The wadis which lie to the west of the main Theban mountain were last officially explored by Howard Carter in 1916 and 1917. He suggested in a subsequent article that these wadis might contain the burial ground of the XVIIIth dynasty royal family members whose burials were then missing.The granting of the concession toexcavate the Valley of the Kings to theEarl of Carnarvon, and the subsequentdiscovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun,meant that Carter never returned to theWestern Wadis to test his theory.The burials of many members of theXVIIIth dynasty royal family remain missing to this day. Since Carter sexploration of this area the evidence inthese wadis has been examined by manypeople, both officially and unofficially, but this report represents the results of the first Ministry of Antiquities-approvedattempt to re-address Howard Carter shypothesis.

The Western Wadis of the Theban Necropolis

Piers Litherland

History

Interlink Pub Group

<p>Shaft Tombs which had only been noted in two brief paragraphs by Howard Carter in 1917 have now been revealed to be burial places of hitherto unrecognised members of the family of Amenhotep III. These architecturally unique shaft tombs had been repeatedly robbed but still contained the shattered remains of the largest collections of canopic jars ever found in Egypt. These and other surviving contents of the tomb seem to have been deliberately destroyed in phaoronic times in an until recently successful attempt to remove the names of the dead from history. The tombs were used over several generations and included the burials of the King s Great Wife, son, daughter, another of his wives and at least a dozen women bearing the title Ornament of the King . Although now the site of the burials appear remote, it was the site of a major crossroads during the XVIIIth dynasty, and traces of plant life and animal dung within the tombs point to a more fertile climate when they were created. The most pressing question the tombs raise is why and when these burials were destroyed, and why the names of several of the family of Amenhotep III and a group of court women should have been subjected to deliberate, systematic and official destruction.</p>

The Shaft Tombs of Wadi Bairiya

Ancient Civilizations

Genius Loci

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The Western Wadis of the Theban Necropolis

The Shaft Tombs of Wadi Bairiya