Tomb of Huye - Ancient Egyptian Tombs

Tombs - General
The design of the tombs at Tel el Amarna are similar to the 18th Dynasty tombs at Luxor. Each has a forecourt (originally surrounded by a brick wall), a main chamber hewn out of rock and sometimes supported by columns, and an inner chamber, or chambers, containing a statue of the deceased.

Ancient Egyptian Tombs

Near the entrance doorway of each tomb and also in the main chamber, there are usually representations of the royal family praying or making offerings to the Aten and receiving the symbols of life from ‘the arm of the sun beams’. Nefertiti usually wears a tall crown, not unlike the blue war crown worn by Akhenaten. Noteworthy is the fact that she and the royal children, as well as some of the noblemen, were depicted with thick thighs and thin necks, indicating that such proportions became fashionable.

Northern Tombs

Tomb of Huye
This tomb belongs to the superintendent of the royal harem and steward of the Queen Mother, Tiy, who is depicted in the doorway reciting the Hymn to the Sun. The reliefs are in fair condition. To the right of the entrance wall are representations of a banquet where Akhenaten and Nefertiti are seated opposite Amenhotep III and Queen Tiy. Below is a delightful representation of two princesses facing each other. Above the royal couple is the symbol of the Aten. Guards stand to the right. Musicians and servants are depicted below.

Tomb of Huye

The main chamber has two clustered papyrus columns. The scene on the right-hand wall shows the temple with colonnaded court, statues and altar, with Akhenaten leading his mother to her Sun-shade Temple. The left-hand wall depicts Akhenaten being borne in a carrying chair to the temple with a large retinue of officials.

Ancient Egyptian Tombs

On each side of the doorway in the rear wall, Akhenaten is shown on the balcony of the palace throwing gifts to Huya. Below, to the right, is the workshop of a sculptor who is painting a statuette of the princess Baketaten, Tiy’s daughter. The inner chambers were unfinished.

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The Great Tomb Robberies | Reign of Ramses IX

The Great Tomb Robberies
It was in the reign of Ramses IX that the first of a series of scandals broke, when it was revealed that the tombs in the Valley of the Kings were being plundered. The robberies mainly took place in Year 16 of the reign, although there had been an earlier incident before Year 9, followed by an attack on KV 9 where Ramses VI had only recently been buried. The affair in Year 16 largely came to light because of intense rivalry between the mayor of Thebes, Paser, and the mayor of western Thebes, Paweraa, who was responsible for the cemeteries.

Ramses IX

Reports of the robberies were made to the vizier, Khaemwaset, who ordered a commission to investigate the allegations. Of the ten tombs that were checked, only that of Amenhotep I was said to have been intact. Of the remainder, some had been partly robbed whilst others had been completely despoiled. The verbatim accounts of the trials of several of the culprits have survived in over a dozen papyri, known as the 'Tomb Robbing Papyri', which are now scattered in various museums. One confession by a stonemason, Amun-pnufer, recorded on the 22nd day of the third month of winter in Year 16 of Ramses IX (c. 1110 BC), related in detail how the tomb of the 17th Dynasty king Sobekemsaf and his queen Nubkhas had been totally pillaged, even to the extent of setting fire to their coffins. The stonemason actually details the extent of the spoils from the two bodies, amounting to ‘160 deben of gold’, which is about 32 lb (14.5 kg). Compare this with the items from Tutankhamun’s tomb, where the gold mask alone weighs 22% lb (10.23 kg) and the inner gold coffin nearly 243 lb (110.4 kg).

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The two tombs of Horemheb | Facts and Secrets

The two tombs of Horemheb
Horemheb began his funerary preparations long before he had any inkling that he would become pharaoh, meaning that he already had a private tomb at Saqqara when, as king, he started to build himself a large tomb in the Valley of the Kings. The tomb at Saqqara (like that of Maya, Tutankhamun's Treasurer) had been partly discovered in the early 19th century AD when sculptures and reliefs were removed from both to European collections (principally to Leiden), but it was lost again until the excavations of the Egypt Exploration Society in 1975.

Tomb of Horemheb (found in 1975)

Excavations at the Saqqara tomb revealed that the walls were superbly carved with scenes of Horemheb's military and court career. From these we learn that there were at least two small campaigns Excavations at the Saqqara tomb revealed that the walls were superbly carved with scenes of Horemheb's military and court career. From these we learn that there were at least two small campaigns

during Tutankhamun's reign against Libyans and Syrians - the faces of the prisoners are especially well represented in the carvings. The tomb was badly wrecked in antiquity, but enough remained of shattered funerary furniture and reliefs and a superb openwork gold earring that the robbers must have dropped to testify that Horemheb's tomb was one of the finest in the area. He himself was not buried in the Saqqara tomb because of his elevation, although it appears that his two wives may have been. After Horemheb became pharaoh, he sent workmen to add the royal uraeus to his brow in the sculpted reliefs, even though he himself was not going to make use of the tomb (p. 138).

