SCIENCE / MEDICINE : Egyptian Tombs Yield Some Intriguing New Insights : Archeology: Discoveries in the Sakkara necropolis may help answer some long-debated questions on a turbulent, colorful chapter in history.
On a chilly February morning in 1986, archeologists Geoffrey T. Martin and Jacobus van Dijk descended into the underground tomb of Ramose, a minor functionary of Egypt’s 18th Dynasty.
Their goal was a 60-foot-deep shaft they had discovered a few days before after breaking through a barrier erected by grave robbers perhaps centuries earlier. Curiosity about what lay at the foot of the shaft consumed them, but prudence had dictated waiting until the stale air in the shaft had been replaced with fresh oxygen.
Climbing down a rope ladder, they emerged at a door that opened on a short, spiral staircase leading to a series of rooms. The walls of those rooms were covered with what Martin called “the most wonderful reliefs and inscriptions, in pristine condition”--an unusual finding because underground chambers in Egypt were rarely decorated.
As they began deciphering the texts, Van Dijk turned to Martin and exclaimed, “My God, it’s Maya!” Almost immediately after, their generator on the surface failed and they were left in the dark for more than an hour to discuss the import of their find.
Their discovery was the culmination of a 10-year search at Sakkara, the official cemetery of Memphis, the ancient capital of Egypt about 20 miles south of Cairo.
Maya (who had no relationship to the Maya of Central America) had been Tutankhamen’s treasurer and one of the most powerful men during the boy-king’s short reign. Martin’s exploration of his tomb and others discovered in the Sakkara necropolis is helping to transform researchers’ understanding of Egyptian society more than 3,000 years ago.
Scientists hope the newly discovered tombs will yield information about the organization of government, the economy, the relationships of nobility and changes in religious and artistic traditions.
Martin’s work, for example, should enable many isolated masterpieces in the world’s museums, collected haphazardly during the 19th Century, to be linked to the Sakkara monuments from which they originally came and placed in their proper context.
The excavations of those early archeologists, said Egyptologist Cathleen Keller of UC Berkeley, “was like cutting pieces out of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Individually, we can see that technically the pieces are quite nice, but we can learn a lot more and appreciate them better when we see the whole thing together.”
The 18th Dynasty was a turbulent, colorful period in Egypt’s history. It has fascinated historians because it is, in the words of Yale University Egyptologist Mark Lehner, “the prime romance novel of ancient Egypt.”
The leading figure of the 18th Dynasty was Akhenaten, husband of the beauteous Nefertiti. Akhenaten wrenched Egyptian society by discarding the multiple gods of his people and adopting monotheism, establishing the cult of Aten, the sun god or solar disk, whom he believed to be the sole creator of the universe. He also established a new Egyptian capital at Tell el-Amarna, dedicated to the celebration of Aten.
Historians have generally considered Akhenaten to be a pacifist who allowed Egyptian influence over what is now Syria, Lebanon, Israel and Lybia to wane, but new evidence from the tombs leads Martin, an Egyptologist at University College in London, to believe that to be an oversimplification.
“There were confederacies of people in Western Asia trying to break away,” he said in a telephone interview. “Why he didn’t fight them well is still a mystery, but he did send armies to Nubia and Western Asia.”
When Akhenaten died in 1334 BC, there was a short interregnum before Nefertiti assumed the throne briefly. She was followed by Akhenaten’s son-in-law Tutankhamen, who moved the Egyptian capital back to Thebes.
During Tutankhamen’s rule, the commander-in-chief of his forces, Horemheb, resubjugated the surrounding lands. Tax money to support Horemheb’s missions, as well as the building of Tutankamen’s magnificent tomb, was raised by Maya.
When Tutankhamen died at 19, no member of the royal lineage was left. Eventually, Horemheb assumed the throne himself.
“We know more about this royal family than that of any other period in Egyptian history, but there are still many unanswered questions,” Lehner said. Among the more important: What brought Akhenaten’s religion to an end? Who reigned before Nefertiti? What brought Nefertiti’s reign to an end and where is her tomb? Why didn’t a member of Horemheb’s family assume the throne after his death?
Those are some of the questions Martin and others, particularly the Egyptian Antiquities Assn., are trying to answer at the Sakkara necropolis. So far, they have studied fewer than a dozen tombs and Martin estimates that “literally scores more” remain hidden beneath the shifting sands.
Martin has just published a two-volume tome describing Akhenaten’s tomb at Amarna. One highlight of the books is a reinterpretation of a major relief from the tomb. He concluded that the relief shows the death of Tutankhamen’s mother during childbirth.
In another new book, to be published this fall, Martin describes for the first time the antiquities found in Horemheb’s tomb at Sakkara. He will discuss those tombs and Maya’s in a symposium Saturday at the Los Angeles Museum of Natural History.
Unlike the royal burial tombs at Thebes, which were hewed from massive sandstone formations, the tombs of lesser functionaries at Sakkara were miniature temples built on the surface, with elaborate below-ground vaults cut from stone. The surface structures have generally been destroyed by vandals and weathering, leaving their foundations hidden by the omnipresent sand.
Horemheb’s tomb, found by Martin while he was searching for Maya’s, has provided new information about Horemheb’s conquests. Scenes from those expeditions, Martin said, “are shown in an extremely vivid way, providing some of the best art surviving from ancient Egypt.”
These reliefs show foreign leaders submitting to Horemheb, the leaders being manhandled by Egyptian soldiers, and prisoners being paraded before Tutankhamen and his queen. “These are extraordinarily unusual scenes that we don’t find in other monuments,” Martin said.
The tomb has also given up the skeletal remains of a young woman and her unborn fetus or newborn child--perhaps Horemheb’s wife Mutnodjnet. “If she died in childbirth, that would explain why he was not succeeded by a member of his family,” Keller said. It is also possible, however, that the body was placed in the tomb at a later date.
Martin also found a fragment bearing the date of year 13 of Horemheb’s reign, indicating that he ruled at least five years longer than was previously believed.
Maya’s tomb has so far been explored less thoroughly. Martin and Van Dijk of the Leiden Museum in the Netherlands spent their first field season in 1987 excavating the surface structures. Not until the next season did they begin surveying the underground chambers, which had been thoroughly stripped by vandals and robbers.
Of the three chambers underground, Martin said, one was intact and two had been smashed to pieces in antiquity. The intact room has allowed the researchers to flesh out Maya’s family history, yielding the names of his two daughters, his parents, his stepmother and other family members.
“Unfortunately, he was a little bit reticent about his career” in the reliefs, Martin says. One of them, however, does show him receiving foreign prisoners from Western Asia.
In both Maya’s and Horemheb’s tombs, there is little commentary to accompany the reliefs and provide historical perspective. “In an ideal world, we would have a lot of inscription to go with the work, but . . . it was usually carved at the tops of walls, which were the first parts to be dismantled and reused.”
During the upcoming field season this winter, Martin plans to reassemble the smashed reliefs. He is hopeful that, once assembled, the reliefs will yield more information about this colorful period in history.
For information about the Saturday symposium at the Museum of Natural History, contact Noel Sweitzer at (213) 231-1104.
