DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.55201#0047
34 EXCAVATIONS AT DEIR EL BAHRI
question of whether the king was actually buried here or not we felt
in some doubt. We found the tomb surrounded by a low brick wall
as though the place had been held sacred; above the tomb entrance
a funeral sacrifice of five bullocks had been made and their heads
and forelegs buried on the spot. However, the tomb chamber as
Mond found it yielded practically no funeral furniture, and this in
spite of the fact that the door had never been opened and that the
tunnel by which thieves had broken in was so small and crooked that
no stone sarcophagus could ever have been brought out through it,
and even a wooden coffin could have been extracted only piecemeal.
The few pits around the edge of the platform had been dug for
the graves of the king’s followers. About four hundred years later
they were reused, a few more were dug, and a little brick house was
built to shelter the guardian who looked after them (pl. 23). It was as
lonely a spot then as it is to-day, and he tried to enliven its desolation
by starting a little garden in his front yard with earth which he
brought up from the fields. Another four or five centuries went by,
and again for a few years the less prosperous citizens of Thebes used
these old pits. One tomb we found just as the undertakers had left it
after blocking its door with stones. Four women had been buried there
successively, and as each newcomer was brought down the pit for
her everlasting rest her undertakers had taken the occasion to drag
her predecessors out of their coffins and break up their furniture in
search for valuables. Finally, the last occupant was brought down;
a spot cleared out in the corner of the room; baskets, wigs, coffins,
and pitifully maltreated mummies brushed aside; and his coffin left
there (pl. 80). Had the people who so ghoulishly robbed and de-
stroyed these bodies been modern Arabs or even ancient thieves, it
would have been one thing; but in each case they were men whose
livelihood was made by persuading the families of the dead to spend
their substance on the very things they were robbing them of. The
last occupant of the tomb was a man named Yotf-Amun, “Charioteer
to the General,”2 and in his coffin we found his whip broken in three
pieces and tied up in its own lash. There was nothing about him to
suggest that he was not an Egyptian, and yet in most un-Egyptian
manner he had a full and bushy beard. In his day horses and chariots
had long been used in Egypt, but it was still remembered that they
had first come from Asia, and probably the best horses and the most
skillful drivers were foreigners still. The Asiatics always wore beards,
2 The inner coffin was originally made for a “Priest and Sculptor of the Temple of
Amun-Re r, Nesit-Amun.”
question of whether the king was actually buried here or not we felt
in some doubt. We found the tomb surrounded by a low brick wall
as though the place had been held sacred; above the tomb entrance
a funeral sacrifice of five bullocks had been made and their heads
and forelegs buried on the spot. However, the tomb chamber as
Mond found it yielded practically no funeral furniture, and this in
spite of the fact that the door had never been opened and that the
tunnel by which thieves had broken in was so small and crooked that
no stone sarcophagus could ever have been brought out through it,
and even a wooden coffin could have been extracted only piecemeal.
The few pits around the edge of the platform had been dug for
the graves of the king’s followers. About four hundred years later
they were reused, a few more were dug, and a little brick house was
built to shelter the guardian who looked after them (pl. 23). It was as
lonely a spot then as it is to-day, and he tried to enliven its desolation
by starting a little garden in his front yard with earth which he
brought up from the fields. Another four or five centuries went by,
and again for a few years the less prosperous citizens of Thebes used
these old pits. One tomb we found just as the undertakers had left it
after blocking its door with stones. Four women had been buried there
successively, and as each newcomer was brought down the pit for
her everlasting rest her undertakers had taken the occasion to drag
her predecessors out of their coffins and break up their furniture in
search for valuables. Finally, the last occupant was brought down;
a spot cleared out in the corner of the room; baskets, wigs, coffins,
and pitifully maltreated mummies brushed aside; and his coffin left
there (pl. 80). Had the people who so ghoulishly robbed and de-
stroyed these bodies been modern Arabs or even ancient thieves, it
would have been one thing; but in each case they were men whose
livelihood was made by persuading the families of the dead to spend
their substance on the very things they were robbing them of. The
last occupant of the tomb was a man named Yotf-Amun, “Charioteer
to the General,”2 and in his coffin we found his whip broken in three
pieces and tied up in its own lash. There was nothing about him to
suggest that he was not an Egyptian, and yet in most un-Egyptian
manner he had a full and bushy beard. In his day horses and chariots
had long been used in Egypt, but it was still remembered that they
had first come from Asia, and probably the best horses and the most
skillful drivers were foreigners still. The Asiatics always wore beards,
2 The inner coffin was originally made for a “Priest and Sculptor of the Temple of
Amun-Re r, Nesit-Amun.”