by Sergei IVANOV, research fellow, Center for Egyptological Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences (CES RAS), Moscow

In 2006 the Center for Egyptological Studies, RAS began an archeological mission at Luxor, Egypt, on the study and conservation of the Theban Tomb No. 23 (TT 23) built in the "Valley of Nobles" (Sheikh Abd el-Qurna). The aim of this expedition was to clean the Theban Tomb of Thay, a "Foreign Minister" at the court of Merenptah, a pharaoh who ruled in Egypt in the 13th century B.C., and study it in detail.

WHEREABOUTS

The Theban Tomb No. 23 is on the western bank of the Nile opposite Luxor, a town near the ruins of ancient Thebes. This tomb is located within the bounds of what is called the "lower pale of Sheikh Abd el-Qurna", a small fence put up in the early nineteen-hundreds to stake out the land patch of archeological diggings undertaken by Robert Mond (1867-1939) of Great Britain. TT 23, a part of the Theban Necropolis, is the burial place of an ancient Egyptian official, Thay, also called To. It is traditionally chalked up to the eastern slope of Mount Sheikh Abd el-Qurna, even though topographically the tomb is confined to the western slope of another eminence nearby, El-Khokha Hill.

Topographic plan of the locality around the Thay Tomb (southern part of the el Khokha Necropolis). Drawn by V. Sorokin and K. Loginov.

Most Egyptologists agree: during the reign of the Eighteenth Dynasty a road was built through this patch of land to connect the Nile valley with the basic part of the necropolis of Sheikh Abd el-Qurna. With the onset of the Ramesside period (1295-1069 B.C.) this road lost its erstwhile significance, and the land around it came to be used for erecting new tombs. The Thay Tomb lies in the lowland amid the burial places TT 109 (north), TT 41-42 (east), T 44 (south) and TT 105-107 (west.)

TOMB OWNER

Thay was a royal scribe during the 19th Dynasty under the reign of Merenptah (ca. 1214-1203 B.C.). Thay began his career under Ramesses II the Great of the Nineteenth Dynasty (ca. 1290-1214 B.C.). A stele found at Serapeum (a religious center where the Apis* bulls were buried) and dating back to the 55th year of the rule of this pharaoh mentions Thay as secretary of Prince Merenptah, the pharaoh's heir apparent then. With his enthronement Thay became a "royal scribe of the dispatches of the Two Lands", that is actually the pharaoh's amanuensis. The pharaoh's office in Pi-Ramesses (the lower Egypt capital named so for Ramesses II the Great) was under his care. Thay must

* Apis, the sacred bull worshiped by the ancient Egyptians because of the supposed connection with the god Ptah.--Tr.

have been quite friendly with the pharaoh who decorated him for loyal service with a Gold of Honor award, a large gold necklace conferred on clerks and soldiers for merit. Thay was the only honoree to collect this distinction under Merenptah. Most likely, he also served as "treasury chief who, in the seventh year of Merenptah's rule, was among officials concerned with the erection of the Merenptah tomb in the Valley of Nobles.

TT 23 ARCHITECTURE

Egyptians believed in an afterlife. They enjoyed life and simply did not want it to end. And so they built posh burial places, real afterlife palaces. The Theban Tomb was one of them. Cut deep into limestone rock, it was an architectural complex oriented from east to west. It was supplied with monumental gateways, the pylon, a suite of inner rooms, and a walkway leading down to the burial chamber underneath. Yet another pylon built of limestone, is in ruins--it must have been demolished by graverobbers back in antiquity. What remains is its lower part, the base and three or four courses of masonry; fragments of the reliefs and inscription are visible on their surface. Outside the pylon there are two bases of columns, 0.75 m across, framing the doorway opening. The inner part of the pylon is furnished with a staircase taking one into the

Plan of the Theban Tomb of Thay (TT23). Drawn by D. Eigner.

tomb's open courtyard. The low banisters are adorned with raised relief pictures of a funeral procession.

