Tutankhamen (5 page)

 

Soon after Tutankhamen's funeral, the Valley suffered a spate of robberies. Tutankhamen's tomb was targeted twice, in quick succession. The first robbers were able to breach the blocked and plastered doorway, make their way along the entrance passage – which was being used for extra storage – and enter the Antechamber. It is not clear how much property was stolen – did the thieves access the tomb on a regular basis, or were they caught immediately? – but it seems likely that they targeted metals, glass and high-value fat-based oils and cosmetics which would have to be stolen soon after the funeral, before they went bad. The necropolis officials who discovered the robbery made a cursory restoration of the tomb, then filled the entry passage to its ceiling with tons of white limestone chips. Sundry small objects, including items dropped by the robbers and items swept into the tomb with the stone chips, were accidentally incorporated in the fill. Finally, the outer doorway was resealed.

Stone chips may have slowed the thieves, but they could not stop them. Indeed, it seems likely that the very men who were employed to fill the passage were those who returned later to rob it. Tunnelling through the top left section of the blocked passageway, then breaching the blocked internal doors, the second band of thieves were able to access all the chambers. However, given that they could only leave via their narrow tunnel, they could only take the smaller, lighter items. Carter was to speculate that as much as 60 per cent of Tutankhamen's jewellery might have been stolen at this time, basing his estimate on the written labels attached to the abandoned boxes and chests. Again, the breach in security was detected. The tomb was restored in a somewhat haphazard fashion, the breaches in the internal doorways were resealed, the tunnel through the passageway was restored with darker-coloured chips, and the outer doorway was again made whole and
sealed with the necropolis seal. So, we can assume, this pattern would have been repeated again and again until the tomb was stripped of all valuables, had nature not intervened.

The Valley of the Kings is a
wadi
, or ancient, dry riverbed. While it normally enjoys a dry environment with minimal annual rainfall, it occasionally experiences severe thunderstorms lasting just a few hours. These lead to sudden, violent and destructive flooding. After more than thirty-five years living in or near the Valley, Carter was able to recall just four of these torrential cloudbursts (in 1898, 1900, October 1916 and November 1916).
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Writing to his mother in October 1918, he describes their effect:

On 1 November 1916 Carter had witnessed the Great Northern Ravine (separated from the Valley of the Kings by a narrow strip of land) filling up with water even though there was no rain: this was the result of a storm fifteen miles to the north-west. He noted that, although prior to the sudden influx of water the ravine was barren of plant life, by the next January it was covered in flowering plants that attracted insects. By the end of the following spring, with no further water, the plants and insects had almost entirely disappeared. The Valley and its branches, however, always remained entirely bereft of life, even after it had been saturated.

With several inches of rain falling on the high desert in minutes, the hard, dry ground cannot absorb the water generated by the storm. This water rushes down the hillside forming large streams which,
carrying a mass of stone, sand and rubble, invade and fill any tomb that might lie in their path. As the streams collide and mix they lose linear velocity, and the central Valley fills with a foaming lake. When the water escapes to the Nile Valley it leaves behind a hard layer of sediment incorporating mud, chalk, shale and limestone. Tombs remain packed with debris and surfaces – decorated walls, ceilings and pillars – are left wet, stained and abraded. Shale expansion and salt migration then cause further damage as the walls dry out. The statistics are sobering: all but ten of the Valley tombs have been invaded by floods; in the last 150 years, a third of all the known tombs have been re-buried under rubble and sand; two-thirds of the tombs still include flood debris.
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The ancient Egyptians, all too aware of the dangers of flash flooding in the Valley, attempted to protect their dead kings by digging a large drainage channel and by erecting diversionary walls near individual tombs. But all the lower-lying tombs have suffered the effects of repeated floods. Tutankhamen's tomb, cut directly into the Valley bedrock, would always be vulnerable. This vulnerability continues today as tourist paths and modern excavations have altered the Valley landscape and raised the floodwater paths. Tutankhamen's tomb occasionally admits floodwater either via its entrance or, causing more damage, through its roof.