Horemheb's tomb in the Valley of the Kings (KV 57) was found by Theodore Davis in 1908. As with all the tombs in the royal valley, it was unfinished and had been robbed. Davis found large quantities of shattered furniture and wooden figures of the king, examples of which, some 14 years later, were to be found complete in Tutankhamun's tomb, such as the king standing on the back of a striding panther (already known from the wall paintings in the later 20th Dynasty tomb of Seti II, KV 15). The painting of several rooms in the tomb had been finished to a very high standard. Work in other rooms, however, was still in progress when the king died, and these are particularly interesting because they show the manner of working - the outline grids and the corrections made.

In the burial hall Davis found Horemheb's great red granite sarcophagus. Horemheb's mummy was not discovered, although the remains of four individuals were scattered in the burial hall and a side chamber. These were probably members of Horemheb's family, although it has been suggested that Ay's body may have been brought here from his tomb in the Western Valley after it had been robbed. It is possible that a graffito found in the tomb refers to Horemheb's body being moved to the tomb of Twosret and Setnakhte (KV 14) for restoration, but other than that there is no trace of it - it does not appear to be one of the unidentified bodies from the two mummy caches (p. 103).

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The Tomb Robberies in Ancient Egypt

The Tomb Robberies 
Contrary to popular belief, Tutankhamun’s tomb was not intact when Carter found it: only the burial was undisturbed. The tomb had been robbed twice in antiquity, quite soon after it was sealed. The first robbery was for the gold and precious jewellery, most of which the robbers got away with except for a notable group of seven solid gold rings found still wrapped in the robber’s kerchief and stuffed into a box in the Annexe. The jewellery now displayed in the Cairo Museum was mainly recovered from the body of the king, on which there were over 170 items.

Tomb of Tutankhamun in the Valley of the Kings

After the priests and guards had resealed the tomb, it was broken into again, this time to steal the precious oils and unguents (largely stored in tall rather ungainly alabaster jars) which the thieves had left behind the first time. On this occasion they came equipped with empty goatskins. The tomb was resealed once again, this time for good: the entrance disappeared from view, hidden in the floor of the Valley. Debris from the construction of Ramses Vi’s tomb buried the entrance deeper still, and there it lay for over 3000 years, until Carter rediscovered the tomb in 1922.

The succession in question

Tutankhamun receives flowers from Ankhesenpaaten as a sign of love

Tutankhamun's early death left his wife Ankhesenamun a young widow in a very difficult situation. Obviously hemmed in on all sides by ambitious men much older than herself, she took an unprecedented step and wrote to Suppiluliumas I, king of the Hittites, explaining her plight. The evidence comes not from the Egyptian records but from excavations at Hattusas (Boghazkoy) in Turkey, the Hittite capital, where a copy was found in the archives. She told him her husband had died and she had no sons while he had many, so would he send one to marry her and continue the royal line. The Hittite king was highly suspicious and made enquiries,- messengers were sent to check the details and reported back that such was the case. A Hittite prince, Zannanza, was therefore sent to Egypt to take up the queen's offer. It seems that he got no further than the border before he was murdered, and the deed can easily be laid at the door of Horemheb: he had the means as commander-in-chief of the army, the opportunity and certainly the motive.

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Queen Hetepheres Tomb Facts

 Tomb of Hetepheres - Queen Hetepheres Tomb - Hetepheres Tomb

Queen Hetepheres Tomb - The Queen Khufu Mother's Tomb

Hetepheres Tomb Plateau

Khufu's father was Snefru and his mother was queen Hetepheres , whose tomb was found empty in 1925 , here in the Giza plateau , next to the great Pyramid .

Another empty tomb ?
Yes . They found the alabaster chest of his very important queen in an ordinary shaft . However, when it was opened, it was found empty. The canopic jars of the queen , containing her internal organs , were found next to the empty alabaster chest .

Why did they leave an empty alabaster chest ?
Nobody knows fir sure , but it may have something to do with the mysterious custom of what is referred to , for lack of a better them , as the " double burial " .

Wait a minute . Are you saying the wife the greatest builder ,Snefru , and the mother of Khufu , had a simple shaft and nor a pyramid for a tomb ?
If pyramids were tombs , this queen should have an elaborate pyramid , Since the Pyramids were not intended o be burial places m neither she nor her husband ( Snefru ) , nor son ( Khufu ) were ever buried in these enormous pyramids .

Queen Hetepheres Tomb

More recently Mark Lehner has suggested that the Hetepheres Tomb discovered by Reisner was Hetepheres' original tomb - her mummy was removed a later stage to a burial in a satellite pyramid (of Khufu's pyramid) where it was destroyed in antiquity:

Tomb of Queen Hetepheres (picture from the tomb - museum of fine arts Boston, pictures of objects from the tomb - Cairo Museum).

Important Links Related to Khufu Pharaoh | Khufu Pyramid Construction | Great Pyramid was built by Ramps | Builder of Great Pyramid | How the great pyramid was built | Synthetic Blocks 

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