CHAPTER V

THE VALLEY OF THE TOMBS

It was about the year 1500 B.C. that the desolate and impressive ravine which is now known as the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings was chosen by King Thothmes I as the site for his tomb. His immediate predecessor Amenhotep I had observed the practice, which had prevailed since the temple was first invented, of building the tomb in association with it. For the temple was a development of the rooms provided at the tomb for the relations of the deceased to make offerings of food and drink to the dead for the essentially practical purpose of maintaining his existence. In these rooms also certain ceremonies were performed from time to time with the object of animating the dead man (or his portrait statue) so that he could enjoy the food and commune with his relations. But such functions were also part of the process of conveying “life” to him and so ensuring the maintenance of his existence.

In course of time as these ceremonies for conveying sustenance and life to a dead king assumed a wider significance the chamber of offering developed into a temple and a subtle change occurred in the meaning attached to the ritual. For instead of being regarded merely as a physical device for conveying food and the essence of life the ceremonies came to be regarded more and more as acts of worship of the dead king. When this happened the close nexus between the temple and the tomb was no longer so essential as it was in earlier times when the ceremonial in the former was intended to vitalize the corpse of the king (or his substitute the portrait statue). But it was not until the closing years of the sixteenth century B.C. (Thothmes I is believed to have died in 1501 B.C.) that the king began to prepare a tomb for himself miles away from his temple. This geographical separation of the temple from the tomb had a far-reaching influence upon the functions of the former, and prepared the way for the modern conception of a house of worship, even though in Europe the ancient conception of the close association of a church and a churchyard (as a burying place) was retained. The practice inaugurated by Thothmes I of preparing royal tombs in the famous Theban Valley lasted from about 1500 B.C. until the end of the twentieth dynasty, about 1090 B.C.

Amenhotep III, who was buried in 1375 B.C., broke away from the observances of his four predecessors who were buried in the Eastern Valley and made his tomb in the Western Valley; and his famous son and successor, Amenhotep IV, the heretic king Akhenaton, made the more daring innovation of preparing a tomb at his new capital, the City of the Horizon of Aton, on the site of the modern Tell el Amarna. It was a rock-cut tomb in the mountains about seven miles to the east of his new capital—which Akhenaton built midway (p. 22) between Thebes and Memphis, the ancient capitals of Upper and Lower Egypt respectively. There he seems to have been buried in the red granite sarcophagus that is now broken into fragments; but his son-in-law Tutankhamen, when he reverted to the orthodox religion of Thebes, thought it proper to remove the mummy of his father-in-law from the City of the Horizon to the Theban necropolis and made for it the resting place in the Valley of the Tombs, which was discovered in 1907 by Mr Arthur Weigall, who as Inspector of Antiquities for Upper Egypt was supervising the excavations endowed by the late Mr Theodore M. Davis.

The fate of the mummy of Akhenaton’s successor Smenkhara is unknown: but Tutankhamen came after him, and Mr Howard Carter’s discovery has shown that he displayed his return to strict orthodoxy by making his tomb in the Eastern Valley among the worshippers of Amen. For some reason which has not been fully elucidated, his successor Ay made his tomb in the Western Valley and so was laid to rest alongside Amenhotep III, whose Minister he seems to have been during his life. He is supposed by some historians to have been the father or the foster-father of Nefertiti, the wife of Akhenaton.

Until the discovery of Tutankhamen’s tomb in the Eastern Valley last November it was believed (by Sir Gaston Maspero and others) that it would be found in the Western Valley. Until then Ay’s was the earliest royal tomb, after that of Amenhotep III, to be discovered, and as they were in the Western Valley, it seemed probable that Ay’s predecessor Tutankhamen had also been buried there. But when making the secondary tomb for Akhenaton in the Eastern Valley he seems to have made his own tomb there also, and so resumed the old practice, which was observed by all his successors for two and a half centuries with the exception only of his successor Ay.

