Burial practice

The construction of royal tombs at Tanis marked a significant break from the tradition of the New Kingdom. Before this period kings had been buried in concealed tombs in the series of wadis on the west bank at Thebes known as the Valley of

Figure 7.4 Columns of the kiosk of Taharqa, in the festival court of Shoshenq I at Karnak. Courtesy Christopher Naunton.

The Kings. They were in this way physically disconnected from the temples that served the cult of the deceased Pharaoh, which were situated in the plain closer to the river. Psusennes I inaugurated a very different series of burials. Simple chambers, situated within the main temple complex, were constructed of massive blocks of stone to house the body of Pharaoh inside a stone sarcophagus. In another departure from New Kingdom tradition the chambers would each be used for the burial of more than one body: the tomb of Psusennes I, for example, also contained the burials of a king Hekakheperre Shoshenq (IIa), two unknown individuals, and the coffin and sarcophagus of Amenemhet. The funerary equipment of Psusennes, in particular, was of the highest quality and included a solid-gold death mask reminiscent of that of Tutankhamun (plate 4). The tombs’ location within the temple enclosure may reflect a desire to provide better protection for the burial ofPharaoh in reaction to the robberies perpetrated on several of the royal tombs of the New Kingdom during the Twentieth and Twenty-first dynasties, but these new practices might equally have sprung from a different mortuary tradition, perhaps brought to Egypt by Libyan settlers.

The burial of non-royal individuals outside the Delta followed the pattern established in the royal necropolis at Tanis. In Thebes the tradition of cutting tombs into the bedrock of the hills and plain in the Qurna area gave way to the reuse of earlier tombs and the preparation of simple shaft tombs terminating in undecorated burial chambers. Such tombs were often used for multiple burials, and many are to be found within the temple enclosures of the Ramesseum and Medinet Habu. The latter was also the location for the chapels of the God’s Wives of Amun of the later Libyan, Twenty-fifth, and Twenty-sixth dynasties.

Figure 7.5 The royal tombs at Tanis. Courtesy Christopher Naunton.

Figure 7.6 Tombs Chapels of the God’s Wives of Amun at Medinet Habu. Courtesy Christopher Naunton.

During the Twenty-fifth Dynasty, as noted above, there was a revival in monumental construction in Thebes, and it is likely that Kushite activity in the area and a renewed focus on the city, in general, was partly responsible for the creation of a newly wealthy upper class at this time, which in turn led to the construction of some of the largest and most ostentatious non-royal tombs anywhere in Egypt to this point. These tombs were cut into the plain at el-Asasif and in the low-lying areas to the west of the Ramesseum.