Third Intermediate Period

The last two tombs built in the Valley of the Kings, those of Ramesses X and XI (KV18 and KV4), were apparently not used for burials, and there is a steady decline in the number of known private tombs as the New Kingdom nears its end. With the beginning of the Twenty-first Dynasty there is a further dramatic fall in the number of known monumental sepulchres.

The royal cemetery was now at the new dynastic capital, Tanis (San el-Hagar), where the nature of the site, in the north-east Delta, meant that the usual Delta approach to tomb construction - a built structure in a shallow cutting - had to be adopted, albeit in stone rather than the usual brick (Stadelmann 1971). Some form of chapel will have been built above, almost certainly in brick, but no traces have survived (cf. Lull 2002: 51-74). The tombs lay in front of the main Amun-temple, closely adjoining one another (Montet 1947-60; Lull 2002). The earliest two tombs, NRT-I (later usurped by Osorkon II of the Twenty-second Dynasty) and NRT-III (Pasebkhanut I), have burial chambers of granite, with subsidiary rooms of limestone. NRT-III is unique in having two such chambers, one for the king, and one for his wife. The limestone part of the tomb incorporated not only an antechamber but also a pair of further chambers for the king’s son and one of his army commanders. Later Tanite tombs are much simpler, featuring only one or two limestone chambers, and with a number of tombs used for the intrusive burials of succeeding kings. There is a gap in the usage of the Tanite necropolis from the end of the Twenty-first Dynasty until the reign of Osorkon II; it is unclear where burials took place during this period, although there is an indication that, wherever it was, it may have been abandoned because of flooding (Dodson 1988:231).

In its decoration, NRT-III is mainly concerned with the king and the gods, rather than the Books of the Underworld. On the other hand, the Twenty-second Dynasty decorations of NRT-I and NRT-V (Shoshenq III) are in many ways greatly condensed versions of the compositions found in royal tombs of the Twentieth Dynasty. A number of the earlier books are omitted entirely, whether for reasons of space or ideology is unclear. Wholly new in a royal tomb is the vignette from chapter 125 of the Book of the Dead in which the deceased is judged before Osiris like a mere mortal. This latter inclusion may suggest a change in the posthumous conception of the king in the Third Intermediate Period, contrasting with his untrammeled divinity as displayed in royal tombs since the Fifth Dynasty.

A few fragments reused in NRT-V are the only evidence for private tombs at Tanis. Twenty-first Dynasty non-royal tombs are known at both Thebes and Abydos, but only the latter appear to have been in any way monumental, being in many ways reminiscent of the temple-tombs of the latter part of the New Kingdom, and continue throughout the Third Intermediate Period (Leahy 1990; 1994). At Thebes, only substructures survive, in some cases usurpations of earlier shafts. A particular feature is the prevalence of multiple burials, with tombs used over a number of generations (Winlock 1942: 95-7), and even repeated interments in a single hollow in the rocks, covered simply with sand and debris (Rhind 1862: 125-7; Dodson and Manley forthcoming). The most elaborate Twenty-first Dynasty tombs at Thebes are two in the area of Deir el-Bahri. One, the Bab el-Gasus, comprises a pair of joined corridors, containing numerous burials of the priesthood of Amun and their families (Niwinski 1988: 25-7). The other, a long corridor tomb (TT320), was constructed as the family sepulchre of the High Priest Pinedjem II, and later employed as a cache for displaced earlier royal mummies at the beginning of the Twenty-second Dynasty (Graefe 2003).

The pattern of known private burials continues into the Twenty-second Dynasty, although a number of offering places now survive at Thebes, in this case amongst the store-rooms of the Ramesseum, where small brick and stone chapels were built above shallow shafts (Quibell 1898: 8-13). Interment within the precincts of earlier temples is a common feature of this period, as later on vaults were opened under the floors of some of the chapels of the temple of Hatshepsut at Deir el-Bahri (Sheikhoslami, 2003). In addition, the outer court of the Medinet Habu temple complex was adopted by the royal/high priestly family of the Twenty-third Dynasty as their cemetery, identifiable burials there being of King Harsiese, in a simple corridor-tomb, and the first of a series of small temple-tombs, with a shallow substructure, built for the God’s Wife of Amun, Shepenwepet I. This series continues down to the end of the Twenty-sixth Dynasty (Holscher 1954). A similar approach is to be seen during the Twenty-second Dynasty at Memphis, with high-status tombs within the precincts of the Ptah-temple appearing there (e. g. Badawi 1957).