This wonderfully impressive gorge (Fig. 10, p. 66) is known to the modern Egyptians as the _Bab_ (or _Biban_) _el Moluk_, the Gate (or Gates) of the Kings. It was known to travellers ever since it was made into the royal necropolis, and Greeks and Romans marvelled at the wonderful tunnel-like tombs there, as generations of tourists have done ever since. Strabo mentions his having seen forty of these tombs, but it is not clear from his account whether he did not include those of the Western Valley and perhaps the Tombs of the Queens and others.

Modern research was inaugurated by the traveller Belzoni who opened the tomb of Seti I in 1819 and described the pictures on its walls (Fig. 20 is copied from his notebook) before they were damaged or destroyed. He brought to London the magnificent “alabaster” sarcophagus of this pharaoh, which is now in Sir John Soane’s museum in Lincoln’s Inn Fields.

The year 1881 will always be memorable for the earliest discovery of Royal mummies. Five years later, when the wrappings were removed from such pharaohs as Seti I and Rameses II, modern men had the novel experience of gazing upon the actual faces of these famous rulers of the remotely distant past, whose exploits had resounded through the civilized world for thirty centuries and more. On several occasions in former years the discovery of Royal mummies had been reported; but in every case further investigation failed to justify such claims, for they proved to be merely intrusive burials of unknown people belonging to times much later than the rifled tombs in which they were found. Examples of such mistakes in identification are the eighteenth dynasty mummy, now in the Cairo Museum, which was found in a pyramid at Sakkara, and at one time was supposed to be the son of King Pepi, of the sixth dynasty; and the skeleton (not a mummy) in the British Museum from the pyramid of Mykerinus, which has repeatedly been referred to as the bones, or even as the mummy, of that pharaoh.

The discoveries made in the famous cache at Deir el Bahari in 1881, and in the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings during the decade 1898-1908, revealed the only actual mummies of members of the royal family so far recovered, although the skeletons of much earlier members of the ruling house were found by M. de Morgan in the pyramids of Dashur nearly thirty years ago.

Long before the recovery of the actual bodies of these famous rulers the statues and bas-reliefs of some of them had familiarized us with their appearance; and inscriptions on their monuments and the ancient writings of the Egyptians and their neighbours had made us acquainted with certain of their exploits. The plundered tombs of some of the great kings of the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties have been known and visited by tourists from the times of the Greek domination of Egypt, and contemporary documents refer to others. Moreover, twenty years before the mummies themselves were revealed, the dealers in antiquities began to offer for sale a series of papyri (most of which came to this country) giving accounts of the desecration of the royal Theban tombs.

_Tomb-robbers’ Confessions_

In the late Lord Amherst’s collection, which was recently sold in London, there was a judicial papyrus of the reign of Rameses IX (about 1125 B.C.), reporting the trial of eight “servants of the High Priest of Amen,” who were arraigned for plundering the tomb of King Sebekemsaf of the thirteenth dynasty. The written depositions of the prisoners set before the pharaoh by the vizier, the lieutenant, the reporter, and the mayor of Thebes were translated by Professor Percy Newberry in these terms: “We opened the coffins and their wrappings, which were on them, and we found the noble mummy of the king. There were two swords and many amulets and necklaces of gold on his neck: his head was covered with gold. We tore off the gold that we found on the noble mummy of this god [_i.e._ the dead king who was identified with Osiris]. We found the royal wife also. We tore off all that we found from her mummy likewise, and we set fire to their wrappings. We took their furniture of gold, silver and copper vases, which we found with them.” The prisoners who made this confession were found guilty, and sentenced “to be placed in the prison of the temple of Amen,” to await “the punishment that our lord the pharaoh shall decide.” There are several other famous papyri reporting trials of desecrators of the royal tombs. In the Abbott papyrus (in the British Museum) inspectors submit a report on the tombs that were said to have been plundered, but the only one that had actually been robbed was that referred to in the confession just quoted from the Amherst papyrus. The two Mayer papyri in the Liverpool Free Public Museums relate to plundering in the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings. One of these is of special interest at the present moment because it relates to the violation of the tomb of Rameses VI, which is immediately above that of Tutankhamen. The robbers were discovered as the result of quarrels among themselves about the division of the spoil. This was one of the most disgraceful incidents in the whole history of tomb-plundering. The robbers, in their haste to get at the gold and jewels upon the mummies, usually chopped through the bandages, and mutilated the mummy in the process. But when, in 1905, I removed the wrappings from the mummy of Rameses VI (which in ancient times had been removed to the tomb of Amenhotep II, where it was discovered by M. Loret in 1898), the body was found to be hacked to pieces. This was no mere accidental injury, but clearly intentional destruction of a malicious nature. It makes one realize the sort of vandalism Tutankhamen’s tomb so narrowly escaped.

