HaCKeRz KrOnIcKLeZ 3/HaCKeRz_KrOnIcKLeZ.iso/anarchy/essays/schoolsucks/egypt.txt

Text File | 1996-04-27 | 11KB | 190 lines

Early Western Civilization
Egyption Tomb 5

        Egyptologists had lost interest in the site of tomb 5, which had been
explored and looted decades ago.  Therefore, they wanted to give way to
a parking lot.  However, no one would have ever known the treasure that
lay only 200 ft.  from King TutÆs resting place which was beyond a few
rubble strewn rooms that previous excavators had used to hold their
debris.

        Dr. Kent Weeks, an Egyptologist with the American  University in Cairo,
wanted to be sure the new parking facility wouldnÆt destroy anything
important.  Thus, Dr. weeks embarked in 1988 on one final exploration of
the old dumping ground.  Eventually he was able to pry open a door
blocked for thousands of years, and announced the discovery of a life
time.  "We found ourselves in a corridor," he remembers.  "On each side
were 10 doors and at end there was a statue of Osiris, the god of the
afterlife."

        The tomb is mostly unexcavated and the chambers are choked with debris,
Weeks is convinced that there are more rooms on a lower level, bringing
the total number to more than 100.  That would make tomb 5 the biggest
and most complex tomb ever found in Egypt, and quite conceivable the
resting place of up to 50 sons of Ramesses II, perhaps the best known of
all the pharaohs, the ruler believed to have been MosesÆnemesis in the
book of Exodus.

        The Valley of the Kings, in which Tomb 5 is located,  is just across
the Nile River from Luxor, Egypt.  It is never exactly been off the
beaten track.  Tourism has been brisk in the valley for millenniums:
graffiti scrawled on tomb walls proves that Greek and Roman travelers
stopped here to gaze at the wall paintings and hieroglyphics that were
already old long before the birth of Christ.  Archaeologists have been
coming for centuries too.  Napoleon brought his own  team of excavators
when he invaded  in 1798, and a series of expeditions in 19th and early
20th centuries uncovered one tomb after another.  A total of 61 burial
spots had been found by the time the British explorer Howard Carter
opened the treasure-laden tomb of King Tutankhamun in 1922.

        BritainÆs  James Burton had burrowed into the site of Tomb 5 in 1820,
and decided that there was nothing inside.  A dismissive Carter used its
entryway as a place to dump the debris he was hauling out of TutÆs tomb.

        In the late 1980s, came the proposed parking area and WeeksÆ concern.
His 1988 foray made it clear that the tomb wasnÆt dull as Burton said.
Elaborate carvings  covered walls  and referred to Ramesses II, whose
own tomb was just 100 ft. away.  The wall inscriptions on the companion
crypt mentioned two of RamessesÆ52 known sons, implying some of the
royal offspring might have been buried within.  Then, came last monthÆs
astonishing announcement.

        For treasure, the tomb probably wonÆt come to close to TutÆs because
robbers apparently plundered the chamber long time ago.  No gold or fine
jewelry has been found  so far, and Weeks does not expect to find any
riches to speak of.  The carvings and inscriptions Weeks and his friends
have seen, along with thousands of artifacts such as beads, fragments of
jars that were used to store the organs of the deceased, and mummified
body parts which tell historians a great amount about ancient Egypt
during the reign of its most important king.  "Egyptians do not call him
Ramesses II," Sabry Abd El Aziz, director of antiquities for the Qurna
region said.  " We call him Ramesses al-Akbar which means Ramesses the
Great."

        During his 67 years on the throne stretching from 1279 B.C. to 1212 B.
C., Ramesses could have filled an ancient edition of the Guinness  Book
of Records all by himself: he built more temples, obelisks and
monuments; took more wives(eight, not counting concubines) and claimed
to have sired more children (as many as 162, by some accounts) than any
other pharaoh in history.  He presided over an empire that stretched
from present-day Libya to Iraq in the east, as far north as Turkey and
southward into the Sudan.

        Today, historians know a great deal about Ramesses and the customs of
his day.  However, the newly explored tomb suddenly presents scholars
with all sort of puzzles to ponder.  For one thing, many of the tombs in
the Valley of the Kings are syringe-like, plunging straight as a needle
into the steep hillsides.  For reasons nobody yet knows, says Weeks,
this one "is more like an octopus, with a body surrounded by tentacles."

        The body in this case is an enormous square room, at least 50 ft. on a
side and divided by 16 massive columns.  In Ramesses æday the room would
have seemed positively cavernous; now it is filled nearly to the top
with rubble washed in over the centuries by infrequent flash floods.
Anyone who wants to traverse the chamber has to crawl through a tight
passage, lighted by a string of dim electric light bulbs where the dirt
has been painstakingly cleared away.

