KV35: Tomb of Amenhotep II

Posted on March 12, 2015 by Paula Terrey

17 March 2000 (morning, continued)

Amenhotep II, blessed by the goddess Hathor

Amenhotep II, assisted by the goddess Hathor

The trail from Deir el-Medina to the Valley of the Kings brings us out near KV35, the tomb of Amenhotep II. Bill would like us to see this one together and then we’ll explore on our own for a couple of hours before meeting up again to tour KV62, Tutankhamen’s tomb.

KV35 is important for a number of reasons, not the least because, like DB320, it housed a royal mummy cache. Discovered in 1898 by French Egyptologist Victor Loret, it had been heavily looted in antiquity, but was still knee-deep in broken funerary furnishings: a higgledy-piggledy puzzle of strange items whose complete form and function could only be guessed at until discovery of similar, unbroken items in Tutankhamen’s tomb over two decades later.

Plan of KV35, Tomb of Amenhotep II

We enter and walk down a very long and steep series of stairs and corridors. The tomb is an odd mix of finished and unfinished surfaces, with this first part being unfinished. When we finally arrive in the burial chamber, however, we’re rewarded with a magnificent “stick figure” illustration of the Amduat that explains, in 12-hour segments, what the deceased will encounter in the netherworld.

The 12th Hour of the Amduat. Public domain photo, Wikimedia Commons.

Winged cobra and cedarwood cow god from KV35. From “The Illustrated Guide to the Egyptian Museum in Cairo,” American University in Cairo Press.

Loret was a careful excavator. He superimposed a series of grids over the chambers as he cleared them and tied his finds to those grids in his notes. He also made sketches and took photographs. Unfortunately, he never published more than a general article about the tomb and no one else took up the task. Still, a few items are always mentioned in the accounts I’ve read: a winged wooden snake sculpture, a painted cedar cow head, and a large model boat that sported a rather gruesome mummy tossed carelessly on top.

And then there was Amenhotep himself. He was in his lidless sarcophagus, encased in an off-the-rack cartonnage mummy case and wrapped in linen supplied for him by the 21st dynasty priests who were in charge of tidying up the Valley of the Kings after extensive looting. These same priests rescued nine of his compatriots and stashed them in a side chamber. With this bonanza, many of the pharaohs not included in the Deir el-Bahari cache (DB320) were now accounted for, leaving the world with an astonishingly complete set of New Kingdom kings.

The three side-room mummies of KV35. Engraving from a photograph.

The mummies didn’t stop there, however, with three more — two women and a boy — on the floor of a side chamber, unwrapped and without any helpful jottings. They’ve inspired speculation ever since, especially the “Elder Lady,” a haughty beauty with flowing hair who is, most likely, Queen Tiye, wife of Amenhotep III.

Amenhotep, packed for shipment to Cairo before being ordered back to his tomb. Note the ancient wreath of flowers around his head.

Loret lovingly packed all the mummies for shipment to Cairo, but at the last-minute the Egyptian government ordered them returned to the tomb. In 1900 that decision was partly reversed, but the three unwrapped mummies stayed in the side chamber and Amenhotep was popped back into his sarcophagus and put on public display.

Then, as if the man hadn’t suffered enough, modern robbers broke into the tomb in late 1901 and ripped the bandages from around Amenhotep’s head and chest, presumably looking for jewelry and amulets and not realizing the wrappings were an ancient re-do and valuables were long gone. Luckily, the mummy was relatively undamaged and so he went back on display until 1931, when he finally made the trip to Cairo and joined the rest of the gang. The three side chamber mummies, however, stayed put.

As we gaze at the stone sarcophagus — it’s quite beautiful, made of red quartzite and with a rounded end like a cartouche — it’s hard to absorb that this space was once so mysterious and complex. Wooden planking covers the floor and the place is packed with people and shockingly hot and humid. These conditions cannot be good for the tomb and I’m seized with guilt for contributing my own sweat and respirations to the mix.

