The
diggings operations of a grave of XXV Dynasty : VIII-VII century b.C. The
grave of the 
Great
Majordomo of Osiris When the Great of Egypt, in the historical ages of the
Middle and New Reign, move from Menfi (the actual El Cairo) to Thebes (nowadays
Luxor) for the main purpose to cement the Country unification, hardly reached
few time before, all the state apparatus, with the splendour and the magnificence
that featured it, settled in the new region, choosing the right riverside
of the Nile to build monumental temples to praise Gods and Pharaohs (we
keep the example in the sacred complexes of Luxor and Karnak) and the left
riverside to bury their own sovereigns, and in separated cemeteries, the
more humble people, distinguished by degree and importance, building in
the mountains facing the Nile a huge funereal complex of graves plenty of
treasures. The magnificent jewels buried with Ramses, Tuthmosis, Amemnes,
Merenptah-Siptah and with the queens their wives - jewels offered by devotees
as the sign of devotion
and help so to pass a comfortable eternal life have appealed in the course
of centuries the attention of ravenous robbers that in every period, but
particularly in the Arabian Middle Age, profaned the graves getting away
any object to sell it then, to keep it or simply to fuse the gold it was
made of. Only one of all these graves were not touched. It was - the story
is well known - the grave of Tut Ankh Amon, monarch of the XVIII Dynasty,
dead when he was not yet twenty years old; in 1922 the most well known archaeologist
of the history of this discipline, the English Howard Carter, entered the
sepulchre and he remained astonished by the magnificence of the perfectly
conserved treasure: in a space, substantially little and secondary importance,
it was piled up a 
boundless
fortune, an unlimited treasure, nowadays exposed in the Egyptian museum
of El Cairo Nowadays the graves in the Kings Valley, Queens and nobles (this
way the areas of this huge cemetery were called) are available for the tourist,
but they go on fascinating archaeologists and stimulating students' researches,
always attempting to discovery something new (even if another Tut Ankh Amon
seems to us quite hard!). Based on these premises the Egyptologist Francesco
Tiradritti, responsible for the Egyptian Section of the Archaeological and
Numismatic Civic Collection of the Sforzesco Castle of Milan (whose director
is the well-known archaeologist Ermanno Arslan), since years manages a team
of experts in the diggings operations of the grave of the noble Harwa (XXV
Dynasty : VIII-VII century b. C.). We are at the slopes of the great temple
of Hatshepsut (the very beautiful daughter of Tuthmosis I), rising against
a spectacular reef scenario: the grave of Harwa was already known by scholars
since time, but nobody has never carried out a systematic and scientific
intervention, turned to clean it and to restore it and mainly directed
- and here it is the most fascinating 
aspect!
-
to explore the maze of corridors leading to the sepulchral room where several
fragments make hope (over more than one basis) that there is still buried
the sarcophagi of this high level personage, famous for its richness and
its power. It was Harwa, a dignitary of noble birth, who hold the position
of the Great Majordomo of the divine Donor (Osiris), from which he drawn
an incommensurable prestige all over the region of Luxor and mainly in the
relationships with the God Ammone's clergy. The grave starts with a vestibule
and a wide courtyard in front of the real entry; just in, we find the hypostyle
hall showing on walls the hieroglyphics narrating the deeds during life
of Harwa ; then there's another smaller hypostyle hall leading to the Osiris
and Usery halls: here the facts narrated by the hieroglyphics change and
become quite funereal since they illustrate the descent to Hades of this
high-ranking personage, accompanied by Anubi. A second corridor rounds the
structure and on the north side it appears an entanglement of rooms and
shafts
for the 
offerings:
it has been founded in one of them a still entire pot containing stocks
or more simply unguents and perfumes; this way one gets to the mortuary,
at the top of the whole complex, where Tiradritti has well founded hopes
to find the sarcophagi. The work of this first campaign has been faultless
and it concerned the digging out and the cleaning of all rooms (at the beginning
plenty of drifts). In the layers still in position it has been worked thoroughly
and important finds have been carried out: first, ceramic material with
all kind of forms and with still intact manufactures; then even a papyrus,
written in hieroglyphics, reporting a fragment of the book of the death,
the Bible of the ancient Egypt, buried only in the prestigious graves, to
testify the holiness during in life of the deceased buried there. Many rooms
are still today the den of tens of bats, that scared by the arrive of men,
got away everywhere; furthermore, some years ago the workers carrying out
handily the digging under the direction of a Rais, run into a cobra that
chose the grave of Harwa to spend the winter: a great fright but the reptile
was killed soon. And, besides the adventure vicissitude and the also physical
labour the archaeologists daily undergone, the team of Tiradritti is reported
as one of the top groups among the Italian missions working in the country
of the pharaohs, always keeping attention to the digging operations and
interventions and zealous in publishing the reports of its own scientific
practice. So we are pleased to report it as worthy of more conspicuous financing
to the great sponsors (as the Cariplo Group) too much often engaged in supporting
scientific expedition (or maybe pseudoscientific!) guilty, after a more
than ten years activity, of having never published neither a monograph about
their discovers: it is the case of the mission working at Tebtynis, near
El Cairo, culpably behindhand in giving sector's scholars the scientific
results of their own discovers.
Mensile di scienza medica e attualita`