A. Historical Notes
We now cross the mouth of the valley which here
divides the northern group into two, and proceed south-eastwards along the
cliffs to the Tomb No. 3, which is that of Ahmose, who was Veritable Scribe of
the King, Fan-bearer on the right hand of the King, Superintendent of the
Court-house, and Steward of the House of Akhenaten, a very important and
confidential servant of the Pharaoh indeed, and closely attached to his person
.
In spite of his position, however, his tomb lay unfinished through half the
reign of Akhenaten . The tomb has been laid out with considerable accuracy, but
its scenes have only been very partially completed . The tomb is situated a
short distance West of the tomb of Meryra, the high-priest ; it faces
South-West . There being a corner of steep cliff at this point, only a small
amount of quarrying had to be done to gain a vertical face of the required
height . The space so levelled, and enlarged by the debris cast out from the excavation, was occupied in later times for shelters,
the stone walls of which still cumber the spot .
B. Architectural Features
Exterior ( Plates 26, 27 ) — The entrance portal, on
each side of which the wall of rock has been dressed for a corresponding
height, consists of a simple framing slightly recessed ( Plate 27 ), and
decorated with inscriptions in the style already familiar . It will be noticed
that in the cartouches of Ra-Aten the early spelling of the name of the sun-god
by means of the disc-crowned hawk is employed ; as also the differentiation of
the two determinatives of the word "father" above them . The doorway
has been mutilated by the cutting of a fanlight over it by some later occupier,
and more recently by the removal of a large part of the left jamb .
Interior . Wall Thicknesses ( Plates 28, 29, 38 ) — On the west wall
thickness is the beautiful prayer which is now so well known, in which Ahmose
prays for Akhenaten that the Aten will " give to him very many jubilees,
with years of peace . Give him of that which thine heart desireth, to the
extent that there is sand on the shore, that fishes in the stream have scales,
and cattle have hair . Let him sojourn here until the swan turneth black, until
the raven turneth white, until the hills arise to depart, until water floweth
upstream, while I continue in attendance on the Good God [ Pharaoh ], until he
assigneth me the burial that he granteth " . Both sides of the entrance
once contained the figure and inscription customary in this situation, executed
in the best style of the period and brightly coloured . But they were cut to
pieces in the great theft of inscriptions which was made for the purpose of
sale in 1893 ( Plate 37 ) . Fortunately the texts are in most instances
recoverable from earlier copies and photographs . The ceiling here retains
portions of the painted design and something, in parts, of the original
brightness of colour .
The Hall ( Plates 26, 38 ) — This has the form of a
lengthy corridor, the further end of which is entirely taken up with the
doorway to the inner chambers and its corniced framing ( Plate 38 ) . The
ceiling, which at the South end is strongly arched, becomes almost flat at the
other . Two recesses cut in the East wall bear witness to the use of the tomb
as a dwelling .
The Inner Rooms — The further door gives access by a
short passage in the wall to a second corridor at right angles to the former,
containing the place of sepulture . The burial shaft descends from a bank of
rock at the East end ; though partially filled, it is open to a depth of nearly
thirty feet. At the other end of the corridor a few feet of a second and
perhaps later shaft have been cut in the floor . At each end of the corridor an
imitation portal has been hewn in the wall behind the shaft . They are out of
place here, being taken over from the class of tomb where this cross corridor
formed the main hall ( Plate 14-c ) . A doorway in the axis of the tomb leads
from this corridor to the shrine, and the ceiling is here heightened to give
the aspect of a central aisle . The portal of the shrine ( Plate 27 ) is of the
kind already met with in the tomb of Huya ( Plate 19 ), but has been left
unfinished . A mistake was made by cutting insets in the transom and filling
them with the dad signs, columns, and sa or signet signs, which should have been put in the panels above . They
were afterwards obliterated with plaster, but are now partially revealed . The
shrine contains the usual seated statue of the deceased man : it appears to
have been as well executed as the material permitted, but has been badly
mutilated . A rough basin has been cut in the floor before it, as if for
purposes of libation . The roof is arched . Pivot-holes in the floor of the
entrance show that the chamber was closed by folding doors .
The whole tomb is laid out with great accuracy, and the walls are cut
true and smooth . In the outer corridor the wall-surfaces were given a fine
coating of plaster, but the decoration which they were meant to receive was
only very partially applied . On the East side some traces of red paint
indicate the King, Queen, and three princesses under the radiant sun . All the
rest is blank, and the clean surface proving too great a temptation to visitors
in the days of the Ptolemies, they scratched their names over the whole space (
see Plate 35 ) . On the West side the greater part of the upper of the two
designs which were projected is preserved to us in ink or sculpture, and also a
fragment of the lower . The remaining space is covered with graffiti . All the
walls are remarkably free from dirt .
C. The Sculptured Scenes
1 — The Prayers of Ahmose - The Thickness of the Outer
Wall . ( Plates 28, 29 ) .