Ancient builders set up a colonnade of round columns alongside the northern, eastern and southern walls of the courtyard to support the roof shading a part of the open spaces. The yard is 11.87 meters long and 10.75 m wide, with its roofed-in part being two meters wide. The antique columns as well the floors and ceilings have not survived; yet they were rebuilt in the 1980s by the Supreme Council for Antiquities of the Arab Republic of Egypt after the original design. The court--its roofed-in portion anyway--was paved in mud brick; archeologists found a large fragment of the original pavement in the southwestern corner of the yard. On the western side of the outer wall four rectangular pillars support the roof to form a portico ahead of the walkway to the inner premises of the tomb; a narrow door passage links the portico with the courtyard.

In keeping with the classification suggested by Frederica Kammp-Seifried of Germany, the layout of the inner court of the tomb is of the "Vb type" distinguished for a transept (an anteroom built in the shape of a cross) and a long gallery leading to the "sanctuary", a small space for the statuary of gods and of the deceased. The architecture and decor of the inner part of the tomb look much like those of the Dhutymes Tomb (Theban Tomb No. 32 erected under Pharaoh Ramesses II).

Overall, the Thay Tomb is 87.12 m long, from the pylon to the eastern part of the burial chamber; the altitude differential, 20.7 m. The original plan and design were changed time and again. The first changes were made before the burial of our hero as the doorway openings were widened to let in the sarcophagus. A passage was cut through the court's northern wall to yet another burial place (Tomb North 2) during the Nineteenth Dynasty. The columns raised from the outer side of the Thay pylon could be dated to that time.

Major changes took place in the Third Intermediate Period (1069-664 B.C., 21st to 25th Dynasties) and especially in the Late Period (26th to the 30th Dynasties, 664-332 B.C.). In those times a pit was dug for a small burial chamber under the northern part of the portico. Only one of the pillars was touched, the builders made it smaller somewhat.

The last burials occurred in the Greco-Roman times (332 B.C.-Third century A.D.) when the Thay Tomb was rebuilt; loculi (side chambers) and the horizontal niche in the vault were cut on both sides of the descending passage.

DECOR

The tomb's decor is impressive: the walls of its open courtyard and most of the inner premises are decorated with painted relief images. The limestone rock enclosing it is not uniform, and therefore here and there the walls were lined with sandstone slabs or else covered with mud plaster (yellow sedimental clay). Most of the pictures and inscriptions are done in the in-cut relief technique as the painted pictorial images are placed in recesses.

The relief images of Tomb 23 are informative enough: they depict the main events in Thay's life and the par-

ticulars of the Egyptian funeral rites and religious beliefs during the New Kingdom.

One of the striking images is presented in the picture of the royal office on the southwestern wall of the courtyard. It is rendered in three parts that must have been in keeping with the real architecture of that edifice. The scribes were confined to the wings, with the central part set aside for the reception room of the chief scribe. The royal archives were kept in two small rooms in the upper and lower corners of the building. The scriptorium and the archives were linked by the open yard, where the cult of Tot, the patron god of the scribes, was celebrated; his sanctuary was in the middle of the right wing of the building.

In many ways the inscriptions of Thay Tomb are typical of the Ramesside period. Nonetheless many texts are original variations or are considered to be full versions of such well-known passages as the "Hymn to the Light" and the "Lute-player's Song". Thus, the interpretation of these writings is a priority area for the Russian archeological mission at Luxor.

STELES

Two monumental rectangular steles are installed on both sides of the entrance to the interior rooms of the tomb; they are consecrated to the god Osiris* and the sun god Rē-Horakhty ("Rā, who is Horus of the Two Horizons")**.

At the turn of the 20th century archeologists, exploring in the tomb, came upon smaller steles set up by Thay's relatives and by relatives of the dead buried

* Osiris, the ancient Egyptian god of the lower world and judge of the dead, husband and brother of Isis, the goddess of fertility; she is represented with a cow's horn and the sun's disk as a crown.-- Tr.