Red quartzite sarcophagus of Amenhotep II. Photo courtesy of Ignati, Wikimedia Commons.

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.

The Great Pyramid

Posted on January 23, 2015 by Paula Terrey

16 March 2000 (morning, continued)

The author photographs a boat pit near the Great Pyramid

After buying our Great Pyramid tickets we wander, waiting for the first rush of tourists to hit it and clear out. It’s a hazy day and there’s a brisk wind from the north. There are so many deep pits in the rock around the pyramid, I feel like I’m walking on Swiss cheese.

Overwhelming scale of the Great Pyramid

The Great Pyramid is dated to 2551 BC and attributed to King Khufu, also known by the Greek version of his name, “Cheops.”

According to my guidebook, it has a base of over 13 acres, was originally 481 feet tall (the tippy top is now missing), and has over two million blocks of stone that weigh, on average, two-and-a-half tons each.

Ironically, the only known likeness of Khufu is a 3-inch-high ivory figurine found at Abydos, showing him dressed in a simple robe and the red crown, sitting on a throne with his right arm crossed over his chest, a flail in his hand.

Interior passages of the Great Pyramid

Like other Egyptian pyramids, the Great Pyramid was surrounded by the ritual structures needed to complete a first-rate funerary complex, including temples and a nice “members only” court cemetery out on the back forty. But it is the interior passages and chambers that have become a sort of giant, three-dimensional Rorschach test through the years. Most people view it as a tomb, but there are those who have seen it as a cosmic clock, Joseph’s granary, a resurrection machine, a code for unlocking biblical secrets, an astronomical observatory, and a massive hydraulic pump.

Massive stone beams above original entrance, Great Pyramid

To get inside the Great Pyramid we climb stone steps on the outside to a 9th century Arab explorer’s tunnel. The original entrance is exposed several courses above us and a little to the left. It is astonishing on its own, protected by enormous stone beams set in a stress-relieving peak.

Female guards at the entrance take tickets and check cameras (allowed, but a separate charge). After passing through the tunnel we come to a spot where, if we climb down a few steps, we can see the descending passageway that connects the original entrance to the subterranean chamber. We don’t go that way, however, but climb the ascending passage that leads to the Grand Gallery.

From the top of the ascending passage we can go straight (actually down slightly and then straight) to the “Queen’s Chamber” (a likely misnomer), or up through the Grand Gallery to the burial chamber. We go up first.

Looking up at the ceiling of the Grand Gallery

The Grand Gallery is a mystery within a mystery, and theories about its purpose run the gamut from it being a stone block storage area to it being part of a counterweight system for lifting the impossibly heavy granite burial chamber blocks. In many ways it’s no different from the corbelled chambers we saw in the Meidum and Red pyramids, but like everything else in this pyramid the scale overwhelms. The Gallery is well-lit, but even so the ceiling is in shadow and I feel like an ant in the elevator shaft of a skyscraper.

At the top of the Gallery we must stoop to get through a low, granite-lined passage to the burial chamber.

Burial chamber, Great Pyramid. Photo courtesy of Jon Bodsworth, Wikimedia Commons.

The burial chamber is as big as our house. Our house is admittedly smallish, but still… There is a ventilation fan rumbling in one of the “air shafts.” Its noise is intense and a bit unnerving. The sarcophagus rests at one end of the chamber — lidless, battered, and empty. It seems out-of-place, somehow — too small compared to the chamber and the pyramid itself. There is a recording thermo-hygrometer on a stand against the wall near the entrance and a security camera up in a corner, trained on the sarcophagus. Those who check the pyramid’s condition are also keeping an eye on cracks in the ceiling slabs and have placed strips that will alert to any signs of shifting.

“Movement detectors” on ceiling cracks in King’s chamber, Great Pyramid

Back out in the Grand Gallery, Bill points out to us, high above our heads, the opening that leads to the relieving chambers over the burial chamber. It would take a very long ladder to get up to it.

