Dier el-Medina

Posted on February 27, 2015 by Paula Terrey

17 March 2000 (morning)

The rock and mud walls of Deir el-Medina

The rock and mud brick walls of Deir el-Medina

When we pull into the parking lot at the ancient village of Deir el Medina, we find we’re early enough to have the site mostly to ourselves.

Deir el-Medina dates to the beginning of the New Kingdom (18th Dynasty, roughly 1500 BC) and was a company town, home to the workers who cut and decorated the tombs in the Valley of the Kings. It offers a rare three-dimensional view of Egyptian life, even if that life wasn’t exactly typical. Restoration work has focused on capping and conserving walls, and as we get out of the bus it feels like we’ve stumbled across the remains of an enormous rock-built honeycomb.

Looking down on the village of Deir el-Medina

The ancient Egyptians were apparently no different from the rest of us and liked to avoid a long commute. Unless they were off on assignment — building pyramids; collecting gold, incense, and exotic animals in the mysterious land of Punt; conquering the enemies of Egypt and returning with a lovely pile of chopped-off hands to prove the body count — they mostly stuck close to their farms and the Nile. Unfortunately, most of those homes were built of mud brick and, durable though it is, it just doesn’t hold up well when subjected to occasional flooding.

Deir el-Medina, however, was far enough from water to leave at least the foundations relatively intact, even after 3500 years of exposure. It was excavated starting in the early 1900s (by men who made hash of it), and then seriously studied from the 1920s until the 1950s by French Egyptologist Bernard Bruyere and Czech Egyptologist Jaroslav Cerny .

Looking up at Deir el-Medina tombs

The Deir el-Medina artisans were literate, skilled, and highly organized. They left behind reams of records jotted on everything from papyrus to ostraca (bits of broken pottery, the archaic equivalent of scrap paper).

So we have their documents, their homes, and their graves (situated on a rise above the village), and among our group we have enough knowledgable scholars to gossip about the workers like we’re discussing old friends.

Fun though it will be to examine the ruins, Deir el-Medina is perhaps best known for its gorgeous tombs, so we make a beeline for them first. Even the courtyard chapels of the tombs in this necropolis were charming; many of them featured small pyramids, including the one we’ll visit first (TT1), which belonged to Sennedjem, “Servant in the Place of Truth” (but more practically, a mason) during the 19th Dynasty.

Sennedjem and his wife enjoy a game of Sennet. Photo courtesy of Mamienfr, Wikimedia Commons.

Sennedjem and his wife enjoy a game of Senet. Photo courtesy of Mamienfr, Wikimedia Commons.

Sennedjem’s tomb is pure eye-candy, abundant color and decoration in a space as cozy and inviting as any home for eternity could hope to be, including an elegant vaulted ceiling in the burial chamber. It was intact when it was discovered in 1886 and stuffed with funerary furniture, coffins, and mummies. It turned out to be a family sepulcher, with at least three generations of Sennedjem’s kin in residence. It’s really too much to absorb without a chance for long contemplation, so looking around I mostly feel dazed, but can at least capture a feeling for his happy afterlife as he and his wife enjoy a game of Senet.

Happy farmers at work in the fields of Iaru. Public domain photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Cheerful farmers at work in the fields of Aaru. Public domain photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

On another wall, cheerful farmers are at work in the fields of Aaru, while yet other scenes depict such interesting things as a knife-wielding cat slaying an enormous snake.

Knife-wielding cat in the tomb of Sennedjem. With many thanks for this image to Jon Hirst. Please see link to Osiris.net in the blog roll.

Knife-wielding cat in the tomb of Sennedjem. With many thanks for this image to Jon Hirst at Osiris.net

After admiring Sennedjem’s tomb, we shift to the tomb of Inherkhau, who was “Foreman of Crew” sometime in the 20^th Dynasty. It’s suffered some damage, but still features many beautiful scenes from The Book of Gates.

That’s all we have time for today, so we return to the stone foundations and mud brick walls of the village. My head is still so full of expansive afterlife images that it’s hard to transition to these modest dwellings. The houses are small and closely packed. Main Street is so narrow, Chaz can span it with his arms.

Dr. Kent Weeks

If you’d like to learn more about the village of Deir el-Medina and surrounding area, then I recommend starting with The Theban Mapping Project. For more than three decades, Dr. Kent Weeks has been the heroic force behind this mind-bending effort to, “… map and database every archaeological, geological, and ethnographic feature in Thebes.”

And if you’d like to explore the gorgeous Deir el-Medina tombs in detail, then I recommend Osirisnet.net, a website loaded with great information and photos.

