Thursday, April 27, 2017

KV57 – Tomb of Horemhab .. Part ( 27 )

Historical notice
This was the last of the great Mr. Theodore Monroe Davis finds, and was discovered by Edward Russell Ayrton and Mr. Theodore Monroe Davis in 1908 . It lies close to the Gold Tomb ( KV56 ), on the right hand of the path leading to the tomb of Amenhotep II and near the inspector's office .





The entrance is insignificant . A flight of steps leads to a corridor and a second flight of steps to a second corridor, which gives access to the well chamber, beyond which was an ante-room, and this to a two-pillared hall ; in the left-hand corner a flight of steps leads down to the inner part of the tomb .



This stairway was meant to be carefully concealed, as usual, in the hope that robbers would take the two-pillared hall to be the end of the tomb . As usual, however, the robbers had not been deceived, and the tomb had been thoroughly plundered .



Beyond this stairway, came another corridor, which was succeeded by another flight of steps, leading down to an ante-room, from which access was gained to the great six-pillared burial-hall in which stood the empty sarcophagus of Horemhab, an admirable piece of work, 8 feet 11 inches in length, 3 feet 9½ inches wide, and 4 feet high . It is of red granite, and is exquisitely carved with figures of the gods and inscriptions . Note the figures of the guardian goddesses at the corners, with their wings outstretched over the sides of the sarcophagus .



Beyond the burial-hall, which had the usual small annexes at its four corners, were three other smaller chambers .



Decoration had not been completed, and was confined to the room of the well, the burial-hall, and the room which leads into it, with some other unfinished work in the corridors . The work is of good quality, and deals as usual with the journey of the sun, and with scenes of the king in the presence of the gods . Some of these latter are very well preserved and fine, and a figure of Osiris in one of the small chambers is noticeable .




Discovery
" … here, where vivid and well-preserved wall-paintings looked down on a jumbled collection of smashed fragments of wood and bones, one felt how hardly the Powers deal with the dead . How far away seemed the great fight between Amun and Aten ; how futile the task which Horemheb accomplished so gloriously ! " . By : Arthur Weigall .



The tomb of Horemheb was brought to light in 1908 opposite the tomb of Ramses III . Slowly the steps leading down to the doorway were uncovered, and the excavators were able to peer through the gloom into a corridor, almost entirely choked with rubble . Two days later this scree, which continued as far the partially filled " well ", had been cleared and it was possible to proceed . As Weigall records :
" The party which made the entrance consisted of Mr. Davis ; his assistant, Mr. Ayrton ; Mr. Max Dalison, formerly of the Egypt Exploration Fund ; and myself . Wriggling and crawling, we pushed and pulled ourselves down the sloping rubbish, until, with a rattling avalanche of small stones, we arrived at the bottom of the passage, where we scrambled to our feet at the brink of a large rectangular well, or shaft . Holding the lamps aloft, the surrounding walls were seen to be covered with wonderfully preserved paintings executed on slightly raised plaster . Here Horemheb was seen standing before Isis, Osiris, Horus, and other gods ; and his cartouches stood out boldly from amidst the elaborate inscriptions " .



Panting heavily from the intense heat and bad air, the perspiration streaming down their faces, the explorers pressed on, climbing down into the well by means of a ladder and climbing up the opposite side . The further wall of the well had originally been blocked, concealing the fact that the corridor continued beyond ; this decorated blocking had been breached, however, and the excavators were able to enter the simple chamber beyond, in the floor of which was cut a flight of stairs ( again originally concealed ) leading into a further corridor, another flight of steps and a final antechamber ( originally fitted with a wooden door sealed around the edges ), decorated like the well shaft . Beyond lay the burial chamber ( also once fitted with a wooden door ) with its six crumbling columns and outlined, unfinished decoration, off which lay an elaborate series of storerooms originally intended for the royal funerary equipment .



