DISCOVERY 



39 



century to century. Yet somehow behind ull this 

 are correlations of physical characters with psychical 

 characters with which we are as 3'et almost unable to 

 deal scientifically, for we see but certain manifesta- 

 tions and hardly know anything about their mental 

 springs. 



The Plundering of the 



Royal Tombs at Thebes 



in the Twentieth and 



Twenty-first Dynasties 



By Aylward M. Blackman, D.Litt. 



All the world is now talking of Lord Carnarvon 

 and Mr. Howard Carter's great discovery in the Valley 

 of the Tombs of the Kings at Thebes. It occurred, 

 therefore, to the writer that readers of Discovery 

 might be interested to hear something about the 

 disasters that befell the Theban tombs and their 

 occupants under the later Ramessids of the Twentieth, 

 and the Priest-Kings of the Twenty-first, Dynasty 

 (about 1 150 to 940 B.C.) — disasters in view of which 

 the discovery of Tutankhamon's tomb in a practically 

 unplundered condition will appear all the more mar- 

 vellous, a thing beyond the dreams of archteological 

 avarice ! 



With this end in view, the article will deal for the 

 most part with a group of documents, all of which 

 were written during the years 1120-1123 B.C., the 

 sixteenth to nineteenth years of Ramesses IX, the last 

 but three of a long line of decadent descendants of the 

 great Emperors, Ramesses II and III. Of these docu- 

 ments the most important, for our purpose, is the so- 

 called Abbott Papyrus, now preserved in the British 

 Museum. Recourse will also be had to two papjTi in 

 the Free Public Museums at Liverpool, the so-called 

 Mayer Papyri A & B, recently published, with accom- 

 panying translation and explanatory notes, by Pro- 

 fessor Peet, as well as to a fragmentary but important 

 papyrus in the Amherst Collection, and to one other, 

 equally fragmentary, to be found in the world-famous 

 collection of Ancient Egyptian manuscripts preserved 

 in the Museum at Turin. All the documents in question 

 are closely interrelated and, scattered now though they 

 be, undoubtedly belong to a single " find." Originally 

 they must have been included among the vizierial 

 archives of the Twentieth Dynasty. 



Thebes in the Twelfth Century B.C. 



At the time when these documents were drawn up 

 the governorship of Thebes, still the capital of the no\s- 



much shrunken Egyptian Empire, was vested in the 

 vizier, the Pharaoh's prime minister. But for ordinary 

 administrative purposes the city was divided into two 

 parts, the one lying on the east, and the other on the 

 west, bank of the Nile, and either under its own mayor, 

 or 'omdah as he would now be called. The eastern 

 half was the main city, containing as it did the business 

 and residential quarters, and also the two great temples 

 of " Elect-of- Places " (Lu.xor) and " Thrones-of-the- 

 Two-Lands " (Karnak). The western city, to which 

 was attached the vast Theban necropolis, was in the 

 main, so it would appear, given up to the officials 

 great and small, and to the countless host of artisans 

 and the like, whose business it was to look after the 

 necropolis and to manufacture and supply all the 

 elaborate funerary equipment, with which the upper- 

 and middle-class Egyptian wished to be furnished at 

 his burial. Here also were the workshops and the 

 residences of the embalmers. 



The Papyrus Abbott informs us that the then mayor 

 of eastern Thebes was a certain Peser, the mayor of 

 western Thebes bearing the name of Pewer'o. Peser 

 does not appear to have been on very good terms with 

 his colleague across the river ; indeed, we gather that 

 their relations with one another were distinctly 

 strained. 



Some time before the period with which we are con- 

 cerned Egypt had lost her hold on her one-time Asiatic 

 dominions, while at home the central government 

 itself had begun to weaken and to disintegrate. By 

 the time that Ramesses IX had succeeded to the 

 throne of his fathers, things had got into a very bad 

 way indeed. Existing records hint at internal 

 troubles caused by, or accompanied by, an intrusion 

 of foreigners. No doubt owing to the disturbed 

 political condition, the necropolis workers were not 

 receiving their wages, which were issued in the form of 

 grain and other food-stuffs, and they were accordingly 

 in a continual state of starvation and its concomitant 

 unrest. The host of workers had to live somehow, 

 and there within easy reach of them lay untold wealth 

 buried in the tombs of the kings and of the nobles, 

 the accumulation of five hundred years or more. In 

 the circumstances it is not surprising that the ill-paid 

 furni.shers and guardians of the dead took to plundering 

 their helpless charges, the higher officials of the necro- 

 polis, probably thoroughly corrupt themselves, being 

 apparently quite powerless to stop the looting that soon 

 began to take place on a large scale. 



A Tale of Two Rival Mayors 



This was the state of affairs in the sixteenth year 

 of the reign of Ramesses IX, when Peser and Pewer'o 

 were mayors respectively of eastern and western 



