DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.55201#0061
48 EXCAVATIONS AT DEIR EL BAHRI
all over with magic texts. The name of Thut-mose I, who reigned
somewhere about 1530 b.c., was carved on the grip of a dagger.
Afh-mose had a compound bow, made up of layers of horn and wood
for greater strength, somewhat the way a carriage spring is made up
of layers of steel, and a leather bowman’s wristlet. We found bits of
his ebony arm-chair inlaid with ivory, his table—in fact, it was hard
to tell how much there had been before the ancient robbers had
amused themselves by hurling rocks at whatever had seemed not
worth carrying away. Another pit had been the last resting place of a
number of women, whose false tresses and transformations were
carefully wrapped up in linen cloths against the day when they would
want to tie them in among their own locks to look their best at some
ghostly function in the next world. Luckily the blue faience pot-
stands and pillow in another tomb had not been completely pulver-
ized in this wanton game, and we found that we had a very handsome
collection of the ceramic art of the early Eighteenth Dynasty.
With the possiblities of the Sfankh-ka-Ref cemetery exhausted,
so far as we could see, on New Year’s Day, 1922, we returned to
Deir el Bahri and the temple and cemetery of Neb-hepet-Ref Day
by day our work seemed to have few ups and many downs. Our gang
grew to over four hundred men and boys, the railway to our dump
lengthened out to a quarter of a mile, and the mere effort of keeping
our cars moving so that the work should never stop took up all of our
energies.
As one stood in the ruined temple doorway, there stretched in front
an enormous courtyard, over two hundred meters long and one
hundred meters wide. On the far side there was a gateway through
which one entered from an avenue, lined on either side with statues
of the king. Toward the front of the court, and partly under the old
house built by the Egypt Exploration Fund, was the mouth of a
gigantic tomb called the Bab el Hosan by the Arabs, found by
Howard Carter in 1900. The temple itself was discovered and cleared
by the Egypt Exploration Fund between 1903 and 1907.
Our object was to clear the southern half of the court from front
to back to discover whether there was a pendant tomb to the Bab
el Hosan and whether there were any other tombs outside of the
southern wall (pl. 1). We found that there was neither the one nor
the other, but to our surprise the front of the courtyard was not the
rock leveled off—it turned out to be a hollow filled some five meters
deep with rock and sand. Originally it had been intended to fill this
hollow less deeply, and at that time a wall of rough field stone was
all over with magic texts. The name of Thut-mose I, who reigned
somewhere about 1530 b.c., was carved on the grip of a dagger.
Afh-mose had a compound bow, made up of layers of horn and wood
for greater strength, somewhat the way a carriage spring is made up
of layers of steel, and a leather bowman’s wristlet. We found bits of
his ebony arm-chair inlaid with ivory, his table—in fact, it was hard
to tell how much there had been before the ancient robbers had
amused themselves by hurling rocks at whatever had seemed not
worth carrying away. Another pit had been the last resting place of a
number of women, whose false tresses and transformations were
carefully wrapped up in linen cloths against the day when they would
want to tie them in among their own locks to look their best at some
ghostly function in the next world. Luckily the blue faience pot-
stands and pillow in another tomb had not been completely pulver-
ized in this wanton game, and we found that we had a very handsome
collection of the ceramic art of the early Eighteenth Dynasty.
With the possiblities of the Sfankh-ka-Ref cemetery exhausted,
so far as we could see, on New Year’s Day, 1922, we returned to
Deir el Bahri and the temple and cemetery of Neb-hepet-Ref Day
by day our work seemed to have few ups and many downs. Our gang
grew to over four hundred men and boys, the railway to our dump
lengthened out to a quarter of a mile, and the mere effort of keeping
our cars moving so that the work should never stop took up all of our
energies.
As one stood in the ruined temple doorway, there stretched in front
an enormous courtyard, over two hundred meters long and one
hundred meters wide. On the far side there was a gateway through
which one entered from an avenue, lined on either side with statues
of the king. Toward the front of the court, and partly under the old
house built by the Egypt Exploration Fund, was the mouth of a
gigantic tomb called the Bab el Hosan by the Arabs, found by
Howard Carter in 1900. The temple itself was discovered and cleared
by the Egypt Exploration Fund between 1903 and 1907.
Our object was to clear the southern half of the court from front
to back to discover whether there was a pendant tomb to the Bab
el Hosan and whether there were any other tombs outside of the
southern wall (pl. 1). We found that there was neither the one nor
the other, but to our surprise the front of the courtyard was not the
rock leveled off—it turned out to be a hollow filled some five meters
deep with rock and sand. Originally it had been intended to fill this
hollow less deeply, and at that time a wall of rough field stone was