A Lucky Priestess
The first time I visited the Valley of the Kings in Egypt, I wandered around like any tourist, with my mouth open and my mind in a daze. In those days there was no "three tomb" limit and you could go in as many tombs as you wished for as long as your interest or your stamina held out. I can't even remember how many tombs we visited, but it was certainly a good many more than three!
On subsequent visits I was better prepared. I had studied maps of the Valley, I had read books about the Valley, and although the miracle of Google Earth was still several decades in the future, I felt that I knew what I was going to be looking at. There was the three tomb limit, but at least I could make sense of the Valley; rather than just a desolate landscape peppered with holes, it was a familiar friend with the tomb of Horemhab over here, Tut over there (with Rameses VI just above him) and Sethi I just round the corner.
Over the next couple of visits I concentrated on seeing as many different tombs as possible, which was a rather random affair as it was impossible to predict which tombs would be open at the time of our visit and sometimes the only tombs we could visit were ones I had already seen. In addition there were always my responsibilities to the tour group, which included not only pointing out objects of interest as we went around, but making sure that everyone had enough water and actually drank the stuff.
That is not as easy as it might appear, for some people appear determined to commit suicide by dehydration! One couple, heading into the positive inferno of the Valley on a hot day, were carrying one 500cc bottle of water and were most indignant when I insisted that they took at least one litre each! "But we don't drink water," they protested. "We never do." On another occasion an elderly gent just about collapsed at the head of the Valley. Diagnosing dehydration, I handed him my water bottle and urged him to drink. He took a sip and handed the bottle back. I drew myself up to my full height, raised my voice, adopted my most threatening mien and ordered him to keep drinking until the bottle was empty. (I had another on in my back pack!) Fortunately he was sufficiently intimidated to obey - and ten minutes later was running around like a ten-year old.
However eventually I managed to time my visit when the only tombs open were ones I had already seen and photographed, we had another member of the Diggings staff with me, and all our other visits had gone smoothly, so there was no pressure of time. I made my excuses and left the group with my colleague, then set off at a brisk pace up the side valley past KV3 and the tomb of Tuya and Yuya. My aim was to photograph every hole in the ground - and I came very close to succeeding.
I was surprised at just how shallow and insignificant some of those holes were! Of course, what I was seeing was simply the vertical entrance shaft and doubtless there was a room at the bottom which was the actual burial chamber, but any idea that all the tombs were long sloping corridors leading down to a suite of magnificent rooms was quickly quashed. Most of them were identified only by large numerals painted on the rock: for example, KV27 and 28 were side by side - deep shafts with the entrance to the tomb chamber blocked by a rough wall of stones.
Among the tombs I was delighted to discover were the so-called Gold Tomb, in which the archaeologist found thousands of tiny flakes of gold. The tomb had been flooded repeatedly and the wooden coffin and furniture to which the gold had been attached had rotted away long ago. Subsequent floods had ground the fragile gold leaf to fragments; among the few objects to escape destruction were two small silver gloves, which Ayrton took back to his houseboat to clean, for they were stuffed with rock-hard mud.
In the end he found that the easiest way of getting the mud out was to lean over the side of the boat and swill them repeatedly in Nile water. It was only after he finished that he discovered eight finger rings and a couple of bones and realised that the hands of the unfortunate owner had still been inside the gloves! Now they were buried deep and irretrievable in the Nile mud, which I suppose was fitting for an ancient Egyptian.
I noticed tomb 5 and photographed the entrance, but as that was some years before Kent Weeks explored the tomb and made the startling discovery that it was the largest of all the tombs in the Vally, I didn't waste much film on it. I was much more interested in KV55, the mystery tomb which contained a coffin from which the cartouche had been carefully ripped out, and the mummy of a man buried in the pose of a woman. People suspected that it was either Akhenaton or his favourite, Smenkare - with most people betting on the latter. Shortly before he was kicked out, Zahi Hawass claimed to have DNA evidence that the body was that of Akhenaton, but I remain unconvinced. Zahi's veracity is not above reproach.
Alas, my attempt to make a full record of the Valley was not to succeed. Only a few years later, amid much fanfare, a new tomb was discovered only a few yards from Tutankhamun's tomb. Zahi appeared, more gargoyle-like than ever, to claim that the discovery was all down to him - he hadn't been anywhere near the place but he couldn't bear that Dr Otto Schaden, the actual discoverer, should get any credit - and that it was a discovery to rank up there with Tutankhamun.
It wasn't. Seven coffins were found, all except two of them in terrible condition thanks to termites - I kid you not - which appear to have invaded the tomb from the workmen's huts built above it a century or two after the tomb was dug. No names or other marks of identification were found, but the style of the tomb and the faces on the sarcophagii date it to the 18th Dynasty and some have suggested that it might even be the tomb of Akhesenamun, the wife of Tutankhamun.
Now another new tomb has been discovered, more or less by accident, by a team of Swiss archaeologists. Numbered as KV64, the tomb contained a single coffin and its inmate is identified as Nehmes Bastet, daughter of a high priest from the Twenty-second Dynasty. This Libyan dynasty comprised such powerful pharaohs as Sheshonk and Osorkon, so the archaeologists are puzzled as to why a mere commoner should be buried in the Valley of the Kings! Nehmes is, in fact, the only woman ever found in the valley who is not related by blood or by marriage to one or another of the pharaohs.
The solution probably lies in the fact that the high priests of Thebes managed to set up a semi-independent state, preserving the native Egyptian way of doing things. Doubtless they had the authority to have one of their number buried int he prestigious Valley - but if one member of the High Priestly family could be buried there, why not others? Perhaps, despite repeated assertions that all the secrets of the Valley have been revealed, we are just on the verge of a whole raft of new discoveries!
© Kendall K. Down 2012
