The wall decorations of a royal burial chamber served a very important purpose, as they depicted the journey of the pharaoh's soul to the next incarnation – the realm of the gods. Without such decorations the king's spirit could not leave its resting place. Furthermore, the way in which the tomb was abandoned and sealed is evidence that they not only feared the pharaoh's earthbound spirit, but made doubly certain that it could not leave the tomb.
The final condition of the tomb shows that the desecrators had ultimately been scared out of the place before they had finished stripping it of all its treasures. The shrine, for instance, had been dismantled and stacked against the north wall and was in the process of being removed, when suddenly, and for no apparent reason, it was completely abandoned and the tomb was sealed up. As two of the valuable shrine panels were left within a few feet of the entrance, the desecrators must literally have dropped them and fled. The fact that they had time to brick up the entrance with these valuable gold-covered artefacts lying within arm's reach, could only mean that the outer portal to the tomb was regarded as a magical barrier against whatever evil they imagined to be inside. To re-enter, even by a few inches, was presumably considered too perilous. Whether they had to complete the procedure in a specific period of time, or whether they had been spooked by something in the tomb itself, we shall never know. What is apparent from the discovery of chisels, a mallet and other workmen's effects found lying on the floor of the burial chamber is that the desecrators departed so quickly that they even left their tools behind. The unusual entrance, therefore, appears to have been prepared as a magical barrier, not to protect the tomb from influences from the outside as was usually the practice, but to prevent whatever was inside from escaping.
It would seem that Tomb 55 was not so much a final resting place as a prison. In the eyes of his contemporaries, Smenkhkare must have committed a crime so heinous that oblivion was not considered sufficient punishment. Rather, they had sentenced him to spend eternity sentient and alone in the silence and darkness of this empty underground vault.
What Smenkhkare had done to warrant so unique and terrible a fate is mystery enough, but his interment in the funerary effects of a woman is even more puzzling. The coffin and Canopic jars had been carefully modified to make them suitable for a pharaoh, with, for instance, a beard being attached to the chin of the face mask, and inscriptions had been altered from feminine to masculine genders. The question is, were these items from the original burial, or were they substitutes from the time of the desecration? Although it has been suggested that the items were the originals – female equipment appropriated and altered to accommodate Smenkhkare because he had died suddenly, before his own burial equipment was ready – this does not sit with the evidence. We know from Tutankhamun's tomb that Smenkhkare did have his own elegantly designed organ coffinettes fully prepared, so there was certainly no reason to use the female Canopic jars. The balance of evidence clearly indicates that the mummy's final condition was the work of the desecrators. This reasoning is further supported by one ofthe gold mummy bands from Tutankhamun's tomb, which was found to have originally been inscribed with the name of Smenkhkare. This intimate funerary item comes from the very mummy of Smenkhkare, and clearly demonstrates that his remains were completely re-dressed by those who had plundered his tomb.
It now seems clear that the desecrators believed that, for their ritual violation of Smenkhkare's remains to have its desired effect, it was necessary to replace the mummy in a new coffin and the organs in new Canopic vessels once the originals had been looted. However, was the fact that they were female burial accoutrements of special importance? Were the woman's coffin and Canopic jars simply discarded items that were at hand and used for expediency, or was there some specific purpose in using female equipment? The answer appears to be that it was deliberately chosen, as the mummy itself was laid out in the attitude of a woman, with only one arm across the chest rather than both.
What can be gathered from this assorted evidence is that shortly after Akhenaten's death, Smenkhkare was entombed conventionally with his own elaborate grave goods. Sometime during the next nine years of Tutankhamun's reign, the king's followers had plundered Smenkhkare's tomb to furnish Tutankhamun's own. Then, in the belief that they could doom Smenkhkare's spirit to survive imprisoned in the tomb, they completely refurnished the mummy and its organs in a macabre transsexual fashion. In the hope of shedding more light on the thinking behind this morbid procedure, attention must turn to the identity of the woman for whom the burial effects were initially intended. Presumably, the excised cartouches had originally bone her name, and perhaps the torn-away face mask had even been in her likeness.
