TMP March 2011 Progress Report

8/3/2019 TMP March 2011 Progress Report

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Theban Mapping Project

Report on the 2010-2011 Field Season in KV 5:

Chambers 5, 6 and 22

Kent R. Weeks

It took three seasons of work before we could reach and finally clear the layers of

flood debris covering the floor of chamber 5 and determine whether the room was theburial place of one of the sons of Rameses II. What we learned makes for a complicated

and frustratingly vague story.1


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Apparently, chamber 5 was originally intended to serve as a Chariot Hall, calledchamber F in the terminology of Elisabeth Thomas.2 A descending stair and ramp

combination between two rows of pillars presumably would have led down through the

chambers floor to a corridor that, in turn, led to a burial chamber, what Thomas wouldlabel chamber J. That plan was changed, however, for reasons we do not know; the plan

of chamber F was altered and itbecame burial chamber J. This required converting thebeginning of a corridor at the base of the stairs into a wider lower level in the middle ofthe room, and removing one of its six pillars in order to make room for the sarcophagus

that would then have been installed here. This alteration in plan may have taken place in

the twenty-second year of Rameses IIs reign, a date mentioned in a workmans graffito

painted on the chambers ceiling adjacent to pillar E, at the point at which cutting on thelower level would have begun.

We cannot be certain which of the sons of Rameses II was buried in chamber 5.The changes to the chambers plan suggest that the sons death was unexpected and his

burial hastily arranged. But that in turn suggests that work had begun on the burial place

while the son was still alive, and that does not square with our earlier conjectures abouthow and why KV 5 grew in such an unusual and complicated fashion.3 (We argued that

KV 5 was not a pre-planned family mausoleum, but a burial complex that was enlarged

on an ad hoc, as-needed basis. That still seems the most logical explanation of its odd

layout.)

Figure 1: Axonometric drawing of KV 5, as of December, 2009. Drawing by Walton

Chan.


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Figure 2: Plan of KV 5, as of December, 2009. Drawing by Walton Chan.

Chamber 5 is the third largest of the 130+ chambers in KV 5 (Table 1). When wefirst crawled into it, the room was in a more dangerous condition than any other part of

the tomb. Blocks of limestone bedrock that weighed many tons had fallen from theceiling, exposing wide fractures and fissures that had weakened the remaining bedrock

and left it ready to collapse. Fallen limestone choked the room; large slabs hung

precariously from the ceiling; the available crawlspace, only a few centimeters high,

offered the only access to the room; and the razor-sharp edges of the limestone shardsmade moving inside a painful experience. Access to chamber 5 was difficult and

dangerous. At the time (1994), we wrote that the ceiling

is so badly damaged (largely, we think, from the vibrations of tourist buses on the

roadway immediately adjacent), that it [chamber 5] probably can only be clearedby digging into it through the overriding bedrock and installing an entirely newroof.4


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Plate 1: Fallen ceiling blocks during clearing of Chamber 5, 2010.

That was too pessimistic. During three later field seasons (in 2007, 2008, and

2009), after conducting extensive geological and engineering surveys, we were able to

clear chamber 5 of most of its fallen bedrockabout 50 tons of it. Nearly all that stonehad collapsed in relatively recent times and lay atop earlier, stratified flood debris.

Working from the chambers entrance clockwise around the room, we were able to breakthe limestone into manageable pieces that our workmen could carry from the tomb. Over

two hundred truckloads of stone were carted away over a three-year period. As

quarrymen removed the fallen stone, our engineers stabilized the remaining bedrock,patching fissures and installing steel supports. By the beginning of the 2010-2011 field

season, we had strengthened its walls, pillars, and ceiling, and chamber 5 was structurally

stable enough that we could concentrate on removing the flood debris that filled the room

to a depth of about two meters. As we worked, from 26 December 2010 to 13 February2011, we were able to study the architecture and contents of chamber 5 in some detail.

Fifteen years ago, we observed that, Chamber 5 promises to be especially important inunderstanding KV 5.

5That has proved to be correct.


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Table 1: Dimensions of the Four Largest Chambers in KV 56

________________________________________________________________________

Chamber Length Width Height Area Volume________________________________________________________________________

3 15.64m 15.44m 2.63m 244.16 m 582.94 m

4 12.93m 8.85m 2.00m 114.63 m 229.26 m

5 10.50m 9.73m 2.08m 101.85 m 195.55 m

14 6.40m 11.12m 2.55m 71.75 m 182.49 m

_______________________________________________________________________

Magical Brick Niches. Our first examination of chamber 5 took place in June,1994. It was a cursory look--necessarily so, given the rooms precarious state--but even

at this early stage we believed that it had served as a burial chamber. Our initial reason

was the presence of four magical brick niches, one cut into each of the chambers walls

(Table 2 and figure 3). Such niches are commonly found in royal tombs in the Valley ofthe Kings from the reign of Thutmosis XXX on, and in the tombs of New Kingdom

queens, especially those of the wives of Rameses II. They distribute themselves in

several ways in those tombs burial chambers, but during the Nineteenth Dynasty theytended to be four in number, cut into each of the chambers four walls.7 On average, the

niches in other KV tombs are larger, at least in height and width, than the four in KV 5(table 2).

