Although there were periods of great socio-political disruption in Egypt between the Third Intermediate Period and the 27th dynasty, some high-status individuals built very impressive tombs, especially in the Memphis region in the north and western Thebes in the south. At Buto in the northern delta there is also recent evidence from this period of two elite burials in stone sarcophagi, which have been excavated by the German Archaeological Institute, cairo, under the direction of ulrich Hartung. The larger burial, Grave J2/89, contained an usurped granite sarcophagus, the red granite lid of which has an inscription identifying it as that of an official named Paraemheb, probably from the reign of rameses II. In between the granite sarcophagus of this burial and the decayed inner wooden coffin was the skeleton of a cat, possibly the pet of the adult male interred there. Jewelry in this burial included a heart scarab made of various materials, including lapis lazuli, and two bracelets of gilded silver inlaid with lapis lazuli and blue glass containing the two cartouches/names of King Iuput II of Leontopolis (23rd dynasty).
At Thebes during the Libyan dynasties a new type of private tomb was built, which consisted of a small mud-brick temple structure on the Theban plain (and not excavated into the limestone hills, as were those of the New Kingdom), with rock-cut shafts leading to the subterranean burial. These tombs were the prototypes of much more grandiose ones built in Thebes at el-Asasif in the 25th and 26th dynasties.
As High Steward of two God’s Wives of Amen, Harwa was one of the highest-ranking officials at Karnak in the 25th Dynasty. Located in front of the 11th-Dynasty mortuary complex of Mentuhotep II (see 7.3), Harwa’s large unfinished tomb (TT 37) was the first of a group to be built at el-Asasif over the next 150 years. Italian archaeologist Francesco Tiradritti has recently been restoring and excavating this tomb (Figure 9.11).
At the bottom of a descending passage, Harwa’s tomb opened through an antechamber and vestibule, which led to an open sunken court. From the court the axis of the tomb turned 90° into a series of pillared halls and passageways, which led to a hall with a niche
Figure 9.11 Plan of the tomb of Harwa at el-Asasif: (1) quarry, (2) access ramp, (3) entrance portico, (4) vestibule, (5) courtyard, (6) first pillared hall, (7) second pillared hall, (8) osiris’s shrine, (9) funerary apartment, (10) corridor, (11) tomb of Akhimenru. Source: Associazione Culturale “Harwa 2001” ONLUS, Montepulciano, Italy. Drawing by Dieter Eigner. Computer-processed by Silvia Bertolini.
For an Osiris figure in high relief. The burial was at the bottom of a vertical shaft in the second pillared hall. According to Tiradritti, the tomb is modeled on the Osireion at Abydos (see 8.6), and the tomb’s sunken reliefs document Harwa’s passage from daily life on earth to his death and transition to the afterlife.
In the 26th Dynasty el-Asasif continued to be the area in which the highest status tombs were built. The largest el-Asasif tombs were built by Mentuemhat (TT 34, ca. 640 Bc), Governor
Of Upper Egypt, and the Chief Lector Priest Petamenopet (TT 33, ca. 600 Bc). Similar in design to (but larger than) Harwa’s tomb, these had large mud-brick superstructures, which emulated New Kingdom royal mortuary temples. Still visible at el-Asasif, the superstructures of the large 26th-Dynasty tombs consisted of three walled courts, fronted by a pylon. The tomb’s sunken court, where daily offerings of the funerary cult were placed on an offering table, was located in the second of the brick courts. The large Saite Period tombs at el-Asasif were robbed not long after their burials and the subterranean chambers were reused for later burials.
In the north high officials of the 26th Dynasty were buried in tombs at Saqqara, Giza, and Abusir, which have acquired the designation “Persian tombs.” These tombs were ingeniously designed with special shafts, probably to lower the heavy nested sarcophagus to the bottom of the tomb. The sarcophagus was placed on top of sand which filled the main shaft, and it was lowered as sand was removed from subsidiary shaft(s). Once refilled with sand, these shafts also foiled tomb robbers. Although their superstructures have been destroyed, some of these tombs remained undisturbed by grave robbers.
In the 1990s a Czech team of archaeologists working at Abusir, led by Miroslav Verner, excavated the late 26th/27th-Dynasty tomb of lufaa (Figure 9.12). lufaa was a lector priest and palace official, and the vaulted limestone roof of his tomb was at the bottom of a vertical shaft filled with sand, over 21 meters below the surface. It took three years for Verner’s workers to clear the main shaft and the two vertical subsidiary shafts, also filled with sand, which emptied into the main shaft. In order for robbers to penetrate the burial, several hundred cubic meters of sand from the main shaft, as well as sand from the subsidiary shafts, would first have had to be removed - essentially an impossibility.
Within lufaa’s decorated burial chamber (ca. 4.88 x 3.35 meters in area), which was constructed of limestone blocks, the Czech archaeologists found a limestone lid to the sarcophagus that weighed 24 tons. Beneath that was a huge basalt anthropoid sarcophagus, within which were the decayed remains of a wooden coffin which, when removed, revealed a covering of thousands of faience beads. When examined in a laboratory, the mummy was found not to be well preserved, but the fingers were still covered with gold foil.
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