The two figures of Ahmose which occur here show the
usual dress . His decorations are few, consisting only of a double row of gold
beads round his neck ; but he carries on his back the insignia of his offices,
secured to a strap which passes over his shoulder . The fan indicates his
position as fan-bearer on the right hand of the King ; the long-bladed military
axe shows the command of soldiery which this and his other offices necessarily
involved, or rendered him liable to .
2 - A Royal Visit to the Temple - West Wall : Upper
half . ( Plates 30 to 32, 32A, 39 ) .
The
greater part of this picture is preserved . On the extreme right it was never
even sketched, or has utterly faded away . The royal chariot ( Plate 32 ) is
partially preserved in the original red ink sketch . The soldiers ( Plate 31 )
are finished with extreme care and are well-preserved, though somewhat injured
by the casting and squeezing to which the scene has been subjected . The temple
( Plate 30 ) as far as the second pylon and the division below it is but
half-finished, and has besides had large parts cut away by thieves . The
existence of the rest of the picture was not suspected, as the surface is to
all appearance quite blank . But chance observation showed me that parts of the
design at least had survived, yet in a yellow ink which had conformed so
exactly to the colour of the wall that it could only be recovered by blindly
following the lines on the wall with a pencil, guided less by their colour than
their texture .
The drawing thus recovered is the frequent one of a state visit to the
sanctuary of the royal statues in the temple, though we are not aware of
anything in the career or offices of Ahmose which could be an occasion for its
insertion here . Its prototype seems plainly to be the scene in the tomb of
Mahu, though the design is considerably altered, and was still further changed
for the tombs of Penehsy and Meryra ( Plates 10-a, 10A-a, 13-b ) .
The lost part probably showed Ahmose and his attendants, or perhaps the
other two princesses and their train . The horses which draw the royal chariot
have been sketched with great freedom, the head and neck showing great
superiority of outline over other designs . The initial sketch seems to have
been in faint yellow ink, corrected and redrawn in red ; but both have had to
be used in Plate 32, and this, taken with the indistinctness of the lines in
parts, must do some injustice to the Egyptian artist . The figures of the royal
personages were rubbed out in the general defacement of the monuments after the
King's death, and they have had to be restored ( Plate 32A ) by help of the
design of Mahu, The King and Queen are represented as chatting face to face in
the car, while the little Merytaten, whose head reaches with difficulty over
the rim, is interested in the prancing horses .
The chariot is immediately preceded by a troop of foot-soldiers, who run
in two detachments, headed by a trumpeter ( Plates 31, 39 ) . Although the
habits of Egyptian draughtsmen preclude easy confidence that an actual military
organization is revealed here, there is a mixture of symmetry and divergence
which strongly suggests that knowledge, and not caprice, has guided the artist
. Since Ahmose had some military command or supervision, he may well have
excluded professional blunders .
It is clear that the four files contain ten men each,
the last man being an Egyptian armed with falchion and baton ; the eleventh man
in the three lower rows is manifestly an officer, holding a baton only ; in the
top row the corresponding place has evidently been vacated by the trumpeter,
who must be in charge of the whole escort . The rear men of the files thus seem
here to take the place of our non-commissioned officers ; elsewhere they are
not so employed, but either in regiments or on police duty . They may have been
a crack regiment appointed to positions of trust, and placed here as a rear
guard or as instructors to the irregular troops .
The detachments seem to be composite . Each is led by
six Egyptian spearmen, and the standard-bearers of the six regiments they
represent . There follow them representative soldiers of the non-Egyptian
regiments, which were perhaps attached to the native regiments in equal numbers
( or in half their strength ) . In the upper detachment we see two bearded
Syrian spearmen, a negro bowman, a Libyan archer with characteristically shaped
bow, an Egyptian sergeant (?) whose presence here breaks the symmetry, and a
second negro with a club . In the lower detachment are three Syrian spearmen,
two Ethiopian bowmen, and a negro with a club ; all of similar appearance to
those above . Each officer is thus in charge of ten men, a favourite military
unit .
The standards are of the five types which occur in
these tombs . It seems most reasonable to assign them to the six ( or twelve )
Egyptian regiments ; for the pictures do not enable us to allot distinctive
standards to the foreign corps . It will be noticed that some of the
standard-bearers, here and elsewhere, have a different dress from the rest .
As in Plate 10A-a, the cortege is met at the gate of
the temple by the military guard and by the officials, who approach presenting
bouquets and offering sacrificial birds and cattle ( Plate 30 ) . Other beasts
await acceptance in the inner court, close by the slaughter-house . All is
astir within the temple, servants running through the great gates of the courts
in haste to make ready for the royal visit .
The building here depicted is the temple enclosure,
but with the whole of the Greater Sanctuary absent . It seems that this is due
only to economy of space, the Smaller Sanctuary being the object of visit . The
absence of any traces of the walls of this building in the ruins of the temple
might make one suspect that the pictures of the Great Sanctuary in the tombs of
Meryra and Panehesy only represent the unexecuted plans which were in the hands
of these priests, and that it was in reality never carried out . But in face of
the extensive building in the city and the mention of several shrines in the
temple of the Aten, this is scarcely likely, and the early tomb of Mahu shows
an elevation of the great pylon which it would be hard to explain away ( Plates
20-c, 21-c ) .