In each niche, a small mud brick would have been placed to serve as the base for asmall amulet or statuette: a ushabti in the north wall niche, a reed or flame in the south, a

figure of Anubis in the east, and a djed-pillar in the west.8 The bricks were often paintedwith a short quote from Chapter 151 of the Book of the Dead. In chamber 5, the interiorsurfaces of each niche were covered with a 0.4 cm. layer of plaster. After the bricks and

figures had been placed inside, it is likely that the niches were plastered over and the wall

then decorated.9 An uninscribed magical brick (object 5.001, see below) was found on

the floor of chamber 5 and perhaps comes from here.


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Table 2: Magical Brick Niches in Chamber 5(Dimensions in cms.)

Designation Wall Distance from Below ceiling Ht W Depth Plastered

Corner interior?

Niche A S 160cm, SW -66 29 20 21 Yes

Niche B W 186cm, NW -72 27 20 19 Yes

Niche C N 140cm, NW -62 33 26 30 Yes

Niche D E 96cm, NE -64 26 17 18 Yes

KV Average10

45 30 20

________________________________________________________________________

Pillars. Clearing in 2011 lent further support to the idea that chamber 5 had been

a burial chamber, but it also complicated the rooms history.

In the New Kingdom, burial chambers in KV tombs were called The Hall in

Which One Rests, or The House of Gold.(table 3).11

.Following Thomas, we labelthem Chamber J. There are several variations in their plans, but chamber 5 differs

significantly from all of them. For example, chamber 5 has two parallel rows of three

pillars each, a total of six pillars. Such rows of pillars are a feature of burial chambers inseveral tombs in the Valley of the Kings, but rows of four pillars are more common than

six (as in KV 8, 11, 14, and 15), and there are also examples of two-pillar rows (in KV 47and 9). In fact, only KV 17, KV 57 and KV 5 have six pillars. Further, these rows ofpillars usually lie at right angles to the entrance to the chamber; in chamber 5, they

parallel the north-south axis of the entrance gate.


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Figure 3: Plan of Chamber 5, March, 2011. Drawing by Kent R. Weeks.

Pillars are not unique to burial chambers. They are found in other rooms as well,most prominently in the room we designate as chamber F, a room that in ancient times

was called the Chariot Hall.12 All examples of Chamber F in Valley of the Kings

tombs have two pillars or four.13


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Because chamber 5 differs from the typical KV plans of both chambers F and J,our initial opinion--that chamber 5 was used as a burial chamber (J)--shifted, and we

began to think that it might instead have been a pillared hall (F). Arguments can be made

for and against both ideas, and as we noted above, we now believe that it had been both,first cut as chamber F, then remodeled to become chamber J. That explains why chamber

5 shares several features in common with both chambers F and J in KV tombs:

Evidence that chamber 5 was cut to serve as a Chariot Hall (chamber F):

1. Its dimensions are similar to those of chamber F in other KV tombs (table 3).2. Its pillars lie in two rows that parallel the axis of the entrance, not at right

angles to it.

3. The slope, tread height and width, and total depth of the central descendingstaircase are similar to those found in chamber F in other KV tombs.

Evidence that chamber 5 was cut as a burial chamber (J):

1. The number of pillars, six, is found in other KV burial chambers (J), but not inexamples of chamber F (table 4).

2. There are four magical brick niches in its walls, and such niches are foundonly in burial chambers.

3. The chamber is almost perfectly square, not rectangular (table 3)4. The chamber has both an upper and a lower level, a common feature in New

Kingdom royal tomb burial chambers.

Pillars E and F in chamber 5 have features unique to KV 5. The original Pillar E

was removed when the room was converted to a burial chamber and the lower level was

cut. A new pillar, built of small, roughly cut stone blocks, was installed to its immediatewest. Once the original pillar had been removed, it became apparent that the ceiling was

structurally unstable, and so a new pillar was installed in order to prevent its collapse.

Fear of collapse may also be the reason that pillar F was not removed, but left standing

within the lower level of the chamber floor. (If so, perhaps the recessed areas on thenorth and south sides of pillar F served as canopic chest emplacements or storage spaces

for other funerary furniture.)


