Theban Mapping Project Report on the 2010-2011 Field Season in KV 5: Chambers 5, 6 and 22

Kent R. Weeks

It took three seasons of work before we could reach and finally clear the layers of flood debris covering the floor of chamber 5 and determine whether the room was the burial place of one of the sons of Rameses II. What we learned makes for a complicated and frustratingly vague story.1

Apparently, chamber 5 was originally intended to serve as a Chariot Hall, called chamber F in the terminology of Elisabeth Thomas.2 A descending stair and ramp combination between two rows of pillars presumably would have led down through the chambers floor to a corridor that, in turn, led to a burial chamber, what Thomas would label chamber J. That plan was changed, however, for reasons we do not know; the plan of chamber F was altered and it became burial chamber J. This required converting the beginning of a corridor at the base of the stairs into a wider lower level in the middle of the room, and removing one of its six pillars in order to make room for the sarcophagus that would then have been installed here. This alteration in plan may have taken place in the twenty-second year of Rameses IIs reign, a date mentioned in a workmans graffito painted on the chambers ceiling adjacent to pillar E, at the point at which cutting on the lower level would have begun. We cannot be certain which of the sons of Rameses II was buried in chamber 5. The changes to the chambers plan suggest that the sons death was unexpected and his burial hastily arranged. But that in turn suggests that work had begun on the burial place while the son was still alive, and that does not square with our earlier conjectures about how and why KV 5 grew in such an unusual and complicated fashion.3 (We argued that KV 5 was not a pre-planned family mausoleum, but a burial complex that was enlarged on an ad hoc, as-needed basis. That still seems the most logical explanation of its odd layout.)

Figure 1: Axonometric drawing of KV 5, as of December, 2009. Drawing by Walton Chan.

Figure 2: Plan of KV 5, as of December, 2009. Drawing by Walton Chan.

Chamber 5 is the third largest of the 130+ chambers in KV 5 (Table 1). When we first crawled into it, the room was in a more dangerous condition than any other part of the tomb. Blocks of limestone bedrock that weighed many tons had fallen from the ceiling, exposing wide fractures and fissures that had weakened the remaining bedrock and left it ready to collapse. Fallen limestone choked the room; large slabs hung precariously from the ceiling; the available crawlspace, only a few centimeters high, offered the only access to the room; and the razor-sharp edges of the limestone shards made moving inside a painful experience. Access to chamber 5 was difficult and dangerous. At the time (1994), we wrote that the ceiling is so badly damaged (largely, we think, from the vibrations of tourist buses on the roadway immediately adjacent), that it [chamber 5] probably can only be cleared by digging into it through the overriding bedrock and installing an entirely new roof.4

Plate 1: Fallen ceiling blocks during clearing of Chamber 5, 2010. That was too pessimistic. During three later field seasons (in 2007, 2008, and 2009), after conducting extensive geological and engineering surveys, we were able to clear chamber 5 of most of its fallen bedrockabout 50 tons of it. Nearly all that stone had collapsed in relatively recent times and lay atop earlier, stratified flood debris. Working from the chambers entrance clockwise around the room, we were able to break the limestone into manageable pieces that our workmen could carry from the tomb. Over two hundred truckloads of stone were carted away over a three-year period. As quarrymen removed the fallen stone, our engineers stabilized the remaining bedrock, patching fissures and installing steel supports. By the beginning of the 2010-2011 field season, we had strengthened its walls, pillars, and ceiling, and chamber 5 was structurally stable enough that we could concentrate on removing the flood debris that filled the room to a depth of about two meters. As we worked, from 26 December 2010 to 13 February 2011, we were able to study the architecture and contents of chamber 5 in some detail. Fifteen years ago, we observed that, Chamber 5 promises to be especially important in understanding KV 5. 5 That has proved to be correct.

Table 1: Dimensions of the Four Largest Chambers in KV 56 ________________________________________________________________________ Chamber Length Width Height Area Volume ________________________________________________________________________ 3 4 5 15.64m 12.93m 10.50m 15.44m 8.85m 9.73m 2.63m 2.00m 2.08m 244.16 m 114.63 m 101.85 m 582.94 m 229.26 m 195.55 m

14 6.40m 11.12m 2.55m 71.75 m 182.49 m _______________________________________________________________________

