The Instruction for King Merikare, which dates to the Middle Kingdom, states clearly that tombs should not be constructed from the ruins of others:926
Do not destroy the monuments of another;
You should quarry stone in Tura!
Do not build your tomb-chamber (is. k) from ruins (shnyt), For what is done will be what will be done.
Figure 52: View across the village from the western tombs towards the Theban necropolis. The hill of Qurnet Mourrai (Eastern Necropolis) is on the right.
Figure 53: View across the Theban necropolis towards the village and the cemetery of Deir el-Medina with the tombs of Sheikh Abd el-Qurna in the foreground and Qurnet Mourrai to the right. The colourful Qurna houses have since been demolished.
Despite admonitions such as this, which acknowledge the trend of reusing old monuments to create new ones, tomb-reuse was common. Hope927 notes a similar phenomenon in Rome, where gravestones were frequently salvaged as building material; and at Karnak New Kingdom private temple statues were re-carved for subsequent owners.928 Saqqara exhibits a cycle of reuse that may have been paralleled at other multi-period sites: Old Kingdom blocks were incorporated into 18th and 19th Dynasty tombs (such as Horemheb, Maya, Tia and Tia),929 Ramesside temples were built with old royal and non-royal masonry, and these temples in turn were dismantled for use in Medieval Cairo.930 The expansion of the village of Deir el-Medina saw tombs used as cellars,931 while cemeteries in the late Hyksos period at Tell el-Daba were covered by houses as the town expanded, the tombs being incorporated into the courtyards of houses or within the houses themselves.932 At Sheikh Abd el-Qurna a number of tombs exhibit evidence of reuse with the later reworking of reliefs (e. g. TT 188, Parennefer),933 or in places where plaster has fallen away to reveal the earlier decoration beneath. Other examples of reuse include TT 81 (Ineni), which began as an 11th Dynasty saff-tomb but was appropriated and extended by Ineni in the 18th Dynasty, the multi-period Cemetery Y at Diospolis Parva, and Roman adaptations in the Theban necropolis, for example TT 32 (Djehutymose).934 The 18th Dynasty tomb of Nebamun (TT 65) also bears evidence of at least two phases of reuse, as a tomb in the 20th Dynasty and as part of the Coptic Monastery of Cyriacus.935
John Mack suggests that in some cases tomb reuse in Egypt was not necessarily an act of usurpation, but rather a means of ‘recharging the cult with a new association’, and thus indirectly benefiting the deceased former owner.936 Hans Goedicke937 also proposed that reuse was not necessarily an act of disrespect, while Longden,938 argues that, at least in terms of artefacts, reuse can forge a link between the present and the past, could be motivated by the apotropaic functions that old objects were thought to possess, and may not necessarily have carried negative connotations. It may be that those buried in ‘usurped’ tombs hoped to benefit from the sanctity such buildings were thought to possess.939 David Jeffreys rejects the term ‘usurpation’ on the grounds that it implies unlawful acquisition;940 it is indeed clear that at least some tombs were officially re-assigned many years after the original owner’s burial.941 Tombs were sometimes used as depositories for important documents,942 and ruined tombs were investigated and sealed after inventories of their contents had been made.943
Nigel Strudwick suggests that family connections and commemoration were the motivating factors behind New Kingdom tomb reuse within a short time of their original occupation,944 and there is evidence that Theban tombs were reopened to permit the burial of several family members within them:945 Sennedjem’s burial chamber, for instance, contained 20 individuals.946 Much later, other tombs at Deir el-Medina were reopened and used to deposit numerous bodies by a group of Ptolemaic mortuary workers known as ‘choachytes.’947 An elite Roman family (‘the Pebos family burials’) were interred in the cellar of a house at the site. The burial (no. 1407) contained five vaulted coffins, one re-used Third Intermediate Period coffin and two mummies,948 and those responsible for the burial evidently considered the village to be a sacred place. It is not clear from 21st Dynasty graffiti in the 18th Dynasty tomb of Kheruef (TT 192) whether the visitors entered the tomb to look at the reliefs or for the benefit of those interred there in the Third Intermediate Period.949 During the latter epoch, Middle and New Kingdom tombs were regularly reused, with new shafts sunk into the courtyards,950 and it is likely that the proliferation of amulets on mummies during this period is directly linked to the reuse of older tombs and fear of attack by the spirits of the original tomb owners.951
The way in which the market for reused funerary equipment operated is not apparent,952 but there is evidence for the reassignment of mortuary furniture throughout Egyptian history, with the practice of coffin theft and re-inscription becoming particularly common in Thebes during the 21st Dynasty.953 Tomb 1386 in the 18th Dynasty Eastern Cemetery at Deir el-Medina contained a coffin that showed repeated re-use, which according to Bruyere was indicative of poverty.954 The foot end of the coffin had been removed because the child was too tall for it, a further indicator of the low status of those responsible for the burial. With regard to the reuse of coffins in ancient Egypt, Cooney states:955 ‘at the base of usurpation was a negotiation between theft and re-association, essentially an innovative conciliation between the principles of (or truth) and the need for materiality’. She sees this need to possess equipment for the afterlife as the driving factor behind ‘re-commoditization’:956 social inequality created a crisis, from which acts of theft and reuse were the inevitable consequences. ‘De-sacralisation’ of tombs may have been carried out by family members responsible for maintaining the owner’s cult after a sufficient amount of (post-burial) time had elapsed: David Jeffreys957 suggests that officiants with legitimate access to a tomb may also have been granted the use and disposal of its contents, providing opportunities for funerary goods to be re-used in daily life and/or form part of another set of burial equipment many years after the original interment.958 959
World History