Architecture
" The whole tomb is of great interest, as showing the transition from the style of the 18th Dynasty to that of the 19th, the plan and style being intermediate between those of the tombs of Amenhotep III and Seti I " . By : Edward Ayrton .



The architecture of this tomb is quite new, the " dogleg " bend of the characteristic 18th Dynasty tomb having been abandoned in favour of a straight – or more precisely, jogged or parallel – axis . The corridors are long, maintaining the trend of enlargement in their height and width, and still descend with the steepness found in the earlier monuments . The first pillared hall is much more square than before, however, as would be the case in all subsequent tomb ; and the burial chamber is notable for a number of rather idiosyncratic design features : the slope from the first pair of pillars to the steps of the " crypt ", the second stair in this area, and the addition of a lower room ( Jaa ) cut beneath storeroom ( Ja ) – all features which do not appear again .



Precise cutting was for the first time attempted, though time evidently ran out before the work could be completed : unfinished walls are in evidence ( with either point-chiselled or flat-chiselled surfaces ) and the decoration in the burial chamber is only partly completed . The tomb thus offers an interesting glimpse of the various stages of work in painted relief – here used for the first time in the Valley of the Kings in preference to mural painting – first the outline grids on the pebble-polished limestone walls, then the freely sketched outlines in red finally corrected in black, then preliminary carving and finally the exquisitely finished, brightly painted reliefs .



Decoration
As in earlier tombs, decoration in the tomb of Horemheb ( KV57 ) is limited to the well shaft, the antechamber and the burial chamber proper . In the first two areas, similar scenes depict the king appearing before and offering to the gods associated with the hereafter, with the figure of Isis replacing that of Nut found in many of the earlier tombs . These multiple images of the king paired with a protective deity stand in a tradition begun in the tomb of Tuthmosis IV, but here they are produced by more skilful artists who vary the stances, gestures and clothing of the figures, and produce much more dynamic representations .



The use of colour is particularly noticeable in this tomb, with multicoloured hieroglyphs and figures accentuated by the blue-grey ground on which they appear . For the first time scenes from The Book of Gates instead of The Book of Amduat were used in the decoration of the burial chamber . The figures depicted represent an interesting transition between the late Amarna age and the refined Ramessid style which appears in subsequent tombs .



Funerary equipment
The principal item of funerary furniture still remaining in the burial chamber was the pink granite sarcophagus, containing a skull and several bones, beautifully decorated in delicately painted sunk relief, standing upon a limestone base and " symbolically supported " by six magical wooden figures ( of which five remained in situ ) set into hollows in the floor on each face . The plain lid, removed in antiquity and thrown to the ground, had shattered across an old break which had previously been repaired by means of butterfly cramps . Additional broken wooden images, resin coated and with yellow detail, royal and divine, were to be seen in the light of the excavators' arc lamps, scattered along with masses of builders' debris and dried floral remains from funerary garlands . Further human remains were recovered from the northeast and lower southwest storerooms .



The royal " sledge sarcophagus " and coffins were represented by several small fragments of cedar wood and acacia tenons incised with the king's throne name, " Djeserkheprure-setepenre ( heqamaat ) ", " [ Holy are the Manifestations of Re, Chosen of Re ( Ruler of Justice ) ] " . The alabaster canopic chest, with portrait-headed stoppers, smashed and scattered in antiquity, was also recovered and has now been restored . Evidently associated with the canopic chest was a series of four miniature lion-headed embalming tables, again smashed to pieces, which had presumably been employed in the embalming of the king's internal organs, remains of which were also found .







Other items of burial equipment included : life-size " guardian figures " ; a hippo-headed couch ; a cow-headed couch ; a lioness-headed couch ; three large Anubis figures, perhaps similar to the one discovered with Tutankhamun surmounting a carrying shrine ; a " germinating Osiris " ; " magical bricks " ; model boats ; fixed and folding chairs ; pall rosettes ; faience beards ; and wooden and stone containers for embalmed provisions . Of uncertain significance is a single canopic jar with human-headed stopper, of private 18th Dynasty from, inscribed in hieratic " with the name of a man (?) … Sanoa, apparently a foreign form " .