Recent work has confirmed that the Valley experienced a devastating flood at the end of the 18th Dynasty. This flood deposited a thick sediment that concealed and protected the entrance to Tutankhamen's tomb.
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The vanished tomb was quickly forgotten. The 20th Dynasty builders who worked on the tomb of Ramesses VI almost two centuries after Tutankhamen's death were certainly unaware of its existence, as they allowed debris from their excavations to accumulate over the entrance to his tomb, then built a series of workmen's huts on top of the mound.

Necropolis security worked well enough while the pharaohs retained their authority. The evidence from Tutankhamen's tomb suggests that there must have been many robberies and attempted robberies – that was inevitable – but that these were relatively minor affairs, easily detected and superficially put right. We must wonder how many of these breaches in necropolis security were reported to the authorities. The 19th Dynasty kings certainly thought that all was well; they abandoned all thought of hiding their tombs, and allowed their hitherto discreet doorways to become obvious, decorative features. But then, towards the end of the 19th Dynasty, the unthinkable slowly but surely started to happen. Unpredictable Nile levels led to high inflation and food shortages, and Thebes suffered occasional raids by Libyan nomads. As the increasingly corrupt civil service failed to pay the Deir el-Medina workmen there were strikes and, inevitably, a sharp increase in crime. By the late 20th Dynasty the situation had deteriorated badly, and the royal tombs were facing a serious and sustained threat from well-organised and well-informed gangs who all too often had the tacit backing of the officials responsible for guarding the tombs. Corruption now extended to the highest levels.

The reign of Ramesses XI saw Thebes in a state of civil war. The Valley had become irredeemably insecure and, on the desert edge, the
memorial temples had been vandalised and stripped of their valuables. Abandoning his incomplete tomb (KV 4), Ramesses fled north. Here, denied access to his ancestral burial ground, we may reasonably assume he ordered the construction of a new, secure tomb. This tomb has yet to be discovered but, given Ramesses' obvious devotion to the god Ptah, patron deity of Memphis, it seems likely that he was buried somewhere near to Ptah's Memphite temple. Succeeding kings would follow this precedent and build tombs within the precincts of their northern temples; here the priests could guard their graves night and day.

Smendes, founder of the 21st Dynasty, ruled northern Egypt from the Delta city of Tanis, while the Theban general and High Priest of Amen Herihor, and his descendants, gradually brought the south under control. To the High Priests fell the responsibility of restoring and maintaining the plundered tombs in the Valley of the Kings. This was a time-consuming, expensive and ultimately fruitless task: it must have been very clear to everyone that as soon as the burials were made good the robberies would start again. So, the necropolis officials decided on a bold change of tactics. If the promise of hidden treasure was attracting thieves to the tombs, the well-publicised removal of that treasure should surely remove all temptation. And, as an added bonus, valuables collected from the tombs could be used to swell the sadly depleted state coffers.

The royal tombs were officially opened and emptied of their contents. The kings and their closest relations were taken from their sarcophagi and moved to undertakers' workshops within the Valley. Here they were stripped of their original bandages and jewellery, re-wrapped, labelled, and placed in plain wooden coffins. The mummies – no longer a temptation to anyone – were then stored in chambers dotted about the necropolis. From time to time these collections were inspected, moved and amalgamated, until there were two major royal caches: one housed in the family tomb of the High Priest Pinodjem II at Deir el-Bahri (DB 320) and one stored in the tomb of Amenhotep II (KV 35).

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As the dynastic age ended and Egypt's official religion moved from paganism to Christianity, then from Christianity to Islam, the tombs in the Valley of the Kings remained open and unprotected. Some were simply lost; others developed a second life as chapels or houses, or were once again used as tombs. It was dimly remembered that the Valley had once been a royal cemetery; this was reflected in its name, Biban el-Moluk or ‘Valley of the Doors of the Kings'. But no one knew how many tombs there were and, as all knowledge of the hieroglyphic script had been lost, no one knew who had been buried in them.