Hatchepsut: The Female Pharaoh (35 page)

As news arrived of the end of the Great Steward, orders were given to close up his presumptuous new tomb. The job was done as quickly as possible… Hastily gathering together bricks and stones at the mouth of the tomb, they started to wall it up, but the work did not go fast enough, and before they had finished their wall they gave it up and raked down dirt just enough to cover over the doorway.
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Senenmut's second tomb, Tomb 353, was a far more secretive affair with a concealed entrance sunk into the floor of the large quarry which was then being used to provide material for the construction of the
Djeser-Djeseru
causeway. This again proved to be a site well chosen for its purpose. After its abandonment the tomb, its unimposing entrance now blocked by mud-bricks and covered by layers of debris and desert sand, vanished from the historical record, only to be rediscovered by chance in 1927. Unfortunately, the newly discovered tomb was completely empty.

In plan, the tomb consists of three subterranean chambers linked together by three descending stepped passageways. The upper chamber (Chamber A) is the most complete, with the walls smoothed and preliminary designs sketched on the walls and ceiling. Chamber B, a rectangular room with a flat ceiling, was left with rough walls, while Chamber C, a vaulted chamber, has walls which have been dressed but not decorated. The northeast corner of Chamber C contains a vertical shaft 1.5 m (4 ft 11 in) deep, with two niches opening off the shaft. The northern niche, which has a vaulted ceiling, measures 0.9 m (2 ft 11 in) high, while the eastern niche had a flat ceiling and measures only 0.7 m (2 ft 3 in) in height.

The unfinished nature of the decoration, plus the presence of builders' rubble in Chambers A and B, implies that the architects employed at least two major building phases, and that Chamber A had been constructed and almost completed before it was decided to extend the tomb by building Chambers B and C. It would otherwise be difficult to explain why Chamber A was the more highly decorated room, as it would surely have been more sensible for the artists to work backwards towards the entrance; first decorating Chamber C, retreating to Chamber B and then finally to Chamber A. We have no date for the commencement of work at Tomb 353, but the stratigraphy of

Fig. 7.6 Plan of Tomb 353

the quarry indicates that the first building phase was well underway by Year 16.

Unlike Tomb 71, Tomb 353 has suffered minimal disturbance over the centuries. There has been some slight natural damage caused by the extrusion of salt from the walls and ceilings, some ancient accidental damage which the original workmen have repaired with plaster, and some rather random attacks on faces on the walls of Chamber A. However, there has been no attempt to erase either text or the names of Senenmut or Hatchepsut, and Senenmut's image is still present in his tomb. The walls of Chamber A are decorated with columns of incised hieroglyphs recording a variety of spells and funeral liturgies designed to ease Senenmut's journey to the Field of Reeds: ‘O you who are living in the two lands, you scribes and lector priests, you who are wise and who adore god, recite the transfiguration spells for the steward Senenmut. There are also several representations of Senenmut, his brother Amenemhat and King Hatchepsut, and a false-door stela facing the entrance from the quarry. However, it is the decorated roof which has excited the attention of scholars, as this represents the earliest known astronomical ceiling in Egypt. It includes a calendar recording lunar months, representations of the northern constellations and illustrations of the planets Mars, Venus, Jupiter and Saturn.

The clearly differing nature of the two ‘tombs’ described above makes it unlikely that they were ever intended for the same purpose. Instead, it seems that Senenmut, although originally intending to be buried in Tomb 71 - to the extent that he ordered his precious sarcophagus to be delivered there – had finally elected to build himself a highly visible funerary chapel and a separate, hidden, burial chamber. The two monuments should therefore be properly regarded as forming the two halves of one whole. The typical 18th Dynasty private Theban tomb consisted of a T-shaped superstructure and a small burial chamber reached via a shaft which could be sited anywhere within either the funerary chapel or the chapel courtyard. The funerary chapel was the public part of the tomb where visitors could offer to the deceased, the burial chamber was completely private. This design had first been used by the ubiquitous architect Ineni, who had re-developed an old Middle Kingdom private tomb with a porticoed front, filling in the gaps between the pillars to make the desired T-shape.

