It’s amazing the speed with which the lush-green farmland irrigated by the Nile gives way to nothing but sand and rocks. This modest hillside, completely overlooked by most tourists’ itineraries, is home to several 3,500 year old rock-cut tombs. These tombs were for two local governors, a soldier, and a priest. Each was a single chamber with a round vaulted roof. Even in November, and even though they were shallow with large doors, they were quite warm.
Ahmose-Son-of-Abana was a soldier, and he dedicated most of the space in his tomb to chronicle his military successes in completing expelling the Hyksos from Egypt. The hieroglyphics were not finished–work usually stops on tombs once the person has died– and you can still see the red vertical guidelines the ancient craftsmen were using to keep their columns straight. Apparently, this tomb is an extremely valuable source of information for Egyptologists and the only known documentation of the campaign against the Hyksos.
As you can see the tombs were defaced at various times by graffiti. I have enough pictures of tomb and temple graffiti I am saving it for an entire separate post!
Sometimes I come across unremarkable photos that I took and am left asking myself, “What the hell is this?” When I first saw this photo, I was similarly like…it’s a small fragment, the colors aren’t that great, there are some dudes clearly prostrating themselves in front of someone important….but why did I take this photo? Then I saw the dog, who is looking backward over his shoulder, and remembered why I took the photo! The looking over the shoulder is the dog equivalent of the prostrating humans…showing deference to the important person who you can’t see to the right of this photo. I must say, I was so absorbed in taking photos that I missed like 50 percent of what our tour guide said. When I was reading my giant Egyptian tome, I kept asking Severin, “Did you know X, Y, Z?” and the response was always, “Yes, we learned about that at ________.” I don’t do well in oral learning, unless I have a notebook to write stuff down. I have to read something to actually remember it. Or take a photo of it and remember the story four months later.
This was one of my favorite scenes, from the tomb of Paheri. It shows Egyptians harvesting wine. I love the grape orchard and everyone busily laboring away.
Below is from the Tomb of Renni. The motifs in all the tombs are very similar, obviously, but I like how you can see a slightly different style in each one.
All-in-all, these were splendid little tombs. It was a great morning to get off the boat, walk around a bit, and see some treasures that lay just a bit off the beaten path.