** Horus, the ancient Egyptian god of the sun, represented as having the head of a hawk ("hawk-headed"); he was the son of Osiris. Rā (Rē, the sun), the principal god of the ancient Egyptians, usually depicted as having the head of a hawk and wearing the solar disk as a crown. In later Egyptian dynastic times, Rā (Rē) was merged with the god Horus, as Rē-Horakhty.-- Auth., Tr.

later on. Some of these relics are in the collection of the British Museum in London; the whereabouts of the other steles is not known yet.

SCULPTURES

Sculptural images of the tomb's owner are still there. His statues show a man in full attire, standing erect. Unfortunately their faces are damaged. The "Sanctuary" displays figures of the sitting deities Osiris, Isis and Horus as well as sculptural diads (twin sculptures) of Thay and his consort (he had two wives, Raya and Neberrawy). Their figures are cut of limestone life size and painted. There were also smaller statues: archeologists have recovered a great number of fragments inside and outside the open yard.

THE PRESENT CONDITION OF THE TOMB

Time took its toll, and so did man and his activity. Today less than 10 percent of the original pylon is extant. It started coming apart already in antiquity due to weathering that destroyed the mortar. It was taken apart then to build new tombs. Meanwhile the ravages of time continued, and sandstone blocks fell loose from the facets of the open yard. Yet attempts were made to restore the raised relief pictures in the courts's northwestern part. The colonnade and the roof of the court collapsed exposing the painted relief images to the elements--sunrays, wind and rain. More than 70 percent of reliefs broke into many small pieces within and next to the tomb. But the reliefs and paintings of

the TT 23 interiors are much better off. Overall, as much as 43 percent of the tomb's decor has been destroyed by the action of negative factors (geological displacements, microclimate changes) and by sheer human vandalism.

In the 1980s the Egyptian Supreme Council for Antiquities began work on the structural reinforcement of the TT 23 Tomb and conservation of still preserved reliefs and paintings. Yet an upsurge of human activity in that area up until the year 2006 and the natural wear of the building materials made it imperative to step up comprehensive conservation efforts in saving this archeological monument.

TOMBS SOUTH AND NORTH

The Thay Tomb is linked with two other tombs-Tomb South (TS) to the south and Tomb North (TN) to the north.

In its layout and architecture TS is typical of burial places of the Late Period (26th to 30th Dynasties, 664-332 B.C.). Such dating is proved by the ceramics and funeral utensil fragments recovered in the lower parts of the tomb. The builders must have misreckoned and intruded the inner rooms of the Thay Tombs, and therefore the architects had to change the original plan of TS from the east-west to the south-north orientation.

The TS walls were devoid of decor altogether: these walls as well as the floor and the ceiling were hewn in rough ledges. It looks the construction of this tomb was never completed.

The TS pit, cleared to a depth of 3 meters, is one of the objects for the Russian archeological mission at Luxor.

In fact, Tomb North is in a poor state and needs urgent repairs. The tall hill of spoil heaps left by archeologists in prior diggings between 1905 and 1998

weighs heavy above and has an adverse effect on the tomb's structural stability.

WHAT RESEARCHERS TELL

The exotic decor of the Thay Tomb has been a major attraction to Egyptologists and common globe-trotters. It has been tempting, unfortunately, also to tombriders and collectors of antiquity, responsible for more ravages. Some of the relics landed in the collection of the Berlin Agyptisches Museum in 1865, and were gone during the Second World War.

Sir Alan Henderson Gardiner, a British Egyptologist (1879-1963), was the first research scientist to map, in 1913, the TT 23 tomb of the Theban Necropolis on the west bank of the Nile, opposite Luxor and the ruins of Thebes. Alexander Badaui (1913-1986), a Egyptian scientist, and Dieter Arnold of Germany made a sketchy description of TT 23. A detailed survey of the courtyard and inner premises was provided by Frederica Kammp-Seifried of Germany in her work on the history of the Theban Necropolis.

