THE SEVENTEENTH DYNASTY TOMB No. 9
BY HOWARD CARTER
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, [Illustration: hieroglyph]
(var. [Illustration: hieroglyph]).