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Plate 2: View of Chamber 5, to the north.

Plate 3: View of Chamber 5, to the north.


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Plate 4: Pillar E, east face.

Flood debris. Beneath the fallen limestone ceiling blocks, chamber 5 was filledto a depth of about two meters with perhaps eleven thin (average thickness about 15 cm.)

strata of almost pure Nile silt, mixed silt and sand, or densely packed small limestone

chips (pl. 5). Perhaps some of this material entered the chamber through two large

fractures in the bedrock that extended from chamber 5 to the surface of the hillside some4 to 6 meters above. But most of it washed into the chamber through the tomb entrance

during the flood events that reached every part of KV 5. Because there are several

doorways and pillars between the entrance of chamber 5 and the tombs entrance, and amarked change in floor level as well as a 90 degree change in direction in chamber 3, the

flood waters and the debris they carried were significantly slowed before entering

chamber 5. Its lack of speed and power meant that floods could carry only small,relatively light weight objects, and this explains the small size and minor amounts of

stones, shards, and other objects washed into the chamber. Here, the objects in the debris

are mostly potsherds of Christian, Roman, Late Dynastic, and New Kingdom date, in that

order of frequency. There is no way to correlate the strata here with those in other parts ofthe tomb, or with the strata in other KV tombs.


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Plate 5: Stratified flood debris between pillar F (at right) and north wall of Chamber 5 (at

left)

Objects. Few objects were found in the debris:

5.01 Magical brick. In flood debris, 50 cm. above floor adjacent to the east wall, near

niche D. Made of silt and measured 6.8 x 4.8 x 3.5 cm. Small holes (ca. 0.4 cm.)

presumably for dowels used to mount an amulet or statuette, pierced one side; two of

them extended through the brick. (Pls. 8 and 9)

5.02 Wall shard of a small blue faience vessel decorated with black painted designs.7.1 x 5.0 x 1.0 cm. (Pl. 7)

5.03 Fragment of a cut and sanded wooden plank, perhaps originally part of a coffin,with a 1.2 cm. dowel hole drilled in one corner. 10.0 x 7.3 x 2.5 cm. (Pl. 6)

5.04 Tubular faience light blue bead, 0.9 x 0.2 cm.Because of its delicate composition, it is likely that 5.01 is original to KV 5, for had itbeen swept in with flood debris from outside, it almost certainly would have been

destroyed. The other objects may have washed in from elsewhere in the Valley of the

Kings. None can be dated with certainty.


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Plates 6-9: Objects 5.03, 5.02, and two views of 5.01.


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Wall decoration. There is evidence that every wall and pillar in chamber 5, likeevery wall and pillar in KV 5 generally, was decorated. And, like most decoration in KV

5, it was painted, and sometimes also carved, on a thick layer of plaster applied to rough

wall surfaces. The plaster has almost completely disappeared because of the water andhigh humidity brought into the tomb by several flood events over the past three thousand

years. We were able to recover only a few dozen bits of decorated plaster from thedebris, Few were larger than ones hand, but some bore identifiable figures orhieroglyphs. (Pl. 10 and 11)

Plates 10, 11: Plaster fragments from Chamber 3.

1. On the floor at the base of the chambers east wall, immediately to the right of nicheD, lay a piece of wall plaster with the remains of a painted broad collar, identical in color

and the width of its painted blue, red, and white bands to the broad collar worn by theroyal son shown on the south wall of Chamber 2.14

2. Traces of a nms-headdress were found on painted plaster lying the floor below thenorth wall, about 3.5 meters from the chambers northeast corner.

3. Several fragments of wall plaster were found on the floor at the base of the south wall,

immediately beside the gate into chamber 6. They were painted with red and blue stripes


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and edged with a yellow stripe crossed with thin red lines. They almost certainly areparts of a throne similar to the pair of thrones shown on the north half of the west wall of

Chamber 1 and, with less preserved color, on the south half of that same wall. 15

4. On the floor near the north face of pillar F lay a fragment of plaster with a painted

blue nb-sign. The glyph is about 9 cm. wide.

5. Several plaster corners with painted blue vertical borders were found on the floor

around pillar B.

6. The east face of pillar A bore a painted scene with a throne identical in color and bandwidth to thrones shown on the south wall of Chamber 1 and the east wall of Chamber 2.16

7. A plaster fragment that possibly comes from pillar B bears, in blue paint, a mr-signthat could be part of the royal name, r-ms.s mri-imn.

8.

Plaster can be seen at the bottom of the west, north, and east walls of the lowerlevel of the chamber, painted with wide, horizontal, black bands.

