Capt. Mondo's World o' Mondo-ness

Book Review: The Lost Tomb, by Kent Weeks When I was laid up last week, I had the chance to catch up on some reading. The book that surfaced to the top was The Lost Tomb: The Greatest Discovery at the Valley of the Kings Since Tutankhamun, which I had picked up in the remaindered book section at the local bookstore. When I saw it, I grabbed a copy, for despite the hype of the title (which I'd like to think of as hyperbole introduced by some anonymous marketing dweeb at the publisher) I already knew that the book was about KV5, a truly "lost" tomb, in the sense that it was known to exist but it’s entrance has been forgotten after it got covered over with rubble and debris.

It's funny, but by the end of the book we don't really know a lot more about why KV5 was built, who's interred in it (though one set of bones seems probably to be a legendary elder son of Rameses II, though Weeks never actually says that) or why it was built the way it was (it's the largest single tomb in the Valley of the Kings). The book is much more about the process of archeology, and about life as an archaeologist in Egypt in the late 1990s.

Weeks manages to discover the location of KV5 after pouring over old documents and sketchy maps pinpointing roughly where it was. Then came the work of picking a likely location and then excavating all of the accumulated debris in front of it. They found the entrance after their second attempt at a dig location. Turns out that the entrance was covered up at least in part by the debris dumped by Howard Carter's workmen shortly after the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun (Week's found a broken champagne glass near the entrance of KV5 he likes to think was lost after the celebration over finding Tut's tomb).

Week's looks at the painstaking task of modern archeology, which in the case of KV5 means clearing away large amounts of materials that washed into the tomb over the millennia during the irregular flash floods that occasionally inundate the Valley. Archeologist of a different age would have just cleared all of this material out straightaway, but Weeks shows the type of information his meticulous removing of layers of material reveal about the history of the tomb since it was built. This careful excavation reveals such things as the likely location of where things may have once resided in the tomb, how the tomb was originally built over many stages and years, and of what happened after the tomb had long been forgotten about, even by the seemingly inevitable tomb robbers. This material often had the consistency and look of concrete, so this is an arduous job. And to this the heat, the cramped working conditions and the sometimes iffy state of the ceiling, and it all makes for an interesting place to work. ;-)

The book provides one of the best glimpses I’ve read into what the life of a New Kingdom pharaoh must have been like. Near the end of the book, he goes into what I think is the most credible history of the Armarna era (i.e. about the "heretic" pharaoh Ahketaton) and how the long reign of Rameses II fitted into the mould of the XIX dynasty. Fascinating stuff, and persuasively argued. Since it is thought that KV5 is the tomb for the many sons (as much as 30+ by many wives) of Rameses II, Week naturally has to talk about the Biblical myth of the Exodus of Moses, and the death of the first son of Pharaoh. Fact is, there’s no event close to the many plagues mentioned in the bible mentioned in any Egyptian history, the Israelites seem not to have been a major population within the boundaries of Egypt, and Rameses II is a dubious candidate in terms of the chronology of the Bible for the event. Weeks makes a good and sensible case that the Exodus is in fact mythic history, with little to tie it to the historical record.

The book provides a glimpse of Egypt in the late 90s, a country with a magnificent past but still currently mired in the third-world. Petty bureaucrats abound, the office that oversees the excavations and opens tombs seems much more interested in short-term profits than long-term conservation, and sadly, pretty much all of the experts are from foreign lands (though Weeks makes a point about training some of the local workmen in surveying for his Theban necropolis mapping project). Weeks was there during the horrific massacre that happened in the Valley of the Kings in the late 90s, and talks about what happened -- a section with particular resonance these days post 9/11 -- and the disastrous effects it had on the local tourism industry. Still, the locals he meets are all friendly, warm and human: the book ends on a happy note shortly after the massacre as a workman comes to Weeks announcing the birth of a baby girl.

Egypt is still near the top of places I want to visit before I expire. The country is certainly brought to life in Week’s book, which is well-written and I found captivating. I look forward to what may prove to be a string of sequels to this book, as the work on KV5 continues now and in the years to come.

I have noticed from reading KMT magazine that Weeks is one of those Egyptian archeologists who does regular tours of sections of the country -- whenever I do manage to scrump up the money to visit the country someday, I’d like to attend one of his tours.