DOI article:
Naville, Edouard: Egypt Exploration Fund: excavations at Deir el-Bahari
DOI Page / Citation link: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.12424#0014
4
Egypt Exploration Fund.
casing made of well-cut black granite. Part of it is still in situ and
supports the cornice. Mr. Dnlison, with the occasional help of Mr. Dennis,
undertook the clearance of the passage and chamber, the heat of which
during the first days of the work was very trying.
Inside and before the shrine were heaps of fragments of the casing
mixed with quantities of so-called mummy-cloth, which I believe was used
for wrapping up various offerings, particularly meat, also many pieces of
broken bows and wooden sticks and tools, wooden figures standing or
sitting; and three or four more or less broken boats. These boats had no
crews of oarsmen; they are evidently models of festal boats on which
were carried statues of a god or of a deceased king, as we see in the
sculptures in the Upper Court of the Great Temple. A wooden figure now
in the museum at Geneva seems to represent one of these statues. There
were no pieces of any kind belonging to a coffin or to a stone sarcophagus.
Mr. Dennis found there two or three very small fragments of bone which
were supposed to be human, but if they are so they probably belong to a
late burial which undoubtedly took place there, judging from the pieces of a
wooden coffin used for propping up the ceiling of the small ante-chamber.
It seems to me quite clear that this chamber is not an actual tomb, but
a subterranean sanctuary. Up to the present a naos or shrine with closed
doors, used for containing a coffin, has never been found. Besides, the size
of the shrine would not admit one of the stone or even one of the wooden
coffins of that time. No inscription of any kind gives us information as
to the purpose of this monument. At the end only, in four different
places, we see engraved on both sides of the joint, as if they were mason's
marks, these signs: ^f"f"' fjj' jj> whidi are generally found
behind a living, not a dead, king. Therefore I believe that this shrine was
supposed to be the abode of the ~ Ka of Mentuhetep II., just as the
wooden shrine found at Dahshur by M. de Morgan was used for the
Ka was worshipped in that sanctuary, and to him were allotted the cakes,
the beer, the pieces of meat mentioned in the stele of Usertsen. In the
shrine was a representation of the Ka. It may have been a statue, sitting
or'standing, as at Dahshur, or lying on a bed like the Osiris at Abydos
or what I think is more probable, it may have been an emblem of precious
metal, which would explain its having disappeared entirely. In the Great
contained its representation. I consider
the shrine
where the Ka is said to live.1 The
1 Deir el-Bahari, V., pi. 121, et passim.
Egypt Exploration Fund.
casing made of well-cut black granite. Part of it is still in situ and
supports the cornice. Mr. Dnlison, with the occasional help of Mr. Dennis,
undertook the clearance of the passage and chamber, the heat of which
during the first days of the work was very trying.
Inside and before the shrine were heaps of fragments of the casing
mixed with quantities of so-called mummy-cloth, which I believe was used
for wrapping up various offerings, particularly meat, also many pieces of
broken bows and wooden sticks and tools, wooden figures standing or
sitting; and three or four more or less broken boats. These boats had no
crews of oarsmen; they are evidently models of festal boats on which
were carried statues of a god or of a deceased king, as we see in the
sculptures in the Upper Court of the Great Temple. A wooden figure now
in the museum at Geneva seems to represent one of these statues. There
were no pieces of any kind belonging to a coffin or to a stone sarcophagus.
Mr. Dennis found there two or three very small fragments of bone which
were supposed to be human, but if they are so they probably belong to a
late burial which undoubtedly took place there, judging from the pieces of a
wooden coffin used for propping up the ceiling of the small ante-chamber.
It seems to me quite clear that this chamber is not an actual tomb, but
a subterranean sanctuary. Up to the present a naos or shrine with closed
doors, used for containing a coffin, has never been found. Besides, the size
of the shrine would not admit one of the stone or even one of the wooden
coffins of that time. No inscription of any kind gives us information as
to the purpose of this monument. At the end only, in four different
places, we see engraved on both sides of the joint, as if they were mason's
marks, these signs: ^f"f"' fjj' jj> whidi are generally found
behind a living, not a dead, king. Therefore I believe that this shrine was
supposed to be the abode of the ~ Ka of Mentuhetep II., just as the
wooden shrine found at Dahshur by M. de Morgan was used for the
Ka was worshipped in that sanctuary, and to him were allotted the cakes,
the beer, the pieces of meat mentioned in the stele of Usertsen. In the
shrine was a representation of the Ka. It may have been a statue, sitting
or'standing, as at Dahshur, or lying on a bed like the Osiris at Abydos
or what I think is more probable, it may have been an emblem of precious
metal, which would explain its having disappeared entirely. In the Great
contained its representation. I consider
the shrine
where the Ka is said to live.1 The
1 Deir el-Bahari, V., pi. 121, et passim.