THE site between the native house ‘Beit el Meleitên’ and the village mosque, about one hundred and fifty metres north-east of the mouth of the Dêr el Bahari valley, was examined in 1908, and as it resulted in the discovery of a XVIIth Dynasty tomb (No. 9), it was continued in the following year 1909. We began by exhaustively clearing tomb No. 9 that for the sake of protection during the interim had been re-covered with earth. In 1908 the front court, pit, and pit-chamber had been investigated: in 1909 our attention was thus confined to the inner chamber only, but everything of interest was discovered during the earlier work.
During the work of 1908 the courtyard was found to contain great masses of pottery and mutilated mummies, and it was among these, on a rock ledge, that the important historical tablet referring to the expulsion of the Hyksos by the General Kamosi (see further description by Griffith, p. 36), and the second broken tablet were recovered. In the first chamber were found parts of a wooden painted Canopic box, with three of its jars in pottery painted to imitate alabaster ([Pl. XXV]. 1 and 2), among other destroyed remains of a plundered burial. But in 1909, owing to the depth and sliding nature of the rubbish, a more extensive excavation had to be made to open the main chambers. Little more was found here than further examples of pots, a child’s coffin too decayed for preservation, and a reed burial of a poorer and much later man (for example see [Pl. XLII]. 3). The tomb consisted of a court formed by low stone and mortar walls, with a cutting in the centre leading to the entrance: this entrance or doorway gave access to a passage, cut in the rock, some six metres in length, which led to a rectangular chamber that apparently formed one of the sepulchral repositories. Cut in the floor of this chamber, on the west side, was a shaft nearly three metres deep, giving ingress to two other chambers, one above the other.
It hardly seems credible that such a mass of pottery as was found in the rubbish outside could have all come from so small a tomb, and one is inclined to think that the greater part must have come from some neighbouring and perhaps larger tomb.
[Plate XXVI] gives the different types of the pottery vessels found here. The earthenware is fine in quality, deep red, with smooth surface, and of a soft nature. Some are of a yellowish-grey material, and examples of these are given in [Plate XXVI]. 2 (the five pieces on the right hand of the lower row). In the top illustration are shown three very fine specimens of complete jars with lids in red pottery with black lines round the circumference of their bellies.
The name on the Canopic box is Kati-nekht,
CHAPTER VI
CARNARVON TABLETS I AND II
By F. Ll. Griffith
THE writing tablet (Carnarvon Tablet I) is a document of the highest historical importance, preserving as it does a contemporary record of the conflict of the Theban Dynasty with the Hyksos. On the face of the tablet eight lines of hieratic contain the introduction to the famous Proverbs of Ptah-hetep, setting forth how the Wazir Ptah-hetep, son of a king, spoke to his King Assa of the advance of old age upon him and the diminution of all his powers, and requested that he might delegate his duties to his son, whom he would instruct in the words and ways of the Ancients. The King accorded his request and bade him proceed, and thus originated the rules of good conduct which go by the name of the old Wazir. The text[18] of the tablet shows some considerable differences of reading from the only other copy known—that in the Prisse Papyrus.
Below this fragment of philosophy are marked the lines of a draught-board, in squares 10 × 3. Four of the compartments contain hieratic signs indicating their place in the game.
The historical text on the other side consisted of no less than seventeen long lines. Unhappily the flaking of the stucco[19] about the fracture has robbed us of one line and of the greater part of two more. The text is singularly difficult, and this great gap, added to some minor imperfections, further obscures the meaning. In the following brief analysis I have had the help of a number of excellent readings suggested by Mr. A. H. Gardiner.