True monumental tomb-building is found once again at Thebes with the advent of the Twenty-fifth Dynasty. Mainly concentrated on the Asasif, a series of large tombs extends down to the end of the Twenty-sixth Dynasty (Eigner 1984), with some similar sepulchres known at Saqqara (Bresciani 1988) and Giza (Sadeek 1984). They are, in essence, an extension of the temple-tomb, usually with substantial brick pylons and enclosure walls, with both open courts and closed chambers cut into the bed-rock. The chapels usually feature at least one hypostyle hall and a range of subsidiary elements, decorated with motifs drawn from a repertoire going back to the Old Kingdom. Some of these tombs employ simple shaft-based substructures, but others have an elaborate series of corridors, stairways, and chambers, decorated in some cases with extracts from the Underworld Books of the New Kingdom, not to mention the Book of the Dead and the Pyramid Texts. The galleries incorporated in certain cases stratagems against robbers akin to those used in the Middle Kingdom; for example, the burial chamber of TT33 (Pedamenopet) was entered via a shaft leading upward from the ceiling level of the preceding room.

Ancient texts and elaborate protective systems are also a feature of a group of tombs constructed in the Memphite necropolis during the Twenty-sixth Dynasty, in particular, within Old Kingdom pyramid-enclosures at Saqqara. They comprise a very large shaft, together with a much smaller one, linked horizontally at the bottom by a tunnel. At the bottom of the main shaft, in the center, was built the burial chamber, closely fitted to the exterior of the large rectangular stone sarcophagus within. A clear space was left between the walls of the shaft and those of the exterior of the burial chamber. The chamber’s arched roof was decorated with ritual texts, including offering lists and the Pyramid Texts, and was fitted with one or more holes, sealed by pottery closures. A doorway sits in the narrower side of the chamber facing the tunnel opposite. It was linked to this tunnel entrance by a brick-arched passage rising from the floor of the larger shaft. This shaft was then filled with sand, and on the surface a niched enclosure built around it, with a stela apparently on each side. This seems to have acted as the primary offering place, although the tomb of lufaa at Abusir has a further set of rock-cut, but brick(?)-roofed subsidiary rooms nearby (Bares and Strouhal 2000). After the funeral, the pottery roof seals were broken, inundating the burial chamber with the sand housed above. As the burial party retreated along the brick tunnel, the roof was pulled down behind them, causing a further downward flood of sand. They then exited via the smaller shaft, which was then also manually filled from above. Thus, access to the burial chamber was impossible without first removing the vast majority of the sand from the main shaft, resulting in many of these tombs surviving intact until modern times. Sand was also used in certain cases to facilitate the lowering of the sarcophagus lids, after the fashion of the burial chamber roofs of the some late Middle Kingdom pyramids (see above). Certain tombs, in particular those of Udjahorresnet at Abusir (Bares 1999), and Pakap at Giza (LG84, Vyse and Perring 1840: II, 131-44) were further protected by the cutting of a deep trench around the perimeter of the whole tomb to a depth considerably below the floor of the main shaft. This was intended to frustrate any robber who might attempt to dig a fresh shaft with the aim of breaking into the burial chamber from below. In addition to such large tombs, smaller versions of the temple-tombs were also built at Thebes, while the pattern of multiple re-use of earlier tombs was continued (Aston 2003).

The kings of the Twenty-fifth Dynasty reverted to pyramid tombs for their sepulchres at el-Kurru and Nuri in Sudan, a pattern that was to be continued by the Napatan kings and their Meroitic successors until the fourth century ad (Dunham 1950-63). The pyramids were generally small and steeply angled, with usually a fairly simple substructure, on occasion (Tanutamun’s Ku17 and Aspelta’s Nu8) decorated with material from the New Kingdom underworld books. A mortuary chapel was built directly above the entrance stairway on the east side.

The Twenty-sixth Dynasty royal tombs at Sais (Sa el-Hagar) were described by Herodotos in a way that suggests that they were small temple-tombs above Tanis-type substructures. However, no trace remains of them today, although scanty remains exist of the Twenty-ninth Dynasty tomb of Nefarud I at Mendes (Tell el-Ruba: Redford 2004). It comprised a large but shallow brick-lined cutting, within which a destroyed limestone structure had been built to house the sarcophagus (still in situ), and presumably also to support the superstructure. The fragments indicate that the tomb’s decoration included elements from the Amduat and depictions of the king before deities.

The identification of tombs built during the Persian dominion remains problematic, and it is unclear how one should distinguish between sepulchres of the late Twenty-sixth Dynasty and Thirtieth Dynasty and those of the intervening period (Aston 1999). A stela from Saqqara shows an interesting mixture of Egyptian motifs with the depiction of the deceased in Persian mode, but, as it was found in a reused context, nothing is known of the tomb from which it originally derived (Mathieson, Bettles, Davies, and Smith 1995).

Thirtieth Dynasty tombs are not generally of monumental size but usually follow the scheme of a temple-tomb-type chapel above a shaft-accessed substructure (Arnold 1997), frequently housing multiple interments (Quibell 1923: 13). Although one sarcophagus and fragments of another survive from royal tombs of the dynasty, they came from secondary locations, and thus nothing is known of the dynasty’s royal sepulchres.