QV66

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Plan of QV66 (with French lettering)

QV66 , the rock tomb of Nefertari , the great royal wife of Ramses II (19th Dynasty), is the most important tomb in the Valley of the Queens . The tomb is the first fully decorated complex in the Valley of the Queens and marks the climax in the development of the Egyptian queen tomb. The importance of the grave is particularly emphasized by the magnificent wall paintings. Some motifs were even taken directly from the image program of the royal tombs, which makes it far above the level of the burial of officials and princes.

discovery

The grave was discovered in 1904 by Ernesto Schiaparelli , who carried out the first systematic excavations in the Valley of the Queens between 1903 and 1905. After the buried entrance was exposed, he found the tomb open, with no remains of the ancient closure, which made it clear that tomb robbers had come before him. The few finds that he was able to recover were transferred to the Museo Egizio in Turin, which he directed , where they can still be seen today.

In the coffin chamber, Schiaparelli found the most important object, the sarcophagus lid that had been blown by looters, the fragments of which could largely be put back together. Here he also found a Djed pillar , which was in one of four wall niches. The other finds include numerous ushabtis , a pair of palm tree sandals, two arched box lids and a knob made of blue faience , which bears the name cartouche of Pharaoh Eje , Tutankhamun's successor from the late 18th dynasty.

architecture

The conceptual basis of the rock grave is a two-chamber system, which, however, has been extended to two axially aligned room complexes through extensive extensions.

The main axis of the tomb from the entrance to the sarcophagus chamber is oriented (according to the real geographical cardinal points) from south to north, which seems to contradict the Egyptian ideology, according to which a sarcophagus chamber has to be in the west. The scenes are mostly based on the ideal cardinal directions, but there is also an integration of the real-geographic cardinal direction into the conception of the decoration program.

As in his own grave complex ( KV7 ), Ramses II had chosen a slightly " kinked " shape in the design of the grave axis for Nefertari , which was common in the time before Akhenaten . This kink is a unique architectural element in the Valley of the Queens. Erik Hornung interprets this as follows:

“This correspondence cannot arise from chance or technical inability, but has to be understood as a reaction to the straight grave axes of the Amarna period, through which one wanted to bring the sunlight as directly as possible into the realm of the dead, while now one more time the curved space of the hereafter imitates. "

Heike Schmidt also sees purely practical reasons in this shift:

“The shift of the main axis is pragmatic due to the thematic separation of the south-north from the east-west oriented room complex. The symmetrical elaboration of the two complexes inevitably had to lead to an axis shift, since the corridor belonging to the main axis should not start from one of the rooms of the north-south axis. "

Another special feature of the tomb is that it has pillars. No previous grave in the Valley of the Queens has pillars. In the Valley of the Kings , too , with few exceptions, pillars are reserved for royal tombs.

Text and image program

As queen, Nefertari was not allowed to use royal funerary texts, but chose equivalents from the Book of the Dead , whose sayings and illustrations were available to everyone for other uses and were also widely used in the graves of officials of that time. However, some motifs are also taken directly from the picture program of the royal tombs and thus raise them far above the level of the graves of officials and princes. Above all, this includes the design of the ceiling as a starry sky, which has only been found in royal tombs since the Old Kingdom and embodies the idea of ​​an afterlife intended for the king. The representations of the heraldic plants of Upper and Lower Egypt ( lotus and papyrus and the goddess Maat ) actually only belong in a royal tomb.

The murals of the tomb follow a specific iconographic program. The journey of the deceased is shown on two axes: the first axis is oriented towards the interior of the grave (religious west), where it reaches the kingdom of Osiris ; the second axis is directed outwards (religious east), where it regenerates and returns to the light of Re . With her move into the " House of Eternity ", Nefertari embarks on a long journey and, after successfully overcoming all obstacles, arrives in the realm of the god of the dead Osiris. Their return to the light takes place in the reverse order in which the transition from their state as Osiris to that of Re takes place. The climax of this journey takes place in the vestibule, where the “going out during the day” of the glorified queen who has merged with the sun emerging on the horizon takes place.