But it was Ludwig Borchardt (1863-1938), a German Egyptologist, who turned his attention to the tomb's relief images--he is also known as a "man who has discovered Nefertity, an exotically beautiful woman married to Pharaoh Akhnaten (c. 1375-1358 B.C.). In his large article Borchardt furnished a circumstantial description of the royal office. Other Egyptologists, Walter Ryzynski of Germany (1880-1935) and Norman de Garis Davies of Britain, Professor Emeritus of London University, focused on particular raised relief pictures. Bertha Porter (1852-1941) and Rosalind Luise Bufort Moss (1890-1990) came up with a most detailed catalog of relief compositions drawn up on the basis of materials of the Oxford Griffiths Institute in 1960.

Other Egyptologists made a study of the inscriptions. Karl Richard Lepsius (1810-1884), a German archeologist and Egyptologist, published a few short texts. He is said to be the first researcher to visit TT 23 in the 1840s. Its whereabouts were forgotten soon to be rediscovered in 1881 by Charles Wilbur of the United States. Relying on his notes and archival photos, Kenneth A. Kutchen, a British historian, prepared a more complete, though not exhaustive, code of the Thay tomb inscriptions, some of which, largely poetic texts and divine hymns, were published in the translations of Edward Frank Vente of the United States (1962) and Jan Assman of Germany (1998). In 1985 Faiza Haikal of Egypt published a copy of the text of the "Hymn to the Light" supplied with her interpretation and commentaries.

In the winter of 1904 and 1905 Robert Mond (1867-1938), a British archeologist, dug the tomb out; however, the results of his work were not published. As a matter of fact, his field notes are rather scanty. What we know is that Mond had Thay's granite sarcophagus lifted from the burial vault and placed it in one of the rooms above. He found many articles like funerary cones, sarcophagi, ushabti figurines (depicting man, cross-armed, or else with tools) as well as other artifacts, with some of them landing in the British Museum.

In the 1980s the Egyptian Supreme Council for Antiquities launched all-out work to restore the tomb. Unfortunately no documents are available on what was done. It is quite clear nonetheless that the colonnade and the roofed-in yard of the tomb were restored, which was absolutely necessary to protect the reliefs and paintings from direct sunrays and erosion. The inner premises were reinforced, and reliefs in one of the chambers there, restored.

At that time a field mission sent by the Center for Study and Documentation of Ancient Egypt (head of the mission Faiza Haikal of Egypt) took pictures of the tomb and copied the inscriptions. These materials were not published, however. Thereupon, in 2006, the RAS Center for Egyptological Studies* was granted a concession for archeological studies and conservation of the Thay Tomb and adjoining places. We had a tall order: clear the interiors of the tomb; make feasibility studies and tests for a subsequent strengthening and toning of the reliefs and paintings; carry out restoration works after the Egyptian Supreme Council for Antiquities had endorsed the results of our tests... We had also to study the tomb's architecture and make an exact plan and measurements of the entire complex; restore the colonnade and floors of the open courtyard; publish the results of our research; install adequate ventilation and lightening facilities and, to cap it all, explore the possibility of opening a museum there.

RUSSIAN FIELD WORKERS IN EGYPT

And so we got busy. It was a job of work--meticulous, painstaking. During the first and second archeological seasons (December 2006 and December 2007) we made a survey of the tomb, inspected its overall condition as well as raised reliefs and paintings. We spotted parts in need of urgent repairs, and mapped out a program of emergency restoration works. In 2007 the Russian Grabar Art Conservation Center sent a group of experts to help restore reliefs on the eastern side of the open court. Exposed to sunlight and precipitation, these carved reliefs on soft loess plaster were badly damaged--their paint, destroyed, peeled off. Thus we had to consolidate the base and the layer of paint, clear the carved reliefs and paintings. We carried on this work in 2008, too.

*See: Ye. Tolmacheva, "Egyptology: Problems, Achievements", Science in Russia, No. 1, 2013.-Ed.

Our team began clearing the space about Tomb South to have more elbowroom and make room for storage facilities. Down there, on the floor of the crypt, was a 5 to 15 cm layer of decomposed limestone littered with droppings of domestic animals. Our people were able to recover pieces of funeral utensils like ceramic vessels, ushabti figurines, beads, amulets and numerous fragments of mummified human bodies. These finds date back to the Third Intermediate Period (1069-664 B.C., 21st to 25th Dynasties) and, for the most part, to the Late Period (under 26th-30th Dynasties, 664-332 B.C.).