Several items from the royal funerary equipment " leaked " onto the antiquities market at the time of Davis's clearance of the tomb, including a series of wooden funerary statuettes, now in the British Museum, where for many years they were mistakenly labelled as coming from Tuthmosis III's tomb .



The tomb ( KV57 ) as a cache
A group of faint graffiti noted years ago by the English Egyptologist Alan Gardiner at the entrance to the tomb of Horemheb ( KV57 ) may offer a clue . The first of these texts refers to the carrying out of an unspecified " command " of the high priest of Amun, Herihor, in the per djet ( burial chamber ? ) of KV57, by the scribe of the army, Butehamun, in an unspecified Year 4 ; the second and third graffiti record the names of a certain Kysen, and of Butehamun ( again ) and the royal scribe Djehutymose ( or Tuthmosis ) ; while the fourth records a further phase of activity within the tomb in an unspecified Year 6 . The precise nature of this later activity is again unclear, owing to Gardiner's uncertainty as to the transcription of the verb in the original hieratic . Two possibilities exist : that this last text records the removal ( fai ) of the king from the tomb for reburial elsewhere ; or that the inscription records an official " investigation " ( sheni ) and all that implied .



The second option seems the more likely, for, when it was first entered by Theodore Davis and his team in 1908, several dismembered skeletons were in evidence scattered around the tomb, together with abundant remains of Third Intermediate Period funerary garlands . Since the excavators encountered no evidence – coffins, cartonnage fragments, shabti figures – of intrusive 22nd Dynasty private burials, there is a strong likelihood that the garlands and skeletal material represent the remains of at least four " restored " royal mummies . Horemheb is certainly high on the list of " missing " pharaohs . Ay is another ; and, if he had been cached within KV57, this would go a long way towards explaining the presence of fragments of his burial equipment ( gilded chariot harness ) in the nearby tomb KV58 .



Burial chamber and the king's sarcophagus
There are quite peculiar features in the burial chamber . The slope ramp between the first pair of columns and the staircase to the " crypt " . The second staircase in this area as well as the addition of a lower staircase .



The rectangular burial chamber (J) consists of two parts or levels : In the front part, there is an upper level which the floor of is on the same level with the previous antechamber (I), the ceiling is supported by six pillars in three double rows where a flat ramp in the center of the room is flanked by the pillars . The rear part which considered the lower level of the burial chamber was sunken and slightly wider than the upper part . The upper level leads to the lower level by two four-steps with 45° . One is in the middle between the last two pillars, and the other one is between the left of the last two pillars and the west wall of the burial chamber .



The royal red granite sarcophagus still stands in the middle of the room in this sunken part with a flat ceiling, now, it rests on a modern cement base, and the lid was broken and repaired in antiquity . At the four corners of the sarcophagus are sculpted representations of the goddesses Isis, Nephthys, Selqet, and Neith, with their spreading wings in the four sides . Selqet and Neith at the head of the sarcophagus, Isis and Nephthys at the foot . The figures on the front side of the sarcophagus represent the god Anubis between the two sons of Horus, Duamutef and Imsety . And on the back side is representation of Anubis between the another two sons of Horus, Qebehsenuef and Hapi . The sarcophagus of the King Horemheb is very similar in appearance to that one of Tutankhamun .



The burial chamber has five main side chambers, two in the left ( Ja and Jb ), two in the right ( Jd and Je ), and one in the rear wall ( Jc ) . The left side chambers each having an adjoining room ( Jaa and Jbb ) . In these side chambers were kept tombstones, food and drink offerings . The burial chamber also have four rectangular magical brick niches in the east and west walls of the chamber .





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