Tomb hunting
JOANN FLETCHER is swept along by a quest to uncover the elusive final resting places of star-studded ancient figures Searching for the Lost Tombs of Egypt by Chris Naunton Thames and Hudson, 304 pages, £19.95
As former director of the Egypt Exploration Society and current president of the International Association of Egyptologists, Chris Naunton is certainly well placed to be Searching for the Lost Tombs of Egypt. And here he does so with skill, guiding the reader through a fascinating landscape of pyramids, temples and tombs within which the Egyptians buried their elite dead for more than three millennia.
With the premise that the final resting places of some of Egypt’s most famous names remain unknown, Naunton takes a chronological approach in seeking out possible tomb sites of these “vanished celebrities”. He begins with the lost tomb of Imhotep (inventor of the pyramid and himself buried somewhere beneath the drifting sands of Sakkara’s vast desert cemetery), which has remained elusive despite repeated attempts to track it down.
Of course, the pyramid tombs Imhotep invented ultimately proved too tempting a target for tomb robbers, so Naunton’s next chapter explains the move to the rock-cut tombs of the Valley of the Kings. The most intriguing chapter, however, covers “the enduring fascination” of the Amarna period and the fate of Tutankhamun’s predecessors Akhenaten and Nefertiti. Here, Naunton discusses my own team’s identifica- tion of a mummified body as Nefertiti back in 2003. Although we interpreted post-mortem damage to her mouth as part of the damnatio memoriae – or ‘condemnation of memory’ – that Nefertiti suffered, Naunton questions this interpretation and prefers the conclusions of a 2010 study claiming the damage was the cause of death, even though it had actually cut through the embalming resins, which could only mean she was mummified while alive!
Naunton then explores the tombs in the Valley of the Kings still awaiting discovery. This is timely given current excavations prompted by the tell-tale clues provided by distinctive geological features and ground-penetrating radar scanning. It’s certainly not a case of whether there are more tombs to be found here, only when they’ll be discovered – or at least made public, since this is often dictated more by politicians than archaeologists.
After then tackling the lost tomb of priest-king Herihor, which Egyptologist John Romer claimed would make Tutankhamun look like a “display in Woolworths”, Naunton ends with Alexander the Great and Cleopatra, whose tombs continue to make headlines every few years with claims they too may have been found – but which so far have not.
This book highlights the fact that some of the biggest names in ancient history were buried in Egypt – and that their last resting places remain tantalisingly hidden. That is surely its greatest strength – one that Naunton supports with a highly readable narrative and well-chosen images. There is much to recommend here to anyone wanting to discover more about a subject central to Egypt’s ancient culture – and one
that’s fascinating in itself.