We were lunching at one of those quaint restaurants that fringe the Thames to the west of London. The riverside, in mid-summer, is one of the most picturesque places to savour a leisurely lunch. Slender willow branches trailed languidly into slow, swirling eddies and ancient oaks and hawthorns gently filter sunlight, dappling the water. Young men, mindful of their poise, poled punts along the river, displaying their skill to their admiring girlfriends in an historic ritual of courtship. Periodically, a crew of scullers crossed our view, their rhythmic strokes causing a cascade of silver droplets to fall from their up-raised oars.
His brows beetling, my father, Sir Reginald Dunlop, Chairman of the British Egyptian Archaeological Society, looked across the table and asked “What has always puzzled me is why the kings of ancient Egypt never found a way to stop their tombs from being robbed?” There was one other person at the table, my Assistant, Dr. Elizabeth Saunders. We had finished eating and I was considering how to cajole Liz into casting aside her professional aloofness and embark upon a mad affair, when my father posed his question.
Before his election to the chairmanship, he was acclaimed as an expert par excellence in interpreting the New Kingdom Dynasties. He had made remarkable discoveries in his field missions, readily debunked myth, was outrageously outspoken on certain aspects of his field and spoke fluent Arabic, all of which made him a widely admired figure in Egypt. Last night, my father hosted the annual dinner in the magnificent Central Hall of the Society’s building in London. The function was the culminating event in a week of meetings and lectures covering recent advances in Egyptology. The Society is the United Kingdom’s most respected association in the study of Egypt’s history and antiquities. Its Foundation Charter states that members dedicate themselves to the ‘glorious history of the noble land of ancient Egypt, her people and culture’ and most of the stellar scholars in Egyptology had been members, with the role of honours including such luminaries as Carnarvon, Petrie, Carter, Burton,Weigall and Ayrton.
The Society’s galleries house one of the world’s finest collections of Egyptian artefacts, with permanent exhibits of statuary, papyri of immense value, exquisite jewellery and carefully selected coffins with their mummified contents, on public view. The walls graphically reproduce monument and tomb decorations and several rooms replicate temple shrines and burial chambers. The library, laboratories and offices are, arguably, the finest research and conservation facilities in its field.
Dominating the entrance foyer is a colossal head of Ramesses II. Carved in red granite, it is part of the original statue that graced the king’s funerary temple at Luxor. Estimated to have weighed in excess of one thousand tonnes, it had stood nineteen metres tall before shattering in some unrecorded disaster. Statues of Pharaohs, queens, nobles and deities from almost every dynasty adorn the galleries in a sequence of exhibits designed to provided visitors with snapshots from the Naqada pre-historic period 4,000 years before the birth of Christ to the end of the Roman Empire’s control of Egypt in the Fourth Century, CE.
Over lunch, discussion had turned to KV5, as it is commonly referred to, in the Valley of the Kings. This immense tomb, considered to be the burial complex of the majority of the male progeny of Ramesses II, arguably Egypt’s greatest Pharaoh, will take decades to excavate, preserve and document. Its re-discovery had re-ignited global interest in ancient Egypt, as it was the most significant find in the Valley since Howard Carter uncovered the fabulous tomb of King Tutankhamen in 1922. Its value to Egyptologists is immeasurable and, whilst it has not yielded the gilded treasures of the Tutankhamen find, its emergence from obscurity opened an exciting new chapter in the life and times of the early Nineteenth Dynasty.
All the then known tombs in the Valley had been numbered by Burton in his 1835 survey, including the enigmatic KV5 which remained an elusive mystery until the extensive Theban Mapping Project survey of the entire Theban necropolis and the Valley’s sixty-two tombs yielded information that led to the astonishing discovery. My father’s question stopped me from further contemplation of Elizabeth’s seduction.
I enquired: “What do you mean?” “Come now, Dennis, has the wine gone completely to your head?” When the mood was upon him, he could be quite direct. “No, not as yet.” “Then you understand the question?”
