In the New Kingdom, the highest officials of the kingdom were buried either in Saqqara near the seat of government (beginning with the reign of Thutmose III), or in Thebes, the most important cult center. In the west Theban hills at Sheikh Abd el-Qurna, southeast of Hatshepsut’s Deir el-Bahri temple, are the rock-cut tombs of a number of officials of the earlier part of the 18th Dynasty. Later 18th-Dynasty private tombs are located to the east of the earlier ones, while a number of Ramessid tombs are between el-Khokha and Dra Abu el-Naga. Although raised relief would have been the most desirable tomb decoration, this depended on the owner’s means and the quality of rock in his tomb.
Box 8-C Mummification and the study of human remains
There is evidence of efforts to preserve the body before the beginning of Dynastic times, and the techniques of mummification evolved over many centuries. By New Kingdom times the mummification process achieved a high degree of preservation and some procedures became standardized for those who could afford it.
The greatest attention was given to the royal mummies, as evidenced in the two caches from Thebes of kings’ mummies, although these were all stripped of the valuables originally placed within their linen wrappings. According to most accounts, the techniques of mummification reached a high point during the 21st Dynasty.
Written accounts of mummification are known from later in the first millennium Bc (Herodotus and Diodorus Siculus), but mummies themselves provide evidence of the variations practiced. The first part of the mummification procedure was done on an embalming table in the Per-nefer - the House of Mummification. After breaking the ethnoid bone between the eye sockets, the brain was removed by a long hook. Internal organs were then removed, from the liver to the lower intestines, through an incision in the left abdomen. The lungs were also removed, but the heart (believed to be the seat of intelligence and emotions) was left in the thorax. What remained internally was then cleansed and packed with materials to preserve the form, and the entire body was covered with dry natron (sodium carbonate and sodium bicarbonate), which desiccated the remaining tissue. The lungs, liver, stomach, and intestines were embalmed and wrapped separately and then placed in four “canopic containers,” each guarded by one of the four sons of Horus, whose heads were represented on the jar lids.
After about 40 days the body was taken to the Wabet (House of Purification) for the final procedures, which included washing it with water and filling the cavities in the brain and torso with materials soaked in resin. The abdominal incision was sewn up, the nasal cavity was filled, and sometimes pads were included under the eyelids. Treatment of the body surface included rubbing with a mixture of cedar oil and preservatives, and a final coating with hot resin. The last step in the process was wrapping the mummy in many layers of linen strips, between which protective amulets were placed. The entire process took about 70 days.
Most of what was left after mummification was muscle tissue and bones, and many infectious diseases which may have been the cause of death cannot be diagnosed from these remains. But a number of mummies have been studied with X-ray images, and tissue can be rehydrated, revealing evidence of disease such as smallpox, schistosomiasis, and intestinal parasites.
In the 1970s James Harris, an orthodontist at the University of Michigan, X-rayed the royal mummies in the Cairo Museum, finding evidence of trauma (both ante-and post-mortem), arthritis (rheumatoid and degenerative), poliomyelitis, dental abscesses, and other defects and diseases. X-rays have also revealed arteriosclerosis in the mummies of four Ramessid kings. The mummy of a priestess Makara was thought
To have been buried with her child, but when X-rayed the small bundle turned out to be a baboon!
Fortuitously, age/sex information of mummies can be obtained through radiography without unwrapping them and performing autopsies, as can the placement of amulets within the linen bandages. Mummies can also been studied with cT (computed axial tomography) and MRI (magnetic resonance imaging). DNA studies of gene sequencing using mummified tissue is also being done, but with questionable results (see 8.5).
Box 8-D The Book of the Dead
Collections of mortuary texts known as the Book of the dead bore the ancient title of Book of Going Forth by Day - for the deceased’s going forth in the world of the dead. Individual examples consist of a series of spells inscribed on papyri, which were often placed in or on the coffin of the deceased.
The earliest known mortuary texts, the Pyramid Texts, which were inscribed in the late old Kingdom, were carved on the inner walls of pyramids and had a royal context (see 6.10). In the Middle Kingdom transformed and expanded versions of these mortuary texts are found painted on coffins of private individuals (the Coffin Texts; see 7.1), but some examples of these texts have also been found on papyri. In the New Kingdom and later, mortuary texts for private individuals were written on papyri (and other media).
The goal of the spells in the Book of the Dead was to help the deceased to overcome successfully various foes and dangers in the afterlife, and the judgment before Osiris - in which the deceased’s heart was weighed against the feather symbolizing maat (truth). An ideal result was an eternal existence in the “Field of Reeds” (Elysian Fields). There are hymns to Ra and Osiris. One set of spells is known as the “negative confession,” in which the deceased swears to a court of 42 gods that he/she has not committed a great number of sins. The Book of the Dead was usually illustrated with a number of painted vignettes, as can be seen in the well-known New Kingdom papyrus of the scribe Any in the British Museum (Plate 8.10).
Especially appealing to the modern eye are a number of painted Theban tombs belonging to officials of the 18th Dynasty. Although the upper part of the tomb of Sennefer (TT 96), who was mayor of Thebes during the reign of Amenhotep II, is inaccessible, a steep rock-cut stairway leads to two well-preserved subterranean rooms (Plate 8.11). The tomb’s colorfully painted ceiling includes representations of a grape arbor. In the antechamber are scenes of processions of priests and servants carrying offerings and tomb equipment. Paintings completely cover the walls of the burial chamber, including scenes of Sennefer’s funeral and mortuary rites, offerings to Osiris, the (post-mortem) pilgrimage to Abydos by boat and return to Thebes, and the worship of Osiris and Anubis with texts from Chapter 15 of the
Book of the Dead. On the chamber’s four pillars are scenes of Sennefer being given offerings by a woman named Merit, possibly his wife, and rituals performed by mortuary priests.
