volume 2 - Robert Bedrosian's Armenian History Workshop

The Wrecking of Tombs and Mummies. 383
a king built a pyramid to cover his body, or hewed a
tomb in the bowels of a mountain, the result was the
same ; the thief found his way into the sarcophagus
chamber and robbed the dead, and broke the mummy
in pieces in order to get possession of rings, pectorals,
scarabs, etc. The discoveries of the royal mummies
at Der al-Bahari and in the tomb of Amen-hetep II
prove that the ancient Egyptian Kings were unable to
protect the Royal Tombs and their occupants against
the tomb-robber. And the inscriptions written by the
priest-kings of the XXIst dynasty on the bandages of
the mummies which they repaired show that the tombrobber
was no respecter of persons.
In times of national trouble and anarchy funerals
became less sumptuous, and the profession of tombrobber
was less lucrative. But the mummies suffered
all the same, for many of them were dispossessed of their
tombs, which were then filled with other occupants.^
The demand for good rock-hewn tombs must always
have exceeded the supply, and those who could not
defend the tombs of their dead saw them filched from
them, and the mummies ejected. But besides the tombrobber
mummies had many enemies, viz., water, moisture,
dry rot, beetles, moths, worms, ants, etc. In tombs
^ Compare the passage in the Leyden Papyras (ed. Gardiner)
in which 'Apu-ur, the Sage, in describing the terrible state of Egypt
under the foreigner, says : " He who could not make for himself a
coffin is [now] the owner of a tomb with a hall," i.e., he " usurped "
someone else's tomb ^^^^ J cS^^^f'^.A:-
And again, " the owners of sepulchres are cast out on to the waste
" many dead are buried in the river," ^^ ^ 1
AAAiWA
'^^
^\. H T^, > " ^ stream is a tomb, a sepulchre hath
A/WAArt f\ l\ AAAA^ -rr- I
.-v-^ ( ifii^ ^ (p. 2, 11. 6, 7). Apu-ur lived between the
Vlth and the Xllth dynasties.
I
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