Luxor: To the West Bank

Posted on February 20, 2015 by Paula Terrey

17 March 2000 (early morning)

Winter Palace garden, Luxor. Photo courtesy of Bonnie Ann Cain-Wood, Wikimedia Commons

The local Luxor muezzin issues his call to prayer at four this morning. Lovely to lie in bed and listen to it although, thanks to the miracle of modern amplification methods, the volume is ear-splitting. It doesn’t end with the muster — perhaps due to the Eid al-Aida festival? — and I’m able to enjoy it for nearly an hour. When it finally stops, a rooster crows in the distance. Then a crow caws, loudly, outside our window and, as the sun peeks over the horizon, hundreds of sparrows in the hotel garden burst out chirping. Chaz sleeps soundly through it all.

Today we’ll go to the worker’s village at Deir el-Medina, home to the men who built and decorated the tombs in the Valley of the Kings, then walk their ancient trail over the cliffs and explore royal resting places for two hours before having a catered lunch in the cafeteria. After that we’ll stop at Deir el-Bahari and Hatshepsut’s temple, return to the hotel for a couple of hours, visit the Luxor Museum when it opens at 5:00 pm, and top things off with an after-dark tour of Luxor temple.

Luxor waterfront. Photo courtesy of Marek Kocjan, Wikimedia Commons.

After breakfast, we leave the hotel and jay-walk across the Corniche — the traffic artery that runs parallel to the Nile — then go down a long ramp to water level (the Nile is many feet below the street) and board a boat called Rameses. The Rameses is white with a painted decoration of lotus blossoms in blue, green and red. We perch around the sides on bench seats, a striped canvas canopy over our heads, as the two-stroke outboard motor propels us toward the West Bank.

Sugar Cane train, Luxor Egypt. Photo courtesy of Marc Ryckaert, Wikimedia Commons.

Once on the West Bank, we board a bus and head for Deir el-Medina.

We’re surrounded by fields of sugarcane, rail tracks snaking through them. Farmers load the cane onto flatbed rail cars that have tall metal posts on the sides to hold the stalks in place.

Luxor West Bank: Qurna Village.

First stop is a checkpoint to buy our tickets. The Western cliffs are straight ahead and the village of Qurna is on a hill to our right. The houses are cream, umber, and blue, with shutters painted rust and bright green.

Qurna is famous because many of those innocent looking homes are built directly on top of ancient tombs. The mere sight of it is enough to send my mind down an exciting rabbit hole, chasing thoughts of DB320, the royal mummies cache, which was discovered and exploited by that infamous Qurna family, the el-Rassuls.

Maspero lounging at the entrance to DB320.

As the story goes, sometime in the 1860s — the exact date is unknown — Ahmed Abd el-Rassul stumbled upon a deep shaft hidden among the Theban cliffs. (Thebes was the ancient Greek name for Luxor.)

Items from DB320. With many thanks for this image to the Manchester Museum.

The tomb was stuffed with an eye-popping assortment of pharaohs, coffins, and burial equipment, all hidden (most likely) during the 22nd Dynasty, a good 350 years after the heyday of perhaps the tomb’s most famous denizen, Ramses II.

Most Egyptologists believe the tomb was originally intended for 21st Dynasty High Priest Pinedjem II and his family, and that earlier royals like Ramses II were crammed in after Pinedjem, when political instability and looting prompted Valley of the Kings caretakers to perform an overall tidying up/rescue mission.

Once found by the el-Rassuls, the tomb became their bank account as they carefully parceled artifacts onto the antiquities market. The authorities knew something was up, but it wasn’t until the mid 1870s that an official investigation was launched.

Ahmed Abd el-Rassul and a younger brother were arrested and tortured, to no avail. Ahmed was released but then apparently had a change of heart and, in 1881, confessed to Emile Brugsch, assistant to Antiquities Chief Gaston Maspero. (Maspero was unfortunately in Paris.) On July 6th, Brugsch was shown the tomb and stunned by what he saw in the light of his torch:

…and there, standing against the walls or lying on the floor, I found an even greater number of mummy cases of stupendous size and weight. Their gold coverings and their polished surfaces so plainly reflected my own excited visage that it seemed as though I was looking into the faces of my own ancestors.

Fearful of attack by the locals, Brugsch put a crew in motion around the clock to clear the tomb as quickly as possible and send it all packing to Cairo. The good news is that he recovered at least 40 mummies and their coffins, plus several thousand smaller objects. The bad news is that it was done with such haste that the chance to tease out a detailed history of the tomb was lost. As a result, the tomb and its contents have been a nice Egyptological chew-toy ever since.

