Five Years' Explorations at Thebes: A Record of Work Done 1907-1911 by The Earl of Carnarvon and Howard CarterCarnarvon, George Edward Stanhope Molyneux Herbert, Earl of
History
Five Years' Explorations at Thebes: A Record of Work Done 1907-1911 by The Earl of Carnarvon and Howard Carter
Carnarvon, George Edward Stanhope Molyneux Herbert, Earl of
In the early spring of 1909 work was continued on the Birâbi site. The
tomb (No. 9), discovered the previous season, was finally cleared, but
nothing further was found in it. Jutting out of one side of the hole
caused by the excavation of the tomb, however, appeared the beginning of
a well-built stone wall. About forty metres’ length of this wall was
cleared, and though unfinished, the masonry in general was good. A
doorway, giving ingress from the north (see Plan, Pl. XXX), eighteen
metres along its length, showed that its northern side formed its
exterior face. The facing of the stone blocks, not agreeing in direction
of their chiselling, showed that they had been re-used from some older
building, and as the size of the blocks and their chiselling were
similar to the masonry of the Mentu-hotep temple at Dêr el Bahari, it
was conjectured that the wall must be of a date posterior to the XIth
Dynasty. Regarding the purpose of the wall, we obtained no clue in 1909,
nor could we then date it with any precision. In 1910, however, we found
several blocks lying near the wall which bore hieratic inscriptions
giving the name of Hatshepsût’s master-builder, Pu-am-ra. Afterwards,
similar inscriptions were found on the blocks built in the masonry.
These, together with a single block bearing the name of the great
queen’s famous architect, Senmut, clearly proved that the wall which we
had found must have belonged to some building of Hatshepsût’s reign.
Further clearance revealed that the building was of the nature of a
terrace temple like that at Dêr el Bahari. So far as we can at present
see, the axis of the building corresponds to the axis of the dromos
leading to Hatshepsût’s temple. This point, together with the fact that
a foundation deposit with objects bearing the prenomen of the queen and
the name of her temple (_Zeser-zeseru_) was brought to light, apparently
in the centre of our monument, shows that we are dealing with a building
in some way connected with the temple at Dêr el Bahari. The probable
interpretation is that this newly-discovered ‘Terrace Temple’ is in
reality a ‘Valley’-Temple or ‘Portal’ to Hatshepsût’s noble monument at
Dêr el Bahari. It would, therefore, correspond to the so-called
‘Valley’-Temples of Gizeh and Abusîr. Another interesting fact relating
to Hatshepsût’s Dêr el Bahari temple was the discovery of a foundation
deposit at the north-west corner of the dromos (Pl. XXIV, _b_), where
it joins the temple. This is the largest deposit that has hitherto been
discovered, and exhibits two new features in connexion with the custom
of placing of such deposits, namely, the consecration of the building by
unction and flesh and blood offerings. These offerings were kept
separate from the usual model tools and implements which were found near
by, and the vessels containing the unguents and wines were smashed, and
their contents, as well as grains of corn, were poured over the clean
sand that filled the cache.
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