Since work on the platform had taken three weeks with twelve men (all debris was carried to the wady floor) and few ancient remains had been found, only the top and bottom of the descending corridor were cleared to measure the slope of the passage (Figs. 36—7, as found). This debris was much like that at the wady head and on the platform; loose dry earth with stone chips, occasional boulders, and modern robbers’ remains. However, a tube bead of Egyptian blue was recovered from either the corridor or the burial chamber beyond.
Although there was no way to determine the condition of the corridor at the time of robbery, attempts were made to estabHsh the original dimensions of the corridor and to determine whether blockings had sealed it. The ceding presented a broken, concave surface covered with mud and a whitish, oatmeal-like material (Figs. 37, 45); a white deposit (lime?) lay along the fissures. No chiseled surfaces could be detected.
At the lower end of the corridor, there was a horizontal patch of material on the floor that the workmen believed was muna (mud plaster), the remnants of an ancient sill. This was a hard substance composed of fine brown dust with tiny limestone chips in it, also looking like oatmeal. Slightly within the burial chamber, a second, more irregular patch of this material was located that had somewhat larger chips in it. As this material had been found on the walls of the corridor over fissured surfaces, and, as it had extended into the burial chamber to a height of about i m near the entrance, the author concluded that this material was more likely formed naturally than by man. However, it was also observed that the corridor walls were chiseled at the point of juncture with the burial chamber, to a height of more than 1.9 m; and, in line with the south side of the “sill,” there was a small corner on the east wall at the 1.9 m height. The distance between the corridor walls where the “siU” was positioned was 1.18 m, and its southern edge was 0.9 m north of the burial chamber (Fig. 46).
Burial chamber (Area IV); see pp. 80, 82, 84, 86f
As with the descending corridor, the burial chamber (roughly 5.2 x 7.5 m) was filled with a great deal of debris upon arrival (Fig. 36); this made an understanding of its ancient condition impossible. Clearing of the chamber was begun in four stages, first to an even level about 1.8 m above the original floor (IV and IV2); then on the eastern half, downward about a meter (IVe/2); the entire west half (IVw/2); and finally, completion of the east half (i. e., IVe/2).
Characteristic of the debris of this chamber were—in addition to the loose dry earth, smaller chips, robbers’ remains, skin and bone (Fig. 82g), and occasional pieces of ancient pottery and bits of glass or beads that were found (Fig. 82a—c)—large chunks of limestone that had fallen from the ceiling, often stiU intact despite the turning over of debris (modern robbers’ items were eventually found very near the floor). Also characteristic of the chamber’s debris was the concentration of stone chip along the walls, and, finally, at a level of somewhat more than a meter from the floor, the presence of a more homogenous, less disturbed strata.
Within the center of this less disturbed area was a patch of mud and chip, sand, and fine chip (the sand and fine chip could have been sieving areas or natural formations). As for the mud, air bubbles within it indicated that it had flowed; the bubbles were sometimes colored yellow or red, due to being near limestone that had iron oxides on its surface (de Wit). Chunks of fine brown silt were also observed. Finally, in one smallish area a few centimeters off the floor at the center of the room, there was a thin horizontal layer of completely homogenous fine silt; below it, the finer quality of whitish dust and chip appeared again.
Other than this “undisturbed unit” within the bottom strata, however, the loose debris contained various robbers’ traces, albeit fewer and generally older than heretofore mentioned. Rather near the floor, however, there was electric cable, a match box, the cork tip of a cigarette, ladder rungs, a Samsun wrapper, a piece of large rope used as a wick, black cloth, pieces of thick green glass, and a fake plaster finger ring. Pottery found in the chamber included vessels that were not considered ancient: WQP65a, WQP66, and possibly WQP83. There were also a number of silverfish on the walls.
Several important pharaonic sherds did appear in the burial chamber, however (pioo, one of the large storage jars, and part of p57), as did a faience tube bead, sections of two Egyptian blue lentoid beads, and four bits of turquoise glass (Fig. 82b). The central part near the floor was sieved, but no pieces of bone, wood, or stone antiquities were found.
Having cleared the chamber of all debris, the question of the chamber’s original dimensions was addressed. The southeast, southwest, and northwest comers of the room were observed to curve inward about 2.0 m from the floor, below two horizontal layers of chert (Figs. 47—9). AU four walls were found chiseled below the chert (even though the
East and west walls would not have needed to be, since they run parallel to the bedding plane of the gebel). Above the chert the limestone was broken in a vaulted arc, its texture like bricks that had been shaped by bedding-plane fissures and fissures perpendicular to them. Various bands of chert ran within the chiseled walls below, but it was remarkable that, above the double band, there was no further band visible in the ca. 1.50 m reaching to the apex of the chamber. This upper section vaulted east-west; perhaps as much as 400 cubic meters of stone had fallen in to create it.
This upper ceiling section was also notable for four patches of very black robber’s smoke (the highest being about 4.40 m from the floor), fissures blackened by bats, mud layers (aU the way to the top), and white (lime?) deposits in the fissures. Presumably the ceiling fell in because of the lack of reinforcing chert layer(s), water seepage from above, and humidity from rain water entering the corridor. This chamber is, after all, the ultimate catchment for water coming off the plateau and emptying into Wady D. Its floor is approximately the level of the wady head, and an examination of the east side of the head shows that there are no chert bands between a double band (presumably that of the burial chamber’s original ceiling) and two thinner chert bands—one near the level of the platform and another about a meter below it. Substantial rains are well known on the West Bank. A storm during the 1930s was reported to R. Stadelmann by Sheikh Abdel Maaboud (deceased ca. 1983) when it seemed that a river was flowing in the Valley of the Kings, and Helen Jacquet saw the aftermath of water damage in the late 1950s when the entire tomb of Ramesses II was flooded (communications, 1988). Stadelmann further reported that 10 cm of rain falling in a morning at the Sety I temple required two to three days to drain.
H. de Wit examined part of the mud area in the center of the cleared chamber, as well as the chamber’s walls and ceiling. He was inclined to think that the mud on the floor was of rather recent origin, particularly as no antiquities had been found in it. This would mean that little of the ceiling had fallen in—or little debris washed in— before the robbers entered in 1916. Indeed, Mohammed Hamad told Winlock that there was a blocking at both ends of the corridor, stating that the objects were “all in the chamber, arranged in an orderly way on a layer of chip which covered the floor, and were buried only by the rock which had subsequently fallen from the roof or been washed in by the floods.” He claimed that two coffins were recognizable (Winlock 1948: 5f; Carter’s sources had mentioned three sets of nested coffins. Doc. 27, p. 40). There are presently three smoke spots at the lower end of the corridor’s east wall—i. o to i. io m above the double band of chert of the burial chamber, and one at the south end of the corridor’s west wall, i m above the burial chamber’s chert band there—indicating that the corridor was filled with debris at some point. There are also smoke spots on the north, south, and east chiseled walls of the burial chamber, and on the broken vaulted ceiling (Figs. 45, 47, 49). As these spots are not dated, it is impossible to know which of the lower ones were made by the original robbers.
In general, it seems that much of the debris found in the chamber in 1988—including boulders found at a high level there—washed in since the robbery. Some corroboration of this theory is offered by the configuration of the surface above the tomb, along the top of its gorge (Frontispiece, Figs. 4 and 24a): a water-worn fissure there seems to be just above the spot in the tomb where mud was found. In other words, mud high on the ceiling of the chamber today and the mud area near the floor are—as suggested by de Wit—the result of rains, water seepage from above, and breakdown of the gebel.
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