DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.55201#0130
SEASON OF 1925-1926
Since we had no big gang of workmen to tie us down to a daily
routine in the winter of 1925-26, the chance to follow the Eleventh
Dynasty away from Thebes seemed too good to be missed.1 We knew
that there were two graffiti at Aswan and a rock carving at the Shatt
er Rigal, and it seemed to Percy E. Newberry, who was a most de-
lightful house guest at the time, and to me that if we could get a look
at them, our Deir el Bahri work might give us some useful clues as to
their interpretation.
With the Aswan graffiti we had no luck whatever. We knew that
they were records left on the rocks at the foot of the cataract by the
Chancellor Khety and the Controller of the Eastern Heliopolitan
Nome, whose name might be read Mery, when they were there in the
41st Year of Neb-hepet-Ref’s reign supervising a river expedition to
the Sudan. But after hours of climbing among the rocks where they
were said to be, we had to give up the search, feeling fairly certain
that one of them at least had been destroyed not long before by some
miserable peasant looking for rock to build a new house. After four
thousand years it seems rather an ignominious end for the memorial
of a high dignitary,
The Shatt er Rigal rock carving has already been mentioned in
these reports as portraying King Neb-hepet-Ref, his mother 1 fah
(who was probably the mother of Queen Neferu as well), In-tef (who
was presumably the Crown Prince), and the Chancellor Khety.2
Neither Newberry nor 1 had ever seen it except in publications. In
fact, very few archaeologists seem ever to have visited the Shatt er
Rigal, a most out-of-the-way little valley seventy-five miles above
Thebes, across the river from the railway and far from any of the
steamer landings. We could only explain its position vaguely to our
head man, Gilani Suleyman, and send him off with tents, tent strikers,
and a cook, and orders to find a picture of a king and queen with two
people standing in front of them and to pitch camp beside it. We fol-
lowed a couple of days later.
It was a desolate spot. Just to the south, the Nile breaks through a
spur of the desert hills called the Gebel Silsileh, eddying and swirling
1 Bulletin, XXIII (1928), II, p. 4. See also American Journal of Semitic Languages,
LVII (1940), p. 137. No report on the work at Thebes in 1925-26 actually appeared in
the Bulletin, but as part of the account of the excavation published in 1928 so largely
deals with that year it is here slightly rearranged and given the date 1925-1926.
2 See above, page 87.
Since we had no big gang of workmen to tie us down to a daily
routine in the winter of 1925-26, the chance to follow the Eleventh
Dynasty away from Thebes seemed too good to be missed.1 We knew
that there were two graffiti at Aswan and a rock carving at the Shatt
er Rigal, and it seemed to Percy E. Newberry, who was a most de-
lightful house guest at the time, and to me that if we could get a look
at them, our Deir el Bahri work might give us some useful clues as to
their interpretation.
With the Aswan graffiti we had no luck whatever. We knew that
they were records left on the rocks at the foot of the cataract by the
Chancellor Khety and the Controller of the Eastern Heliopolitan
Nome, whose name might be read Mery, when they were there in the
41st Year of Neb-hepet-Ref’s reign supervising a river expedition to
the Sudan. But after hours of climbing among the rocks where they
were said to be, we had to give up the search, feeling fairly certain
that one of them at least had been destroyed not long before by some
miserable peasant looking for rock to build a new house. After four
thousand years it seems rather an ignominious end for the memorial
of a high dignitary,
The Shatt er Rigal rock carving has already been mentioned in
these reports as portraying King Neb-hepet-Ref, his mother 1 fah
(who was probably the mother of Queen Neferu as well), In-tef (who
was presumably the Crown Prince), and the Chancellor Khety.2
Neither Newberry nor 1 had ever seen it except in publications. In
fact, very few archaeologists seem ever to have visited the Shatt er
Rigal, a most out-of-the-way little valley seventy-five miles above
Thebes, across the river from the railway and far from any of the
steamer landings. We could only explain its position vaguely to our
head man, Gilani Suleyman, and send him off with tents, tent strikers,
and a cook, and orders to find a picture of a king and queen with two
people standing in front of them and to pitch camp beside it. We fol-
lowed a couple of days later.
It was a desolate spot. Just to the south, the Nile breaks through a
spur of the desert hills called the Gebel Silsileh, eddying and swirling
1 Bulletin, XXIII (1928), II, p. 4. See also American Journal of Semitic Languages,
LVII (1940), p. 137. No report on the work at Thebes in 1925-26 actually appeared in
the Bulletin, but as part of the account of the excavation published in 1928 so largely
deals with that year it is here slightly rearranged and given the date 1925-1926.
2 See above, page 87.