Egyptian Tombs: Life Along the Nile

These tombs provide us with invaluable information about the lives of the ancient Egyptians. Two tombs within the cemetery are particularly fascinating. The earlier of the two dates to the Middle Kingdom and belonged to a man named Wah; it was discovered on March 24, 1920, beneath the causeway, leading to the destroyed tomb of an important official, Meketre, who was Wah's employer. The second, the early New Kingdom tomb of a woman named Hatnofer, was uncovered on January 11, 1936, beneath the manmade terrace of the offering chapel belonging to her son Senenmut, the chief architect.

The third and latest assemblage discussed here belonged to a man named Khonsu (86.1.2a), who lived at about the mid-point of the New Kingdom. Khonsu was buried with several generations of his family in a tomb that was discovered by members of the Egyptian Antiquities Service in 1886. Because the funerary furniture within the crypt was all quite similar in style, the Egyptian government generously allowed the Metropolitan Museum to purchase a group of objects from the tomb—an acquisition that represented a significant addition to its fledgling collection of Egyptian art, nearly twenty years before the Museum began its own excavations.

Wah, Hatnofer, and Khonsu each lived at an extraordinary time in Egypt's history. Wah was born in the early Middle Kingdom at the end of the reign of one of Egypt's greatest kings, Nebhepetre Mentuhotep (07.230.2), and he lived through the transitional period in which power passed from Dynasty 11 to Dynasty 12. Hatnofer was born late in the reign of Ahmose I, another of Egypt's most renowned rulers, and lived to see the great female pharaoh, Hatshepsut (29.3.2), become the principal ruler of Egypt. Khonsu, who was probably born at the very end of Dynasty 18, nearly two centuries after Hatnofer, lived most of his long life under a single pharaoh, Ramesses II, called the Great—the most illustrious ruler of Dynasty 19.