From this scanty evidence, we are relatively confident that the walls and pillars of

chamber 5 were decorated with scenes in which Rameses II presents one of his sons tovarious deities. Such scenes can be seen in KV 5s chambers 1, 2, 7, and 22,17 and

undoubtedly there were others that have been destroyed by flash floods. This evidence

suggests that in content if not in style, the walls of chamber 5, and probably other walls inKV 5 as well, resembled those in QV 44, the burial of Khaemwaset, a son of Rameses

III.18

Masons marks and graffiti. Masons marks, which occur are frequentelsewhere in KV 5, are less common in chamber 5. A 1 cm wide black painted vertical

line extends from 10 cm of the ceiling downward about 50 cm. on the north wall, in line

with the west faces of pillars B, D, and F. Five 20 cm. long vertical black lines, eachabout 1 cm. wide, were painted on the east wall at irregular intervals between the north

side of pillar F and the south side of pillar B. A single black dot, about 2 cm. in diameter,

was painted on the south wall immediately left (east) of the chambers entrance door.

About eight red dots are irregularly distributed in the upper 15 cm. of the west wall, andsix more are similarly sited on the western half of the south wall. On a block of

limestone that had fallen from the ceiling (in relatively recent times; it lay atop the strata

of flood debris), we found a painted black graffito similar to that on the ceiling ofchamber 3 (pl. 12).19

R3- h3t-sp 22

It refers to year 22, probably a regnal year of Rameses II, and its location, adjacent to

pillar C, suggests that it marked the limit of work that year cutting the chambersstaircase and ramp (see below).


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Plate 12: Graffito on fallen ceiling block from Chamber 5.

Stabilizing the chamber. As the clearing of chamber 5 progressed, we cleanedthe ceiling and walls, then patched their numerous fractures and fissures. One pillar, B,

wad partially preserved from floor to ceiling, and it was restored using limestone blocksand mortar. The other pillars were preserved to no more than 1.20 m. above the floor.

The original ceiling above them is gone, and we did not attempt to restore them. The

largest fissures are to be seen in the overlying bedrock in the southeast quadrant of thechamber, surrounding pillar B, and here, screw jacks and steel beams were installed to

support the ceiling. The greatest damage to chamber 5 occurred in the northern half of

the room. Fortunately, the overlying bedrock that remains has formed a shallow dome, a

natural form that has superior strength. Its shape, together with our restoration andengineering work, we believe leave chamber 5 in better structural condition than any time

in its history.


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Plate 13: Engineer filling fractures in ceiling of Chamber 5.

The collapse of the ceiling of chamber 5 began in antiquity. The great weight of

the overlying bedrock and its numerous fractures caused the pillars to collapse early inthe tombs history. As we shall see, pillar E was removed in antiquity and replaced by a

pillar built of rough cut stones half a meter to its west. Perhaps it had been the first pillar

to collapse. If so, pillars C, D, and F soon followed; pieces of them lie in the lowest

strata of debris that fill the rooms central lower level. Flood borne debris had filled thelower level and covered the upper floor level of the chamber with about 10-20 cm. of

debris before the ceiling began to collapse. The greatest damage to the ceiling occurred

after flood events had ceased to deposit silts in chamber 5, and much of it may have beenrecent, perhaps caused by the vibrating tour buses that parked in the roadway adjacent to

the then-unknown entrance to KV 5 in the 1960s and 1970s. .


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Table 3: Proportions of Chambers (F) and (J) in Selected KV Tombs

Chamber F Chamber J

Tomb Width Length L/W Width Length L/W

KV 57 7.53 6.88 1.09 14.12 8.95 1.57

KV 17 8.43 7.95 1.06 14.26 8.38 1.70

KV 8 8.95 9.42 0.95 13.75 14.87 0.92

KV 5 10.40 9.70 1.07

Table 4: Dimensions and Pillars of Chambers (F) and (J) in Selected KV Tombs

Chamber F Chamber J

Tomb # pillars volume # pillars volume

________________________________________________________________________

KV 57 2 157.75m 6 466.31m

KV 17 4 207.84m 6 503.00m

KV 8 2 274.20m 8 1111.72 m

KV 5 6 195.55 m_______________________________________________________________________

Lower Level. Extending between pillars A-B and C-D, and then widening toinclude pillars E and F, a lower level in chamber 5 is reached by means of a steep stair

and ramp combination. Such central lower levels are common in New Kingdom royal

tombs (e.g., KV 8, 9, 11, 14, 17, 35, 43, 47, and 57), but that in chamber 5 does not

follow their usual plan. We belileve the reason for this is that, originally, chamber 5 wasintended to serve as a Chariot Hall (chamber F), and later redesigned to serve as a burial

chamber (chamber J)


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Plate 14: Chamber 5, ramp-st air combination, view to south and chamber entrance.

