Friday, April 14, 2017

KV47 – Tomb of Siptah .. Part ( 25 )

Another Mr. Theodore Monroe Davis find . The tomb lies near those of Setnakht, Tuthmosis I and Seti II, in the west side of the valley . Siptah was, it will be remembered, the Pharaoh who was the first husband of Queen Tausret, and who, indeed, attained the royal title by his marriage with that lady, who was queen in her own right .




His tomb was discovered in 1905, by Mr. Edward Russell Ayrton and Mr. Theodore Monroe Davis, the tomb is accessible, and part of the funerary furniture is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York .



It consists of a flight of steps, three corridors, an antechamber, and a four-pillared hall, of which only a single pillar was standing when the tomb was discovered, and that in a very bad condition .



Beyond the hall were two more corridors leading into a square room ; but the condition of these last portions of the tomb was disastrous, the rock having collapsed .



The tomb had been rifled in ancient days, and, indeed the mummy of Siptah was one of those found in the tomb of Amenhotep II . One curious feature is that the cartouches of Siptah had everywhere been erased and subsequently restored .



Some of the paintings are of great merit . Mention may be made of the beautiful figure of the kneeling Isis, admirably reproduced in Mr. Davis's volume on the tomb, and of the vulture-ceiling of the main corridor .



' Ayrton penetrated as far as the second chamber, but owing to the bad state of the rock he abandoned it as being " most unsafe to work in " … Mr. Davis and I inspected the tomb in February, 1912, and so no further collapse had occurred … we decided to complete its excavation ' . By : Harry Burton .



History and archaeology
Discovered by Edward Russell Ayrton in November 1905, KV47 was excavated down to the antechamber, but only cleared fully by Harry Burton in 1912 . In 1922 Howard Carter cleared the area around KV47, discovering several ostraca and other small objects associated with the tomb . From the finds recovered by Ayrton and Burton, it seems that KV47 received the burials of both Siptah and his mother, Queen Tiaa . The burials were eventually disturbed, however, and the king's cartouches erased from the tomb walls – only later to be restored . Unfortunately, the evidence is complex and there is no agreement among Egyptologists as to the exact timing, sequence and motivation of these events .



The bones found by Burton in the sarcophagus of KV47 seem to have belonged to an intrusive burial of the Third Intermediate Period . The mummy identified as that of Siptah by the 21st Dynasty necropolis priests was discovered in the Amenophis ( Amenhotep ) II cache ( KV35 ) in 1898 . Apart from the somewhat withered and shortened left leg, which was apparently caused by poliomyelitis, the king's body had been much battered in the search for valuable amulets . The mummy's right arm had been reattached with splints at the time of the reburial .



Architecture and decoration
While the outer part of the structure follows the plan of Seti II's tomb ( KV15 ) quite closely ( with the addition of the entrance sarcophagus ramp found Amenmesse's tomb [ KV10] ), the interior of Siptah's monument is unusual in a number of ways . Two corridors, rather than a corridor and stairway, were constructed beyond the pillared hall and, uniquely, a side passage was cut to the left of the corridor after the antechamber . This was abandoned when it ran into the nearby tomb KV32 . The shattered burial chamber is also exceptional in having no ancillary storerooms ; perhaps this was due to the unsuitable nature of the shale in which this hall was cut . The abandoned passage may have been intended to lead to storage rooms, though it is also possible that a separate sarcophagus hall for the king's mother Tiaa was intended .



Only the outer passages of Siptah's tomb were plastered and decorated, and although the motifs are standard ones, the quality of the decoration is high . Beyond the usual entrance motif, perhaps the finest examples of Maet seated on the heraldic plants of the Upper ( lotus ) and Lower ( papyrus ) Egypt occur on the reveals of the entrance .



The litany of Re appears in the first passage and at the beginning of the second, and is followed by a number of scenes stressing underworld deities, including Anubis before the bier of Osiris . Also, we can see in the first passage a youthful Siptah before Re-Horakhty receiving life from him . Scenes from the Amduat were also placed in the third passage, but these are now largely destroyed .



Funerary equipment
The sarcophagus of Siptah was discovered in the burial chamber of the tomb by Harry Burton in 1912 . The sides of the coffer are decorated with alternating triple kheker-ornaments and recumbent jackals, above a lower register of underworld demons, a design followed by a number of Siptah's successor . The cartouches are recut, like many cartouches within the tomb, though this fact does not necessarily indicate that the monument was usurped from an earlier king .



Among the mass of as yet unpublished calcite fragments brought to light during the excavations carried out on behalf of Theodore Davis are said to have been discerned the remains of a rectangular sarcophagus, two anthropoid coffins and two canopic chests . These, for the most part, are probably to be divided between Siptah himself and his mother, Queen Tiaa . However, some of the coffin fragments are said to carry the name of Merenptah, and to be associated with the anthropoid coffin fragment of this king now in the British Museum in London . Their presence within KV47 has not yet been explained . Davis found hundreds of fragments of Egyptian alabaster . Many of these belonged to between 40 and 50 shabtis inscribed with the names of Siptah . Some were sections of funerary vessels, all these fragments now in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York .



The burial chamber and the sarcophagus of Siptah
The burial chamber is rectangular, its Dimensions is 13.73 m in width by 9.07 m in length, and an average height of 5.3 m, with four square pillars in one row and it is unfinished . The red paint contours on the back wall show where the additional pillars were to be cut . There is a rectangular shallow pit in the floor of the compartment . The vaulted ceiling was fallen in the area where the sarcophagus lay . The traces of the ceiling can be seen on the back, left and right walls . Due to the poor condition of the rock, the front of the chamber and its pillars have collapsed . There are no side compartments ( chambers ) .



The sarcophagus is of red granite, and has the effigy of the king on the lid, with traces of yellow and red paint in the hands, the scepter and the face . The upper edges of the sides were damaged when the lid was raised .



The sarcophagus of the king Siptah is in cartouche-shaped in form with effigy on led . The box's exterior and interior decorated with excerpts from the Book of the Earth . Also, we can see on the exterior of the lid Siptah as Osiris surrounded by IsisNephthys that they kneeling around Siptah's cartouches, a pair of cobras with human heads and arms, a snake and a crocodile .





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