1. Situation :-
We now move southwards towards the southern group of
tombs, they are located off three miles from the south of the northern group .
On our way we notice, about the centre of the arc formed by the high desert
behind the city, a long and narrow promontory jutting out from the high ground,
and enclosing at its broader western point a small hollow .
On the slopes of this promontory, and in the bottom of
its valley, the expedition of the Egypt Exploration Society noticed brickwork,
and excavation speedily revealed that the traces of brickwork on the slopes
were the remains of a series of tomb-chapels belonging to middle-class citizens
of Akhetaten, and were of a somewhat later date than that of the city's
flourishing period under Akhenaten, probably coinciding with the later stages
under Smenkhkere and Tutankhamun, when the Amun faith was recovering the
prestige and power which it had lost under Akhenaten .
The tomb-shafts belonging to these chapels are not in
their enclosures, but on the slopes above them . The brickwork in the hollow
proved to be the remains of a workman's village, and is probably to be regarded
as a special home provided for the workmen who executed the great rock-tombs in
the cliffs above . It is surrounded by the remains of an encircling wall, with
very limited means of exit . Patrol-roads encircled it on three sides, and
guard-houses were placed on the main road from it to Akhetaten .
The wall cannot have been for defence . It was not
designed to keep enemies out, but to keep workmen in . The solution is probably
to be found in the notorious character for riot and violence which the
tomb-workers in general held, and of which documentary evidence exists with
regard, at least, to the necropolis of Thebes .
It is curious that the bold cliffs themselves were not
selected as a site for the earliest tombs at Akhetaten, but a low bank which
marks the rise from the level of the plain to that of the great wady running southward through the mountains . The rock is of the worst
possible nature ; the site was limited in area and lay an hour's ride
south-east of the city . Hence after a few years it was abandoned for the
northern cliffs . These unattractive hills are bounded on the East and West by
two Khors ( drainage valleys ) and are cut into three parts by dry
water-courses, descending from the level of the wady .
The southern group of tombs ( 7 to 25 ) lies, as
already mentioned, on a low bank near to the point at which the hill-road makes
its exit from the Amarna plain .
2. Number :-
Of the tombs excavated here, nineteen are usually open
and have been numbered ; but there are
others in a greater or less state of completion, of which eight appear on the
accompanying map ( Plate 13 ) . All the tombs are liable to become sanded-up,
so that many of the numbered tombs had to be excavated in order to secure plans
. The eight lettered tombs were completely hidden and were cleared of sand by
Norman de Garis Davies . Most of them had been unearthed before by MM. Urbain
Bouriant and Alexandre Barsanti, but no records or plans seem to have been made
. The tombs are betrayed at once by the piles of stone fragments thrown out ;
so that it is almost impossible that any large chamber remains undiscovered, though
there might be many of the type 9b, 9c . There are also many small cuttings
where a tomb was planned or whence stone was taken for inset ( patchings,
cornices, etc. ), and these no doubt have caused disappointment to others . Of
the tombs which Mr. Norman de Garis Davies opened only 7c was of any size, and
none showed any traces of inscription except 25a .
3. Previous Records :-
The buried state of these tombs, consequent on their
low position, kept them unknown or uncopied long after their first discovery .
They seem to have been unvisited by Sir John Gardner Wilkinson , as Robert
Hay,who shared with him the knowledge of the tombs of El Til, refers to the
conspicuous tomb of Ay as " the tomb opened by me " . Tomb 13 also
was opened by him and his companion G. Laver in 1830, as he records on its
ceiling ; and tombs 7 and 8 were entered, and such copying and planning done as
were possible under the circumstances . Nestor L'Hôte did very little work here
. The great advance which Mr. Karl Richard Lepsius made on Hay was more in the
publication than in the extent of his copies ; for though the entrances of most
of the other tombs were plain to him, he made no attempt to penetrate into them
. The work done by French Egyptologists on the site between 1883 and 1902 has
already been noted . The result of their combined labours, long delayed owing
to the illness and death of M. Bouriant, has now appeared, so far as the south
group is concerned .