        At the end of his claustrophobic journey lies the door Weeks found, and
the relatively  spacious corridors beyond.  It is here, as well as in
two outermost rooms that the artifacts were discovered.  Weeks says,
"The tomb was pretty well gone over in ancient times."  The
archaeologists have tracked down a record of one of those robberies
which in about 1150 B.C.  A 3,000 year old papyrus fragment housed in a
museum in Turin, Italy which recounts the trial of a thief who was
caught in the Valley of the Kings.  He confessed under torture that he
had broken into Ramesses IIÆs tomb and then returned the next night  to
rob the tomb of RamessesÆchildren, which across the path.

        Additional artifacts could lie buried if,  as Weeks believes, the tomb
had unusual split level design.  The ceilings of the corridors to the
left and right of the statue of Osiris slope downward and then drop
abruptly about 4 ft.  Moreover, the doors that line the corridors all
lead to identical 10 ft. by 10 ft. chambers.  The openings are only
about 2.5 ft. wide which is too narrow to accommodate a princeÆs
sarcophagus.  That suggests to Weeks that the rooms werenÆt burial
chambers but rather chapels for funeral offerings.

        Hieroglyphics above each painting make it clear that the pharaohÆs
firs, second, seventh, and 15th sons were buried in Tomb 5.  Many of the
engravings show Ramesses presenting one or another of the newly deceased
young men to Re-Harakhty, the god of the sun; Horus, the falcon headed
god of the sky; or Hathor, goddes of motherhood, who is often depicted
as a cow. These scenes reflect the belief that pharaohs were demigods
while alive and that life was merely a short term way station on the
road to full deity.

        Anything that researchers learn in Tomb 5 about RamessesÆoldest son,
Amen-hir-khopshef, could be especially significant to religion
scholars.  Cautions Weeks: " IÆm not saying that we will prove the
validity of the Bible,but scholars are hungry for any new information
about this crucial time in Judeo-Christian history."

        The great buildings boom got under way as soon as Ramesses took throne
at age 25, right after he discovered that the great temple his father
Seti I had begun at Abydos was a shambles.  The new pharaoh summoned his
coursties to hear his plans for completing the work.  Then, he went on
to built dozens of monuments, including a temple at Luxor and Karnak and
the cliff temples at Abu Simbel which were rescued from waters rising
behind the Aswan Dam in the 1960s.

        In an age when life expectancy could not have been much more than 40,
it must have seemed to his subjects that Ramesses would never die.  At
92, the pharaoh went to join his ancestors and some of his sons in the
Valley of the Kings.  His internal organs were removed and placed in
vessels known as canopic jars, and the body was embalmed and gently
wrapped in cloth.  Archaeologists found that the embalmers has even
stuffed peppercorns into the monarchÆs nostrils to keep his aquiline
nose from being flattened by the wrappings.

        Ramesses was then placed in a sarcophagus and interred, along with
everything he would need to travel through the afterlife: The Book of
the Dead, containing spells that would give the pharaoh access to the
netherworld; tiny statuettes known as Ushabti, which would come alive to
help the dead king perform labors for the gods; offering of food and
wine; jewelry and even furniture to make the afterlife more
comfortable.  ItÆs likely, say scholars that Ramesses IIÆs tomb was
originally far richer and more elaborate than King TutÆs.

        Unlike several other tombs in the valley, RamessesÆhas never been fully
excavated.  A French team is clearing it now, and the entire tomb could
be ready for visitors within five years, but it is not expected to offer
archaeologists any surprises.  Tomb 5 is a completly different story.
Weeks says " We have never found a multiple burial of a pharaohÆs
children.  We have no idea at all what happened to the most of the
pharaohÆs children."  Archaeologists either have to assume that Ramesses
II buried his children in a unique way, or they have to consider the
possibility that theyÆve overlooked a major type of royal tomb.

        Archaelogists  still havenÆt resolved many basic questions about Tomb
5; when the tomb was built, over what priod of time it was used.  Some
answers could pop up as the excavations progress. Says Weeks " LetÆs
hope the tomb yields a whole lot of new bodies. Then, medicos can get to
work on them, and find out what therse princes were like, whether they
had toothaches, how long they lived."

        WeeksÆteam plans to return to Tomb 5 for the month of July.  Their goal
is to get enough inside to explore the staircases  and lower level.
Weeks stimates that it will take at least five years to study and map
the entire tomb, protect the decorations, install climate controls and
electricity and shore up the precarious sections.  Says Abdel Halim Nur
el Din, secretary-general of egyptÆs Supreme Council of Antiquites:  "
WeÆre in no hurry to open this tomb to the public.  We already have 10
or 12 that they can visit."  It is more improtant to preserve the tombs
that have already been excavated, say the Egyptians, than make new ones
accessible.

        The recent find gives scholars hope that more can be discovered  even
in this most explored of EgyptÆs archaeological sites.  Notes the
antiquities departmentÆs Abd El Aziz: " We still havenÆt found the tombs
of Amenhotep I or Ramesses VIII," he says.  " We have 62 tombs in the
Valley of the Kings, but in the Western Valley, which runs perpendicular
to it, we have discovered only two tombs.

        The pharaohs would be pleased to know they have held on to a few of
their secrets.  After all, they dug their tombs deep into hillsides,
where the crypts would be safe from the rabble and robbers.  However,
they never counted on was the need for parking lots