Beneath the Sands of Egypt (2 page)

Since the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun, very little archaeological excavation had taken place in the Valley of the Kings. While there had been studies of the funerary texts on the walls of the some of the large royal tombs, the assumption seemed to be that there was little left to be found. An expedition from the Brooklyn Museum broke that trend in 1977 by spending a few years excavating a huge shaft in the tomb of Rameses XI and conducting some useful conservation studies. A dozen years later, I would apply to investigate a series of the “anonymous” tombs located behind a prominent hill in the valley. They seemed to form a group, and the information I had about each was truly compelling. Each had its number—21, 27, 28, 44, and 45—and all but 21 were visible as shafts, open or otherwise. The general area of 21, the largest of the
five, could be discerned from a map, but its specific location was paved over by rubble most likely brought by a combination of flash floods and dumping on the site by early excavators.

I wrote to Elizabeth Thomas with my idea of investigating these small, ignored tombs, and she presented me with a suggestion. As I would be working in the vicinity, why not see if I might be able to locate an enigmatic, undecorated grave known as tomb KV 60? It was supposed to be located in the vicinity of KV 19, which belonged to a Twentieth Dynasty prince by the name of Montuhirkhopeshef. I had no interest. There were four tombs with known locations to keep me plenty busy, in addition to uncovering and studying Tomb 21. Besides, the location of Tomb 60 was nowhere immediately apparent. It was, however, a very interesting burial. The discovery was made in the spring of 1903 as described briefly by Howard Carter in an article published the following year:

In retrospect the description of the tomb would seem sufficient to cause any modern archaeologist a major twinge of excitement, yet Carter's comments suggest almost a casual disinterest in this remarkable discovery. The tomb description appears as a couple of paragraphs in a lengthy article in which Carter describes his work in Upper Egypt for the years 1902–3. During that time he also excavated at the mortuary temple of Rameses II (“the Ramesseum”), inspected the work of various archaeologists, made repairs to temples, excavated the dangerous tomb of Thutmose I and Hatshepsut in the Valley of the Kings, discovered the marvelous royal tomb of Thutmose IV, and oh, yes, an undecorated tomb of minor interest in the vicinity containing two female mummies.

Carter, at the time, had been contracted to do some archaeological work for the eccentric American millionaire Theodore Davis. Davis, an amateur archaeologist, hired Carter to conduct excavations on his behalf in the Valley of the Kings. Davis had the concession to dig wherever he chose in the sacred valley, and despite his armchair background he was exceedingly successful in uncovering some wonderfully provocative tombs. He was also responsible for finding a cache of embalming materials belonging to a then-obscure
pharaoh named Tutankhamun, a discovery that provided evidence that the king's burial was yet to be found somewhere in the valley. When a small tomb was discovered in 1907, Davis concluded that this must be the woefully robbed tomb of the little-known king and moved on, although Carter himself remained skeptical.

If Howard Carter's notes regarding KV 60 are brief, Theodore Davis himself has even less to say about the experience: “During the season of 1904–5, Mr. Carter, while excavating for Mr. Davis, dug a trench across the entrance to this tomb, and discovered a tomb of the XVIIIth Dynasty, over which the tomb of Mentuherkhepshef had been cut. This earlier burial he found to contain the mummies of two women. The tomb had been plundered and contained nothing of interest.”

The words “nothing of interest” certainly confirm the early-twentieth-century attitude about these smaller tombs, an attitude so blasé that the wrong year was given in Davis's description of the find.

Just a month or two before he encountered Tomb 60, Howard Carter discovered in the same vicinity the large, decorated, and looted tomb of the great Eighteenth Dynasty pharaoh Thutmose IV. In fact, an old rope, likely used by robbers three thousand years ago, was found tied to a pillar in order to facilitate the crossing of a deep shaft, and a large ancient cursive graffito records an inspection of the tomb after the robbery. Though the tomb was robbed in antiquity, there was an impressive residual collection of battered burial debris found along with the pharaoh's magnificent stone sarcophagus, sans mummy, that dominated the spacious burial chamber.

Given the prevailing outlook of the day and the continual search for more “significant” discoveries, it is not surprising that Tomb 60 drifted quickly into obscurity. Carter closed the tomb, probably filling it with the debris of continuing excavations, but
its history was far from over. The tomb was likely entered three years later, in 1906, by another excavator, Edward Ayrton, while he was in the process of excavating KV 19. We know of this visit only indirectly, through a handwritten notation in the Egyptian Museum's inventory catalog, the
Journal d'Entrée,
which records the acquisition of a coffin with a mummy, “recognized by Carter as having been found by him near Menthuherkhepeshef in 1903. It was brought away later by (Ayrton?).” No mention was made of the second mummy in the tomb, found lying on its floor. Might it and other burial remnants still remain within? Sometime, perhaps immediately, after this second modern visit to the tomb, KV 60 became once again buried and its specific location lost, destined to remain obscure for another eighty years.

As Carter noted, the mummy in Cairo retrieved by Ayrton was initially identified by hieroglyphs on the coffin in which she lay, yet later research revealed that she was
not
the nurse of pharaoh Thutmose IV but rather served that role for Hatshepsut, the controversial woman who ruled over Egypt for about twenty years. Her name was Sitre (Daughter of the god Re), and her nickname was “In” (Fish). A shattered statue of this woman was discovered at the site of Hatshepsut's temple, on the other side of the cliffs from the valley, and depicts her seated with the young queen/pharaoh-to-be seated on her lap. The location of Tomb 60 would perhaps seem to make sense, then, because the closest royal tomb of the appropriate date was indeed that of Hatshepsut nearby.

