginning to regret asking my question. You are the bearer of good news. The lifting of a veil of ignorance, whilst illuminating, is not necessarily a source of joy. I am now completely re-assured and will sleep well tonight.”

  “Gentlemen, much is conjecture and, as we well know, time in Egypt is not measured in years so we shouldn’t be too worried during our lifetime though it is something to keep under consideration. We will put strain gauges into a number of tombs to measure movements within the rock formation. These devices may show nothing at all but, at least, we will create a reference point for future observation.”

  On that note, we agreed to call it a night. I was pleased to see my observations had fallen on receptive ears and my remarks about the problems affecting the tombs gave both men valuable background information. By voicing some of the threats to the geology of the valley and the potential long term consequences, I felt I had laid the groundwork for the acceptance of one of our more radical structural concept

  Chapter 7 - THE ROYAL NECROPOLIS

  Present day - Egypt

  The tomb restorations would take place in an area that was but a fraction of the ancient land of the pharaohs. Other than the narrow fertile corridor of the Nile Valley with its flood plains, the greater part of the country was, then and now, a hostile, arid wasteland with a few scattered oases in the north-west. The geology of Egypt was the product of millions of years of sedimentary layering created when Northern Africa lay submerged under a vast ocean. As the waters of the Mediterranean receded, the northern limits of the Saharan Shield tilted upwards, exposing the land mass to millennia of high temperatures and countless storms which sculpted a landscape of expansive desert and sun blasted eroded mountains. The scarcity of rain in the hinterland, as the global climate stabilised, made the development of a civilisation dependant on the river which the ancient Egyptians called Iteru, meaning the great river. The country could still have been a historical backwater, if not for the annual inundation which carried millions of tonnes of fertile silt that spread out over the flatlands bordering the Nile.

  Scattered in remote patches, are outcrops of granite, basalt, porphyry, graywacke and other types of rock. These cryst
alline hard stone reefs, formed by pre-historic volcanic action, yielded the material used by the kings in creating their ornamental monuments and statuary. From immense sedimentary beds, sandstone and limestone were quarried to provide millions of tonnes of masonry seen today in the temples, pyramids and other remnants of the ancient civilisation.

  The early Egyptians used mud bricks as their building medium. Then, starting from the date of the first use of stone in monumental work some 4,500 years ago, quarrymen and masons became masters in wresting stone from the earth and shaping it into the monuments that astonished later generations. At the principal source of red granite near Aswan, there remains, still welded to the native rock, an almost complete obelisk forty-one metres long. The masons working on this huge object discovered a flaw in the stone and left it unfinished as a stark testament to their skills. This quarry, and others, are still littered with incomplete monumental works discarded because of fractures in the stone or accidental breakage.

  Masons could only extract and fashion the softer stone with copper and bronze tools as iron, which the Hittites had learnt how to produce, was rare and expensive. To sculpt the harder stone, they were forced to employ tough dolerite pounding hammers to slowly pulverise the rock into rough outline before shaping the final contours with grinding stones and fine powdered quartz in a process that took years to produce a large piece of statuary. Under the great builder kings, thousands of men toiled to meet royal demands for vast quantities of monumental masonry.

  To the eyes of a civil engineer, there were few mysteries about how the Egyptians manhandled massive blocks of stone, colossal statutes or huge obelisks. Despite idle speculation, engineers have no doubts about how these structures were erected. Only about 20,000 men had laboured on any of the pyramids and, in a country which had a population of around a million people, a king determined to build a pyramid would have had no difficulty in assembling such a small workforce. In the Eleventh Dynasty tomb of a noble, Djehutyhetep, I saw a wall painting depicting a colossal calcite statue of an enthroned figure mounted on a sled drawn by four teams of men, assisted by boys pouring lubricating slurry under the sled runners. A foreman stands on the statue, whilst another calls out the chant to which the teams hauled in unison.

  The area we were to focus on, the Valley of the Kings, only came to prominence in the New Kingdom era following the overthrow of the foreign Hyksos rulers in 1550 BC. The new king, Ahmose, who had risen from the Theban nobility, chose to emphasise the importance of the city of his birth and the primacy of the god, Amun,at the Karnak and Luxor temples. The triumphant Ahmose, designated as his burial place, a bluff overlooking the Nile valley within the traditional boundaries of the older Theban cemetery. The location of the tomb of his son, Amenhotep I, is still unknown, although KV39 is a hot contender.

  By either following convention or making one, Amenhotep’s successor, Thutmosis I, definitely chose to be interred within the confines of a ravine long overlooked in the Theban Hills, a decision establishing the valley as the royal necropolis for the next four hundred years. Perhaps the pyramidal shape of the mountain looming over the valley reminded him of the grandeur of the monuments at Giza. Then again, he may have reasoned that, as the Hyksos had taken over and dominated the Delta region as far as Memphis, a more secure and remote graveyard was warranted instead of the historic necropolis around the older and vulnerable capital.

  The king’s necropolis is about seven kilometres inland from the western bank of the Nile and almost directly opposite the ancient temple of Amun-Re in Luxor. Fields stretch from the river’s bank to the foothills of the Hills where a limestone cliff rises straight up from the flood plain to a height of almost 200 metres. It is behind this deeply fissured rampart and its narrow plateau that the Valley of the Kings is located, one of many such formations created by the erosion of the Libyan Plateau. Sandwiched between the river’s bank and the escarpment stand the remains of the funerary temples of most of the New Kingdom Pharaohs. Within walking distance are the extensive burial grounds of provincial rulers, nobles and commoners dating back well before the New Kingdom era. The skeleton of the artisan township at Deir el-Medineh is almost directly behind the main mortuary complex and pathways still lead from the ruined village to the king’s valley.

