News from the Valley of the Kings

There is a new photo set of the Tomb of Maya the Overseer of the Treasury at Saqqara by Kate Gingell on Egyptological.

Kate has also kindly provided a photo album of Horemheb's tomb at Saqqara as well which is also on Egyptological.  I'm sure most people can find it by browsing but I will add a link when I do a longer Horemheb post later on today, or maybe tomorrow.

Three stories are dominating the Egyptian archaeological landsape:

1. whether new finds and opening new tombs can revive tourist fortunes
2. Hawass - inevitably
3. the findings of the robot inside the Great Pyramid

The robot stuff is certainly interesting, altough far from conclusive but for News from the Valley of the Kings the other stories are more germaine to the focus.  There are good roundups as well. The Independent asks, Can a tomb bring Egyptian tourism back to life? Past Horizons concentrates on the other story in Egypt's Man from the past who insists he has a future.

I had hoped there might be some nice new images to the tombs of Maya or Horemheb which have opened at Saqqara, but I cannot find mich other than the image in the Independent story and similar odd images in equivalent coverage elsewhere.  However, while I was looking I did turn up this photo of the discovery of Horemheb's tomb in the Valley of the Kings

Seven New Kingdom tombs are to open at South Saqqara just outside Cairo including the unused/unfinished tomb of Horemheb built before he became King.  The other big news is that Maya, Tutankhamun's Treasurer is also to open.

Vincent Brown has gathered a little more detail.

Rinze has drawn my attention to an article about the orginal looting of the false door from the tomb of Hetepka at Saqqaea which appeared in the 2002 edition of Culture without Context.  It was written by Peter Watson and can be read online.  The tomb was first looted, probably around 1991.  The picture alongside shows the false door in situ before the tomb was trashed.  The article has pictures showing how the tomb looked after that looting.  (The article doesn't credit the photo.  I have reproduced it because it seems to be only photo on the Web of the false door from the tomb of Hetepka.  No copyright infringment intended.)

I have been unable to trace when the false door was returned to Egypt but by Octovber 2005, Dr Hawass is reported saying that the tomb had been largely restored.

Hetepka was a royal hairdresser.  Apparently when the Tokeley-Parry case came to trial, she was described in court as the "Vidal Sisoon" of ancient Egypt.  Many reports say that the tomb was published by G.T. Martin in The Tomb of Hetepka (Oxford 1976) but I think this is the full reference:

MARTIN, GEOFFREY THORNDIKE. The Tomb of Hetepka and Other Reliefs and Inscriptions from the Sacred Animal Necropolis, North Saqqâra, 1964-1973. With chapters by Alan B. Lloyd and J.J. Wilkes and a contribution by R.V. Nicholls. (Egypt Exploration Society: Texts from Excavations. 4th Memoir./ Excavations at North Saqqâra.) xvi, 142, (2)pp., 86 plates (partly folding; 1 color). 5 figs. Sm. folio. Cloth. D.j. London (Egypt Exploration Society), 1979.

All looting is deplorable but if tombs had Saqqara had to be looted then it is better that an already damaged tomb like Hetepka was the victim than a tomb like Maya.  (Since most of the new reports of looting are in Lower Egypt, I have not been reporting them here, but I do try to keep the Looting Database up to date.)

From Dr Hawass (my bold):

I am very sad to announce that several important antiquities sites have been vandalized. After a preliminary inventory had been taken, Dr. Sabri Abdel Aziz, Head of the Pharaonic Sector of the Ministry of State for Antiquities Affairs, reported to me the following incidents: At Saqqara, the tomb of Hetepka was broken into, and the false door may have been stolen along with objects stored in the tomb. I have arranged for a committee to visit the tomb this coming Saturday to compare the alleged damage with earlier expedition photos. In Abusir, a portion of the false door was stolen from the tomb of Rahotep. In addition, break-ins have been confirmed at a number of storage magazines: these include ones in Saqqara, including one near the pyramid of Teti, and the magazine of Cairo University.

After his first, less than convincing visit to Saqqara, Jeffrey Bartholet, returned to Saqqara on Tuesday 8th February and was allowed to enter the Tomb of Maya.  He reports on NGM, with a photo from inside the tomb.  This shows a solidier which sort of validates the picture if anybody had doubts.  He reports seeing three chambers with reliefs.