4. Change of Necropolis :-
The transference of the Necropolis to the northern
hills presents us with an unsolved problem : for the material changes that
coincided with it suggest that it had real significance . The new and stricter
name of the Aten comes into use ; the form of tombs undergoes considerable
alteration ; the Queen's sister disappears ; detailed pictures of the temple
are shown and those of the palace are altered ; the figure of the deceased
takes the place of the King in the doorways . None of these changes is
startling ; none perhaps was sudden ; yet, taken together, they show that the 8th
or 9th year of the reign marked a turning-point . Probably it
exhibited in some definite way the success of the revolution : only a very
partial and short-lived success, no doubt ; yet not to be a failure was already
much .
It may well be supposed that up to this point all had
been in doubt . Now ( surely by a compromise ) civil peace was assured . The
city had been solidly founded ; the temple and the palace erected ; the
boundaries of the sacred district solemnly confirmed ; the Queen's sister
married off, in a way, perhaps, that had political results ; a new influx from
Thebes was changing somewhat the first fashions in which the King's influence
and local mannerisms had been unchallenged . All this is hypothetical ; but
some such change, important yet not radical, seems indicated .
5. Architecture :-
The originality so marked at this epoch in other
directions is not less prominent in tomb architecture . There was a complete
break from the traditions of Theban tombs both in form and in mode of
decoration . The ordinary T-shaped chamber is unknown at El Amarna, and so also
is decoration in colour on plaster. Papyrus columns everywhere replace the
square pillar of rock where support is needed for the roof . If Akhenaten fails
to win our admiration away from the bright colour and rich detail of the Theban
tomb, his architecture, at least, is in the highest degree imposing, especially
in the Southern Group, where the larger tombs almost reach the dignity of
rock-temples . There is no other necropolis like this in Egypt . Beside the
solid masonry of Saqqara, the magnificent simplicity of Beni-Hasan, the rich
colouring of Thebes, must be set the graceful architecture of the tombs of
El-Hagg Qandil . The row of complex columns finishing at the wall in pilasters
with cavetto-cornice, and carrying either a simple or a corniced architrave, is
an architectural element which, by its harmonious blending of straight lines
with curves and of the plain with the broken surface, may bear comparison with
features of classical architecture that have become imperishable models . The
breaking of the plain wall-surface by double corniced portals, or by the door
and lattice, also shows admirable decorative taste, and we can only regret that
no free-standing building remains in Akhetaten . Unfortunately the period was
so short and the work so hurried that we have to complete the tombs in
imagination . One and all they remain sketches which show the restless genius
of the artist; and if there seems no great variety of type, no more indeed than
indicates that the type was variable, we must remember that the tombs of the
group appear to be the product of two or three years at most .
6. Tomb-forms :-
The most natural impulse in tomb-quarrying is to gain
wall-space with least labour . To this the corridor answers best . It might lie
athwart the entrance or in line with it, and though the latter arrangement had
the advantage of taking small frontage space, the cross corridor was generally
adopted, as it secured room for expansion . In the South group only tombs 18,
19 and 23 adopted the direct corridor . It was imitated in tombs 3 and 5, but
there the cross-corridor ( with false doors ) was added at the further end,
thus forming an exact T-shaped .
The smallest tombs are all of the cross-corridor type,
with a false door ( shrine ) at each end and another opposite the entrance (
tombs 7, 11, 17 ) . If time and means permitted, the breadth of the corridor
was doubled, the back wall becoming a row of columns down the centre (
commenced in Nos. 10, 12, 20; nearly completed in 7c, 13 ) . Or it might be
trebled or quadrupled by having two rows of columns ( Nos. 8, 14, 16 ) or three
( No. 25 ) . Two false doors to right and left on entering still bore witness
to the embryo-form, though these might be repeated in the new cross-aisle (
Nos. 8, 16 ) . Not that the development actually took place in successive
strips . After the cross-corridor was finished the central aisle might be run
out to its limit, and the excavation begun to right and left ( Nos. 21, 22 ) .
The simple cross-corridor tomb was, however, not
really complete . It had no place for burial ( only a shaft in the chamber in
tomb 11 ), and it was intended that the door in the back wall should lead to a
further room, in which or through which the burial place should be reached . In
the tomb of Mahu ( No. 9 ) this room was left quite simple and small . In Nos.
8 and 15 this inner room was meant to become a many-columned chamber . Where
the cross-corridor had become a columned hall, it was felt advisable to begin
the burial place at once, placing it at the end of a flight of steps leading
down from the floor ( in the left-hand back corner, Nos. 8, 13, 14, 16, 25 ) .