Niche at one end of the Queen’s chamber

At the bottom of the Grand Gallery we duck-walk through a passage to the Queen’s Chamber. The Queen’s Chamber was never finished and has an uneven floor. There is a niche at one end, although that word hardly does it justice because, like everything else in this pyramid, it’s big. It was burrowed into by treasure hunters and the hole they left behind is gated over. It was in the southern “air shaft” of this chamber that the robot camera discovered the “door” with copper pins.

After leaving the Queen’s Chamber, we go back to the area where steps lead down to the original descending passageway. The gate is still open, but one of the female camera police is shooing people away. She gets distracted for a moment, however, and in an impulsive moment of lawlessness I dash down and arrive at a spot where I can look back up to the original entrance and see sunlight shining around the edges of the steel door that covers it, and also some of the granite sealing plugs. I would love to go back and contemplate in detail all the things we’ve seen, but it’s starting to get crowded and so we must move along. We emerge to a fine view of the bus parking area.

Bus parking as seen from entrance of the Great Pyramid

Mastabas at Meidum

Posted on December 25, 2014 by Paula Terrey

15 March 2000 (morning, continued)

The ruined exterior of Mastaba 17

Next we visit Mastaba #17, which is right next to Meidum pyramid. Its bulk is impressive, but because it was mostly built of mudbrick it’s lost its form. If it weren’t so rectangular and sitting alone in the middle of a perfectly flat plain it could pass as a weathered hill.

Sarcophagus of an unknown prince

We enter via an old robber’s tunnel but it’s tricky. First we must crawl through a narrow passage, then climb down a wooden ladder to an area where we can stand, then crawl again over a limestone block that was one of several used to seal the original burial chamber passage. The real entry has a curved wall and massive stone blocks line the burial chamber.

Ancient wooden mallet propping lid

The sarcophagus is as big as a teenage elephant and an ancient wooden mallet — perhaps left by tomb robbers? — is still in place, propping open the lid. We’re told that the rifled mummy of a prince, name unknown, was discovered inside.

Palace façade remains of Mastaba 16

“Meidum Geese,” Mastaba 16. Photo courtesy of Roland Unger, Wikimedia Commons. They are on display in the Egyptian Museum.

After Mastaba #17 we take a short drive to Mastaba #16, which belonged to Nefermaat, one of Sneferu’s sons. The famous “Meidum Geese” painting came from inside this tomb and the outside has a palace façade that’s still intact in places. This hints at exciting things to explore, but when we enter through a tunnel we find it’s dark and bat-nasty. These conditions are more romantic on paper than in person and we don’t make it far. Then it’s back on the bus for the drive to Dashur.

Tomorrow is the feast of Eid Al-Adha, commemorating Abraham’s near-miss sacrifice of his son, and preparations are underway. We see women in tropical-bright robes walking toward an irrigation ditch, massive aluminum pots on their heads, and I can’t help but wonder if they’ll use that water to cook.

A donkey so laden with clover we see only his nose and legs. Water wheels. Fields of onions, clover and wheat. Goats lounging on a pile of decayed mudbricks. Roaring diesel pumps. A cemetery surrounded by fields. A blue galabeya scarecrow with a plastic bag head. A tiny boy prodding a donkey. A butcher shop, cattle heads hanging from the awning. A cascade of purple morning glories. Cactus next to clover. Shimmering silver dust on palm fronds. Stick crates bursting with ripe tomatoes.

As we drive through a small town we see men building furniture by hand, long golden curls of wood falling from their planes and chisels. Other men are loading blocks of pure white limestone into the back of a pickup. Our driver toots his horn to warn our Mercedes bus is barreling down on them and a worker looks up, smiles, and waves as he leaps back, his face so coated with limestone dust he looks like a grinning ghost.

Meidum Pyramid from Mastaba 16