Chamber 22. In her last season of work in KV 5, Susan Weeks drew the tracesof decoration that were found in chamber 22. These include: partial columns of text,

fragments of Book of the Dead Chapter 125, the so-called Negative Confession, on thesouth wall (fig. 4);

20a head of Rameses II on painted plaster from pillar A (fig. 5); traces

of a flail also from pillar A(fig. 6); khekherfrieze from the south wall (fig. 7); and asm-priest, perhaps from pillar A (fig. 8).

We also include our working drawings of chamber 22, its side-chambers, and thecorridors (20, 21) and side-chambers.(20a-l) preceding it (figs. 9-14).


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Figure 7: Khekher-frieze and columns of text, Chamber 22, south wall

Figure 8: Sm-priest, perhaps from Pillar A, Chamber 22.


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Figures 9


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Figures 10


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Figures 11


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Figures 12


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Figures 13


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Figures 14


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Figures 9 14: Working drawings of Chambers 20-26. Drawings by Walton Chan.

1 Our workforce this season was supervised by the TMPs project foreman, Ahmed Mahmoud Hass:an.

Our Inspector of Antiquities was Mahmoud Hosny Mahmoud Abdallah. In Cairo, our office manager was

Magdy Abu Hamad Ali. We wish to thank the staff of the Supreme Council of Antiquities for their

continued assistance in making our work possible. Funding for this seasons project was provided by

donors listed on our website, www.thebanmappingproject.com. I dedicate this annual report to the memory

of one of the TMPs most esteemed and valued members, my beloved wife, the late Susan Howe Weeks.2 Elizabeth Thomas, The Royal Necropoleis of Thebes. Princeton, n.p., 1966.3 See, e.g., Kent R. Weeks, The Lost Tomb, New York, 1998, and other editions.4 Kent R. Weeks, Archaeological and Architectural Description, in: Kent R. Weeks (ed.),KV 5: A

Preliminary Report on the Excavation of the Tomb of the Sons of Rameses II in the Valley of the Kings.Cairo: American University in Cairo Press (= Publications of the Theban Mapping Project, II). Cairo,2000. P. 30.5Ibid.6 These and other measurements are available on the TMPs website,

http://www.thebanmappingproject.com.7

Ann Macy Roth and Catharine H. Roehrig, Magical Bricks and the Bricks of Birth. JEA 88 (2002):121-139.8 Elizabeth Thomas, The Four Niches and Amuletic Figures in the Theban Royal Tombs. JARCE3(1964): 71-78.9 Isabelle Rgen, When the Book of the Dead Does Not Match Archaeology: The Case of the Protective

Magical Bricks. British Museum Studies in Ancient Egypt and the Sudan 15 (2010): 267-278.10 Thomas, op. cit.11

Elizabeth Thomas,Royal Necropoleis . Pp. xx-xx. Weeks, Introduction, p. 121-122.12 Kent R. Weeks, Introduction to the Valley of the Kings, in: Kent R. Weeks (ed.), The Treasures of theValley of the Kings: Tombs and Temples of the West Bank in Luxor. Vercelli, Italy: WhiteStar and Cairo:American University in Cairo Press, 2001. P. 121. Our chamber designations follow those of Thomas.13

Two pillars: KV 8, 34, 35, 43, 57; four pillars: KV 6, 9, 11, 15, 17, 47.14

Weeks,KV 5, p. 70, fig. 56.15 Weeks,KV 5, p. 65 and fig. 51; p. 57 and figs. 45, 46. Similar thrones can be seen in: KV 16 (RamesesI), chamber J, rear wall ; and, with minor variations, in QV 44 (Khaemwaset), chamber H, rear wall. See

F. Hassanein and M. Nelson,La tombe du Prince Khaemouaset (VdR no 44) = CEDAE, 72. Cairo, 1997;Klaus P. Kuhlmann,Der Thron im alten gypten (= Abh. DAIK, g Reihe, 10). Glckstadt, 1977.16 Weeks,KV 5, p. 58, fig. 46 and p. 72, fig. 59.17

Edwin Brock, in Weeks,KV 5, pp. 55ff.18

F. Hassanein and M. Nelson, op. cit.19 Weeks,KV 5, pp. 26-27, fig. 22.20 The closest parallel to this wall is that on the south wall of chamber H in the Valley of the Kings tomb of

Merenptah, KV 8. To my knowledge, no copies of this wall have yet been published.

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