Word: tombs
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Because of his marathon reign, historians already know a great deal about Ramesses and the customs of his day. But the newly explored tomb suddenly presents scholars with all sorts 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...
...this 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-most of them broken. "Clearly," says Weeks, "the tomb was pretty well gone over in ancient times." The archaeologists have tracked down a record of one of those robberies, which occurred in about 1150 B.C. A 3,000-year-old papyrus fragment housed in a museum in Turin, Italy, recounts the trial of a thief who was caught in the Valley of the Kings. He confessed under torture that...
Additional artifacts could lie buried if, as Weeks believes, the tomb had an 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.-strong evidence of stairways. Says Weeks: "I think there are more rooms on the lower level." Moreover, while the doors that line the corridors all lead to identical 10-ft. by 10-ft. chambers, the openings themselves are only about 2 1/2 ft. wide, too narrow to accommodate a prince's sarcophagus. That suggests to Weeks that the rooms...
That hope is based largely on the paintings and carvings adorning the tomb walls. Because of floods, vibrations from buses, and a leaky sewage pipe built over the tomb's entrance, only hand-size fragments remain of some of the scenes painted by ancient artists. Others, however, are nearly whole. "Some of the paint," says Weeks, "is as bright and fresh as the day it was applied...
Hieroglyphics above each painting make it clear that the pharaoh's first, second, seventh and 15th sons, at the very least, 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, goddess 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...