_Hiding the Mummies_

The discovery of the royal mummies in 1881—and this applies with special force to the remains of the famous pharaohs Seti I and Rameses II—gave us the other side of the story, for it revealed the measures taken to protect the bodies of these kings from further injury, and the persistence with which the protectors of the tombs moved the mummies from one place to another in their endeavour to save them. The condition of affairs revealed in the tomb of Tutankhamen brings proof of what has long been suspected, that the work of the plunderer began soon after the closing of the chambers. But during the twentieth and twenty-first dynasties, when there was a rapid weakening of the Administration, tomb-robbing assumed proportions it had never attained before. The record inscribed upon the coffins of Seti I and Rameses II throws a lurid light on the extent of this loss of control. For a century and a half their mummies were moved from one hiding-place to another in the attempt to secure their safety. The mummy of the great Rameses was moved to the tomb of his father, Seti I, whose body for some time remained in its own alabaster sarcophagus, which is now in Sir John Soane’s Museum in Lincoln’s Inn Fields. But in the reign of Siamon (976-958 B.C.) the two mummies were hidden in the tomb of a queen called Inhapi, and about ten years later were moved again, this time to a tomb that had been originally prepared for Amenhotep I at Deir el Bahari. Here they, together with more than thirty other royal mummies, remained undisturbed for more than twenty-eight centuries, until about fifty years ago they were rediscovered, and the successors of the ancient tomb-robbers of Thebes once more resumed the old process of depredation. But the late Sir Gaston Maspero had not studied the papyri of the twentieth dynasty in vain, for he obtained a confession that is worthy of being set beside those recorded in the Amherst and Mayer papyri.

The story of the ill-treatment of the royal mummies and of their repeated removal from one hiding-place to another prepared us in some measure for the discoveries that were made when the shrouds and linen bandages were removed. But in spite of this the investigation was full of surprises. Several of the mummies after being hastily rewrapped (in the twentieth or twenty-first dynasty) were put into the wrong coffins. So that, for example, when the mummy supposed to be Rameses I (of the nineteenth dynasty) was unwrapped, an old white-haired lady was found embalmed in a way distinctive of the early part of the eighteenth dynasty. And again, when the mummy in the coffin of Setnakht (the first king of the twentieth dynasty) was examined, it was found to be that of a woman embalmed in the manner distinctive of the time of Setnakht’s predecessor (Seti II, of the nineteenth dynasty); and it is probable that she is Queen Tausret, the wife in turn of the two kings, Siptah and Seti II. Such discoveries reveal the need for caution in claiming that the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings has yielded up all its hidden secrets. For there are many royal mummies that we know to have been buried there which have yet to be recovered.