If the stairway was extensive, it was made to turn on itself so as to keep
within the area of the tomb . The stairway, when in the second chamber, was on
the right ( Nos. 6, 9, 15 ) .
7. Sequence :-
It is difficult to determine the order of succession
of the tombs in this group . The Princesses are always three in number, except
in tombs 9 and 11 where Merytaten alone appears . Reasons will be given for
doubting if these two tombs can really date as early as Akhenaten's fifth or
sixth year . All the tombs therefore seem to be practically of one period, and
we are unable to suggest with confidence any sequence among them . Tombs 8 and
23 show examples of the later form of the name of the Aten, and tomb 9 uses no
other . These, then, we should expect to be latest in date .
8. Methods of Construction :-
As will be seen in dealing with separate tombs, they
are all more or less unfinished, and the decoration of all is seriously
incomplete . Evidently the work was done in the utmost haste . The shrewd king
seems to have seen that the best way to bind his courtiers to Akhetaten and to
his enterprise there was to let them see their future halls of burial already
planned on an elaborate scale and actually begun . A tomb was invariably
quarried from the roof downwards, and to the last the ceiling remained the most
finished and accurate portion ; so that the modern surveyor is obliged to adopt
the laborious and inverted method of taking the ceiling as the basis of his
plans . The reason for this is not far to seek . When one tomb was begun before
its neighbour had been completed, it was advisable that the latter should have
marked out its claim to frontage by excavating the whole breadth within . This
is in fact always found to have been done, even if the tomb was left unfinished
in the rear ( Nos. 14, 22, 25, etc. ) .
A further peculiarity of these tombs is that they were
evidently finished piecemeal as the work went on ; the last smoothness and
detail were given to the ceilings, architraves, cornices of doors, and capitals
of columns, while the other half of the tomb, the column, the doorway, was
still a mass of rock . The explanation, however, is not that, owing to a
childish impatience to reach pleasing results or in order to avoid the use of scaffolding,
the tomb was completed in sections : this feature is the direct result of the
conditions under which the work was done . So hasty was it, so insecure the
supply of labour, so remote the chance of completion, that the most expeditious
method was the only method . The plasterers moulded and whitewashed the
capitals of columns regardless of the fact that the shaft was still unformed
and that their work would be seriously impaired, if not destroyed, should the
excavation ever be proceeded with . The decorators and sculptors, who found a
properly smoothed wall, sketched out, sculptured and painted their scenes,
though half the chamber, or all save the doorway, was still virgin rock . This
procedure has been justified . But for this unmethodical haste there could have
been no architectural beauty and no texts or scenes in the necropolis ; for not
a single tomb reached completion, and only in two cases are even the interiors
perfectly ready for decoration . This must be remembered in appreciating architectural
features, and not less in drawing conclusions from the scenes . No evidence can
be gathered from the absence of certain representations, for the subjects which
would have occupied the remaining walls are unknown to us . As a matter of fact
all the pictures we have in this group, with the exception of those in the tomb
of Mahu and one in the tomb of May, are three separate versions of the same
design, showing the reward of the official from the window of the palace (
Tombs 7, 8, 25 ) .
The tombs and their sculptures lie open also to the
charge of being " jerry-built " ; for the material in which they are
excavated is quite unsuited to their ambitious designs . The admirable lines of
cornice and column and the fine detail of sculpture are all executed in plaster
. The stone basis for both is often of the roughest description . Many of the
columns, owing to faults and fissures in the rock, are largely made up of
plaster . No doubt a great deal of bad work, due to haste, has also been
covered up in this way . But the Egyptian work in plaster was so excellent, and
the insecure basis for this rock-architecture is so little to be suspected even
now, that the passing centuries must be considered to have sufficiently
vindicated the ancient architect .
9. Later Burials :-
Most, if not all, of the tombs have been re-used for
later burials, bones and great mounds of sherds outside the principal tombs
witnessing eloquently to the fact . Large numbers of coffins were, I believe,
found by the first excavators, many being burnt and others removed to Cairo .
No notes of this Departmental undertaking have been published .
10.
Roads :-
As in the North group, broad tracks, swept clear of
stones, lead from the vicinity of the ancient town to many of the chief tombs .
They are marked for a certain distance, but after three or four hundred yards
from the tombs they visibly swerve from the straight line and often bend
considerably, perhaps because several ran into one . Their full mapping remains
to be done .
Part ( 19 ) .. Coming SoOoOon .....
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