Read Beneath the Sands of Egypt Online
Authors: PhD Donald P. Ryan
Beneath the Sands of Egypt (18 page)
I was once invited to Padua, Italy, to speak to a local group of amateur and professional historians known as the Amici di Belzoni (Friends of Belzoni). Well over two hundred years since his birth in 1778, Belzoni is still considered a proud citizen of the city, and the Amici were eager to hear about their native son as well as my work in the valley. Working through a translator, I presented a lecture that was enthusiastically received, and the hospitality surrounding my visit was impressive. I was taken to the great man's birthplace and shown memorabilia relating to his life and travels. At the end of my talk, I opened the floor to the audience and was asked the awkward question, “So, do Americans love Belzoni, too?” The sincere questioner was no doubt expecting an answer in the positiveâafter all, who couldn't fail to love Padua's hometown boy made good? I didn't have the heart to say that most Americans had probably never heard of him and that those who had probably looked at him as an infamous looter. All I could mutter was something to the effect of, “Not everybody understands him.”
My opinion of Belzoni is not universally appreciated. On more than one occasion, I've experienced incredibly angry reactions at the very mention of his name, although I've noticed a softening of judgment in recent years. Belzoni was certainly a man of his times, but when placed next to a qualitative yardstick against his peers, he stands tall, exercising an astounding degree of archaeological insight in a time when there were no real standards for such.
My own interest in developing a project in the Valley of the Kings was partially inspired by one of Belzoni's discoveries there, a tomb now referred to as KV 21. The tomb was one of those whose entrances were invisible when I did my impromptu survey of the valley in 1983. Consulting his
Narrative,
I found the description of the tomb to be both enchanting and provocative:
On the same day [October 6, 1817] we perceived some marks of another tomb in an excavation, that had been begun three days before, precisely in the same direction as the first tomb, and not a hundred yards from itâ¦. This is more extensive, but entirely new, and without a single painting in it: it had been searched by the ancients, as we perceived at the end of the first passage a brick wall, which stopped the entrance, and had been forced through. After passing this brick wall you descend a staircase, and proceed through another corridor, at the end of which is the entrance to a pretty large chamber, with a single pillar in the centre, and not plastered in any part. At one corner of this chamber we found two mummies on the ground quite naked, without cloth or case. They were females, and their hair pretty long, and well preserved, though it was easily separated from the head by pulling it a little. At one side of this room is a small door, leading into a small chamber, in which we found the fragments of several earthen vessels, and also pieces of vases of alabaster, but so decayed that we could not join one to another. On the top of the staircase we found an earthen jar quite perfect, with a few hieroglyphics on it, and large enough to contain two buckets of water. This tomb is a hundred feet from the entrance to the end of the chamber, twenty feet deep, and twenty-three wide. The smaller chamber is ten feet square: it faces the east by south, and runs straight towards west by north.
Belzoni's published plates, too, show an accurate cross section of the tomb, complete with scale.
Belzoni's plan of KV 21 (which he here refers to as “Tomb No. 3”) is accurate and evidence of his insight and skill as an early archaeologist. The plan was published with his
Narrative
in 1820.
Donald P. Ryan
A couple of other early visitors to KV 21 likewise offer interesting tales of mummies and pots. James Burton mapped the tomb in 1825, and provided the following comments: “A clean new tomb, the water not having got into it. Two mummies remaining nearly wholeâfemalesâsome hair on the headsâdistorted hand and footâmummies in small chamberâvases entrails stopt with earthâlargeâcommon red pottery all broken.”
The tomb was also visited by Edward Lane (c. 1826), who wrote:
This might easily escape observation being surrounded by rubbish rises higher than the top of the entrance. It is on the same plan as most of the others; but without any sculpture; being unfinished. We first descend[ed] a sloping passage then a flight of steps and next another sloping passage at end of which is a square chamber with square pillar. Upon the ground were lying two female mummies quite naked. On the east of this chamber same
side as the entrance is another chamber, smaller and containing many broken jarsâ¦
Of course, these descriptions were all written before John Gardner Wilkinson came about and marked the valley's tombs, thus initiating the present numbering system. Belzoni merely referred to his new discovery as Tomb 3, and Lane and Burton used their own designations: Tomb 5 and Tomb T, respectively.
Elizabeth Thomas's comments about the tomb in her
Royal Necropoleis of Thebes
likewise encouraged my interest, and in 1983 I began a file housed in a blue folder bearing the title “Tomb 21 Project.” I pursued every avenue of inquiry, including the archival notes of those who visited the tomb in Belzoni's wake and the comments of the Theban Mapping Project. I typed letters to museums and individual scholars and kept a record of responses, enjoying every bit of related data, no matter how trivial or ancillary. I envisioned that KV 21 would be the centerpiece of what would someday become the Pacific Lutheran University Valley of the Kings Project, and if it weren't for the unexpected rediscovery of KV 60, it might have been.