If the examination of the royal mummies reveals the thoroughness with which the tombs have been rifled—not one of the series has ever been found undisturbed—they also give us some idea of the value of the jewellery and amulets which excited the greed of the robbers thirty centuries ago. The torn and mutilated wrappings of the mummies often bear the impressions of magnificent pectoral ornaments, and of amulets on the forehead, neck, or limbs; and the occasional finding of fragments of these, made of gold, lapis lazuli, or carnelian, gives us some idea of the value and beauty of this extravagant equipment of the dead. But I have known only one instance of an object of any considerable intrinsic value escaping the diligent searching of these experienced robbers. During the examination (in 1909) of the badly plundered mummy of Queen Hontaui I found a large and beautifully embossed plate of pure gold, unique in size and in the elaboration of its design.

From these considerations we can safely predict that if, as seems now to be certain, the unplundered mummy is found in the tomb of Tutankhamen jewellery of great value and beauty of design will probably be found on it. The superb workmanship displayed in making these ornaments and amulets is known to us from the discoveries made by M. de Morgan in the Pyramids at Dashur in 1893. These gold pectoral ornaments inlaid with precious stones were wrought with an amazing perfection of technical skill many centuries before the time of Tutankhamen; but the jewellery of the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties now exhibited in many museums (especially the Cairo Museum and the Louvre) reveals that the skill in making such works of art had not been lost. The quality of the workmanship revealed in the objects found in the first chamber of Tutankhamen’s tomb should prepare us for the discovery on the mummy of ornaments even surpassing those of Rameses II in the Louvre (see Maspero, _Egyptian Art_).

But the chief interest in the discovery should be in the mummy itself, for the welfare of which all the elaborate arrangements were made. It is not merely because the mummies enable us to form some idea of the physical features of the kings and queens, and by appealing to our common humanity give their personalities a reality they would not otherwise possess; nor is it because they often reveal evidence of age and infirmities; their chief interest is the light they throw on the history of the period and upon the development of the art of embalming.

Perhaps I can best make plain what is meant by this statement if I refer to specific illustrations of the former kind of contribution the study of mummies makes to the fuller understanding of history.

When in 1907 the bones were found that had once formed part of the mummy wrongly assumed to be the famous Queen Tiy, I discovered that they were the remains of a young man’s skeleton, for which, if it had been normal, it was difficult to admit an age of more than twenty-six years, if indeed as much. Now the archæological evidence seems to leave no loophole of escape from the conclusion that these bones are actually the skeleton of King Akhenaton; but, on the other hand, the historical evidence seems to demand an age of at least thirty years (or, according to a recent memoir by Professor Kurt Sethe, thirty-six years) for the famous heretic pharaoh. This apparent conflict between the two classes of evidence has stimulated an intensive study of the historical data and of the medical history of Akhenaton himself; and the final outcome of the investigations is likely to provide a most illuminating revelation of the inner meaning of perhaps the most human and dramatic incident that has come to us from ancient times. The peculiar features of Akhenaton’s head and face, the grotesque form assumed by his legs and body, no less than the eccentricities of his behaviour, and his pathetic failure as a statesman, will probably be shown to be due to his being the subject of a rare disorder, only recently recognized by physicians, who have given it the cumbrous name Dystocia adiposo-genitalis. One of the effects of this condition is to delay the process of the consolidation of the bones. Studying the history of modern instances of this affection the possibility suggests itself that Akhenaton might well have attained the age of thirty or even thirty-six years, although his bones are in a condition which in the normal individual is appropriate to the years twenty-two to twenty-six. It is tempting to speculate on the vast influence on the history of the world, not merely the political fate of Egypt and Syria in the fourteenth century B.C., but the religious conceptions of Palestine and the whole world for all time, for which the illness of this pacifist poet may have been largely responsible.

There is still a vast amount of information to be got from the study of the royal mummies in the light of modern knowledge, and by the use of technical methods that are now for the first time available: and one of the hopes raised by the new discoveries is that it may be possible to set an example of how such work ought to be carried out, so as to extract from the remains of these ancient pharaohs all the information they can give us.

