T he following volume contains a record of work done in the Theban Necropolis during the years 1907-11. In the editing of this report I have availed myself of the generous help of several scholars, whose names appear at the heads of the chapters they have contributed. To these gentlemen I wish to tender my sincere thanks for their co-operation. Mr. Howard Carter has been in charge of all operations; and whatever successes have resulted from our labours are due to his unremitting watchfulness and

T HE necropolis of Thebes—the great city which for so many centuries had been the capital of Egypt—lies on the western side of the Nile valley, on the margin of the desert opposite the modern village of Luxor. No ancient site has yielded a greater harvest of antiquities than this famous stretch of rocky land. From time immemorial it has been the profitable hunting-ground of the tomb robber; for more than a century a flourishing trade in its antiquities has been carried on by the natives of the d

T HOUGH partly excavated in the rock at the side of a foot-hill the Mortuary Chapel of Teta-ky and his family is mainly a crude mud-brick construction, with its actual sepulchres subterranean: these latter are approached from a vertical shaft in the centre of the fore-court ( Pl. I . 1 and 2). The peculiar irregularity of the courtyard and buildings, which will be seen from the plan ( Pl. II ), seems due, in the first place, to the shape of the site, and, secondly, to the fact that this particul

T HE following description of the paintings of the tomb of Teta-ky is taken from notes I made in 1909 when I visited Lord Carnarvon’s excavations. The notes I made at that time were not then intended for publication. This fact will explain their briefness. The tomb of Teta-ky having unfortunately been mostly destroyed by natives since that date, the copy of the texts and pictures that I took on the occasion of my visit in 1909, together with Mr. Howard Carter’s photographs, are the only remainin

T HE discovery of Model Sarcophagi containing Funerary Statuettes in small holes on the four sides of the entrance to the mummy shaft (see Pl. II and p. 13) of Teta-ky’s tomb is of considerable interest; it is, I believe, the first recorded instance of shawabti figures having been found in such positions. They were placed in the four holes in pairs; each model coffin and figure bears a different name, but curiously enough, that of Teta-ky, whose body was buried in the sarcophagus chamber at the

T HE panoramic view given in Pl. XIII clearly shows the nineteen different sites that were excavated and examined in this particular part of the necropolis during 1909 and 1910. Many were experimental excavations made on the chance of there being hidden tombs, but as several sites gave no results it is unnecessary to describe them. Site 3. A tier of tombs, plundered, and most of them used in later times, probably by Copts, as dwellings. In the corner of the court of the principal tomb of this se

T HE site between the native house ‘Beit el Meleitên’ and the village mosque, about one hundred and fifty metres north-east of the mouth of the Dêr el Bahari valley, was examined in 1908, and as it resulted in the discovery of a XVIIth Dynasty tomb (No. 9), it was continued in the following year 1909. We began by exhaustively clearing tomb No. 9 that for the sake of protection during the interim had been re-covered with earth. In 1908 the front court, pit, and pit-chamber had been investigated:

T HE writing tablet (Carnarvon Tablet I) is a document of the highest historical importance, preserving as it does a contemporary record of the conflict of the Theban Dynasty with the Hyksos. On the face of the tablet eight lines of hieratic contain the introduction to the famous Proverbs of Ptah-hetep, setting forth how the Wazir Ptah-hetep, son of a king, spoke to his King Assa of the advance of old age upon him and the diminution of all his powers, and requested that he might delegate his dut

A DJOINING the site of Tomb 9 is the ‘Valley’-Temple to the Dromos of Hatshepsût’s Mortuary Chapel at Dêr el Bahari (Site 14, Pl. XXX ). It was first discovered by the excavation of the tomb No. 9, which exposed some of its stone-work, and it was a surprise to find here, in such a well-known place, a finely built limestone construction of considerable proportions quite near to the surface. At the beginning this building was a puzzle to us, the part revealed in season 1909 being only a long piece

C OVERING the upper stratum of the sites explored in the Birâbi were numerous brick-vaulted graves, mostly found not more than a metre or so beneath the surface rubbish ( Pl. XXXIII ). Probably when these vault-graves were first made they actually stood above the surface, their superstructures being in all probability intended to be exposed, as would be gathered from the fact of their external walls showing, in some cases, painted decoration upon the plaster still adhering to them ( Pl. XXXIV .

T HE two papyri which I propose to call in future Papyrus Carnarvon I and II are of great importance on account of their date. [21] They both bear the protocol of a local king who reigned in Upper Egypt under Ptolemaios Epiphanes (205-181 B.C. ). The king is named Harmachis, and so far there are known to exist only three other contracts of his time, two in the Berlin Museum (Demotic Pap. Berlin, Nos. 3142-4, 3145), dated in his third and sixth years, and another mentioned in the Revue Égyptologi

I N 1911 many large paving slabs of limestone with positions of columns marked by circles chiselled upon them were uncovered (see plan, Pl. XXX . 40). These were immediately below a number of Ptolemaic vault-graves, and practically on the same level as the pavement of the Upper Court and some twenty-eight metres south of the boundary wall of the ‘Valley’-Temple. As far as the work of this season allowed, eleven of these substructures were revealed, giving enough proof that a late building of som

I N the removal of the lower strata of Site 14 the mass of sand, amounting to many thousands of cubic metres, contained but few things to which any great importance could be attached. In fact, days were passed while extricating the masonry of the ‘Valley’-Temple without hardly a single object coming to light. Among the few things discovered the most important were:— 1. A genealogical stela in limestone, measuring 44 x 29 cms., coloured, and of the ‘Household of the mother of the Mer Shen of Amen

D EEP below the foundations of the ‘Valley’-Temple of Queen Hatshepsût in the Birâbi are rock-hewn tombs, or pit and corridor types, dating from the XIIth Dynasty on to the Intermediate Period. This fact was first ascertained in 1910, and in that year twelve tombs of this necropolis were opened. Their exploration was continued in 1911, when four more were revealed, and three out of the four were thoroughly investigated. All the graves examined during the two seasons had had their original burial

89. Wooden stela of Ihŷ ( Pl. LXXV ). This tablet is composed of two boards held together by pegs or dowels, and covered with a fine coat of stucco, the surface of which has been polished to receive the writing. Upon it are the following representations:—Above, to the right, is drawn the sacred Barque of Sokaris; below, to the left, is figured the deceased with staff and sceptre, and before him, a boy offering a goose, a table with offerings, a lotus-flower, loaves of bread, joints of meat, &amp

With the exception of the fragments of flower-stalks (Fig. 2 A) of some species of Compositae, the specimens figured here are all of well-known ancient Egyptian plants. Two of them, the Mimusops Schimperi and the Balanites aegyptiaca , are not now known in Egypt proper. A , B , C , D , E , F , G , H , I , J , K , L , M , N , O , P , Q , R , S , T , U , V , W , Y , Z...