Magical Brick Niches. Our first examination of chamber 5 took place in June, 1994. It was a cursory look--necessarily so, given the rooms precarious state--but even at this early stage we believed that it had served as a burial chamber. Our initial reason was the presence of four magical brick niches, one cut into each of the chambers walls (Table 2 and figure 3). Such niches are commonly found in royal tombs in the Valley of the Kings from the reign of Thutmosis XXX on, and in the tombs of New Kingdom queens, especially those of the wives of Rameses II. They distribute themselves in several ways in those tombs burial chambers, but during the Nineteenth Dynasty they tended to be four in number, cut into each of the chambers four walls.7 On average, the niches in other KV tombs are larger, at least in height and width, than the four in KV 5 (table 2). In each niche, a small mud brick would have been placed to serve as the base for a small amulet or statuette: a ushabti in the north wall niche, a reed or flame in the south, a figure of Anubis in the east, and a djed-pillar in the west.8 The bricks were often painted with a short quote from Chapter 151 of the Book of the Dead. In chamber 5, the interior surfaces of each niche were covered with a 0.4 cm. layer of plaster. After the bricks and figures had been placed inside, it is likely that the niches were plastered over and the wall then decorated.9 An uninscribed magical brick (object 5.001, see below) was found on the floor of chamber 5 and perhaps comes from here.

Table 2: Magical Brick Niches in Chamber 5 (Dimensions in cms.)

Designation

Wall

Distance from Below ceiling Ht W Depth Plastered Corner interior? 160cm, SW 186cm, NW 140cm, NW 96cm, NE -66 -72 -62 -64 29 27 33 26 20 20 26 17 21 19 30 18 Yes Yes Yes Yes

Niche A Niche B Niche C Niche D

S W N E

KV Average10 45 30 20 ________________________________________________________________________ Pillars. Clearing in 2011 lent further support to the idea that chamber 5 had been a burial chamber, but it also complicated the rooms history. In the New Kingdom, burial chambers in KV tombs were called The Hall in Which One Rests, or The House of Gold.(table 3).11 .Following Thomas, we label them Chamber J. There are several variations in their plans, but chamber 5 differs significantly from all of them. For example, chamber 5 has two parallel rows of three pillars each, a total of six pillars. Such rows of pillars are a feature of burial chambers in several tombs in the Valley of the Kings, but rows of four pillars are more common than six (as in KV 8, 11, 14, and 15), and there are also examples of two-pillar rows (in KV 47 and 9). In fact, only KV 17, KV 57 and KV 5 have six pillars. Further, these rows of pillars usually lie at right angles to the entrance to the chamber; in chamber 5, they parallel the north-south axis of the entrance gate.

Figure 3: Plan of Chamber 5, March, 2011. Drawing by Kent R. Weeks. Pillars are not unique to burial chambers. They are found in other rooms as well, most prominently in the room we designate as chamber F, a room that in ancient times was called the Chariot Hall.12 All examples of Chamber F in Valley of the Kings tombs have two pillars or four.13

Because chamber 5 differs from the typical KV plans of both chambers F and J, our initial opinion--that chamber 5 was used as a burial chamber (J)--shifted, and we began to think that it might instead have been a pillared hall (F). Arguments can be made for and against both ideas, and as we noted above, we now believe that it had been both, first cut as chamber F, then remodeled to become chamber J. That explains why chamber 5 shares several features in common with both chambers F and J in KV tombs: Evidence that chamber 5 was cut to serve as a Chariot Hall (chamber F): 1. Its dimensions are similar to those of chamber F in other KV tombs (table 3). 2. Its pillars lie in two rows that parallel the axis of the entrance, not at right angles to it. 3. The slope, tread height and width, and total depth of the central descending staircase are similar to those found in chamber F in other KV tombs. Evidence that chamber 5 was cut as a burial chamber (J): 1. The number of pillars, six, is found in other KV burial chambers (J), but not in examples of chamber F (table 4). 2. There are four magical brick niches in its walls, and such niches are found only in burial chambers. 3. The chamber is almost perfectly square, not rectangular (table 3) 4. The chamber has both an upper and a lower level, a common feature in New Kingdom royal tomb burial chambers.

Pillars E and F in chamber 5 have features unique to KV 5. The original Pillar E was removed when the room was converted to a burial chamber and the lower level was cut. A new pillar, built of small, roughly cut stone blocks, was installed to its immediate west. Once the original pillar had been removed, it became apparent that the ceiling was structurally unstable, and so a new pillar was installed in order to prevent its collapse. Fear of collapse may also be the reason that pillar F was not removed, but left standing within the lower level of the chamber floor. (If so, perhaps the recessed areas on the north and south sides of pillar F served as canopic chest emplacements or storage spaces for other funerary furniture.)

Plate 2: View of Chamber 5, to the north.

Plate 3: View of Chamber 5, to the north.

