aristide malnati

N. 2/2000

Aristide Malnati

The plain of Gizah is doubtfulness the archaeological site the most renown all over the world; it's the most important part of a vast necropolis of which it's only the departure point since the funeral structures cover 40 km to south to Dashur, crossing Abu Sir, Saqqara and Memphis: at Gizah the greats of the IV and V dynasty are buried, in particular the pharaohs Cheope, Chefren and Micerino, that made be built the giant pyramids all we know for themselves; and along with them their queens, their courts and several of their subjects enjoy the eternal rest there.
The work to reconstruct pyramids took several thousands of workers (and who died in the huge undertaking are buried here) and a repartition of work into several phases.

That of Gizah is just a huge sepulchral area where, besides all kind of graves, we can find all that is linked to the funeral rituals, as the high temple and the valley temple, the sacred enclosures and the funeral ships; and then the Sphinx, a monster with a woman face and a lion-like body having a protective function over the entire graveyard area.

But if pyramids, the mastaba, the Sphinx and the sanctuaries have been always open - and celebrated by all populations and by the great personages that went to Egypt (think about Herodotus, Alexander the Great, Cesar, Germanic, the Arabian sovereigns, Napoleon, English and more in general Europeans) -, in the underground of Gizah there's a network of passages connecting graves, wells and channels setting a maze of mysteries that are unravelled day by day, without - let me say it at once - applying for beings from the outer space or other irrational eccentricities suggested by the millenarian emphasis, but in the full respect of the historical events that left here indelible traces. Zahi Hawass is the director of the excavations of Gizah since already 15 years, he really is the pharaoh of the third millennium, he is at home here and by the means of borings and real excavations reassembles, tile by tile, the entangled mosaic of the underground of this burial place. Zahi Hawass, beyond the most picturesque aspects and those more closely related to the archaeological legends, owns a well-built scientific acknowledgment, deriving him from the lengthy archaeological missions with experts from all over the world (he worked often with Stadelmann, Director of the prestigious Deutches Institut fuer Archaeologie) and deriving him from his enlightened studies abroad (leading him to achieve a Master in Egyptology at the Boston University): well then he a thoroughly expert and archaeologist that surely does not outdone next to the most well-known western luminaries.

By the means of frequent borings and more complete interventions, Zahi Hawass has recently worked in the area where are buried the workers that built the pyramid and here he made the discovering of his life (till now!): he found a three levels funeral well pushing on 25 metres and having water tank a the less level feature by four little cippus on the corners and inside, as an island, the granite platform of a sarcophagus. Well then it concerns the sepulchre of Osiris, God of the Kingdom of the dead, where, according to the imaginative Egyptian mythology, the water element is the most important one; and even Herodotus, historian of the V century b.C. that went to Egypt to look for material about pharaohs and their descendants to narrate in the II book of his "Stories ", says (Book II, chapter 124.4) that "The pharaoh Cheope made be built his pyramids as on an island, after bringing there water by the means of a channel coming from the Nile ". So then why not think, as Hawass does, that this sepulchre devoted to Osiris is instead the sepulchre of Cheope, placed out of the pyramid and connected to it by a channel that couples to it in an exact point on the platform? It was a way to better ensure . . . a greater intimacy to the dead person and to defend him from the attempts of profanation (a measure that was not clearly enough since there are no traces of the sarcophagus in the well of Osiris). It's a suggesting conjecture that must nevertheless be looked over with scientific rigour and supported by further elements that could emerge soon or later.
But the undertakings of Hawass do not stop here; it's the latest opening of the grave of the devotee Kay, carried out on live broadcast under the curious eye of the cameras of the American Network Fox TV. Inside, how a wonder!, the mummy perfectly kept and wrapped in its dark bandaging; soon the mummified corpse has been sent to the laboratories of the Egyptian Museum of El Cairo to be recovered and X-rays examined by the historical and medical point of view: here it is entrusted to the fond care of Nasri Iskander, that deals in his laboratory with the recover of the health of all the mummies of the Museum and that has wisely organized the hall where the remains of the greats of the past rest (from the several Ramses up to a Tuthmosis IV to end with the beautiful Nefertari). Next to the sarcophagus, in the most secluded part of the funeral structure, some basso-rilievo show Kay in the tender gesture, and erotic at the same time, of kissing his wife. But who was Kay? For once our curiosity is satisfied; a stele showing a hieroglyphic text points it as a high-range devotee and the wording says: "Me, Kay, availed of the work of Egyptian workers and architects to make build my grave. I paid them with breath and beer, instead of other goods, and they seemed to be satisfied ". A statue of the devotee and some cookery ceramics complete the funeral set and have a peculiar function in the afterlife. But surprises are not over: inside the funeral structure the cameras of the Fox TV shot a more little room, seat for the eternal rest of Kay's family, with still the skeletons of his wife and of a daughter.
This way, mystery by mystery, Zahi Hawass, a modern Sir of Gizah, unravels the secrets of an area that is becoming even less mysterious.