The tomb of Rekhmira (TT 100) is of unusually large size, with a transverse hall opening off an exterior courtyard, and a long high chapel ending in a false door, above which is a carved niche. But there is no burial chamber or shaft leading to one (or perhaps it has not been found). rekhmira was Thutmose III’s vizier and governor of Thebes. Scenes of religious rites pertaining to the transition to the afterlife are found in the tomb, but there are also animated scenes of craftsmen, such as sculptors, goldsmiths, carpenters, and stone masons, working for the Temple of Amen. Temple workers are shown making mud-bricks and rope, carving stone vessels, and casting bronze artifacts. In the transverse hall are the well-known scenes of foreign tribute brought to Egypt, including tribute bearers from the Aegean and Syria, the latter with gifts of horses (Figure 8.18). There are also
Figure 8.18 detail of a painting in the tSth-dynasty Theban tomb of rekhmira (TT 100) at Sheikh Abd el-Qurna showing Nubians bringing a giraffe and long-horned cattle as tribute. In the lower register Syrians bring horses, an elephant, and a bear. Source: Werner Forman Archive.
Figure 8.19 Relief of a banquet scene from the 18th-Dynasty tomb of Ramose (TT 55).
Nubians and other Africans bringing not only gold, ebony, incense, elephant ivory, and exotic hides, but also live wild animals. A giraffe is painted with a monkey climbing up its neck, and there are leopards, and baboons - and some domesticated animals including dogs and long-horned cattle. Like other high officials, Rekhmira depicted his role in the government; but such scenes and their associated hieroglyphic texts also give insight into foreign relations and the international economy of this period when Egypt controlled vast territories abroad.
Agricultural scenes, of plowing and hoeing, broadcast sowing, harvesting, threshing, and winnowing, are found in a number of 18th-Dynasty tombs, including those of Nakht (TT 52) and Menna (TT 69), who were both government scribes/officials. The unfinished tomb of Ramose (TT 55), vizier and governor of Thebes during the reigns of Amenhotep III and Amenhotep IV, contains both reliefs and paintings. Demonstrating the high quality of elite art during this opulent period are the exquisite low reliefs carved on the east wall in the tomb’s large hypostyle hall (with 32 columns), including scenes of a funerary banquet (Figure 8.19). There are also painted scenes of the funeral, and lines of tears run down the faces of female mourners. The decoration in this tomb changes from what might be called a classic high style of the mid-18th Dynasty to Akhenaten’s Amarna style, showing the rapidity of this major cultural transition.
Although most of the Theban private tombs were robbed in antiquity, a few survived with a number of grave goods intact, including many items of daily life - furniture, jewelry, cosmetic artifacts, tools, and cloth - and shawabti (servant figurines) to serve the deceased. The burial was in a coffin with the viscera preserved in containers placed in canopic chests. The remarkable preservation of artifacts in some tombs associated with Deir el-Medina will be discussed below (see 8.11). Recent conservation efforts in tombs, such as Nigel Strudwick’s work in the tomb of Senneferi (TT 99), have also uncovered artifacts, often found in fragments. In Senneferi’s subterranean tomb two ivory adzes used in the Opening of the Mouth ritual have been found along with fragments of a papyrus and a linen mummy shroud inscribed with texts from the Book of the Dead. This tomb was extensively reused in post-New Kingdom times (21st through 26th Dynasties), when six shafts were cut in the tomb chapel. Thousands of fragments of later burial equipment have also been recovered.
At Saqqara high officials built a number of tombs dating to the 18th and 19th Dynasties (later ones are known from texts). Since 1976 French archaeologist Alain-Pierre Zivie has been excavating rock-cut tombs in cliffs along the eastern edge of Saqqara, in the area of the “Cemetery of Cats,” where thousands of sacred cat mummies (Late Period) were left as votive offerings. The tomb of Netjerwymes, with a pillared courtyard and rock-cut chapel, belonged to an important official whom Rameses II sent as a diplomatic envoy to the Hittites. Zivie has also found the tomb of Tutankhamen’s wet nurse, Maya, and that of Rai'ay, an official of Akhenaten, whose reliefs and texts reflect both the Atenist religion and the post-Amarna Period restoration of the mortuary cult of Osiris.
A large group of free-standing tombs at Saqqara, dating to the later 18th Dynasty (especially the post-Amarna Period) and 19th Dynasty, is in the area to the south of the Unas pyramid causeway. First located in the 19th century, tombs in this area have been systematically investigated beginning in 1975 by a joint British/Dutch expedition, and beginning in 1999 by a Dutch expedition (Leiden Museum and Leiden University).
Resembling small-scale temples, the late 18th-Dynasty tombs consisted of a walled mud-brick superstructure with one or two courtyards and chapels, covered with finely carved low relief in limestone. Earlier Old Kingdom mastabas in this area were dismantled, and their subterranean burial chambers were often remodeled and reused. Tombs include those of General Horemheb before he became the last ruler of the 18th Dynasty, and Maya, Tutankhamen’s Overseer of the Treasury (Figure 8.20). Reliefs of the reign of Akhenaten in the tomb of Meryneith, Steward of the Temple of Aten in Memphis, were destroyed in the post-Amarna Period.
World History