Obviously, this was not the first time the enigma of plundered Egyptian tombs had surfaced. Whilst all modern Egyptologists pride themselves on their scholarly approach to their chosen discipline, most harboured an inner sense of despair when new discoveries came to light and were found to be devoid of intact artefacts. When Howard Carter broke through the wall of Tutankhamen’s burial chamber and was asked impatiently by his sponsor, Lord Carnarvon, what he saw, he replied ‘Wonderful things’. Carter, after spending his entire career in Egypt, had finally glimpsed a fragment of one of the most impressive treasures the ancient world had given up. The potential thrill of a similar discovery tantalised the heart, if not the intellect, of every self-respecting archaeologist at all excavation sites.
The land that was Ancient Egypt is home to countless grave sites and tombs in cemeteries that stretch from the northern Delta to the southernmost reaches of the former kingdom. Estimates range to several million ancient burials in the country, a not unexpected figure in a time frame covering four millennia. A chronicle of kings who ruled Egypt lists at least two hundred and sixty men and women who ruled in the period from the end of the Pre-dynastic era until the death of the last Ptolemaic ruler, Cleopatra VII Philopater in 30 BC, the lover of Julius Caesar and Marc Antony. As of yet, a considerable number of royal graves remain undiscovered.
In most instances, the tombs or graves of these rulers had been robbed in antiquity and the sale of grave goods still provided a lucrative source of income for many when the country was part of the Ottoman Empire. The battle continues even today. There is an unceasing contest between modern robbers and the Egyptian government, determined to thwart further looting of antiquities. Not only had the graves of rulers suffered pillage and despoliation. The burial sites of officials, members of the nobility and commoners all drew the attention of thieves, and suffered a similar fate. Specifically, tombs in the Valley of the Kings and theadjacent necropolises were victim to a systematic campaign of sanctioned pillage in the twilight of the Ramesside Dynasty.
There have been and will,no doubt, be discoveries of untouched burials, but the majority of the tombs of the most famous and wealthy rulers have been located, though found breached and the contents rifled. The most notable exception was the tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamen. It was the sheer magnitude of the riches within his tomb, a relatively minor Eighteenth Dynasty king, which excites the imagination of the professional and layman alike.
Noticing a lack of response, my father, with a touch of asperity, sought to drive home his point.
“Save for the Romans, the rulers of Egypt were the greatest builders of the Ancient World. There are no equals to the great pyramids, the temples of Luxor and Karnak or monuments as overpowering as Abu Simbel. These kings, or rather their builders, were superb, given the unsophisticated equipment of the time and their ability to move massive stone objects is unparalleled. Their mastery of design and construction set the stage for Greece and Rome at their imperial greatest and yet, the Egyptian kings could not find a way to preserve the sanctity of their graves. Why not?”
I didn’t think that this was the time or place to enter into an intense discussion of the subject, because the wine, food and Elizabeth’s presence had all combined to take the edge off my thinking. But my father’s question resonated with me as it had since I first embarked on my study of ancient engineering.
Yesterday, as a keynote speaker at the symposium, I delivered what I hoped would be the definitive paper on Egyptian construction methods. With the aid of computer graphics, I explained the techniques employed in building the most complex structures from the pyramids to the cutting, transport and erection of the obelisks and colossi that are the hallmark of the country’s history. No aliens, nor a pre-historic ‘master race’ had figured in the building of these monuments, which required nothing more than a few sophisticated pieces of then standard engineering kit, the efficient management of muscle power, much sweat and a lot of time set into a well structured administrative system designed to allow the creation of buildings dedicated to the gods and the not inconsiderable egos of some of the Pharaohs.
I should explain why Sir Reginald posed his question. Quite apart from my demonstrated mastery of the discipline, I was his elder son and, in his eyes, heir apparent to the leadership of the Society. From my earliest moments, I was force fed on the ways and life of ancient Egypt. My mother and father had met at Cambridge University, when he was studying for his Masters Degree in Ancient History. My mother, Eileen was then the faculty secretary at the Department of History and their marriage was considered by their friends to be a match made in heaven, that is, an Egyptian heaven. Mother was a formidable scholar in her own right and my parents function as a team. They went to Egypt together, co-authored learned papers and I remain convinced that I was conceived amidst the ruins of Abydos on one such field trip.
