CHAPTER V

THE SEVENTEENTH DYNASTY TOMB No. 9

BY HOWARD CARTER

The site between the native house ‘Beit el Meleitên’ and the village mosque, about one hundred and fifty metres north-east of the mouth of the Dêr el Bahari valley, was examined in 1908, and as it resulted in the discovery of a XVIIth Dynasty tomb (No. 9), it was continued in the following year 1909. We began by exhaustively clearing tomb No. 9 that for the sake of protection during the interim had been re-covered with earth. In 1908 the front court, pit, and pit-chamber had been investigated: in 1909 our attention was thus confined to the inner chamber only, but everything of interest was discovered during the earlier work.

During the work of 1908 the courtyard was found to contain great masses of pottery and mutilated mummies, and it was among these, on a rock ledge, that the important historical tablet referring to the expulsion of the Hyksos by the General Kamosi (see further description by Griffith, p. 36), and the second broken tablet were recovered. In the first chamber were found parts of a wooden painted Canopic box, with three of its jars in pottery painted to imitate alabaster (Pl. XXV. 1 and 2), among other destroyed remains of a plundered burial. But in 1909, owing to the depth and sliding nature of the rubbish, a more extensive excavation had to be made to open the main chambers. Little more was found here than further examples of pots, a child’s coffin too decayed for preservation, and a reed burial of a poorer and much later man (for example see Pl. XLII. 3). The tomb consisted of a court formed by low stone and mortar walls, with a cutting in the centre leading to the entrance: this entrance or doorway gave access to a passage, cut in the rock, some six metres in length, which led to a rectangular chamber that apparently formed one of the sepulchral repositories. Cut in the floor of this chamber, on the west side, was a shaft nearly three metres deep, giving ingress to two other chambers, one above the other.

It hardly seems credible that such a mass of pottery as was found in the rubbish outside could have all come from so small a tomb, and one is inclined to think that the greater part must have come from some neighbouring and perhaps larger tomb.

Plate XXVI gives the different types of the pottery vessels found here. The earthenware is fine in quality, deep red, with smooth surface, and of a soft nature. Some are of a yellowish-grey material, and examples of these are given in Plate XXVI. 2 (the five pieces on the right hand of the lower row). In the top illustration are shown three very fine specimens of complete jars with lids in red pottery with black lines round the circumference of their bellies.

The name on the Canopic box is Kati-nekht, [Illustration: hieroglyph] (var. [Illustration: hieroglyph]).