News from the Valley of the Kings

Two fantastic posts from Jane Akshar on the work of Andrzej Ćwiek, head of the Polish Mission, at Deir el Bahri. In one Jane reports on a lecture at the Muumification Museum and in the other she describes a private guided tour of a visit to the temples.

With many thanks again to Kamil Zachert here is another Cliff Mission video shot by Mr. Dariusz Dudziak in November 2009.  This one is 10 minutes long and captivating.



A reminder that there is now a Cliff Mission FaceBook page.  There is some commentary in the video but it is in Polish.  If you really wish to follow what is going on, perhaps the best bet is to remind yourself of Kamil's photostream which has English titles for the photos which essentially give you some key points of reference.

There is a video of the December work of the Cliff Mission team on FaceBook.  It's only short - just a couple of minutes long.  The first half shows the team working on the rocks overhanging the temples and illustrates why the work is needed.  The team then take a tea break and the second half of the video reminds me of a film I once saw called the Piano ... some people will love it but most people may be better of skipping the second half.  Still, nice to see the first half and good to get some more video of work in progress rather than a "face" talking to camera after the project is over. 

Kamil has kindly informed me that Professor Niwinski and the Cliff Mission team expect to be back at Deir e-Bahri in April.  One of the main aims is to protect the Temple of Hatshepsut and the other temples below the cliffs from falling boulders.  They estimate that there are between 5,000 and 7,000 tonnes of stones which need to be removed from the cliffs. That's a huge task!

Kamil Zachert has kindly contacted me to tell me that he has updated his Flickr photostream with loads of new photos of the autumn 2009 work by Professor Andrzej Niwinksi. The scale of some of the work is shown by the image I'd added at the top which Kamil has titled "Removing the rest of the Pillar". As always with Kamil, it's a fabulous set of photos.  Just click on the photo above.

If you'd like to see a picture of the professor, there's a great image of him as well:

I nearly missed this because I've not found a write up, but Prof Niwinski has conducted an autumn expedition in the cliffs at Deir el-Bahri. See Kamil's photostream for more photos. There aren't many this time, but one is quite interesting, so take a look.

The main Cliff Mission site has also been updated to indicate release of a new September issue of Herhor.  Sorry, I missed that too!.   I'm guessing there may be another mission yet this season and that any update will come after that.

I'm a big fan of the tombs of the nobles so this new material on tomb TT192 (Kheruef) is very welcome.

There's an article by Basque Research about the use of GPR to locate the missing tomb of Monthemhat, fourth prophet of Amun and Governor of Upper Egypt (670- 648 B.C.). The article doesn't make clear where the tomb is so it's worth reading this article as well which describes the complex and overal excavations is more detail.

When I first posted my previous post, I had a photo of the wrong boulder. Many thanks to Kamil for correcting me and supplying the right photos. (I have changed the photo in the first post, but just to be certain I have repeated the correct photo in this post as well.)

The boulder is much bigger than I thought - in the lowest photo above it is the boulder on which the guy with the blank shirt is standing. I now also better understand the difficult it posts. It isn't just the boulder itself, it would also mean clearing all the other rocks from around it and of which may fall - and moving them could dislodge the big boulder, and as the middle photo shows, they are working right above the Deir el-Bahri temples.

While there may be something beneath the boulder all is not lost as one other location is suspected of harbouring the entrance to a tomb.

This is a photo by Anthony International of Hatshepsut's Mortuary temple at Deir-el-Bahri. Isn't it wonderful? I've linked to Anthony's Egypt set on Flickr as he has an image of the excavations taken on 14th February 2009. Ordinarilly that's what I would have posted but I just couldn't resist this one.

I can't see anywhere on Anthony's Flickr pages to show my appreciaton so if you would like feel free to leave comments here.

Deir-el-Bahri is the short wadi facing Karmak temple across the Nile which is famous as the site as the Temple of Hatshepsut. The Valley of the Kings lies behind. Deir-el-Bahri is also where the DB320 cache which was discovered in 1881, containing some 40 mummys, many of the royal including such notable pharaohs as Seti I and Ramesses the Great. The tombs in the cliffside are famously inaccessible, these days requiring ropes and a lot of exertion.

For a number of years a Polish team have been search the cliffs for another tomb, either a third cache or perhaps a burial for a single royal. Reports on their work have been very hard to come by but the have recently given a lecture at the Mummification Museum in Luxor and Jane Akshar was present to take notes for her blog.

It is a fantastic post by Jane of what must have been a brilliant lecture by Prof, dr hab. Andrezej Niwinski. There is also a Polish Website. An English version is underway but for now I have linked to a Google translation. The best bit about the Website anyway are the photos so the translation is perfectly sufficient for viewing those.

Jane confesses to excitement at what the lecture covered and I have to agree. So what as got me excited? Well the clear suggestion that there is something underground at Deir-el-Bahri.

• Butehamun the Elder (an inspector from the time of the 21st Dynasty - and possibly another inspector of a similar name) visited the cliffside eerie. Clearly he had some reason to go to such effort (and possibly in those days some danger) to reach somewhere so inaccessible.
• There are robber tunnels. What were they looking for?
• A 100 ton boulder has been moved by Ancient Egyptian workers and apparently placed on top of something.
• There is system of drains diverting water away from something.
• The Egyptian form of concrete, disguised as rock, has been used to seal two fissures to protect against water penetration.
• Radar(?) has detected a void 10m - 12m below the surface.

Jane's post has the details but it does look as though a tomb is hidden here. The theories seem to be:

• The tomb of Amenhotep I as this matches the location in the Abbott Papyrus
• The tomb of Herihor - perhaps re-using the tomb of Amenhotep I
• A third mummy cache

Personally I don't think a Middle Kingdom tomb could be entirely ruled out either.

The bad news? Moving the massive boulder is too dangerous to consider...

The first announcement of a new tomb in the Valley of the Kings came in August 2005 when the Egyptian State Information Service announced that an Egyptian Polish team had been given to excavate the tomb of the New Kingdom Pharaoh Amenhotep I in the Valley of the Kings. As I describe below, unfortunately this was mis-reported by the press how announced the stunning find of an intact tomb.

Amenhotep I was the second pharaoh (1526-1506 BC) of the 18th Dynasty. His tomb was mentioned in the Abbott Papyrus, one of the highlights of the British Museum. The papyrus dates from around 11ooBC (about 400 years after the death of Amenhotep I) and describes an investigation into the looting of royal tombs. Amenhotep's tomb was found to be intact but his mummy was moved by priests to cache in the cliffs of Deir el Bahri (TT320, the Tomb of the Royal Mummie) where it was discovered on 6th July 1881 among 36 assorted royal and anonymous mummies by egyptologist Emile Brugsch . The cache was probably discovered as early as 1860 by the infamous Rasaul brothers.

His mummy remains wrapped to this day.

Presumably, once his mummy had been safely transferred, his original tomb was re-sealed. And the tomb's location remained a mystery although it is variously thought to be either KV39 in the Valley of the Kings or at Dra' Abu el-Naga, although neither has definitively been identified as his tomb. Indeed Niwinski, the leader of the Polish expedition, believes the tomb remains undiscovered in the cliffs of Deir el Bahri above the magnficent Mortuary Temple of Hatshepsut as Zahi Hawas reports in December 2005. Unfortunately due to a translation error, Pravda reported with great excitement that his tomb had been found intact.

The search to identify the tomb of Amenhotep I continues.