The first gateway is the outermost entrance ; the
second, as the lavers, the choir, and the great royal statue show, is the
gateway which admits to the court of the Lesser Sanctuary ; and the third is
the gateway of that building . There is no essential divergence in this picture
from the other plans .
The space between the first and second gateways ( down
to the bottom of the Plate ) is, then, that occupied already or destined to be
occupied by the Great Sanctuary . Some of the objects seen here are afterwards
shown in that building, and the two sets of lavers seem by their position to
imply its existence . The mutilation of the wall prevents us from knowing if
the great altar was shown, but duplicate pictures and the presence of an altar
of another type make it very unlikely . We may also note the player on the lute
and his chorus, who here supplement the harpers' choir in the inner court .
3 - The Royal Family at Home - West Wall : Lower
Scenes . ( Plates 33, 34 ) .
Of the scene which was destined to cover this part of
the long west wall, only a small part of the ink design was ever carried out
with the chisel, and what was unexecuted is erased . The sculpture too has been
defaced in ancient, and again in recent times . From the little that remains,
it seems likely that the picture was connected with Ahmose' office as
chamberlain ; for the existing fragment shows the royal family seated at meat
in the hall of the palace . The remainder would probably have depicted Ahmose
waiting on his sovereign, the reward of his assiduity in this office, and
perhaps the congratulations received by him at home on this mark of favour . The
contemporary tomb of Pentu is somewhat similarly illustrated, but equally
unfinished and injured . It has a scene in which the royal pair are seen at
meat, and another in which they sit in the hall, as here, and bestow rewards on
their servant ( Plates 8-c, 10-c ) .
This picture of the palace differs in certain respects
from the pictures already seen, being founded plainly on designs that belong to
the period of the southern tombs . The picture as preserved to us begins with
the great hall of the palace with its three ( i.e. six ? ) columns . If the
drawing resembles that in the sister tomb, the loggia and porch were shown
outside the hall . But where the rays of the sun, falling as usual upon the
royal pair, break through the upper line of the building ( at once roof and
side-wall ) a similar window has been placed, cleverly indicating the means by
which the sun-light streamed into the actual palace .
In this hall the King and Queen sat at meat on
high-backed chairs before piles of viands ( traces in paint ) . The chair of
the King is adorned by the symbol of the union of South and North Egypt in
fretwork . The King is attacking a bird, while the Queen deals with a joint of
formidable proportions ( the reverse in Plate 4 ). Attendants serve at
side-tables ( below ) and a cupbearer is holding out a goblet to the Queen .
Three princesses are present, the youngest of whom sits on her mother's knee,
while her two elders eat from their own table beside the Queen's chair .
Fragments of the King's and Queen's names remain ; those of the princesses are
lost . A row of wine-jars ( now destroyed ) is shown on the farther side .
Behind the chair of the Queen ( Plate 33 ) stand attendants, two or three
nurses for the children and the palace string-band of female performers ( cf.
Plates 5, 7, 32-b ) .
Behind the hall was a corridor which separated it from
the more private rooms ; it is here divided into two parts entered separately,
each admitting to a suite of rooms beyond . They form :-
I – The Harem
A. The
Royal Suite, comprising :-
1) A
dining-room, entered by three doors ( the centre one decorated ; the side doors
for servants to come and go quietly ) . It contains two sets of water-jars, a
chair in front of a table of meats and flowers, and several small stands ( Hay
) . Separated from it by another corridor are three rooms .
2) A
bedroom aired by the malqaf ( cf. Plates 13, 18-a ) and containing articles of
the toilet, refreshments, and a high couch reached by steps and furnished with
luxurious bedding and a head-rest .
3) A
columned room, entered from a similar but unfurnished ante-room ; perhaps a
retiring room, as meat and drink as well as sandals are shown in it .
4) Two
small rooms, entered through a columned antechamber, appear to be pantries ; as
servants are carrying empty jars in corresponding rooms in the lower suite .
The raised platforms serve as chests, for we see in one case the lifted cover .
B. The
Women's Apartments :– Here we see a number of figures, probably all female, and
though the group has suffered greatly, a help to restoration is afforded by a
design in the tomb of Ay . Two women play the lute, one dancing the while, one
the lyre and one the harp . The feet of a fourth woman are seen who apparently
sits on the ground and leans against the knees of a companion .
II - The Men's Apartments — As this division is almost
an exact counterpart of the sets of rooms ( 3 ) and ( 4 ) above, we conclude
that it is the men's side of the house .
Plate 33 exhibits an interesting feature in connection
with the vault of heaven, which, as is customary, is stretched above the scene,
its ends resting upon the shoulders of the mountains . At their foot a tree and
a shrub are placed . This tree occurs again in a similar position on a block of
this date from Karnak in Cairo Museum, and also in the tomb of Ay . M. Gaston
Maspero recognizes in this tree one of the two " sycomores of malachite
" which grew at the spot where the sun entered and left the upper world .
Part ( 14 ) .. Coming SoOoOon .....
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