Winlock, Herbert E.: Excavations at Deir el Baḥri 1911-1931 (New York: by Macmillan Press, 1942)

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EXCAVATIONS AT DEIR EL BAHRI

hole. Dr. Alan Gardiner and Dr. Ludlow Bull, who visited us during
the winter, kindly examined several of them and gave us preliminary
translations.
One small bit was the memorandum of an “issue of sandals on the
13th of the 3d Month of Shbmu to the overseer Ken-Amun—11 pairs;
and to the overseer Ti-hes-penu—11 pairs”—a very frequently recur-
ring expense, evidently, for we found quantities of old papyrus sandals
worn out by the workmen on the sharp stone chips. A second was a
note of the loan of donkeys to officers detailed to the building opera-
tions in Hat-shepsut’s day. A third, docketed on the back with the
names of the gang-bosses, Amen-hotpe and Rer-weru, gives a list of
serfs engaged on the Queen’s temple on the 20th of the 2d Month of
Akhet. Rer-weru brought 76 men; Amen-hotpe brought 36, and with
him Sen-nefer with 38, making in all 74 under Amen-hotpe; and to
this total of 150 men Min-mose added 28, making an aggregate of 178
men on the job that day.
The more interesting ostraca, however, date from the building of
the shrine called Djeser-akhet which Thut-mose 111 erected to Hat-
Hor and Amun in the old Neb-hepet-Ref temple. One is a “heading
of a list of work bringing out stone under the Mayor and Vizir Rekh-
mi-Ref at the temple of Amun in Djeser-akhet,” and another a “list
of stone which is at the command of the Mayor and Vizir,” itemizing
several hundred blocks for the base of the building. It takes study to
make much sense of a third which begins “Year 45, 4th Month of
Prbyet, day 15: List of the work consisting of the stone work which is
under the direction of the Mayor and Vizir Rekh-mi-Ref, in the
temple of Amun in Djeser-akhet. There was dragged out stone of
[ . . . 1111]I, and stone of ti-mes IIII, making IX completed upon the
. . . of the southern wall. 4th Month of Proyet, day 16: The work for
the top of . . .” etc., etc.—a difficult snarl of unknown words and
rubbed spots that needs painstaking research to unravel.
Then, too, there is a certain importance in the information to be
gained on the career of the great Rekh-mi-Re f. He mentions the shrine
of Djeser-akhet in his tomb, and here in 1456 b.c. we find him in
charge of the building, fully bearing out Davies’ ingenious reasoning
in his work on Puy-em-Ref.3
Lists of workmen and of blocks of stone did not take all the thought
of the clerks of the works any more than the temple sculptures took
up the entire time of the artists. Both had their moments off. One

3 The Tomb of Puyemrl, Vol. II, p. 78ft.