In the 1980s, when the German scholar Rolf Krauss attempted to put a name to this anonymous woman, he discovered something that, far from throwing new light on the mystery, simply made the matter all the more perplexing. From thorough examination and microscopic analysis of the inscribed panels on the Canopic jars, he recovered hieroglyphics that had been all but obliterated. They revealed that a female title had indeed been removed from columns of text and replaced by that of a man. Incredibly, however, it was not the name Smenkhkare, as Krauss expected, or any other title pertaining to that king, but Neferkheperure – the throne name adopted by Akhenaten. Following this discovery, other eminent authorities, such as Cyril Aldred, curator of the department of Egyptian Art at the New York Metropolitan Museum, re-examined the inscriptions on the coffin itself and concluded that they too had been reinscribed in a context that was only applicable to Akhenaten.
These new findings, taken together with Weigall's earlier identification of contextual references to the same pharaoh on the now-lost mummy bands, illustrate almost conclusively that the intimate burial apparatus in Tomb 55 was expressly adapted for Akhenaten, and not for Smenkhkare at all. Yet how could the mummy be Akhenaten? Although his mummy has never been found, unless virtually every eminent Egyptologist for more than a century has been completely mistaken, Akhenaten was far too old to have been the mummy in Tomb 55. If it was a king from the period immediately preceding Tutankhamun, as dated and determined from every item in the tomb, and it was the age indicated by the most modern forensic techniques available, then it could only be Smenkhkare.
The enigma of Tomb 55 as it now remains is not only a complete mystery, it is utterly bizarre. A body which is almost certainly Smenkhkare is heartlessly robbed of its riches, subjected to an odious ritual curse, laid out in the parody of a woman, and re-interred in a queen's funerary equipment which had already been adapted for another man. Add to this the fact that the 'magic bricks' had been made for Akhenaten's tomb, the shrine had been made for Queen Tiye's, and the treasure boxes removed from the tomb had been sealed with Tutankhamun's cartouche, and we have a mystery so complex that it has remained unsolved for almost a century.
With the mystery of Tomb 55 there begins an exciting historical detective story. Unfolding step by fascinating step, a trail of ancient arcane clues ultimately takes us way beyond the borders of pharaonic Egypt. It is an investigation which leads to startling new evidence of an epoch-making cataclysm, and rediscovers the most extraordinary series of events ever to have shaped the course of human history.
SUMMARY
• Ancient Egyptian tombs were always constructed with one purpose in mind: to keep intruders out. In 1907 archaeologists discovered a new tomb in Egypt's Valley of the Kings. Known as Tomb 55, it was unlike any Egyptian tomb ever discovered. Rather than to keep intruders out, it was designed to keep someone or something trapped inside.
• The mummy was still in its gilded coffin, but all evidence of its identity had been removed.
• In ancient Egyptian belief, if someone was buried without their name they could not enter the next world. It would seem that Tomb 55 was not so much a final resting place as a prison. In the eyes of his contemporaries, the occupant must have committed a crime so heinous that oblivion was not considered sufficient punishment.
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p; • Forensic tests carried out in 1963 finally identified the mummy as the Egyptian pharaoh Smenkhkare, the brother and predecessor of the famous Tutankhamun.
• Sometime in the middle of the fourteenth century BC, Tutankhamun had apparently robbed his brother of his funerary goods, subjected him to an odious ritual curse, laid him out in the parody of a woman, and reinterred him in a woman's funerary equipment which had already been adapted for another man. The enigma of Tomb 55 is so perplexing that it has remained a mystery for almost a century.
