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Bab el-Gasus

1891 archaeological discoveriesTheban tombs
Qesm Al Wahat Al Khargah, New Valley Governorate, Egypt panoramio demonzak (16)
Qesm Al Wahat Al Khargah, New Valley Governorate, Egypt panoramio demonzak (16)

Bab el-Gasus (Egyptian Arabic: باب الجسس, romanized: bāb el-gasus, lit. 'Gate of the Priests [Spies]'), also known as the Priestly Cache and the Second Cache, was a cache of ancient 21st dynasty (c. 1070–945 BCE) Egyptian mummies found at Deir el-Bahari in 1891. It was excavated by French Egyptologists Eugène Grebaut and Georges Daressy, with Urbain Bouriant and Ahmed Kamal, on the direction of Mohamed Ahmed Abd al‑Rassul, who had also revealed the location of the Royal Cache in 1881. The tomb entrance was located on the flat area just outside the precinct wall in front of the Mortuary Temple of Hatshepsut. The find was significant for Egyptology, particularly in respect of religion, mummification, and coffin studies. It is the largest intact tomb ever found in Egypt. Today, the contents of the tomb are spread between 30 museums worldwide.In 1893, Khedive Abbas II of Egypt presented groups of artefacts from the tomb to 16 countries, as gifts celebrating the Khedive's accession to the throne. As a result of this dispersion, the artefacts have received limited focus by scholars.It contained 254 richly decorated coffins (101 double sets) giving 153 coffin sets in total, as well as 110 shabti boxes, 77 Osirian wooden statuettes (mostly hollow and containing a papyrus), 8 wooden steles, 2 large wooden statues (Isis and Nephthys), 16 canopic reed baskets, 5 round baskets made of woven reed. The coffins were made almost exclusively with wood from the native fig tree, the Ficus sycomorus.On the 125th anniversary of the find, the Centro de Estudos Clássicos e Humanísticos of the University of Coimbra launched the "Gate of the Priests" project, with the University of Leiden, the National Museum of Antiquities of Leiden, the Vatican Museums and UCLA, in order to reconstruct the original collection of Bab el-Gasus. A new display of the Bab el-Gasus artefacts was opened at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo in 2021 following the moving of the Royal Cache.Although one of the Theban tombs, the tomb never received a serial number.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Bab el-Gasus (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

Bab el-Gasus
Maabad Hatshebsout Road,

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N 25.7379 ° E 32.6086 °
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Deir el-Bahari

Maabad Hatshebsout Road
85958
Luxor, Egypt
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Mortuary temple of Hatshepsut
Mortuary temple of Hatshepsut

