Aidan Dodson - The Royal Tombs of Ancient Egypt

To the memories of:

Edwin C. Brock (19462015), Otto J. Schaden (19372015) and Nabil Swelim (19352015)

First published in Great Britain in 2016 by
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Copyright Aidan Mark Dodson, 2016

ISBN: 978 1 47382 159 0
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Contents

Preface

The tombs of the kings of Egypt include some of the most iconic sepulchres of all time, and very many books of distinctly variable quality have been published on various groupings or aspects of them. Indeed, the present writer has issued a volume on the pyramids and another on the tombs that followed them. However, none ever seems to have attempted to provide coverage of all such monuments, from the earliest times down to the end of paganism, including both native rulers, buried in Egypt, and those of foreign monarchs, buried abroad. The present volume is an attempt to fill this gap, and as such includes descriptions, images, discussions and references for not only such tombs as the pyramids and those in the Valley of the Kings, but also the funerary monuments of the kings of Persia (who formed the Twenty-seventh and Thirty-first Egyptian Dynasties) and the mausolea of the Roman emperors, who continued to claim pharaonic dignity down to the end of the third century AD. It also provides data on the tombs of the families of the kings as Egypt, an aspect of the Egyptian funerary world that is rarely covered, with the exception of a few star tombs, for example that of Nefertiry, wife of Rameses II.

Aside from providing the full story of the Egyptian royal tomb, the opportunity has been taken to include the results of the very latest fieldwork in Egypt, which has revealed a whole hitherto-unsuspected royal cemetery at Abydos, a tomb full of members of the royal family in the Valley of the Kings, and the tombs of more family members in a remote valley at Western Thebes. As very much work-in-progress, it is possible that some of the initial conclusions reported here (some from the excavators oral presentations at conferences, in particular the 2015 annual meeting of the American Research Centre in Egypt in Houston and the Abusir and Saqqara in the Year 2015 conference in Prague) may change from the position when the manuscript for the present book was submitted in the autumn of 2015.

In writing a book such as this, one inevitably falls into the debt of many people; in particular, I would like to thank Felix Arnold, Andrew Chugg, Caterin Johansson, Piers Litherland, Dawn McCormack, Alireza Moftakhori, Leire Olabarria, Hourig Sourouzian, Joe Wegner, Kent Weeks and Magdy Abu-Hamid Ali for all their help, as well as others who have allowed me to visit their work, discussed finds, provided images or assisted in a wide range of ways. In doing so, I must pay tribute to Edwin Brock and Otto Schaden, two of my oldest friends in Egyptology, who died shortly after the manuscript was completed and to whom this book is dedicated. Much of their careers were devoted to the Valley of the Kings, Ted in particular for his work on the study and reconstruction of the royal sarcophagi, Otto to the clearance and study of the tombs of Ay and Amenmeses, also finding the first new tomb there since Tutankhamuns KV63, perhaps the embalming cache of that tomb. Also taken from us during the same fatal autumn was Nabil Swelim, another old friend, in this case in the study of pyramids, among whose distinctions was the rediscovery of the Brick Pyramid at Abu Rowash, hidden in plain sight for many decades.

I would also like to thank my principal partners in tomb and temple visiting over the years, my wife Dyan Hilton and my dear friend Salima Ikram, for their company and insights. I am also indebted to Martin Davies and Reg Clark for proofreading the manuscript (and providing photographs!), but all surviving errors of typography, fact and/or judgement remain, of course, my own responsibility.

Department of Archaeology & Anthropology
March 2016
University of Bristol

Abbreviations and Conventions

Renderings of Egyptian names are intended as far as possible to preserve the original consonantal structure of the original written Egyptian, rather than any hypothetical ancient pronunciation. Persons of the same name are distinguished by roman numerals (upper case for kings and certain other senior figures; lower case for others) or letters, according to a basic system that has been developing within Egyptology since the 1970s (see Dodson and Hilton 2004: 39). This is not wholly internally coherent, as it is desirable to preserve some long-standing designations for avoidance of confusion.

When giving bibliography for monuments, for reasons of brevity references are generally restricted to Porter and Moss (various dates) and substantive publications that have appeared after the publication of the relevant Porter and Moss volume.

Introduction

The Egyptian tomb was at its heart a magical machine for aiding the journey of a dead person from this world to the next, and keeping them nourished in the beyond. To fulfil this role, it ideally comprised two distinct elements, the burial chamber in which the body would lie for eternity, and an offering place where food and drink could be placed by the living for the benefit of the dead, or which could generate such nourishment by means of written spells and often painted or carved depictions.