26 April - 2 May 2001
Issue No.531
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Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 26 April - 2 May 2001 Issue No.531 |
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Dig days:
A family to remember
In 1974, during my early days as an archaeologist, I went to Luxor with the University of Pennsylvania to work on the West Bank of Thebes (Ancient Luxor). That was my second visit to the West Bank (the first was as a student at Alexandria University). When I arrived, it was early: about 6:00am. The valley was quiet. All I could hear was the noise of the birds. Around me I could just make out the dark faces of the villagers, like smudges in the grey dawn light.
I had to hire a donkey to take me on the long plodding trek to the expedition house where David O'Connor, Professor of Egyptology at the University of Pennsylvania, was staying. As I slowly made my way to the valley, my thoughts wandered, and I recalled the story of a cache of mummies that was found at Deir Al-Bahri and the family that had watched over them.
The story of Deir Al-Bahri is interwoven with that of the Abdel-Rasoul family. Theirs was a family with an uncanny feel for the secrets of the past. They could locate the tombs of the Pharaohs, and they used to go into the Valley of the Kings at night to search with lamps for the entrances of tombs. The ancient Egyptians had a word for this: "Hy," meaning "He who knows the secrets of the location of the tombs."
In 1871, the Abdel-Rasoul family found the secret tomb of Deir Al-Bahri. They told no one so they could benefit from the treasure themselves. Slowly, royal artefacts began to appear on the market. The Antiquities Department sent Ahmed Pasha Kamal, the first Egyptian archaeologist, to find out where these royal artefacts were coming from. The police caught Mohamed Abdel-Rasoul, a member of the family, and they tried all the ways they could think of to get him to talk. They tried beating him; they tried talking to him nicely; they even tried to bribe him. But he did not reveal the secret.
Mohamed, at last, returned to his family. He wailed over his recent suffering, and demanded a greater share of the treasure inside the hidden tombs. The family quarrelled over how the loot was to be divided. Mohamed grew upset and finally ran to Ahmed Pasha Kamal and revealed the location of the hidden tomb.
The Egyptian archaeologist entered the tomb in the company of the police in 1881. Inside, he found about 40 mummies of the great Pharaohs of Egypt, such as Ahmose, who conquered the Hyksos; Tuthmose III, the Napoleon of the past; and the greatest of the great pharaohs, Ramses II. Most of the mummies had been moved to Deir Al-Bahri about 1100 BC, when the ancient Egyptians discovered that thieves had raided the tombs. Thousands of papyrus fragments surrounded the mummies. It was a great find. Then, in 1934, Mohamed Abdel-Rasoul led Kamal to the location of another hidden tomb. Kamal moved all the mummies into a boat to be shipped to Cairo. As all the mummies of the Pharaohs were loaded onto the boat, ladies from the village came out dressed in black, and the villagers moaned and wailed as they bid farewell to their ancestors.
That tale still echoes today. Now I listen to stories told by our famous actress, Nadia Lutfi, about Shady Abdel-Salam's filmed version of the famous discovery of those mummies and the family that tried to hide them.
[to be continued]
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