Plate 4: Pillar E, east face.

Flood debris. Beneath the fallen limestone ceiling blocks, chamber 5 was filled to a depth of about two meters with perhaps eleven thin (average thickness about 15 cm.) strata of almost pure Nile silt, mixed silt and sand, or densely packed small limestone chips (pl. 5). Perhaps some of this material entered the chamber through two large fractures in the bedrock that extended from chamber 5 to the surface of the hillside some 4 to 6 meters above. But most of it washed into the chamber through the tomb entrance during the flood events that reached every part of KV 5. Because there are several doorways and pillars between the entrance of chamber 5 and the tombs entrance, and a marked change in floor level as well as a 90 degree change in direction in chamber 3, the flood waters and the debris they carried were significantly slowed before entering chamber 5. Its lack of speed and power meant that floods could carry only small, relatively light weight objects, and this explains the small size and minor amounts of stones, shards, and other objects washed into the chamber. Here, the objects in the debris are mostly potsherds of Christian, Roman, Late Dynastic, and New Kingdom date, in that order of frequency. There is no way to correlate the strata here with those in other parts of the tomb, or with the strata in other KV tombs.

Plate 5: Stratified flood debris between pillar F (at right) and north wall of Chamber 5 (at left) Objects. Few objects were found in the debris: 5.01 Magical brick. In flood debris, 50 cm. above floor adjacent to the east wall, near niche D. Made of silt and measured 6.8 x 4.8 x 3.5 cm. Small holes (ca. 0.4 cm.) presumably for dowels used to mount an amulet or statuette, pierced one side; two of them extended through the brick. (Pls. 8 and 9) 5.02 Wall shard of a small blue faience vessel decorated with black painted designs. 7.1 x 5.0 x 1.0 cm. (Pl. 7) 5.03 Fragment of a cut and sanded wooden plank, perhaps originally part of a coffin, with a 1.2 cm. dowel hole drilled in one corner. 10.0 x 7.3 x 2.5 cm. (Pl. 6) 5.04 Tubular faience light blue bead, 0.9 x 0.2 cm. Because of its delicate composition, it is likely that 5.01 is original to KV 5, for had it been swept in with flood debris from outside, it almost certainly would have been destroyed. The other objects may have washed in from elsewhere in the Valley of the Kings. None can be dated with certainty.

Plates 6-9: Objects 5.03, 5.02, and two views of 5.01.

Wall decoration. There is evidence that every wall and pillar in chamber 5, like every wall and pillar in KV 5 generally, was decorated. And, like most decoration in KV 5, it was painted, and sometimes also carved, on a thick layer of plaster applied to rough wall surfaces. The plaster has almost completely disappeared because of the water and high humidity brought into the tomb by several flood events over the past three thousand years. We were able to recover only a few dozen bits of decorated plaster from the debris, Few were larger than ones hand, but some bore identifiable figures or hieroglyphs. (Pl. 10 and 11)

Plates 10, 11: Plaster fragments from Chamber 3. 1. On the floor at the base of the chambers east wall, immediately to the right of niche D, lay a piece of wall plaster with the remains of a painted broad collar, identical in color and the width of its painted blue, red, and white bands to the broad collar worn by the royal son shown on the south wall of Chamber 2.14 2. Traces of a nms-headdress were found on painted plaster lying the floor below the north wall, about 3.5 meters from the chambers northeast corner. 3. Several fragments of wall plaster were found on the floor at the base of the south wall, immediately beside the gate into chamber 6. They were painted with red and blue stripes

and edged with a yellow stripe crossed with thin red lines. They almost certainly are parts of a throne similar to the pair of thrones shown on the north half of the west wall of Chamber 1 and, with less preserved color, on the south half of that same wall.15 4. On the floor near the north face of pillar F lay a fragment of plaster with a painted blue nb-sign. The glyph is about 9 cm. wide. 5. Several plaster corners with painted blue vertical borders were found on the floor around pillar B. 6. The east face of pillar A bore a painted scene with a throne identical in color and band width to thrones shown on the south wall of Chamber 1 and the east wall of Chamber 2.16 7. A plaster fragment that possibly comes from pillar B bears, in blue paint, a mr-sign that could be part of the royal name, r-ms.s mri-imn. 8. Plaster can be seen at the bottom of the west, north, and east walls of the lower level of the chamber, painted with wide, horizontal, black bands. From this scanty evidence, we are relatively confident that the walls and pillars of chamber 5 were decorated with scenes in which Rameses II presents one of his sons to various deities. Such scenes can be seen in KV 5s chambers 1, 2, 7, and 22,17 and undoubtedly there were others that have been destroyed by flash floods. This evidence suggests that in content if not in style, the walls of chamber 5, and probably other walls in KV 5 as well, resembled those in QV 44, the burial of Khaemwaset, a son of Rameses III.18