The mortuary temple of Hatshepsut (Egyptian: Ḏsr-ḏsrw meaning "Holy of Holies") is a mortuary temple built during the reign of Pharaoh Hatshepsut of the Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt. Located opposite the city of Luxor, it is considered to be a masterpiece of ancient architecture. Its three massive terraces rise above the desert floor and into the cliffs of Deir el-Bahari. Her tomb, KV20, lies inside the same massif capped by El Qurn, a pyramid for her mortuary complex. At the edge of the desert, 1 km (0.62 mi) east, connected to the complex by a causeway lies the accompanying valley temple. Across the river Nile, the whole structure points towards the monumental Eighth Pylon, Hatshepsut's most recognizable addition to the Temple of Karnak and the site from which the procession of the Beautiful Festival of the Valley departed. The temple's twin functions are identified by its axes: its main east-west axis served to receive the barque of Amun-Re at the climax of the festival, while its north-south axis represented the life cycle of the pharaoh from coronation to rebirth. Construction of the terraced temple took place between Hatshepsut's seventh and twentieth regnal year, during which building plans were repeatedly modified. In its design it was heavily influenced by the Temple of Mentuhotep II of the Eleventh Dynasty built six centuries earlier. In the arrangement of its chambers and sanctuaries, though, the temple is wholly unique. The main axis, normally reserved for the mortuary complex, is occupied instead by the sanctuary of the barque of Amun-Re, with the mortuary cult being displaced south to form the auxiliary axis with the solar cult complex to the north. Separated from the main sanctuary are shrines to Hathor and Anubis which lie on the middle terrace. The porticoes that front the terrace here host the most notable reliefs of the temple; those of the expedition to the Land of Punt and of the divine birth of Hatshepsut, the backbone of her case to rightfully occupy the throne as a member of the royal family and as godly progeny. Below, the lowest terrace leads to the causeway and out to the valley temple. The state of the temple has suffered over time. Two decades after Hatshepsut's death, under the direction of Thutmose III, references to her rule were erased, usurped or obliterated. The campaign was intense but brief, quelled after two years when Amenhotep II was enthroned. The reasons behind the proscription remain a mystery. A personal grudge appears unlikely as Thutmose III had waited twenty years to act. Perhaps the concept of a female king was anathema to ancient Egyptian society or a dynastic dispute between the Ahmosid and Thutmosid lineages needed resolving. In the Amarna Period the temple was incurred upon again when Akhenaten ordered the images of Egyptian gods, particularly those of Amun, to be erased. These damages were repaired subsequently under Tutankhamun, Horemheb and Ramesses II. An earthquake in the Third Intermediate Period caused further harm. During the Ptolemaic period the sanctuary of Amun was restructured and a new portico built at its entrance. A Coptic monastery of Saint Phoibammon was built between the 6th and 8th centuries AD and images of Christ were painted over original reliefs. The latest graffito left is dated to c. 1223. The temple resurfaces in the records of the modern era in 1737 with Richard Pococke, a British traveller, who visited the site. Several visitations followed, though serious excavation was not conducted until the 1850s and 60s under Auguste Mariette. The temple was fully excavated between 1893 and 1906 during an expedition of the Egypt Exploration Fund (EEF) directed by Édouard Naville. Further efforts were carried out by Herbert E. Winlock and the Metropolitan Museum of Art (MMA) from 1911 to 1936, and by Émile Baraize and the Egyptian Antiquities Service (now the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA)) from 1925 to 1952. Since 1961, the Polish Centre of Mediterranean Archaeology (PCMA) has carried out extensive consolidation and restoration works throughout the temple and it was opened to the public in March 2023.

TT71
TT71

Theban Tomb TT71 is located in the Theban Necropolis, on the west bank of the Nile, opposite to Luxor. It was the tomb chapel of Senenmut, who was the steward and architect of Hatshepsut. The chapel is located in the necropolis area around Sheikh Abd el-Qurna. Previously (for about 100 years) the tomb was accessible and for most of this time the target of numerous investigations and intrusions, although early on already heavily destroyed. The tomb was visited already early. In the first half of the nineteenth century, John Gardner Wilkinson, Robert Hay and J. Wild copied scenes, although the decoration was already badly destroyed. Richard Lepsius (1842–45) took the false door to Berlin and copied some inscribed bricks. Only in 1906 Kurt Sethe copied all inscriptions. In 1930–31 Herbert Winlock cleared the whole tomb. Winlock found the fragments of a smashed sarcophagus. Today the tomb chapel's decoration is almost totally gone. With its dimensions it is one of the biggest Theban chapels of the 18th Dynasty. The facade is about 30 meter wide. In the middle there is the entrance and on either side there are four niches with windows. The inner of the chapel has an (upside-down) T-shaped plan. The transverse hall is about 26 m long and supported by eight columns. At the back there are several small niches. In the hall appears the oldest depictions of Minoans in Egypt so far known. There are also remains of soldiers under a Hathor frieze and a biographical inscription. After the transverse hall follows a long passage with a niche at the end. Only few remains of the decoration survived, such as an offering list and a banquet scene, where Senenmut is once shown with his mother and once with his father. A special feature only known from this tomb are several rock cut stelae providing the name and titles of Senenmut.Above the chapel, cut into the rocks, there is a block statue of Senenmut. It has always been a matter of confusion that Senenmut had two tombs. However, in the 18th Dynasty several high officials had one decorated tomb chapel and a second tomb with an underground burial chamber often not even close to the chapel. In some cases it can be assumed that they even had an undecorated burial chamber in the Valley of the Kings, while a decorated chapel closer to the fertile land. The burial chamber of Senenmut was found at Deir el-Bahri TT353 and is sometimes called Senenmut's 'secret tomb', as it has no chapel, which was in fact TT71. TT71 functioned most likely also as chapel for Senenmut's parents, who were buried close by and are depicted in the chapel.