Rescue the mural

The bad porous rock into which Nefertari's grave was hammered, but also the effects of water and the salts dissolved in it, resulted in his decorative decorations being badly damaged and, in the end, whole plastering panels with colored decoration coming off the walls threatened.

Since September 1985, the Egyptian Antiquities Administration and the Getty Conservation Institute (GCI) in Malibu have been trying to save the endangered paintings, around 20 percent of which had already been irrevocably destroyed by then. The large-scale campaign came to an end in the spring of 1992 after seven years of research and five years of restoration work.

photos

  • Queen Nefertari making the sacrifice

  • Queen Nefertari at the Senet game

  • The god Re-Harachte and the goddess Hathor

  • Queen Nefertari in prayer position

literature

  • Erik Hornung : The tomb of an Egyptian queen. In: Bibliotheca Orientalis. (BiOr) Vol. 32, No. 3/4, 1975, pp. 143-145.
  • Erik Hornung: Valley of the Kings - The resting place of the pharaohs. Artemis, Zurich 1982, ISBN 3-7608-0519-1 .
  • Christian Leblanc: Architecture et évolution chronologique des tombes de la Vallée des Reines. In: Bulletin de l'Institut français d'archéologie Orientale. (BIFAO) No. 89, 1989, pp. 227-247.
  • Christian Leblanc: Ta set neferou - une nécropole de Thèbes-Ouest et son histoire I. Nubar Print House, Cairo / Paris 1989, ISBN 2-9504365-0-1 .
  • Rosalind Moss , Bertha Porter : Topographical Bibliography of Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphic Texts, Reliefs and Paintings. Part 1: The Theban Necropolis. Part 2: Royal Tombs and Smaller Cemeteries. Clarendon Press, Oxford 1964.
  • Ernesto Schiaparelli : Relazione sui lavori della Missione archeologica italiana in Egitto. Volume I: Esplorazione della "Valle delle Regine" nella necropoli di Thebe. R. Museo di Antichita, Turin 1924.
  • Heike C. Schmidt, Joachim Willeitner : Nefertari - wife of Ramses' II. (= Zabern's illustrated books on archeology. Vol. 10) from Zabern, Mainz 1994, ISBN 3-8053-1474-4 .
  • Heike C. Schmidt: Scenario of the transfiguration - backdrop of the myth: The grave of Nefertari. In: Studies on Ancient Egyptian Culture. (SAK) No. 22, 1995, pp. 237-270
  • Gertrud Thausing, Hans Goedicke : Nofretari. A documentation of the wall paintings of her grave (= Monumenta scriptorum. ). Academic Printing and Publishing Company , Graz 1971.
  • Kent Weeks : In the Valley of the Kings. Of funerary art and the cult of the dead of the Egyptian rulers. Frederking & Thaler, Munich 2001, ISBN 3-89405-456-5 .

Web links

Commons : Tomb of Nefertari  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ HC Schmidt, J. Willeitner: Nefertari. Wife of Ramses II. P. 94.
  2. ^ HC Schmidt, J. Willeitner: Nefertari. Wife of Ramses II. P. 95ff.
  3. ↑ Heike C. Schmidt: scenario of the transfiguration - backdrop of the myth: The grave of Nefertari. In: SAK. 22, 1995, p. 237ff.
  4. ↑ Erik Hornung: Valley of the Kings - The resting place of the pharaohs. 1985, p. 53.
  5. ↑ Heike C. Schmidt: scenario of the transfiguration - backdrop of the myth: The grave of Nefertari. In: SAK. 22, 1995, p. 240.
  6. ↑ Erik Hornung: The tomb of an Egyptian queen. In: BiOr. Vol. 32, No. 3/4, 1975, p. 144.
  7. ↑ Erik Hornung: Valley of the Kings - The resting place of the pharaohs. P. 52f.
  8. ↑ Christian Leblanc: The valley of the queens. In: Kent R. Weeks: In the Valley of the Kings. Of funerary art and the cult of the dead of the Egyptian rulers. 2001, p. 286, p. 297ff.
  9. ^ HC Schmidt, J. Willeitner: Nefertari. Wife of Ramses II. P. 101ff.

Coordinates: 25 ° 43 ′ 40.3 "  N , 32 ° 35 ′ 33.4"  E