![]() We can’t be sure precisely who this was as there are no inscriptions identifying either of the Boy King’s parents, but it is likely to have been the heretic pharaoh Akhenaten. In 1907, Ayrton discovered the enigmatic tomb KV 55, which contained a jumble of material of the Amarna period, including some of the burial equipment of Queen Tiye and a coffin containing the mummy of a male individual who has recently been shown through DNA analysis to be the father of Tutankhamun. Read more | Tutankhamun unmasked: 7 intriguing truths about the pharaoh and his treasures.His tomb was the longest ever constructed in the Valley at more than 137 metres, and beautifully decorated throughout.ĭavis would continue to sponsor the excavations of Carter’s successors in Upper Egypt, starting with James Quibell, who found the largely intact non-royal tomb of Queen Tiye’s parents, Yuya and Thuya, then Arthur Weigall, and from 1905 with another excavator acting independently of the Antiquities Service, Edward Ayrton. One of the greatest of all pharaohs, Seti I ruled for between 11 and 15 years, re-established Egypt’s territory in Syria-Palestine and launched massive building projects at sites such as Karnak and Abydos. In any case, they were slowly being swallowed up by the sands, a very modern phase of the history of the site nonetheless becoming a part of its archaeology.īelzoni moved a little farther up the same branch of the Valley, where – at last – he made a discovery of the magnitude he had hoped for: the tomb of Ramesses I’s successor, Seti I. Looking southwards, the Step Pyramid, the world’s first monumental building in stone (and a creation of Imhotep) was very visible – tomb 3518 seems to have been built in precise alignment with it, adding weight to the idea that it might have been Imhotep’s own.Īs I prepared to leave the site, I noticed a series of narrow gauge railway carriages of the kind used by Emery and other archaeologists to carry the debris away from their excavations. The upper reaches of its preserved mudbrick walls emerged from the golden sands, which continued to swirl around them – as if they might swallow the tomb in a moment. Tomb 3518 – around which was found both a seal bearing the name of Imhotep’s king (Djoser) and a number of votive offerings made to a god of medicine and healing, which was probably Imhotep himself – was partly visible. Of the tombs Emery found, number 3508 was invisible, though I was able to get close to its position. To my surprise and delight, the main temple complex of the Sacred Animal Necropolis discovered by Emery remained recognisable from the photos I had seen. Having studied the archaeological maps and modern satellite images at length, I set out across the sands armed with an iPad and iPhone, heading roughly northwest from what remains of Emery’s dig house. In spring 2015, I set off for the plateau to attempt to locate, or at least get close to the site of some of the monuments that have been associated with Imhotep’s tomb. He wanted to find the tomb of Imhotep and had been drawn to the area by a combination of two types of evidence: some very large tombs of Imhotep’s time, and a scatter of ritual deposits indicating much later cultic activity of the kind one would expect around the temple of Imhotep, which texts tell us was in the area. The North Saqqara plateau was extensively excavated by Bryan Emery in the 1960s and early 1970s. “I cannot boast of having made a great discovery in this tomb though it contains several curious and singular painted figures on the walls and from its extent, and part of a sarcophagus remaining in the centre of a large chamber, have reason to suppose, that it was the burial place of some person of distinction.” The world would not know it was Ay’s tomb until it was investigated again in the 1970s, although almost all the figures and names of the pharaoh had been defaced.Ĭhris Naunton strides into the desert to find the architect and physician vilified by Hollywood Read more | What was life in ancient Egypt?. ![]() There, a little further down the wadi, he found the tomb of Ay, the penultimate pharaoh of the 18th Dynasty, although only by accident and without realising whose tomb it was: “I went into these mountains only to examine the various places, where the water descends from the desert into the valleys after rain,” he wrote. He began his search in late 1816 in the Western Valley, where Napoleon’s savants had noted the existence of the tomb of Amehotep III. ![]() The tomb of royal priest Wahtye was unearthed at Saqqara in 2008 (Photo by Khaled DESOUKI/ AFP/Getty Images)
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