  Access to the more distant Valley of the Queens is by way of a road running behind the mortuary temples. The Valley of the Kings is at the end of a longer roadway which winds up onto the plateau before wending its way down into the ravine behind the escarpment wall and Queen Hatshepsut’s temple. In antiquity, its entrance narrowed between rocky outcrops which all but hid it from the inquisitive.

  The Valley is encircled by an almost continuous geological formation similar to a curtain wall, with a series of culverts branching off a 600 metre long central, dry watercourse. The erosion scarred, upper mountains, hills and escarpment present an arid but none the less noble vista of soft browns, warm ochres and yellow hues, deeply etched by aeons of scorching heat and rare cloudbursts. The barren lower hills are cloaked in scree washed off the upper hills and the valley floor is littered with boulders and loose rock mingled with the limestone chips created by masons when quarrying the royal graves.

  Since the Valley first commanded the attention of serious explorers, hundreds of tonnes of chipped stone and excavated waste had been moved from place to place by those seeking tombs and this constant moving of spoil was one of the reasons many grave sites took so long to discover. Material was indiscriminately dumped anywhere convenient to the labourers engaged in the haphazard excavations of the pioneer tomb hunters. Waste was unwittingly deposited over several already obscured tomb entrances until the more systematic methods of later archaeologists permitted the discovery of Tutankhamen’s tomb, (KV62) and KV5, the vast mausoleum of the male children of Ramesses the Great.

  Most Eighteenth Dynasty tombs had unassuming entrances, sealed with simple plastered masonry walls, which were easily lost under an accumulation of water and windswept debris whereas the majority of Nineteenth and Twentieth Dynasty tombs had impressive portals cut into the hillsides. These were originally sealed off with ornamental cedar doors secured with nothing more than looped ropes from which hung the seals of the high priests who had officiated at the internments. This made their early looting very easy for thieves.

  Though the days before I left for Egypt were exceptionally busy, the nights were long. Despite having the companionship of Elizabeth or my parents for the occasional dinner, time weighed heavily most evenings. It had been years since I left the university so my knowledge of the history of the New Kingdom was more than a bit rusty. The Society’s library held an extensive collection of publications on Pharaonic Egypt so I thought, what better way to spend the lonely nights than doing some homework and restoring my intimacy with the Egyptologists in whose footsteps I would now follow. I read extensively to re-acquaint myself with the history of Egypt and the Valley or as the ancients knew it, Taa Set Aat, meaning the Great Place.

  Even before the long reign of Ramesses X1 ended, control of the kingdom had begun to again split into Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt as the influence of the last Ramesside kings diminished in the south because they had long favoured Pi-Ramess, in the Delta, as the city from which to rule. Thebes retained its role as the centre of state religion and the Valley remained the burial place of all but the last of the eleven kings to bear the name Ramesses.

  Ultimately, the fight for control of the south became so intense, a civil war erupted between the Theban temple high priest, Amenhotep and the loyalist Viceroy of Kush. Exactly what happened to complete the rupture is not clear. Ramesses XI despatched a military commander, hoping to resolve the issue. After repulsing the Viceroy’s forces, the general realised he had effective political power and may have forced the pharaoh to accept him as the local ruler. The high priest who succeeded Amenhotep then appeared to have seized power, with his successor completing the break from total obedience to pharaonic rule by re-establishing a line of Th
eban kings.

  After the death of Ramesses XI, the founder of the Twenty-First Dynasty, Pharaoh Smendes, settled for centralised royal administration in the north, accepting the de facto loss of Upper Egypt. The Valley was then abandoned as the royal necropolis, though it continued to serve as a burial place of Theban nobles, some of whom usurped royal tombs and funerary equipment for their own use.

  Once the Valley lost is raison d’etre, the despoliation of the tombs commenced. The high priests, in need of funds to fuel their campaign against the viceroys, ordered the systematic plunder of tombs in the royal valleys and the adjacent necropolis in a ghoulish manner Genghis Khan would have envied. In an episode of unprecedented sacrilege, the coffins of royalty were attacked with savagery, mummies torn open to reveal heart scarabs and linen burial cloth shredded to gain access to hidden amulets. Rich ornaments, gilded shrines, precious jewels and artefacts were stripped from chambers, leaving the tombs littered with the shards and fragments of smashed glory. For at least a century, the sepulchres stood open and rarely visited but still victim of opportunistic theft of anything of value overlooked during the initial act of rapine. Finally,temple priests, possibly working under pharaonic decree, located and where necessary, re-wrapped and encoffined the royal dead. The fear of further acts of sacrilege was so pronounced that bodies were moved from one hiding place to another.

  One group, first secreted in the cliff tomb of the Seventeenth Dynasty, Queen Inhapi, was re-housed in the crypt of Amenhotep III (KV 35). Another major group was re-interred in the Theban necropolis family tomb of Pinudjem II (DB320) and both caches remained untouched for almost three millennia. Possibly the tomb of Pharaoh Horemheb was the site of a third cache. His mummy, and those of several other kings, remains unaccounted for. The fate of the bodies of innumerable queens, princes and princesses is unknown. The royal tombs lay open, ransacked and frequented only by snakes and jackals which inhabited the surrounding desert and the long and ignominious period of obscurity and decay commenced.