Masons marks and graffiti. Masons marks, which occur are frequent elsewhere in KV 5, are less common in chamber 5. A 1 cm wide black painted vertical line extends from 10 cm of the ceiling downward about 50 cm. on the north wall, in line with the west faces of pillars B, D, and F. Five 20 cm. long vertical black lines, each about 1 cm. wide, were painted on the east wall at irregular intervals between the north side of pillar F and the south side of pillar B. A single black dot, about 2 cm. in diameter, was painted on the south wall immediately left (east) of the chambers entrance door. About eight red dots are irregularly distributed in the upper 15 cm. of the west wall, and six more are similarly sited on the western half of the south wall. On a block of limestone that had fallen from the ceiling (in relatively recent times; it lay atop the strata of flood debris), we found a painted black graffito similar to that on the ceiling of chamber 3 (pl. 12).19 R3- h3t-sp 22 It refers to year 22, probably a regnal year of Rameses II, and its location, adjacent to pillar C, suggests that it marked the limit of work that year cutting the chambers staircase and ramp (see below).

Plate 12: Graffito on fallen ceiling block from Chamber 5.

Stabilizing the chamber. As the clearing of chamber 5 progressed, we cleaned the ceiling and walls, then patched their numerous fractures and fissures. One pillar, B, wad partially preserved from floor to ceiling, and it was restored using limestone blocks and mortar. The other pillars were preserved to no more than 1.20 m. above the floor. The original ceiling above them is gone, and we did not attempt to restore them. The largest fissures are to be seen in the overlying bedrock in the southeast quadrant of the chamber, surrounding pillar B, and here, screw jacks and steel beams were installed to support the ceiling. The greatest damage to chamber 5 occurred in the northern half of the room. Fortunately, the overlying bedrock that remains has formed a shallow dome, a natural form that has superior strength. Its shape, together with our restoration and engineering work, we believe leave chamber 5 in better structural condition than any time in its history.

Plate 13: Engineer filling fractures in ceiling of Chamber 5.

The collapse of the ceiling of chamber 5 began in antiquity. The great weight of the overlying bedrock and its numerous fractures caused the pillars to collapse early in the tombs history. As we shall see, pillar E was removed in antiquity and replaced by a pillar built of rough cut stones half a meter to its west. Perhaps it had been the first pillar to collapse. If so, pillars C, D, and F soon followed; pieces of them lie in the lowest strata of debris that fill the rooms central lower level. Flood borne debris had filled the lower level and covered the upper floor level of the chamber with about 10-20 cm. of debris before the ceiling began to collapse. The greatest damage to the ceiling occurred after flood events had ceased to deposit silts in chamber 5, and much of it may have been recent, perhaps caused by the vibrating tour buses that parked in the roadway adjacent to the then-unknown entrance to KV 5 in the 1960s and 1970s. .

Table 3: Proportions of Chambers (F) and (J) in Selected KV Tombs

Chamber F Tomb Width Length L/W Width

Chamber J Length L/W

KV 57 KV 17 KV 8 KV 5

7.53 8.43 8.95 10.40

6.88 7.95 9.42 9.70

1.09 1.06 0.95 1.07

14.12 14.26 13.75

8.95 8.38 14.87

1.57 1.70 0.92

Table 4: Dimensions and Pillars of Chambers (F) and (J) in Selected KV Tombs

Chamber F

Chamber J

Tomb # pillars volume # pillars volume ________________________________________________________________________ KV 57 KV 17 KV 8 2 4 2 157.75m 207.84m 274.20m 6 6 8 466.31m 503.00m 1111.72 m

KV 5 6 195.55 m _______________________________________________________________________ Lower Level. Extending between pillars A-B and C-D, and then widening to include pillars E and F, a lower level in chamber 5 is reached by means of a steep stair and ramp combination. Such central lower levels are common in New Kingdom royal tombs (e.g., KV 8, 9, 11, 14, 17, 35, 43, 47, and 57), but that in chamber 5 does not follow their usual plan. We belileve the reason for this is that, originally, chamber 5 was intended to serve as a Chariot Hall (chamber F), and later redesigned to serve as a burial chamber (chamber J)

Plate 14: Chamber 5, ramp-st air combination, view to south and chamber entrance. Chamber 22. In her last season of work in KV 5, Susan Weeks drew the traces of decoration that were found in chamber 22. These include: partial columns of text, fragments of Book of the Dead Chapter 125, the so-called Negative Confession, on the south wall (fig. 4);20 a head of Rameses II on painted plaster from pillar A (fig. 5); traces of a flail also from pillar A(fig. 6); khekher frieze from the south wall (fig. 7); and a smpriest, perhaps from pillar A (fig. 8). We also include our working drawings of chamber 22, its side-chambers, and the corridors (20, 21) and side-chambers.(20a-l) preceding it (figs. 9-14).

