World’s first in-law apartment?
Allow me for a moment to indulge [whose permission do you need? It’s your blog. — Ed.] of fancifully romantic speculation …
Not that kind of romance!
… about the spectacular tomb found earlier this year in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings, as the New York Times reports:
The Valley of the Kings (and its adjacent Valley of the Queens) is an astonishing sun-blasted terrain that overawes even a Spielbergian imagination.
“This is what we got into archeology for in the first place!”
On the Nile’s west (left) bank, it rises in brutal sandstone cliffs over the rich black alluvial earth (keme) that gave Egypt its original name. Here amidst this desolation the great pharaohs of
The
Some — most — were robbed, but a few survived, including the newest, KV 63, discovered only six months ago (84 years after the 1922 discovery, KV 62, yielded Tutankhamen’s gold) and carefully excavated, bit by bit:
Instead the coffin was packed with bits and pieces of materials used to prepare mummies, including elaborate collars decorated with flowers, and one with gold beads.
That no mummies were found in KV 63 — the first tomb discovered in the
“We found hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of mummies, but we never discovered something like this,” said Dr. Zahi Hawass,
Zahi Hawass, chief of
Archaeology is about patience — and about expecting the unexpected. It is about finding a clue in the sand and gently sifting through layers of time. KV 63, as the
Egyptology has always been about showmanship, and in Dr. Hawass science has met shtick:
“Looking at me, you wouldn’t think I could have built them with my own hands, would you?”
Dr. Hawass is fiercely protective of
“Wonder what Dr. Hawass will find next?”
The practical Dr. Schaden has a straightforward theory:
The new find is only a few feet away from King Tut’s tomb. But it is just one small and unadorned room, at the bottom of a shaft that the American team, led by Otto Schaden, an Egyptologist who leads a project with the University of Memphis [Tennessee — Ed.] discovered last year.
He had been digging around some ancient workmen’s huts near the tomb of the pharaoh Ay, the last king of the 18th dynasty and the life’s work of Dr. Schaden. On the last day of the dig, in the last possible place, he came across what he now calls “an unusual situation.”
“Lo and behold, there was a dark layer where there should have been bedrock,” said Dr. Schaden, 68, who smokes a pipe, has a goatee, carries lots of pens in his dusty vest and so looks very satisfyingly like an Egyptologist. “So we knew something was up.”
Dr. Otto Schaden and his principal find
The signs pointed to the room being a cache for embalming materials but there seemed also a strange rush: Egyptian coffins are often covered with resin to preserve them, but in this case it seemed to have been slathered on sloppily. Several of the sealed jars, which also contained broken pottery, were smashed and the bits stuffed inside the coffins.
“Why they took jars that were already filled, broke them and put them in coffins — that’s strange,” he said. The floor, too, was scattered with broken pottery.
Again, Dr. Schaden resists much speculation. But he has not ruled out some ancient foul play.
Death on the
(The film has some great footage of Karnak and
Meanwhile, Dr. Hawass was summoning four millennia back to light:
Deep beneath the surface, as Dr. Hawass performed for the cameras — pointing, thinking, walking, staring — Dr. Schaden stood off to the side and in a very clinical manner laid out what seemed to be a refutation of Dr. Hawass’s theory, though he did not call it that. He said that there was some evidence linking the tomb he discovered to the tomb of King Tut. The face carved on one of the coffins was similar to the one on King Tut’s coffin. There were seals and large sealed jars in the new discovery that were also similar to those found in Tut’s tomb.
But, Dr. Schaden said in his understated way, the team had not uncovered any evidence that mummies had ever been buried in KV 63. “It was set up as a tomb, but it may not have been used,” he said. “That is not unusual. Many tombs were built or they started to be built and were abandoned.”
I’ve previously posted that these ancient tombs are significant not only for themselves but also for housing history: so enormous were the work teams required that the pharaohs constructed whole cities — the world’s first planned unit developments — to house them.
How are the worker’s quarters coming along?
What then to make of this small one-room tomb?
Dr. Hawass’s theory is that the tomb was the burial place of King Tut’s mother, Queen Kiya. While there is evidence linking Tut’s tomb with this one, others who have actually worked inside the newest tomb said there is no evidence a mummy was ever buried there.
Queen Kiya
“I really believe that KV 63 is the tomb of the mother of King Tut,” Dr. Hawass said with great dramatic flair as he referred over and over to the “Golden Boy” King Tut. “She died when she was delivering him and therefore there was no time to cut a beautiful decorative tomb. That is actually the tomb that the mother should be buried [in]. Why King Tut is buried here? He wanted to be buried beside his mother.”
Separate-entrance attached accommodations are even today a staple of multi-family housing — the in-law apartment.
In-law apartment (note separate entrance)
Who will dare to argue with Dr. Hawass, or his mummy?
Bow down before Dr. Hawass!