During our third archeological season (December 2008-January 2009) we got down to cleansing the downward passage. We succeeded in cleaning the burial chamber and premises nearby, all that strewn with pieces of limestone, with fragments of funerary utensils here and there (all the various ushabti figurines, painted coffins, elegant cartonage cases, amulets, fragments of pottery and the like). There was also what we may call a "modern litter" (packages of tobacco and candles, matchboxes, and that sort of thing). The copious funerary utensils we have recovered are of different periods from the end of the Twenty-Eighth Dynasty to the Roman times. As to the "modern litter", it goes back to the early nineteen-hundreds: it was left by Robert Mond's party digging out here in 1905. To save time he and his aid workers deposited heaps within the tomb so as to use them later for evening out the descending corridor's floor and leveling its slope for the lifting of the granite sarcophagus.

Our people continued the cleansing of the corridor in our fourth archeological season in December 2009 through January 2010. We centered on the clearing of the pits and burial chambers down the corridor. The litter of these pits and vaults was of the same kind as in the other parts cleared before.

We were through with our clearing work during our fifth field season in January of 2011, when we hit upon the eastern pit. During our sixth and seventh seasons (January 2012, January-February 2013, respectively) we surveyed the locality about TT 23 so as to pinpoint the entrances to Tombs South and North and find, if possible, other elements of the necropolis. Thus we discovered what remained of the outer fence around the Thay burial complex. Exploring the design of the open court's walls and the pylon, we restored them to

their original height. We retrieved a large number of blocks and fragments of funerary utensils from TT 23. Because of the low quality of limestone where burial vaults were hewn out, the entrance, walls and columns of the tomb struck deep cracks. In spite of the overall structural solidity of the complex, such cracks have caused the cave-in of a larger part of the necropolis. And therefore during our latest season in 2013 we busied ourself with filling in the cracks and structural reinforcements of the vaults.

Beginning in 2006 we combined our restoration and archeological work with that of studying the architecture of the Thay Tomb and adjacent places. We made a large-scale topographical plan of the locality, took exact measurements of the inner rooms and mapped the complex in detail; each year this plan was amended in keeping with the results of new explorations. The high-precision measuring technology enabled us to build a three-dimensional model of this unique complex.

In 2006 we began copying the inscriptions and documenting the carved reliefs and paintings of the tomb. In particular, we zeroed in on over 3,000 slabs with fragments of paintings and reliefs, a job that will make it possible to reconstruct a large party of the decor.

We also examined finds retrieved during the clearing work. As we found out, the larger part of the material (coffins, cartonage cases, ushabti figurines, papyrus rolls of the Book of the Dead, statuettes of deities) date back to the age of the New Kingdom (1552-1069 B.C.) and the Late Period (26th to 30th Dynasties, 664-332 B.C.), and reflect stages of the evolution of Egyptian burial ceremonies.

Clearing the Thay Tomb, our archeologists discovered the remains of more than 100 humans interred there at different times. A study of these remains shows that they belonged to a Caucasoid population with thin bones and weak muscles. In all likelihood, the dead buried in the tomb were of noble birth who did not have to toil.

We also found many pieces of fabrics dating to the New Kingdom (Roman times) like mummy bandages, burial shrouds and other items used in mummification and interment. The examination of more than 2,000 fragments brings us to an important conclusion: the fabrics were mostly of linen with a bit of wool, cotton and even silk here and there. Part of the fabrics were made expressly for burial; these cerements (bandages for the mummies) and shrouds were of top quality and costly. But the greater part of the mummy bandages were cut from old everyday wear, mended and patched up time and again. Some of these items can be identified and restored to their original look, thus making it possible to expand our knowledge about the ancient Egyptian costumes, their cuts and styles.

Since we are not yet through with our work at TT 23, our results are of tentative nature so far. Still, we are able to make certain conclusions about the history of TT 23 and the Theban Necropolis at large. We have learned more about the life styles and funerary rituals of the ancient Egyptians.