Figure 4: Book of the Dead Chapter 125 on south wall of Chamber 22.

Figure 5: Head of Rameses II, Pillar A, Chamber 22.

Figure 6: Traces of a flail from Pillar A, Chamber 22

Figure 7: Khekher-frieze and columns of text, Chamber 22, south wall

Figure 8: Sm-priest, perhaps from Pillar A, Chamber 22.

Figures 9

Figures 10

Figures 11

Figures 12

Figures 13

Figures 14

Figures 9 14: Working drawings of Chambers 20-26. Drawings by Walton Chan.

1

Our workforce this season was supervised by the TMPs project foreman, Ahmed Mahmoud Hass:an. Our Inspector of Antiquities was Mahmoud Hosny Mahmoud Abdallah. In Cairo, our office manager was Magdy Abu Hamad Ali. We wish to thank the staff of the Supreme Council of Antiquities for their continued assistance in making our work possible. Funding for this seasons project was provided by donors listed on our website, www.thebanmappingproject.com. I dedicate this annual report to the memory of one of the TMPs most esteemed and valued members, my beloved wife, the late Susan Howe Weeks. 2 Elizabeth Thomas, The Royal Necropoleis of Thebes. Princeton, n.p., 1966. 3 See, e.g., Kent R. Weeks, The Lost Tomb, New York, 1998, and other editions. 4 Kent R. Weeks, Archaeological and Architectural Description, in: Kent R. Weeks (ed.), KV 5: A Preliminary Report on the Excavation of the Tomb of the Sons of Rameses II in the Valley of the Kings. Cairo: American University in Cairo Press (= Publications of the Theban Mapping Project, II). Cairo, 2000. P. 30. 5 Ibid. 6 These and other measurements are available on the TMPs website, http://www.thebanmappingproject.com. 7 Ann Macy Roth and Catharine H. Roehrig, Magical Bricks and the Bricks of Birth. JEA 88 (2002): 121-139. 8 Elizabeth Thomas, The Four Niches and Amuletic Figures in the Theban Royal Tombs. JARCE 3 (1964): 71-78. 9 Isabelle Rgen, When the Book of the Dead Does Not Match Archaeology: The Case of the Protective Magical Bricks. British Museum Studies in Ancient Egypt and the Sudan 15 (2010): 267-278. 10 Thomas, op. cit. 11 Elizabeth Thomas, Royal Necropoleis. Pp. xx-xx. Weeks, Introduction, p. 121-122. 12 Kent R. Weeks, Introduction to the Valley of the Kings, in: Kent R. Weeks (ed.), The Treasures of the Valley of the Kings: Tombs and Temples of the West Bank in Luxor. Vercelli, Italy: WhiteStar and Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2001. P. 121. Our chamber designations follow those of Thomas. 13 Two pillars: KV 8, 34, 35, 43, 57; four pillars: KV 6, 9, 11, 15, 17, 47. 14 Weeks, KV 5, p. 70, fig. 56. 15 Weeks, KV 5, p. 65 and fig. 51; p. 57 and figs. 45, 46. Similar thrones can be seen in: KV 16 (Rameses I), chamber J, rear wall ; and, with minor variations, in QV 44 (Khaemwaset), chamber H, rear wall. See F. Hassanein and M. Nelson, La tombe du Prince Khaemouaset (VdR no 44) = CEDAE, 72. Cairo, 1997; Klaus P. Kuhlmann, Der Thron im alten gypten (= Abh. DAIK, g Reihe, 10). Glckstadt, 1977. 16 Weeks, KV 5, p. 58, fig. 46 and p. 72, fig. 59. 17 Edwin Brock, in Weeks, KV 5, pp. 55ff. 18 F. Hassanein and M. Nelson, op. cit. 19 Weeks, KV 5, pp. 26-27, fig. 22. 20 The closest parallel to this wall is that on the south wall of chamber H in the Valley of the Kings tomb of Merenptah, KV 8. To my knowledge, no copies of this wall have yet been published.