CHAPTER TWO
Prelude to Heresy
When Tomb 55 was so mysteriously sealed sometime in the late fourteenth century BC, the Egyptian kingdom had already been in existence for almost 2,000 years. The great pyramids of Giza had been standing silently for over a millennium, but there was still another thirteen centuries before Egypt's last pharaoh, Ptolemy XV, the son of Cleopatra, was murdered on the orders of Caesar Augustus and Egypt became the personal estate of the Roman Emperors. Ancient Egypt was by far the longest-lived civilization the world has known; yet for nearly all its three-thousand-year history, its religious beliefs remained fundamentally unchanged. The one occasion the nation did experience a religious revolution, however, just so happens to have occurred during the lifetime of Tutankhamun and Smenkhkare. Before we can ascertain if there is any correlation between this and the enigma of Tomb 55, we must first appreciate the extraordinary nature of Egyptian culture.
During the European Renaissance, when interest in the ancient world was rekindled, Egypt's wondrous ruins refused to surrender their secrets. Unlike the language of the Greeks and Romans, ancient Egyptian had not been a living language since Egypt came under the sway of the Arab world in the second half of the first millennium AD and Arabic became the national tongue. The land of the Nile was filled with the imposing monuments of a once-mighty people: temples, pyramids, tombs and palaces, covered with tantalizing inscriptions that no one could understand.
Egyptian writing, in the form of simple pictograms, first appeared around 3000 BC and was soon developed into a system of decorative hieroglyphics, used to inscribe monuments, together with hieratic script, a simplification of hieroglyphics used for speed of writing on papyrus. For years the translation of these exotic symbols defied all attempts, and it was not until the end of the eighteenth century that it was at last made possible by the discovery of the Rosetta Stone. This slab of black basalt, found near the town of Rosetta at the mouth of the Nile in 1799, bore a lengthy inscription dating from 197 BC. As the stone carried the same text in Egyptian hieroglyphics and in a known language, Greek, it enabled the French scholar Jean François Champollion to work towards a complete decipherment of hieroglyphics by 1822.
Even though the myriad inscriptions that still survived could now be read, it soon became clear that day-to-day records of ancient Egyptian life were few and far between. Only from 332 BC, when Alexander the Great annexed the country and made it a satellite nation of the Greeks, is there a clearly documented history of ancient Egypt. The Greeks brought a new concept to the culture, recording contemporary events for historical posterity; something which the Egyptians themselves appeared to have considered pointless. Egyptian writings had almost exclusively concentrated on commercial, commemorative or religious matters. Even those historical events which the translation of hieroglyphics did reveal were found difficult to date or to fit into a chronological framework.
Ultimately, five inscribed monuments were discovered to reveal the names and order of succession of many of Egypt's pharaohs. The Palermo Stone, a black diorite slab dating from around 2470 BC, recorded a series of early kings; a Royal List from the temple of Karnak included the names of those who preceded Tuthmosis III around 1500 BC; and a Royal List from the city of Abydos, made by Seti I around 1290 BC, named the seventy-six kings who proceeded him, as did two duplicates made by his son Ramesses II. Unfortunately, as an historical chronology these lists are almost useless on their own, as they fail to provide the length of each reign. Luckily, however, one ancient text still survives which does: a list of some 300 kings written in hieratic script on a long sheet of papyrus dating from around 1200 BC. Now in the Turin Museum, the so-called Royal Canon not only gives the order of succession, but also provides the exact period of each reign, right down to the months and days. The problem, however, was that at the time it was rediscovered there was no way to determine how the list related to the modern calendar. Which year did it start and which year did it end? Consequently, the dating of Egyptian history proved a nightmare, with scholars disagreeing with one another sometimes by centuries. Historians needed points of reference: other datable events with which to link the pharaohs' reigns. It was no use looking to ancient Egypt's contemporary neighbours. Until the time of the Greeks their historical records were little better. It fell to astronomy eventually to resolve the matter. Some of the pharaohs' reigns could be precisely dated due to ancient astronomical observations and a lucky mistake in the Egyptian calendar.
