Mummification Museum lecture, TT147

Theban Tomb Project TT147 Dr Boyo Ockinga MacQuarrie University

BTW When I write these notes I do try and look things up and when doing this one I found this very interesting link which talk about the work of the Australians in Egypt http://arts.monash.edu.au/archaeology/excavations/assets/documents/corroboree-catalogue.pdf

TT147 is located in the Dra Abu Naga area of the Theban Necropolis and belongs to Nefer - renpet. There is a gully just above it which runs down the hill directly into the courtyard of TT147 which has caused many problems for the tomb and they are trying to block this off to protect the tomb. The courtyard is filled with debris and the mud brick walls have been washed away. There is a different, softer stone in the gully and a hard rock around it and this made the ancient workmen move the position of the door. When the removed the existing door it revealed the sandstone threshold. The tomb is T shaped and has been reused with possible 2 subsidiary burials.

The original burial was in the time of Amenhotep III. The walls were blackened by soot and smoke which surprisingly was easy to remove compared to other similar tombs. Some lovely dancers were revealed by Ali Abdullah the restorer who uses a mixture of distilled water, alcohol and ammonia on tissue paper which is peeled off 30-40 seconds after application. Conservation was needed on the plaster as it was very vulnerable. The stone was poor quality so they had mud plaster walls 20cm thick and some of the mouldings were in this. On top of this there was two other layers plaster. Flooding had badly attacked the lower parts of the wall and the burial chamber had thick layers of silt. However they were able to make use of this during reconstruction. There was nothing left in the burial chamber except the impression of a wooden coffin in the mud.