In 1989, with our hands thoroughly busy with Tomb 60, I nonetheless decided to at least locate the entrance of KV 21. At best a small shallow depression less than a meter in diameter could barely be discerned in the right lighting. In keeping with the unanticipated theme of that summer of surprises, I was able to locate the long-buried entrance of KV 21 in about ten minutes with the astute application of my trowel. With the depression serving as a subtle clue, I approached the edge of the hillside where a tantalizing bit of exposed bedrock beckoned me to initiate my search. Within a few minutes, I exposed what appeared to be an artificial right-angle cut and, shortly thereafter, the ultimate definitive confirmation of hopes: the num
ber 21, painted in red by none other than Wilkinson himself during his 1827 survey. So there it must be, somewhere beneath my feet.
While the careful work of documenting and clearing KV 60 continued, I set a crew to removing the tons of flood debris that deeply obscured the entrance to Tomb 21. Prevented by tradition (along with practicality) from participating in the physical labor myself, I had to content myself with watching while seated on a wooden chair just meters from the action. My boom box nearby played a mix of Egyptian pop music and Edvard Grieg, the latter's Piano Concerto in A Minor being a favorite, as the sun arose in the valley, the concerto's opening chords embellishing the beauty of the sunlit cliffs. Howard Carter's hill of excavation debris, “the Beach,” also proved a wonderful vantage point, especially when one was emerging from the dramatic confines of KV 60.
It took the team of at least ten workmen about a month to reveal the entrance to the tomb. Typically, one or two would wield crude local hoes to pull dirt into rubber baskets clenched between their feet. Once full, the baskets would then be passed to a line of workers stationed a few feet apart, who would in turn pass the burden down the line until it was ultimately sifted and dumped. The empty baskets would then be thrown back into the pit, making a series of steady clunks, their soft sides rarely annoying the diggers who were routinely struck by the flying receptacles.
There were a few false alarms. At one point I was convinced that the tomb's doorway was imminent, as the vertical rock surface we were following began to indent inward. But we were not even close. This feature of natural rock, though, eventually evolved into an artificially planed surface that continued downward. At the same time, we began to reveal steps, steps of which Belzoni himself seemed unaware. Eventually eighteen would be exposed, fourteen of which were carved into the bedrock and an additional four
added in the rubble above. As we dug deeper, it became necessary to build support walls on either side of our excavation to protect us from cave-ins. We also began to notice that we seemed to be excavating an earlier trench dug to the tomb's entrance sometime before and whose outline seemed to appear on an old photograph. By chronologically following a deepening debris trail of windborne newspapers and other material that refilled this trench, we were able to date the tomb's last intrusion to around 1895.
As stated, it took about a month to reveal the top of the doorway with the continual efforts of a basket brigade. The tomb's door, surprisingly, was blocked with stones, no doubt the efforts of a post-Belzoni protoconservationist, and there the digging stopped. Mark Papworth and I had a conference. Well occupied and obsessed with KV 60, should we enter KV 21 or wait till the following year to explore its interior? The discussion was very short. Papworth was all for it, and with weak resistance from me, the decision was made: We should take a look inside so we would at least have an idea of what we might need to plan for in the following field season. Only enough stones from the crude stone wall were removed to allow the passage of a single archaeologist, namely me.
Entering KV 21 was indeed a remarkable experience. Here was the tomb that had originally inspired my interest in working in the Valley of the Kings. Here was the tomb that had haunted my sleep, including one memorable dream in which I finally entered the tomb, only to find a cache of Kent Weeks's surveying equipment safely stowed. “Time to take a dive,” offered Papworth. “Go get it!” In great anticipation, with Belzoni's description running through my head, I stuck my arms through the small gap between the stones and began to crawl within. Papworth captured the moment on film, with only the heels of my boots visible as I slithered into the tomb's intimidating interior.
Local workmen uncover the ancient steps leading down to the doorway of KV 21. Note the “21” painted on the wall, the result of John Gardiner Wilkinson's tomb-numbering system in 1827.
PLU Valley of the Kings Project
I recall a very odd sensation. Although my flashlight was on full beam, my surroundings appeared dim and disturbingly gloomy as I proceeded to crawl forward. I yelled nervously back at Mark but then discovered the cause: In all my enthusiasm for entering the tomb, I had neglected to remove my sunglasses. Once I'd done so, the surroundings became somewhat more inviting and interesting. The first few feet involved crawling over a tapering pile of flood debris that within several yards allowed me to crouch, stoop, and eventually stand up. I knew from Belzoni's description what I should expect ahead, and, just as described, the tomb's walls showed no sign of decoration. Of course I hoped to reach the burial chamber and find the mummies he'd described, in place and intact. Sadly, such was not the case. Before I even reached the end of the
first corridor, I noticed something that almost resembled a coconut in the dusty debris. It was the back of a mummified head attached to a partial torso. This was an initial portent of what I would soon find beyond.
Following the first sloping corridor was a set of stairs, steep and covered with rubble. I carefully descended its right-hand side, clutching the walls while I checked the uncertain footing, my light casting limited, mostly opaque views through the haze of kicked-up fine dust. Splayed out on the steps were more clues to the desecration: a mummified human leg attached to a portion of pelvis. The stairs led to another sloping corridor, whose floor was littered with boulders, a clear sign that Belzoni's clean tomb had suffered significant flooding since 1817, and at the hall's end some crushed mud bricks, indicating that at some distant time the chamber beyond must have been sealed as telltale traces of plaster around the door confirmed.