At my birth, my future was as clear as the sky over the Nile. Throughout my childhood, with a brother and sister in tow, we took our holidays to dusty field camps in Egypt and drank in the stark beauty of the Nile floodplain, the wadis of the Theban hills and the majesty of the country’s ruined monuments. It is a family joke that I deciphered hieroglyphs before I read Shakespeare and, when my peers at school recited the poetry of T.S. Eliot, I reeled off pharaonic genealogy. My entrance to Cambridge University was assured as my father had been elevated to the Chair of Egyptian Studies. Having romped through my history degree, I dismayed my parents by opting to further my studies and took a second degree in Civil Engineering, a decision that would have unexpected consequences for both my parents and me.
On the completion of my academic life, I increased my parent’s distress by forsaking a university career and accepted a position with a large American construction company that saw me working on engineering projects in Brazil, Indonesia and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. A marriage contracted in lust in Rio, and slowly destroyed in the Arabian sands, left me single and seeking fresh opportunities.
Three years ago, after my father accepted the invitation to chair the BEAS, he went hunting for money. Since its inception, the Society’s financial requirements had been met by membership fees and donations from private sponsors and, in his opinion, these revenue streams were inadequate to meet the challenges he saw ahead for the Society. Ever astute, he observed a potentially new and lucrative source of funds in the massive profits generated by the explosion of financial markets. This burgeoning offshoot of rampant capitalism led many enterprises to develop a social conscience which they sought to assuage by tax deductible donations to worthy causes. My father aggressively hunted down willing corporate donors and, due to his not inconsiderable efforts, the Society was well funded and looking for projects to embellish its already glittering reputation.
Almost simultaneously, under the determined hand of its new President, Mohammed Kamal, the Egyptian government became more mindful of its neglected heritage. Alert to the increasing deterioration of monuments and tombs, exacerbated by increasing tourist numbers, his administration considerably enlarged the funding available for the preservation of its patrimony.
Tourism is the significant revenue generator in Egypt. Following the negative publicity created by a terrorist attack in Deir el-Medindeh, the government had geared up to promote the country as a magnet for the ever expanding tourist dollar. Agreements were negotiated between the Council of Egyptian Antiquities in Cairo and international archaeological organisations,which had an established commitment to Egypt, with regard to what sites and monuments required major projects directed at restoration or preservation.
President Kamal was also an astute operator. Like the proverbial bee drawn to the honey pot, he homed in on the cash-heavy BEAS and, after a series of ebullient meetings with its Chairman; the Society was granted the task of highly specialised refurbishment works in the Valley of the Kings. The brief was to undertake remediation projects and expand on the limited restorations completed since the First World War.
Mindful of this agreement, my father was keen to see me return to the fold as he thought my talents in engineering and archaeology were being wasted in crass civil engineering projects. He repeatedly asked me what romance was there in building dams and airports, where was the excitement in ensuring power station footings were correctly aligned and so forth, whilst he tempted me with of one of the greatest challenges in archaeology. He spoke of the UNESCO sponsored restoration of the massive Buddhist temple at Brobrabour in Indonesia and the removal and re-building of the twin temples and colossi commissioned by Ramesses II at Abu Simbel when this site had been threatened by the swelling inundation of Lake Nasser behind the ramparts of the new Aswan High Dam.
The agreement’s principal objective was the stabilisation of the tomb structures themselves. The tombs of the New Kingdom Pharaohs, built between 1550 and 1103 BC, were over 3,000 years old. Many suffered from partial collapse, several were completely closed off by the failure of internal elements and others were unstable due to the depredations of time, weather and seismic events. My father made a strong and compelling point. Before further work could be done on the exploration and conservation of tombs, their structural integrity had to be restored. This was the work of a highly qualified civil engineer with an intrinsic knowledge and passion for Egyptology and, in my father’s jaundiced opinion, who better to head up this campaign than his son.