The tomb of the wet nurse is still sealed with bricks. And on Tuesday, inspectors at Saqqara led me into Maya the treasurer’s burial chamber. “Nobody touched the tomb here, “ said Mohammad Mohammad Youssef, chief inspector for South Saqqara, as he and a colleague broke a wire and seal on the metal door leading underground. “We put seals on the lock about a month ago when we checked it for humidity and temperature, and the same seals were still here and the locks were not broken.” Youssef and I walked down a tight, sandy staircase of a dozen steps to an iron gate with another three locks on it, and another seal that was untouched after the looting. Then we entered three chambers, over 3,000 years old, shimmering with golden-yellow reliefs.

For me this interview with Professor Philippe Collombert, Chair of Egyptology at the University of Geneve in the Tribune de Genève, (thanks Twitter!) taken with other reports, pretty much confirms two things:  

1. Saqqara was looted.  What damage was done remains disputed, but the size of the invasion was massive and some damage is seemingly inevitable.
2. The police guarding ancient sites and museums across Egypt abandoned them at about the same time without any warning.  There has been no explanation for an apparently synchronous set of walk outs.

Of the looting Collombert said (with a slight elision for brevity):

C’est alors que j’ai vu une chose inouïe se produire: les pilleurs se sont précipités. Cent, deux cents jeunes gens de 10 à 15 ans, venus des villages de Saqqara et d’Aboussir tout proches, ont déferlé par groupes de dix. Certains étaient armés de pistolets et tiraient en l’air pour faire partir les ghafirs (les gardiens).

(Then I saw something incredible. The looters rushed. One hundred, two hundred young men, 10 - 15 years of age, from the villages of Saqqara and Aboussir, swarmed in groups of ten. Some were armed with pistols and fired into the air to scare away the guards.)

Mais il y a eu des dégâts. Les cadenas des magasins ont été forcés, des momies cassées, une tente contenant des poteries incendiée, des structures en brique brisées…

(But there was damage. The locks of magazines were forced; mummies were broken; a tent containing pottery was set on fire, brick structures were broken ...)

That is my translation (Google Translate makes ham of it), but I think it is accurate.  There is more in the source article - but you may be better reading  the original French if you can!

Maia is safe! Thank Heaven.

In a sign that Dr Hawass is learning, he allowed National Geographic journalist Jeffrey Bartholet to tour Saqqara yesterday. The report has just appeared on the National Geographic site. An independent report will do much to reassure. I am sure that Dr Hawass will be highly irritated, probably highly offended, that public opinion at this time requires independent reports rather than accepting his own word.  However, he is a Minister in a Government which has arrested journalists and has a record of media censorship, so many people probably will seek corroboration of anything which seems to have a political dynamic - such as reports of looting during the unrest.

The reporter wasn't an expert, so he doesn't know which tombs he visited - other than Maia, the wet nurse of Tutankhamun.  He didn't actually enter the tomb, reporting:

There had been reports on archaeology blogs that at least one tomb had been badly damaged and looted: the tomb of Maya, treasurer and top adviser to King Tutankhamun. When I asked to see the tomb, Farag took me to a place whose doors were sealed with bricks. This was Maya’s tomb, and it was untouched, he said. I later learned that this tomb didn’t belong to the treasurer Maya. It was that of a second Maya, King Tut’s wet nurse. When I called to ask about the treasurer’s tomb, and others that might have been vulnerable in its vicinity, I was told those too were undamaged. “I’ve seen them during the last week, and Maya is in good shape,” says Hussein, the government archaeologist. “Nothing at all happened there.”

I feel relieved.  I know people have their own focus at Saqqara.  For some it is Maya the Treasurer; for some it is the Serapeum; for some it is Horemheb.  For me it was Maia because I think there is still so much to learn about the family of Tutankhamun and his upbringing - quite apart from it being an exceptionally well-decorated tomb.  I am relieved.

What genuinely seems to be a new report from Saqqara has appeared at CulureGrrl.  I have some reservations because the orginal source is not named; however I know that some people are reluctant to appear to contradict Dr Hawass so that might be legitimate.  For those reasons, it adds to our picture of events but it still isn't definitive.


Rather than summarise the report, I suggest you read it for yourself as there is a lot of information in there.  The good news is that the site sounds as though it is now pretty secure - the most serious damage was done on Saturday.

Once again, however, there is a story of on-site SCA staff going above and beyong the call of duty to protect their sites against armed gangs.

PS I should add that separately reports say that Dasour is safe and secure.   Although unverified, this seems likely.  Concern grows for Abusir.

As we know, Horemheb was burried in tomb KV57 in the Valley of the Kings but before he became Pharaoh, he built a tomb at Saqqara which is less well publicised.  Jane Akhar has posted up some photos.