DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.55201#0060
SEASON OF 1921-1922
We are told that this is the age of specialization, and not to be
behind the times, we introduced it into our digging at Thebes-
and it paid.1 Two seasons before, we had found the models of Meket-
Ref and decided to specialize on the Eleventh Dynasty cemeteries.
The following year this led us to the tombs of fAshayet and little
Mayet. Sticking to the same scheme in 1921-1922 we were rewarded
with the private letters of a garrulous old farmer-priest, which have
taken us right up the back stairs of a household of four thousand
years ago and let us eavesdrop on domestic squabbles of the days of
Abraham.
The unfinished temple site which we had found the previous year
was cleared in the autumn of 1921 right up to the point where the
ancient engineers abandoned their task at the death of their royal
master. High up, half-way between this unfinished temple and that
at Deir el Bahri, on the rocky crags beside a dizzily winding path,
there are scratched a confusing medley of signatures.2 It is just like
some schoolroom desk or some temptingly white-birch tree. Once
there is an initial cut into it, every boy who owns a penknife has an
irresistible impulse to add his. In this case, however, it was the
Twelfth Dynasty priests who left their scrawls, and nearly every
one of them mentions that he served the tombs of Neb-hepet-Ref or
S fankh-ka-Re f. The association of the priests of these two kings
can not be a mere coincidence. Surely, if they forgathered here, it
was because the two tombs that they were guarding were not far
away, and as there is no question but that the temple of Neb-hepet-
Ref was at Deir el Bahri nearby, it is reasonable to suppose that
S fankh-ka-Re f was buried in the equally nearby unfinished temple to
the south.
We found a dozen more grave pits, and in one we found the two
arms wrenched from a mummy, with the skin still showing the im-
prints of eight large bracelets of gold and semi-precious stones. Every-
where we found those curiously decorated mummy cases that the
Arab workmen call rishi from the feather patterns painted on them.
One of the pits was the tomb of a warrior named A fh-mose Pe-n-het,
son of A fh-hotpe, as we learned from bits of his mummy cloth written
1 Bulletin, XVII (1922), December, II, p. 19. See, for the papyri of Heka-nakhte,
Scribner’s Magazine, 1922, p. 288.
2 Spiegelberg, Graffiti aus der Thebanischen Nekropolis, Nos. 920-987; Winlock,
American Journal of Semitic Languages (1941), p. 146.
We are told that this is the age of specialization, and not to be
behind the times, we introduced it into our digging at Thebes-
and it paid.1 Two seasons before, we had found the models of Meket-
Ref and decided to specialize on the Eleventh Dynasty cemeteries.
The following year this led us to the tombs of fAshayet and little
Mayet. Sticking to the same scheme in 1921-1922 we were rewarded
with the private letters of a garrulous old farmer-priest, which have
taken us right up the back stairs of a household of four thousand
years ago and let us eavesdrop on domestic squabbles of the days of
Abraham.
The unfinished temple site which we had found the previous year
was cleared in the autumn of 1921 right up to the point where the
ancient engineers abandoned their task at the death of their royal
master. High up, half-way between this unfinished temple and that
at Deir el Bahri, on the rocky crags beside a dizzily winding path,
there are scratched a confusing medley of signatures.2 It is just like
some schoolroom desk or some temptingly white-birch tree. Once
there is an initial cut into it, every boy who owns a penknife has an
irresistible impulse to add his. In this case, however, it was the
Twelfth Dynasty priests who left their scrawls, and nearly every
one of them mentions that he served the tombs of Neb-hepet-Ref or
S fankh-ka-Re f. The association of the priests of these two kings
can not be a mere coincidence. Surely, if they forgathered here, it
was because the two tombs that they were guarding were not far
away, and as there is no question but that the temple of Neb-hepet-
Ref was at Deir el Bahri nearby, it is reasonable to suppose that
S fankh-ka-Re f was buried in the equally nearby unfinished temple to
the south.
We found a dozen more grave pits, and in one we found the two
arms wrenched from a mummy, with the skin still showing the im-
prints of eight large bracelets of gold and semi-precious stones. Every-
where we found those curiously decorated mummy cases that the
Arab workmen call rishi from the feather patterns painted on them.
One of the pits was the tomb of a warrior named A fh-mose Pe-n-het,
son of A fh-hotpe, as we learned from bits of his mummy cloth written
1 Bulletin, XVII (1922), December, II, p. 19. See, for the papyri of Heka-nakhte,
Scribner’s Magazine, 1922, p. 288.
2 Spiegelberg, Graffiti aus der Thebanischen Nekropolis, Nos. 920-987; Winlock,
American Journal of Semitic Languages (1941), p. 146.