Egypt With Omar Sharif

From the earliest days of royal and noble burials in ancient Egypt, objects and jewelry of gold, precious stones, alabaster and faience had been placed within the tombs for the use of the kings in the afterlife. Even the golden masks on the deceased, like this example of King Tutankhamon, would have been hacked off. It was important that the deceased be provided for in the afterlife as well as he had been in this life.

Providing the dead with commodities and objects of value thus brought with it the threat of tomb robbery. The tombs of the elite were most at risk, since they contained a higher proportion of valuable objects, but even poor graves were robbed for the sake of the meager offerings and adornments placed with the dead. Grave robbers were present from the earliest times. Old Kingdom inscriptions contained warnings that robbers would be judged by the gods in the hereafter. Severe punishments awaited in this life as well, more definite than any curse.

Some architectural developments were taken to avoid the possibility of theft, such as in earliest times, storing goods in subterranean chambers. The entrance stairway leading to the burial chamber in Early Dynastic and Old Kingdom mastaba tombs was blocked by one or more stone slabs, which slid into place in vertical slots. The entrance passage or shaft was also blocked by rubble.

The burial chamber in the tomb of Senwosret at Lisht was protected by a series of stone slabs, the first of which, once lowered, could not be forced upwards again because metal or wooden bolts were released from holes in the lateral grooves in the slab, effectively locking it.

But there were times when robbery was committed at the very time of burial, probably by the undertakers or cemetery guardians.

A number of intact burials have been found, the tombs with intact entrance blockings, but the bodies had been searched and the valuables removed. Elsewhere bodies had been left thrown out of their coffins, while still articulated.

Even large stone sarcophagi could not always prevent theft, since the thieves would lever off the lids or even tunnel through the sides or floors of the sarcophagi.

Today only a handful of bodies remain in their tombs, and even fewer are still as they were when interred.

The treasure trove of Tutankhamun was not exempt from robbery. Howard Carter noted the multiple entries of thieves. Evidence was found of at least two robberies, carried out close to the time of the burial, perhaps by members of the burial party.

At the time of the first break-in, the entrance corridor was empty, save for jars of embalming material and other items stored there for want of space within the tomb proper. Both the outer and inner corridor blockings were broken through at the top left hand corner, giving access to the antechamber, which the robbers ransacked primarily for meta but also linen, oils and perfumes. The robbery was soon discovered, order restored, the corridor emptied of funerary goods and the materials reburied in another pit, filled up to the roof with limestone chippings, and the tomb resealed with the seal of the necropolis administration.

A short time later, the tomb was clearly entered again, though this time with far more difficulty than previously, since the thieves now had to burrow through the corridor blockage. This second gang gained access to the entire tomb, and among their booty was perhaps 60% of the jewelry stored in the treasury. They evidently entered the tomb at least twice, on the last occasion they must have been apprehended. A knotted scarf containing eight gold rings had been confiscated and casually tossed back into one of the antechamber boxes. The breached entrances to the burial chamber and at either end of the entrance corridor were closed and resealed with the same jackal and nine-captives motif, and the hole dug through the corridor fill re-blocked.

Robbery in decline ages:

During the course of the 20th Dynasty, the age of the last Ramesside kings, the control of the central government slackened. After Ramesses II’s glorious reign, it seemed that his successors were coming fast, one after another. When kings died in only a short period of time, tombs were left unfinished, and deliveries from the central government became problematic. By the ninth year of Ramesses IX, delivery of the Deir el-Medina village rations became sporadic and insubstantial again.

In addition, the Theban region was unsettled by attacks of Libyan raiders. One work journal at Deir el-Medina recorded "Year one, first month of winter, day three. No work for fear of the enemy." The work-journal further reported that those enemies have reached Pernabi, a town north of Thebes perhaps, and that they have destroyed all that was there and burned its people. Foreign wars left mercenaries, Bedouin and dispossessed Egyptians roaming the Nile, attacking its towns and villages.

Armed and armored, they must have struck fear into the villagers near the Valley of the Kings. But the King was up in the delta with his army-the village, even Thebes, its temples, tombs with gold, were defenseless.

The workmen gangs went on strike. It would not be the first time. Life was becoming harder and the standard of living was dropping. The rich tombs on the western bank began to attract foreign raiders again and Thebans too.

Robbers style:

Apparently the robbers worked in gangs of seven or eight, including stonemasons or coppersmiths, with water-carriers, a smith to melt down the plundered metals, and a boatman to ferry them from the necropolis to the city. Once inside the tombs, which they would access from the rear to leave the doors and seals intact, the robbers would smash the burials, break open the stone sarcophagi, hack the gilding from the coffins, tear the mummies apart for their jewelry, carry off the linens, oils and furniture. Sometimes the thieves simply set fire to the burial chambers, then later on scraped the hardened pools of gold from beneath the ash.

The inhabitants of the west bank took the findings to be a vindication of themselves and launched a demonstration aimed against the mayor of East Thebes.

But the footnote to all this was that the loot stolen from the tombs had found its way into the Theban economy. Since at this time there was no coinage in Egypt, payments were made in kind. Everyone had somehow benefited at some time from the thefts. After all, in a region where everyone knew everyone’s business to some degree, it would have been difficult to hide sudden newly-acquired wealth.

A great irony was that the very people who lived their lives in the fervent belief that the king was their living god, their priest who would act to bring and keep ma’at in the world and prevent the incursion of chaos, thought nothing of robbing that king after death. One has to wonder what went on in their minds. Did it not matter that they were violating the nourishment of his ka? Or perhaps, like us today, the ancient Egyptian thieves were able to somehow moralize and justify how their illegal acts were justified if there was an ultimate reason that was good-for example, the care of themselves and their family outweighed the care of the dead.