It will be remembered that after the death of Akhenaten, and the short
reigns of Smenkhkere and Tutankhamun, the throne was seized by a priest, "
The Divine Father Ay ", who had no claim to royal descent, and was not
even of high rank in the priesthood .
King Ay was the penultimate of the 18th Dynasty, and his tomb was excavated
near to that of Amenhotep III at the end part of the Western Valley ( WV ) . It
is accessible . This was the last tomb to be used in this part of the valley, this
is the first time that the Pharaoh's tomb has a completely straight plan,
without a curve . It is believed today that it was originally prepared for
Tutankhamun, but as it was not finished when he died, the young Pharaoh was
buried in a smaller tomb of the valley ( KV62 ).
The tomb was discovered in the winter of 1816 by Giovanni Battista
Belzoni ( Expedition led by Henry Salt ) which immediately began the first
excavations, and they picked up in 1908 by Howard Carter with the displacement
of the fragments of the sarcophagus to Cairo for Mr. Gaston Maspero who had
them re-assembled and reconstituted in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo and
returned to the burial chamber in 1994 but in the reverse of its original
orientation . Finally in 1972, Mr. Otto John Schaden continued the
excavation on behalf of the University of Minnesota and completely cleared the tomb
.
The tomb consisted of a corridor and a flight of steps, with a small
chamber leading into the burial-hall, which is adorned with paintings in which
the king is shown boomeranging birds ( Boomerang : is a curved flat piece of
wood that can be thrown so as to return to the thrower as a hunting weapon )
and plucking bulrush, as if he had only been an ordinary nomarch ; while others
show him standing in the presence of his fellow-gods and goddesses .
The tomb, which remained unfinished, extends over a total length of just
over 60.16 m . The all corridors and chambers of the tomb are undecorated and
unfinished, except the burial chamber, and the sloping corridor ( B ) has a
pair of square beam holes in the side walls near the end of it, which served as
a beam anchoring to allow the sarcophagus to descend the steep staircase .
The first stairwell ( C ), which has a staircase just after the first
corridor, has probably not been fully excavated, for this reason that it is
often considered as a corridor . By another corridor ( D ), leading to a large
enough square antechamber ( E ), which precedes the burial chamber ( J ), it is
undecorated and it is the usual location of the well shaft, but here it was not
cut through the level floor .
The burial chamber ( J ) is the only decorated chamber
in the tomb, with scenes of The Book of Amduat, and The Book of the Dead, and the representations of Pharaoh with various
deities . Its paintings show a curious mixture of the ritual type of work, in
which the king stands before the gods, and the popular type in which the dead
man is shown as engaged in ordinary occupations of life . The whole decorations
in the tomb are the same decorations and style that in the tomb of Tutankamun (
KV 62 ) .
When we entering the burial chamber ( J ) with a wooden floor, and on
the right-hand ( east wall ) of the destroyed wall, there is a scene showing
the king fowling and sailing in the papyrus marshes with his Consort Tiy ( the
Great Royal Wife, his beloved, the Lady of the Two Lands ), using a boomerang
in hunting twelve birds which may have as a symbolic of the twelve hours of the
day and the night, and also harpooning . The figures of the king and his wife
and their cartouches in intentional damage .
On the north wall ( Monkey wall ), we see a large
scene of the first hour of The Book of Amduat . In the upper
register and from the left hand side there is a representation shows five deities
of the solar barque ( from left to right : Maet, the Mistress of the
Barque [ Nebet-wia ], Horus, Ka of Shu and Nehes ) . On the middle, the
solar boat is sailing with two figures of Osiris and scarab . On the right
side, there is a short text representation Re travelling to the underworld .
In the lower register there is a large rectangle, which is divided into
twelve boxes, each of these twelve small rectangles contains the representation
of a seated baboon with two names . And between the two registers, is a red
hieroglyphic inscription which contains a brief two introductions : names of
the gods opening the gates for the great Ba and names of the gods who sing
praises to Ra when he enters into the underworld .
On the west wall, and from the right hand, is a scene of the king embraced
by Osiris-Wennefer (the great god, master of eternity ) with the dark green
face and the Atef-crown . Then comes a scene representation the king followed
by his Ka before Hathor and Nut, all of the king's
figures and cartouches are intentionally damaged .
On the south wall, comes texts and representations from The Book of the Dead . In the upper register
there is a scene shows the goddess Nephthys stands between two of solar
barques, the left one carries two standing falcons that is called " The Mandjet
Barque ", and the right one carries the nine gods of the Heliopolitan
Ennead ( from left to right : Re-Horakhty, Atum, Shu, Tefnut, Geb, Nut, Osiris,
Isis and Horus ) . And the lower register is a text from the chapters 130, 141,
142 and 144 of The Book of the Dead describe the eternal life
given to the souls of the dead, and they show the doors of the underworld .
A low gateway near the southern end of the west wall of the burial
chamber leads into an undecorated side chamber or annexe ( Ja ), it is probably
used for storage the canopic equipment and additional tomb burial objects .
Above the entrance of the side chamber, and from the burial chamber, there
is a good and beautiful representation of the four sons of Horus as deified
kings seated before offering table, which appear here for the first time in the
tomb . On the left, are Duamutef and Qebehsenuef wears the white crown of Upper
Egypt, while Imsety and Hapi on the right wears the red crown of Lower Egypt .
Ay's sarcophagus is of red granite, and its lid is vaulted . The entire
sarcophagus resembles the of Tutankhamun's in form and decoration , and the
scenes on the sarcophagus are from The
Book of the Dead . The four deities of protective ( Isis, Nephthys, Selkis, and Neith )
are also depicted on the corners with spreading wings . On the two long sides
are represented two winged solar disks .
The tomb goes by the name of Turbet el-Qurud, "
The Tomb of the Apes ", from the twelve cynocephali which figure in this
burial-hall . It will be remembered that Ay's unfinished tomb at El-Amarna has
preserved for us the only extant copy of the long version of the Hymn to the
Aten .
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