KV36 – Tomb of Maiherperi .. Part ( 33 )

Also known as the Standard-Bearer ( or Fan-Bearer ) to the King . Maiherperi must have been high in favour with Queen Hatshepsut to be allowed a tomb in the valley . His funerary furniture, including a specially fine copy of The Book of the Dead, with coloured vignettes, found in the tomb, and Maiherperi's canopic chest of resin-coated wood with gilded details, now occupies several cases in U 17 ( 3800-3823 ) at Cairo museum .

History and excavation

The burial of Maiherperi, a child of the royal nursery and royal fan-bearer, was brought to light by Victor Loret during his second season of work in the Valley of the Kings in March 1899, cut into the floor of the wadi midway between the tomb of Amenhotep II ( KV35 ) and the tomb of the Chancellor Bay ( KV13 ) . Although KV36 ( as the tomb is now numbered ) was the first substantially intact burial to have been discovered in the valley in modern times, it never, for some reason, attracted the attention it deserves – perhaps because, like so much work, it was never scientifically published . Indeed, the only account we possess of the burial in situ is a semi-popular description prepared by the Egyptologist Georg Schweinfurth . His article, general though it is, does permit a tentative reconstruction of the layout of the burial as Loret first encountered it . The tomb is uninscribed .

Who was Maiherperi ?

" … on the copy of The Book of the Dead found in the tomb …, Maiherperi is depicted with his face black instead of the normal red, and a detailed examination of his mummy, which showed that he died at about 24 years of age, also showed that he negroid, but not actually a negro " . By : Reginald Engelbach .

The mummy of Maiherperi was examined on 22 March 1901, and the results of that autopsy prompted Mr. Gaston Maspero to put forward the suggestion that the owner was a royal son by a black queen . Since Maspero is consistently referred to as " child of the Kap ", or royal nursery, however, the greater likelihood is that he was no more than a close companion of one of the kings of the early 18^th Dynasty during his childhood . A linen winding-sheet from the tomb carries the cartouche of Hatshepsut, but most commentators today would date the burial rather later, perhaps in the reign of Tuthmosis IV, on the basis of the tomb's contents .

The problem of the " extra " coffin

The mummy of Maiherperi lay within two anthropoid coffins and an outer wooden shrine of rectangular form . A third anthropoid coffin, smaller in size, lay unused in the centre of the chamber . Although Maspero's explanation has a charm of its very own ( tired of resting within the one, [ Maiherperi ] could move to the other ), the likelihood is that this " spare " coffin had originally been intended as the innermost of the set . Having been employed to carry Maiherperi's mummy in the funeral procession, on arrival in the burial chamber it was found to be too large to drop smoothly, as intended, into the nested second and third coffins already positioned within the tomb . Interestingly enough, a similar situation faced the workmen charged with placing the second coffin of Tutankhamun ( which had perhaps not originally been intended for this king's use ) within the first, outermost coffin . But whereas in the tomb of Tutankhamun the problem could be swiftly resolved by a few judiciously aimed adze blows, in the case of Maiherperi's ill-measured innermost coffin nothing could be done . After much fruitless pushing and jamming, Maiherperi's mummy would seem to have been hastily ejected from its over-large third coffin and placed within the smaller of the two nested coffins around which the large wooden funerary canopy was then erected . The unused third coffin was abandoned where it lay .

The mummy of Maiherperi, and the robbery of the tomb

When Loret entered the tomb, the mummy of Maiherperi still lay within its outer two coffins, though the tenons joining lids to bases had already been broken in antiquity and the mummy rifled – the bandages, over the arms in particular, having been crudely hacked away with an adze . Most of the funerary jewellery had been carried off by the robbers .

Further evidence of robbery could be seen in the general absence not only of jewellery but of all portable metalware, and also of non-funerary linen and clothing . The containers of ben-oil had had their sealed linen coverings ripped away, but had then been discarded ; the oil was evidently too old to be of interest . Following the plundering of KV36, the tomb appears to have been subjected to a hasty, semi-official tidying up, similar to that seen in the tomb of Yuya and Tjuyu ( KV46 ), and reclosed .

All the indications are that the culprits, both here and in KV46, were members of the necropolis workforce who had stumbled upon the tomb in the course of their work ( attested by a series of 19^th-20^th Dynasty ostraca recovered by Carter in 1902 ) in the immediate vicinity of the shaft entrance, and that the " restorers " of the damage were their superiors, anxious to avoid scandal, investigation and recrimination .

Part ( 34 ) .. Coming SoOoOon .....

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