The ancient Egyptians knew that the year consisted of 365 days, but they made no adjustment for the additional quarter day, as we do now by adding a day every fourth year. Civic activities, administrative meetings, tax collections, censuses and so forth were arranged according to a 365-day calendar, but religious activities were tied to celestial events, such as the midsummer sunrise, or the spring equinox, that occur at the same time each 365-and-a-quarter-day solar year. Accordingly, the Egyptian civil and solar calendars gradually moved out of synchronization by a day every four years until, after 730 years, midsummer's day fell in the middle of winter. Because they had no idea that the year was determined by the length of time it took the earth to orbit the sun, this discrepancy perplexed the ancient Egyptians, who every few centuries would find the seasons apparently reversed. On one papyrus dating from the thirteenth century BC, a mystified scribe records: 'Winter has come in summer, the months are reversed, the hours in confusion.' It would take a further 730 years for the solar calendar to catch up with the civil calendar, so only every 1,460 years would the two calendars properly align.
As the brightest star in the sky, Sirius was considered to be of great magical importance, and each year on the day of its heliacal rising – its annual reappearance in early July – an important religious festival took place. Accordingly, when this festival coincided with the first day of the civil calendar, every 1460 years, it was considered a particularly special time: the beginning of a new eon called the Sothic Cycle (after Sothis, the ancient name for Sirius). Such an occasion is known to have been celebrated by the Roman occupiers of Egypt in the second century AD. A coin was issued to commemorate the event during the reign of the emperor Antoninus Pius in AD 139. As this only occurred every 1,460 years, by counting backwards we can work out that the same thing had also happened in 1321 BC and 2781 BC.
Against these important dates, specific years in the reigns of kings from the Royal Canon of Turin could be determined. One of the kings included III the list was Senusret III, and a contemporary inscription records that in the seventh year of his reign the heliacal rising of Sirius occurred on the 226th day of the civil calendar. As it took four years for the calendars to move out of alignment by one day, then for the calendars to be out of alignment by 226 days meant that 904 years (226 X 4) must have transpired since the beginning of the last Sothic Cycle in 2781 BC. Accordingly, the seventh year of Senusret III's reign must have been in 1877 BC. Another such sighting is recorded in the ninth year of the reign of the pharaoh Amonhotep I. It happened on the 309th day of the civil calendar, meaning that 1,236 years had transpired since the beginning of the Sothic Cycle in 2781 BC, making the ninth year of Amonhtep's reign 1545 BC. With these and other such recorded sightings it was possible to date the reigns of a number of kings recorded in the Royal Canon. As this list gave both the successive order of the kings, together the length of their reigns, by counting backwards and forwards from the known dates, it was possible to work out when each king's reign beg
an and ended. For example, if the seventh year of Senusret III's reign was 1877 BC, his reign must have begun in 1884 BC; the recorded nineteen-year reign of his predecessor, Senusret II, must therefore have begun in 1903 BC; the recorded thirty-four-year reign of this king's predecessor, Amenemhet III, must have begun in 1937 BC, and so on.
There was a problem with this procedure: as it took four years for the calendars to move apart by a day, the heliacal rising of Sirius would occur on the same day for four consecutive years. Consequently, unless a specific hour was recorded from which to calculate on which of these four years the sighting was made, any date determined from this point of reference could be out by four years. However, this was a minor difficulty compared to problems arising from the Royal Canon itself, in that it was badly damaged, leaving many gaps in the chronology. Even the surviving sections were questioned. Could a list of kings prepared around 1200 BC really be an accurate record of events occurring over a period spanning some two thousand years into the past? Although the eventual scientific dating of archaeological discoveries tended to tally with the dates derived from the Royal Canon, these techniques, such as radiocarbon dating, allowed for a considerable margin of error. From a combination of all these procedures, however, a rough chronological framework of Egyptian history has now emerged. All the same, academic arguments continue. Even recognized authorities can disagree with each other by thirty years or so concerning events in later Egyptian history, and sometimes by as much as a century regarding earlier times.
Atlantis and the Ten Plagues of Egypt: The Secret History Hidden in the Valley of the Kings Page 3