If you’d like to know more about the Royal Mummy Cache (who wouldn’t?!) then you can do no better than to start with Al-Mummia (The Night of Counting the Years), an acclaimed 1969 Egyptian film that reenacts the entire thrilling discovery. Look for it on Youtube.

Update

Razed village of Qurna, July 2009. Photo courtesy of Remih, Wikimedia Commons.

The historic village of Qurna no longer exists. In 2005, the Egyptian government evicted the residents and moved them to new houses. The old buildings were bulldozed and the debris left in place.

Then in 2011, the disastrous drop in tourism that followed the Egyptian revolution threw most of the locals out of work. The American Research Center in Egypt stepped forward with a plan to provide employment through a detailed survey and clean-up. The Qurna Site Improvement Project, lead by Dr. John Shearman and Dr. Andrew Bednarski, employed more than six-hundred workmen for two years, including conservation training and a first-ever recording of ethnographic information about the inhabitants.

If you wish to support such caring efforts, then I urge you to join the American Research Center in Egypt and affiliate with the Northern California Chapter. It costs nothing extra and will give you access to The Cartouche newsletter.

Cairo To Luxor

Posted on February 12, 2015 by Paula Terrey

16 March 2000 (late afternoon)

Mena House Hotel. Courtesy of Paul Mannix, Wikimedia Commons.

After my walking tour of the Giza Plateau, I return to Mena House and track down Chaz. He’s by the pool with others from our group and eager to tell me about his own adventure. It turns out that while I was examining the requisite antiquities, he witnessed something he never, ever expected to see in Egypt: A tall, thin Mickey Mouse and a few other “something is a little off” characters, dancing on the grass to the delight of the hotel guest’s children.

“Mickey Mouse” and friends on the lawn at Mena House

Pierced metal lamps at Mena House cast a lacy pattern. Photo courtesy of joepyrek, Wikimedia Commons.

We go back to our room, collect our baggage, and then proceed to the main building to check out. I’m going to miss Mena House. The lobby smells like incense and pierced metal lamp shades cast lacy patterns on the polished marble walls and floors.

On the way to Cairo Airport, we pass the Giza Zoo and see goats and a flock of flamingos. The park is spacious and grassy, with light poles shaped like drooping flowers.

Old mansions hunker next to the highway, windows broken and shutters layered with dust. Some buildings are crumbling at the edges and visibly leaning, but there’s laundry hanging from the balconies.

We whiz by a horse track and basketball courts and then the Cairo Railway Station, which is built of light yellow stones and has keyhole windows with bright blue shutters. The rail yard is packed with passenger trains. Moustafa tells us it takes nine hours to go from Cairo to Luxor by train. In first class they serve at least two meals and have entertainment areas: It costs around $40 US. The third class train has no windows and costs about a dollar.

Al Nour Mosque in Cairo. With many thanks for this image to beautifulmosque.com

Moustafa points out (it’s hard to miss) the Al Nour Mosque, with its green copper domes and two outsized minarets. It was started by the people in the neighborhood, but they ran out of money and for a long time it sat unfinished. Apparently King Fahd of Saudi Arabia would pass by on his way to and from the airport, and asked why it was languishing. When he heard the locals were broke, he donated enough to wrap it up.

The next highway-dominating feature is a billboard photo of President Mubarak, looking dapper in a suit and tie. The Nile is gray-green in the late afternoon light.

At Cairo airport things are much calmer than when we arrived, since the Hadjis are all in Mecca by now. We board our plane and most of the group nods off, although I can’t imagine why when there is so much to think about. I’d like to peel the cabin wallpaper and take it home with me: It’s a cream background with a repeating design of a golden scarab topped with a sun disk, surrounded by feathers and sitting on an ankh.

Luxor airport has only one baggage carousel and there are more taxi drivers outside than personnel inside. The air is balmy and there isn’t much traffic. Already I sense the pace of things here is slower than in Cairo… unless you are with our group.

We check into the New Winter Palace, which is next to and shares grounds with the Old Winter Palace. Once again our bathroom is fit for a pharaoh, with a tub the size of a sarcophagus and marble everywhere. Because Egypt is a desert country, I expected the hotels to have those conservation-friendly Eastern Bloc shower heads that emit needles of water so sharp they take the skin off your back. But these faucets flow in such a luxurious stream, I can almost imagine I’m in an ancient villa with servants pouring the water over me from earthenware jugs.

