Andrea Loprieno-Gnirs: Challenged by nature: structural damages in Theban tombs

A talk at the conference Profane Landscapes, Sacred Spaces, held in Prague in June 2014. egyptologie.ff....
Andrea Loprieno-Gnirs (University of Basel)
Challenged by nature: structural damages in Theban tombs and their impact on a cemetery
TT 95 is the tomb chapel of Mery and Hunay in the southern foothills of the cemetery of Sheikh Abd’el-Qurnah dating to the reign of Thutmose III and Amenhotep II. It suffered from substantial structural damage along a crack running from East to West through the courtyard and the rooms of the chapel: While parts of the ceiling in the South-Eastern corner of the second pillared hall had fallen down, half of the ceiling and a pillar in the South-Eastern aisle of the entrance hall had collapsed, exposing the room and its decoration to the challenges of nature. The building history of the chapel as well as archaeological and textual evidence suggests that severe damage took place during the period of tomb construction. In this paper, I will discuss the tomb’s specific location within the non-royal cemetery of the middle 18th Dynasty and its interrelations with surrounding funerary monuments, the environmental challenges encountered by the builders and stonemasons involved in the construction of the tomb and the risks they took when trying to realize ambitious building projects, and finally the pathology and history of the damages inflicted to the building structure of the chapel. I will examine what the owners of the tomb complex undertook after the incident and how the chapel was used in later times. Similar records from other contemporary sites within the Theban Necropolis may provide information about the possible date and the causes of harm to their basic structure. Also, the question can be asked if some of the cases presented, including Mery and Hunay’s tomb, could be linked to seismic activities in the Theban region. After a brief overview of the seismicity of Egypt and of geophysical and archaeological studies discussing possible impacts of earthquakes on Egyptian monumental architecture during the Bronze Age, I will re-examine the evidence from the 18th Dynasty Theban Necropolis and ask how the environment was adapted to human needs and how it itself influenced human behaviour, in which way natural events had repercussions on technological, social, political, and religious practices of their time.