DISCOVERY 



43 



i6. "1 We may well believe, therefore, that Peser's 

 charges against Pewer'owere anything but groundless. 

 and that the truth of them was being gradually forced 

 upon the vizier. Perhaps the maladministration of 

 the necropolis by Pewer'o had become so notorious a 

 fact that even heavy bribery could no longer make it 

 worth the vizier's while to continue his policy of hush — 

 he may have come to realise that to go on like this 

 would lose him his viziership. 



Later Robberies 



But thanks to the stupidity or roguery of Kham- 

 wese's initial policy, Pewer' 5 's disgraceful incompe- 

 tency, and the utter inability of the central government 

 to cope with any situation that demanded instant and 

 firm action, the plundering still went on. Thus four 

 accounts of trials of tomb-robbers, three dating from 

 the nineteenth year of the reign of Ramesses IX, are 

 preserved to us in the Mayer Papyri A & B. These 

 accoimts inform us fairly completely as to how the 

 trial of persons accused of such criminal offences was 

 conducted. They were first examined by beating with 

 a rod, their hands and feet were fettered, and an oath 

 was administered to them not to speak falsely. Then 

 their deposition was taken down. If, after being thus 

 beaten and fettered, the accused still maintained his 

 innocence and apparentlj' could reveal nothing, and 

 other serious evidence against him was not forth- 

 coming, he was declared innocent and set at liberty. 



Articles of Spoil Most Favoured by Thieves 



Two passages, one in the Mayer Papyrus A and the 

 other in B, tell us what sort of loot the ancient tomb- 

 robbers were out to obtain. From the tombs of a 

 certain Queen Nesmut, Queen Bekurel (wife of 

 Ramesses VI), and a person whose name is not recorded, 

 the thief Bukha'ef got 3 deben (about 273 grammes) 

 of silver, 150 dehen (13,650 grammes) of copper in the 

 form of vessels, I dcben (gi grammes = about 3 oz.) of 

 gold, a necklace of gold weighing 8 kite (72 grammes = 

 more than 2 oz.), and a number of garments, some of 

 coloured cloth (or perhaps rather cloth embroidered 

 in divers colours), and others described as being of 

 fine Upper Egyptian cloth. In the other passage a 

 witness tells us how he and four others robbed the 

 tomb of Ramesses VI. He relates how, after spending 

 four days in breaking into it, they at last sticceeded in 

 opening the tomb and entered it. He speaks of their 

 finding a basket, and apparently also some sixty chests 

 or boxes. They opened the basket and found in it 

 various bronze and copper articles, wash-basins, 

 ewers, and vases of different kinds, weighing in all 



' Breasted, Ancient Records of Egypt (Chicago, IC06-7). vol. 

 iv. §§;o2, 542. 



500 dehen (45,000 grammes = i cwt. 21 lb. 4 oz. 

 15 dwt.), which they divided into five equal shares of 

 100 deben in weight. They also opened two boxes 

 full of clothes, the boxes very possibly being more or 

 less like that shown in Fig. i. Among these clothes 

 were coloured or embroidered robes and garments of 

 good Upper Egyptian cloth, in all thirty-five garments 

 — seven, therefore, falling to the share of each thief. 

 They opened yet another basket, this time containing 

 not bronze and copper articles but clothes — and here, 

 alas ! the docimient abruptly ends, the rest being torn 

 off and lost. So we shall never know what other 

 treasures these thieves found in the tomb of Ramesses 

 \T and carried off. 



The Treasures in Tutankhamon's Tomb 



It is just such objects as those described in the 

 preceding paragraph that have been found in the 

 newly discovered tomb of Tutankhamon. The 

 accounts hitherto published speak of boxes, baskets, 

 and \-ases, as well as of splendid furniture overlaid 

 with gold and inlaid with ivory and brilliantly coloured 

 glaze plaques. According to the account in The 

 Times, included among the great array of costly 

 furniture are several gilded couches, which are no 

 doubt much like that shown in Fig. 2. Mention was 

 also made in The Times of cushioned chairs. Such a 

 chair, elaborately carved and gilded, with its leather 

 ctishion, is depicted in Fig. 3. 



By the time the reign of the last of the Ramessids 

 came to an end, there were few royal tombs left to 

 plunder. Paynozem I, the third king of the succeeding 

 priestly dynasty, gave up in despair the task of at- 

 tempting to protect the royal sepulchres, and started 

 transferring the bodies — the rich tomb-furniture and 

 burial-outfit had long ago vanished — to the tomb, so 

 well known to tourists, of Sethos I. During the reign 

 of Siamun, next king but one to Paynozem, the bodies 

 of Sethos I, Ramesses I, and Ramesses II, were taken 

 from the tomb of Sethos I to that of a queen called 

 Inhapi. But even here they were not safe from the 

 marauder's hand, and finally, a few years later, under 

 Pesibkhcnno II, they, and the bodies of a number of 

 other royal and highly placed personages, were secretly 

 conveyed to an old and probably unused tomb of 

 Amenophis I, near the temple of Deir el-Bahri. The 

 entrance to this tomb was finallj' sealed up early in 

 the Twenty-second Dynasty, not long after 940 B.C. 

 " Here," says Breasted, "'the greatest kings of Egypt 

 slept unmolested for nearly three thousand years, 

 until about 1871 or 1872, when the Theban descendants 

 of those same tomb-robbers, whose prosecution under 

 Ramesses IX we can still read, discovered the place, 

 and the plundering of the royal bodies was begun again. 

 By methods not greatly differing from those employed 