Out of respect for Elizabeth Thomas, I added KV 60 to my list of requests to be submitted for approval to the Egyptian antiquities authorities. If the situation presented itself sometime during the next few years, perhaps I would spend a moment contemplating the location of this long-missing tomb. The scenario as it played out, however, would be quite different.

It was late June 1989 when we arrived in Luxor to begin our work on the valley's undecorated tombs, and the intense summer heat had already arrived a couple of months before. We spent a day getting established, negotiating a reasonable long-term rate with our hotel manager, and rounding up the supplies we would need to begin work. I was accompanied by one of my former professors, Mark Papworth, a brilliant thinker and the unsung co-instigator of a major theoretical revolution that swept through American archaeology in the 1960s and '70s. We were also joined by Hisham Hegazy, an inspector with the Antiquities Service who worked as a freelance archaeologist from time to time. I had met him the year before, while spending a few weeks on an excavation in the Nile Delta directed by another former professor. Handsome, charming, and with a reasonably good command of the English language, Hisham was a wonderful asset with his knowledge of local archaeology
and
the system that governs it.

The morning of June 26 had been spent making sure all was in order with the local authorities, and by the time that had been dealt with, the solar inferno was in full effect. We set off to the valley that day to orient ourselves to our work site and drop off a few brooms, hoes, and buckets. The ride up the valley was especially searing, even with the windows of our rented car wide open. Our driver pulled up as close to the entrance as possible, the souvenir dealers having already locked up their little trinket kiosks and disappeared for the day. It was exciting to be in the valley on official business, not merely as a tourist. We rounded the corner by the old rest house, heading toward the valley's eastern cliff, passing the remarkable tombs of Rameses I and Seti I. The well-maintained path soon ended as we walked a bit farther up a small path to the only visible shade at the entranceway of Tomb 19, the beautifully painted corridor tomb of Prince Montuhirkhopeshef. We put
the tools down in a heap. “We're here, let's take a look around,” I offered, and we took a little stroll down the small wadi that contained the tombs in our concession: KV 21, 27, 28, 44, 45, and, lost somewhere in the area, 60.

The environment was virtually unchanged from what I had observed in years before, a handful of shafts filled with rubbish, a small breeze blowing an odd bit of paper over the mixed surface of silt, rock, and stone chips. These last were the result of the carving of tombs by ancient workmen, whose detritus had been redistributed by Western excavators in the last couple hundred years. Some of the earlier excavators used a technique perhaps best described as “the human bulldozer.” Large numbers of local workmen, sometimes in the hundreds, were employed to clear portions of the valley, or other archaeological sites, to the bedrock. As they went from one spot to the next, earth and stones were removed by hoe and hand, placed into baskets, passed elsewhere, and dumped as the clearers surged forward. Some unfortunate later excavators were met with the task of removing the piled debris of their predecessors in order to conduct new excavations. A mountainous pile of stone chips, the result of Carter's digging, overlooked the area where we would be working. From its level top, we had a commanding view of the tombs below, and we nicknamed it “the Beach” for its flat and sunny demeanor.

The entrance of Tomb 21 was completely buried, but a small dimple in the overlying flood debris suggested a likely place to investigate. The other tombs—minus 60, of course—were all identifiable by visible shafts, each of which was filled with a variety of natural and human debris. Our initial inspection didn't take long, and on the way back toward Tomb 19 I brought up the matter of the lost Tomb 60. Carter's notes sprang to mind: “immediately in the entrance of Tomb 19.” Looking to the left and right, I saw
nothing that seemed even likely as a place for locating a tomb. The entranceway to Tomb 19 had been cut in ancient times through a rock spur, with a gently downward-sloping ramp and vertical sides approaching a square door that had three decorated jambs. In many ways it resembles a modern single-car garage, but with a high ceiling and pharaonically painted walls. The ramp was covered with several inches of windblown sediment, and when I spied a broom in our tool pile, an idea came to mind. Why should I doubt Carter? If he said immediately in front of Tomb 19, why shouldn't I look?

With the broom I began to sweep away several inches of loose sediment down to the bedrock starting just a few yards east from Tomb 19's door. Hisham helped, and without much difficulty we were able to make progress, with a new swath cleared about every meter. The rock beneath glared white as it was exposed, and after less than a half hour's work I noticed something unusual: a linear deformity in the bedrock. I continued to sweep along the break and found that this crack, of sorts, stretched horizontally nearly all the way across the entrance ramp of Tomb 19. One end disappeared underneath a rock wall to the south, while the northern end made a sharp turn to the west. At that point I removed my trowel and traced the edge of what appeared to be a pit or depression in the rock that was filled level with the white limestone chips and light brown sediment characteristic of the valley.

None of us said much, but it soon became clear we were on to something. A few photos were taken from the hillside above, and afterward I hoed out a few centimeters in a small area in one of the corners. “Well, we'll have to give this more attention, won't we?” I concluded. Both Mark and Hisham were reserved yet hopeful, and although we optimistically discussed the possibility that maybe we had just stumbled across the long-lost Tomb 60, we dared not let ourselves get overexcited lest we become disappointed should our
prospect turn out to be nothing more than a shallow pit or a natural feature.

The next couple of days were spent excavating the pit. A few odd artifacts were beginning to turn up—some mummy wrappings and a couple of beads—but no immediate signs of a tomb. Two things changed that situation in short order. On the south end of our pit, a small stone shelf resembling a step began to appear, and on the north I noticed a few stones sinking downward as I worked my trowel, its metallic surface producing a characteristic high-pitched ringing sound with every scrape across the white limestone chips. A few more passes with the trowel revealed a tiny black slit, which proved to be a gap at the very top of a wall of boulders, blocking the entrance to some sort of corridor beyond. We were indeed on to something.