1 The Life and Times of Butehamun: Tomb Raider for the High Priest of Amun George Wood ‘Every royal tomb found in the Valley had been despoiled. Treasures, jewels, and kingly mummies had vanished. It was assumed that the ancient tomb robbers had destroyed what they could not steal, until that astonishing day in July of 1881, when a group of modern thieves led Emil Brugsch, of the Cairo Museum, to a remote valley in the Theban mountains. The thieves, men from the village of Gurneh, had discovered what archaeologists had missed—the last resting place of Egypt’s mightiest kings, queens, and royal children, hidden away in the days of the nation’s decline by a group of loyal priests.’ — From The Curse of the Pharaohs by Elizabeth Peters Master’s thesis 45 credits in Archaeology Spring Term 2020 Supervisor: Andreas Dorn Campus Engelska parken 2 Abstract Wood, G. 2020. The Life and Times of Butehamun: Tomb Raider for the High Priest of Amun. This is a biography of the scribe Butehamun. A member of a well-known family who had long lived in the village of Deir el-Medina working on the tombs in the Valley of Kings, Butehamun’s coming of age saw invasion and civil war in Thebes, and the end to the making of new tombs in the Valley, as the New Kingdom came to an end. Instead he was given the task by the High Priests of Amun to remove and rewrap royal mummies and rebury them in secret caches, while plundering them of their gold and other valuables for the coffers of the priestly rulers of Thebes. In many respects Butehamun was a tomb raider in the service of the High Priests of Amun. That project seems to have been successful: The mummy of every single king from the 18th through 21st Dynasties that has been identified and was found in a tomb was found in the two caches KV 35 or TT 320 (with the sole exception of Tutankhamun). Butehamun is unusually well- documented, leaving behind many letters, labels on coffins he worked with, graffiti, and highly unusual imagery on his own coffins. Two houses he lived in have been excavated, one with inscriptions about his family. This paper seeks to create a biography of Butehamun through the study of these things he left behind. One seems to reflect he may have suffered a crisis of faith, others may display instead a deep piety for Amun and pride in the royal mummy reburial project he carried out in the service of the god. Keywords: Butehamun, Deir el-Medina, Thebes, Egypt, Egyptology, mummies, reburial, caches, Valley of the Kings, biography Master thesis, 45 hp. Supervisor: Andreas Dorn. © George Wood Department of Archaeology and Ancient History, Uppsala University, Box 626, 75126 Uppsala, Sweden 3 Abstrakt Wood, G. 2020. Gravplundrare i tjänst hos Amuns överstepräst: Butehamuns liv och samtid. Detta är en biografi över skrivaren Butehamon. Han kom från en mycket känd familj som i många generationer verkat i byn Deir e-Medinah och arbetat med gravarna i Konungarnas dal. Han växte upp under en tid av invasion och inbördeskrig i Thebe, vilket ledde till slutet på det Nya riket och på byggandet av nya gravar i Dalen. Butehamons uppdrag från guden Amuns överstepräster blev istället att svepa om mumierna med nytt linne och avlägsna allt guld och andra värdesaker. Mumierna begravdes i nya hemliga förvaringsplatser, medan värdesakerna gick till Thebes religiösa härskare. Man kan beskriva Butehamon som en gravplundrare i tjänst hos översteprästerna. Projektet tycks ha varit en succé: Varenda kung från 18:e till och med 21:a dynastierna vars mumie har identifierats och som hittades i en grav fanns i ett av de två gömställena, KV 35 eller TT 320 (med Tutankhamon som enda undantag). Butehamon är ovanligt väldokumenterad, med många brev, etiketter på likkistor han arbetat med, graffiti samt de mycket ovanliga bilderna på hans egna likkistor. Två hus där han bodde har grävts ut, ett med inskriptioner om hans familj. Denna avhandling är en biografi över Butehamon baserad på studier av de saker han lämnade efter sig. En av dem tyder på en andlig kris, medan andra tycks avspegla en djup fromhet och tro på Amun och stolthet över det mumieprojekt han ledde i gudens tjänst. Nyckelord: Butehamon, Deir el-Medinah, Thebe, Egypten, Egyptologi, mumier, Kungarnas dal, biografi 4 Acknowledgements Special thanks to Federico Poole and Silvia Mosso of the Egyptian Museum in Turin, as well as Sophie Labbé-Toutée and Catherine Bridonneau of the Louvre in Paris, and Kathrin Gabler and Hans-Hubertus Münch of the University of Basel for their help. Thanks as well to my teachers in Uppsala, Professor Andreas Dorn, Dr. Sami Uljas, Dr. Angus Graham, and Professor Emeritus Lana Troy. Thanks are due as well to Carolin Johansson, who walked with me from the cultivation to Deir el-Medina, showed me the tombs of the residents, and then the way to Medinet Habu. Not to mention innumerable help with Middle and Late Egyptian. They have all contributed to my understanding of Butehamun and his times, but any errors or misunderstandings are entirely my own. Though I never met her, Barbara Mertz’s Amelia Peabody books, published under the pseudonym Elizabeth Peters, inspired me to go to Egypt in the first place, and then to pursue Egyptology (with a special interest in Deir el-Medina). Grants from the Wångstedts Foundation made possible visits to the Egyptian Museum in Turin, the Louvre, and to Luxor, to see important elements from Butehamun’s life. Finally, massive thanks to my wife Anki for going along with my crazy idea to go back to school after retiring, and before that for decades of accompanying me to museums and archaeological sites on five continents. As well as taking me along for two months in the middle of a Swedish Winter to Kigali and Nairobi, where most of this thesis was written. 5 Contents Map and Figure Credits .............................................................................................................7 Abbreviations and Terminology ............................................................................................... 10 Theory ...................................................................................................................................... 12 Methodology ............................................................................................................................ 13 1. Introduction: Deir el-Medina ............................................................................................... 14 2. Butehamun’s Youth ............................................................................................................. 19 3. Occupation and Civil War .................................................................................................... 22 4. Renaissance and the Move to Medinet Habu ....................................................................... 25 5. The War in Nubia ................................................................................................................ 32 5.1 Provisioning the Army .............................................................................................................. 32 5.2 The Road to Nubia .................................................................................................................... 33 5.3 Dhutmose in Nubia .................................................................................................................... 34 What was Piankh Doing in Nubia? .................................................................................... 37 5.4 Butehamun on the Home Front ................................................................................................ 37 6. Controversies........................................................................................................................ 41 6.1 Multiple Wives? ........................................................................................................................ 41 6.2 Multiple Butehamuns? .............................................................................................................. 43 6.3 Short Chronology/Short Generations? ..................................................................................... 44 7. The Reburial Project ............................................................................................................ 47 7.1 KV 42 ......................................................................................................................................... 49 7.2 KV 49 ......................................................................................................................................... 49 7.3 KV 4 ........................................................................................................................................... 50 7.4 KV 35 ......................................................................................................................................... 50 7.5 Other tombs possibly visited by Butehamun for the project ................................................... 54 7.6 Graffiti: Butehamun leaves his mark in the Necropolis ........................................................... 55 The Death of Dhutmose ..................................................................................................... 56 8. Butehamun Faces the Afterlife ............................................................................................ 60 8.1 The Letter to Ikhtay .................................................................................................................. 60