The importance of the study of the technique of mummification as a means of revealing the past history of civilization (by affording evidence of the diffusion of culture which was the chief factor in the process of cultural development) is too large a subject to embark on here. I mention it only because most of the exact information we have of the history of embalming has been derived from the royal mummies themselves.

In my pamphlet _The Migrations of Early Culture_ (1915) I made use of the evidence afforded by the geographical distribution of the practice of mummification to demonstrate the diffusion to the ends of the earth in ancient times of elements of culture that were derived directly or indirectly from Egypt.

In the _Revue Neurologique_ for 1920 two French physicians, Drs M. Ameline and P. Quercy, published a very curious memoir with the title “Le Pharaon Aménophis IV, sa mentalité. Fut-il atteint de Lipodystrophie Progressive?” I have used the adjective curious with reference to their work, because they have put forward a carefully reasoned statement in support of the diagnosis they suggest, but do not seem to have made any attempt to make themselves acquainted with the evidence provided by the remains of the pharaoh. When it is recalled that in 1912 I gave a detailed account (_The Royal Mummies_, Catalogue Générale du Musée du Caire) of the broken bones which were all that was left of the mummy of the pharaoh (no trace of the mummy of his mother, Queen Tiy, has been found), it is surprising to find in a scientific journal the following statements, written ten years after the appearance of my official report was published:—“on a retrouvé récemment (1905), à Thèbes même, les _momies_ du pharaon _et de sa mère Tii_,” and, referring to the remains of Akhenaton, _i.e._ the broken fragments of the skeleton, “La momie, recouverte de feuilles d’or délicatement repoussé et d’un réseau d’or avec pierres et verres colorés, _est également exceptionnellement belle, mais ces ornements empêchent naturellement d’examiner le corps du pharaon aux rayons X et, a fortiori, d’en practiquer l’autopsie_?” (_op. cit._, p. 451. All the italics are mine).

I have quoted these purely imaginary statements to emphasize the fact that the distinguished physicians who made them were totally ignorant of the conditions revealed in the skull, and based their diagnosis wholly upon the pictures of Akhenaton and the history of his achievements. They describe the condition of progressive lipodystrophy as an affection characterized on the one hand by a progressive and complete disappearance of the subcutaneous fat of the upper part of the body; and, on the other, by a marked increase of the adipose tissue below the loins. The first example of this strange affection was described by Barraquer in 1907, but it is exceedingly rare in adult men. In fact the authors remark that “it would indeed be curious if a pharaoh, dead for thirty-five centuries, should provide a second case (after Gertsmann’s) of the occurrence of this condition in an adult man.”

It is unfortunate that these physicians neglected to study the report which I wrote for the General Catalogue of the Cairo Museum, published in the volume _The Royal Mummies_ in 1912. For they would then have realized that the slight hydrocephalus, the indication of an early overgrowth of the jaw such as occurs in acromegaly, and then the gradual assumption of a feminine contour of figure, with a delayed union of the epiphyses, suggest the possibility that Akhenaton may have been the subject of Dystocia adiposo-genitalis.

The form of the head in Akhenaton, his daughters and some of the members of his family, more than half a century before his time, raises a problem of great difficulty and complexity.

There is no doubt that the slight malformation of Akhenaton’s head was due to pathological causes. It is equally certain that the gross distortion of the heads of his daughters, represented in the statues from Tell el Amarna which are now in Berlin, are the result of artificial deformation such as was and still is practised upon young children in Asia Minor and Northern Syria, with the royal family of which Akhenaton’s family was linked by close ties. But in addition the mummy of a boy in the tomb of Amenhotep II, which was certainly embalmed in the reign of that pharaoh and is probably the body of his son, has a skull which is exceptionally broad and flat, and when viewed from the front presents an appearance curiously similar to the portrait statues of Akhenaton’s daughters. The full significance of these peculiarities cannot be interpreted until the royal mummies now in the Cairo Museum are submitted to a thorough re-examination.