After lunch, we retired to his office at the Society’s building on Baker Street, where he called in several of the resident archaeologists and we spent the afternoon looking at the scope of the project. Naturally, I was intrigued. The opportunity was not only immense; it was almost infinite as each damaged tomb presented its own unique challenges. It struck me again that almost every tomb discovered and explored, with the notable exception of Tutankhamen’s, had been robbed and robbed without finesse.
In one of history’s footnotes, it is recorded that during the reign of Pharaoh Horemheb, the king ordered repair work to the tomb of Thutmosis IV after the detection of its attempted robbery. A set of documents, the Tomb Robbery Papyri, record the inquisition of the thieves. The robbers are named, their plunder described, their methods dissected and their deaths by impaling noted with relish. A section covering the trial of one thief, Nesamun, notes ‘He was examined with the stick. He said ‘I saw nothing else, what I have said is what I saw’. He was examined with the stick again. Finally he yielded, “Stop, I will tell…’ which indicates interrogation under stern royal instruction was not a particularly pleasant affair.
Horemheb fundamentally reformed the management of the necropolis. Up to that time, the village housing artisans and masons, who made royal graves, was home to a few settled families. It also hosted skilled itinerant workers plying their trade wherever a need arose. Horemheb believed the footloose nature of the itinerants let them see the wealth interred in a tomb, thus tempting them to re-visit as thieves. He decreed only workers who lived permanently in the village of Deir el-Medinah could henceforth work in the Valleys of the Kings and Queens. Further decrees increased the number of guards and the frequency of devotional observances by temple priests.
Tombs built before his reforms had obscure portals - mere holes in the ground blocked with stones or hidden behind masonry walls, their entrances later debris covered and lost from sight. In the more rigidly controlled environment, his successors built conspicuous gateways to their tombs and stone filled entrance ways became a thing of the past. Heavy cedar doors, lashed closed with rope from which hung the seals of the high priests, were used to seal tombs and a thick necklace of limestone chippings was proudly heaped up in an arch around the entrance.
In a sterling example of the law of unintended consequences, Horemheb had hoped to remove the problem of casual labourers returning to pilfer tombs. Rather naively, his reforms gave rise to entrances so large and elaborate that subsequent rulers may as well have put up signs saying ‘Here I am, come and rob me’.
Grave robbery was a well known problem. The Strike Papyrus makes reference to an attempted entry into the tomb of Ramesses II (KV7) and the mausoleum of his sons (KV5) in the reign of Ramesses III. Others document the robbery of Ramesses VI’s (KV9) tomb, a theft of articles from the tomb of Seti II, two assaults on Tutankhamen’s grave (KV62) and three on the crypt of nobleman Yuya and his wife, Tuya (KV46). In all, there were fifteen documented attempted robberies from graves in the Valley up until the final desecration. With the waning of the Ramesside Pharaohs power, Thebes increasingly fell under the control of the high priests of Amun whilst the kings languished far away in the Delta city of Pi-Ramess.
Then, in an act of unprecedented sacrilege and venality, the high priest of the Karnak temple ordered the systematic plunder of all the tombs around Thebes, including those in the royal valleys, to finance an internecine war between the provincial governor and the viceroy of Nubia for control of Upper Egypt. Grave robbery was not confined to the New Kingdom period and it was a perennial and well documented problem throughout the entire dynastic history of Egypt. So severe was the problem, one of the most respected sons of Ramesses II, Prince Khaemwaset, undertook the restoration of grave sites and tombs of royal predecessors in the vast Memphite necropolis, just south of modern Cairo.
It was late in the afternoon when my father returned to the question he posed at lunch. If the kings of Egypt were concerned about tomb robbery, why did they continue to build tombs so vulnerable to the attentions of robbers? The question also raised the corollary. In a culture so deeply steeped in the sanctity of death and the need to preserve the bodies of the deceased so they would serve as the periodic host to the departed spirit, why was grave robbery such a common and ubiquitous event?
I was not to know, at the end of the afternoon’s discussion, these two questions would acquire an increasing significance over the next few years; nor could I know that a mind greater than mine had pondered on the same question 3,000 years ago.