Historic Winter Palace Hotel. Photo courtesy of H. Grobe, Wikimedia Commons, with changes to suit the look of this blog.

Giza Plateau Walking Tour

Posted on February 5, 2015 by Paula Terrey

16 March 2000 (afternoon)

Sphinx & Khafre’s Pyramid

After the Sphinx we return to Mena House for lunch in the main dining room and luck out with a table by the picture windows. From our vantage point the Great Pyramid is so dominating that it’s an odd juxtaposition to our humble (but delicious) chicken kabob in a pita bread pocket.

After lunch most of the group opts to relax by the pool or take naps, but five of us return to the Giza Plateau with Moustafa and spend two hours exploring the pyramids of Khafre and Menkaure.

Map of the Giza Plateau. Courtesy of MesserWoland, Wikimedia Commons.

Khafre’s Pyramid

Khafre was one of Khufu’s sons and, at 471 feet, his pyramid falls only ten feet short of his father’s. It’s quite different in many ways, however, including simpler interior passages and a slightly steeper angle. It also sits a bit higher than the Great Pyramid and still retains some of its casing at the top. Khafre’s pyramid is closed for restoration today, so we won’t be able to go inside. The public can visit all three of the main Giza pyramids, but as part of a conservation effort only two are open at any given time.

Menkaure followed Khafre and ruled for about eighteen years. His pyramid is smaller than the other two at a mere 213 feet tall, but his mortuary complex is relatively well-preserved and his builders worked with stones so large it boggles, so there’s plenty to view and contemplate.

Giant stone blocks of Menkaure’s mortuary temple. The corner of his pyramid is behind them and Khafre’s pyramid is in the distance.

First stop is Menkaure’s mortuary temple, where the stone beams are as big as semi trucks. We examine them and the causeway that leads to his valley temple. Mud brick building ramps can still be seen in spots around the pyramid, since Menkaure died before his temple and pyramid were finished.

This pyramid is open, although the passages are a mob scene, crammed with Egyptian children enjoying their holiday. We climb down to a small chamber carved with a series of false doors, then crouch our way along a low passage to an antechamber, then go down again to the burial chamber. On our right, before we enter the burial chamber, there’s a room with several smaller rooms off of it, but we can’t go in because it’s gated.

Menkaure's burial chamber and his loss sarcophagus

Menkaure’s burial chamber and his lost sarcophagus

The burial chamber is tiny compared to Khufu’s but has an elegant vaulted ceiling. The place is wall-to-wall kids, but the attendant shoos them out and gives us a couple of minutes to ourselves, since we’re the only adults who’ve been willing to brave the decibel level.

Menkaure’s sarcophagus is missing, the object of a great tragedy. Unlike Khufu’s austere granite coffin, Menkaure’s sarcophagus featured carved decorative panels. English Egyptologist Richard William Howard Vyse pounced and packed it off to the British Museum in the fall of 1838, but the ship that was carrying it, the Beatrice, never arrived in Liverpool, lost during a storm.

Remains of a subsidiary pyramid

Back outside, we walk around the satellite/subsidiary pyramids. Menkaure has three, but Khafre has only one.

Moustafa then takes us to see a Ramses II pair statue discovered in the past couple of years, but still in the ground. Dr. Hawass hasn’t had a chance to publish it yet, so we can’t take photos, but it’s fun to see it anyway. It’s an interesting link between this OId Kingdom site and that ubiquitous New Kingdom pharaoh.

We walk around Khafre’s pyramid and observe the original granite casing of the lower courses. Menkaure’s pyramid also had a granite casing, although it was never completed. Moustafa tells us that a lazy official under Ramses II quarried Khafre’s casing until Ramses got wind of it and made him stop. Several of the granite blocks are still lying around, partially shaped into columns. We walk between the pyramid and a sheer wall of limestone bedrock, remains of a pyramid quarry. The marks made by the stone cutters are still evident, along with hieroglyphic graffiti dating to Ramses II.

Quarry near Khafre’s pyramid. Photo courtesy of JMCC1, Wikimedia Commons.

Dr. Mark Lehner

If you’d like to learn more about the Giza Plateau, you’ll find no better source than the Ancient Egypt Research Associates website. The soul of this terrific organization is Egyptologist Mark Lehner, a man who’s dedicated the better part of his life to unlocking the secrets of this breathtaking part of our shared human history.

Dr. Lehner is the force behind The Giza Mapping Project, an ambitious effort to account for every square centimeter of the plateau. In the process he’s advanced our understanding of the pyramid builders far beyond anything known before, including critical research on the infrastructure and organization that made it all possible.