Senenmut was certainly not the only official to experiment with a variation on Ineni's theme. The early 18th Dynasty was a period of innovation in private tomb architecture and, for example, his contemporary Amenemope also decided to separate the two distinct elements of his tomb, building a funerary chapel in the Theban hills and a separate burial chamber in the Valley of the Kings. Like Amenemope, Senenmut would have discovered clear advantages to the bi-partite tomb. Tomb 71 was built in a highly prestigious location with an excellent view over the necropolis, but not founded on good rock; tunnelling under the public rooms would have been both difficult and dangerous, and intricate wall carving was impossible. In direct contrast, Tomb 353 was built from firm rock, allowing safe tunnelling and detailed carving and with the additional benefit of being comparatively inconspicuous and therefore far more secure from the unwanted attentions of tomb robbers.

Given that Senenmut was not the only 18th Dynasty official to build himself an atypical tomb, it would appear unlikely that he could ever have been criticized for usurping a royal prerogative, particularly as it is now realized that the façade of Tomb 71 was by no means a straight copy of the façade of the Deir el-Bahri temple. He could certainly be criticized for tunnelling under the precincts of the Deir el-Bahri temple, and thereby linking his tomb with that of the queen, if anyone had realized that this was where his underground passages were tending. However, it is by no means certain that this was Senenmut's principal intention, as the passages follow a route which seem designed simply to exploit the local rock to best advantage. It must therefore be questioned whether Senenmut ever intended his plans for Tomb 353 to be kept secret from the queen. It would certainly have been very difficult, if not impossible, to undertake such a massive project without some word of illicit excavations reaching the palace and it seems far more logical to assume, in the face of any evidence to the contrary, that Hatchepsut both knew and approved of Senenmut's funerary arrangements.

The historical record is tantalizingly silent over the matter of Senenmut's death. All we know is that he retired abruptly from public life at some point between Hatchepsut's regnal Years 16 and 20, and was never interred in either of his carefully prepared tombs. What
could have happened to him? The enigma of Senenmut's sudden disappearance is one which has teased egyptologists for decades, the lack of solid archaeological and textual evidence allowing the vivid imaginations of Senenmut-scholars to run wild, and resulting in a variety of fervently held solutions, some of which would do credit to any fictional murder/ mystery plot.
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As the most simple explanation, no matter how dull, is often the correct one, we might expect to find that Senenmut pre-deceased Hatchepsut, either dying of natural causes or, in a more melodramatic turn of plot, being killed by the agents of Tuthmosis III. If, as seems likely, he had started his royal career during the reign of Tuthmosis I, Senenmut would have been an elderly man of between fifty and seventy years of age by Year 16, and his death would not have been unexpected. Why then was he not buried in his intended tomb? Could Senenmut really have met his death abroad, or have been drowned in the Nile, or even been burned to death? Any of these unlikely tragedies would explain the lack of a body for burial, but would such a catastrophe really have passed unrecorded on any contemporary monument? Did Senenmut die before his burial chamber was completed, and was he therefore interred in a makeshift grave? Is it even possible that Senenmut had a third, even more secret tomb, still waiting to be discovered?

Speculation that the unexpected death of Princess Neferure caused Senenmut to lose all influence with the queen, leading to his gradual retirement from public life, appears less convincing, not least because there is no proof that Neferure predeceased her tutor. In any case, would anything as mild as early retirement from court have prevented Senenmut from being buried in his intended tomb?

More dramatic accounts of Senenmut's disappearance were popular during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. These placed great reliance upon the fact that many of Senenmut's monuments were vandalized following his death, indicating that someone harboured a personal grudge against the powerful steward of Amen. This, set against the vivid background of a feuding royal court irretrievably split into irreconcilable factions, suggested that his fall from grace may have been the result of a major disagreement with the queen. If Senenmut was dismissed by Hatchepsut, it was argued, it was almost certainly due to his arrogant assumption of privileges hitherto reserved for royalty.
Certainly the queen had the power to dispose of her advisers as she wished but, as this chapter has shown, there is far less evidence for the usurpation of royal prerogatives than has previously been supposed. Could they have quarrelled over something more serious? Suggestions for such a quarrel have ranged from a lovers’ tiff to Senenmut's defection to the rival political party of Tuthmosis III.

A variant on the vengeance theme has Senenmut surviving Hatchepsut, only to be killed by the supporters of Tuthmosis III. Less dramatic, and equally lacking in proof, is the suggestion that Senenmut outlived Hatchepsut and perhaps even continued to serve under Tuthmosis III before dying a natural death. The image of a vengeful Tuthmosis ruthlessly hounding his former co-regent's supporters has often featured in reconstructions of Senenmut's life. We now know that this thirst for vengeance may have been considerably overstated. At least some of Hatchepsut's principal advisers continued to serve under Tuthmosis III, including the architect Puyemre, the chief treasurers Tiy and Sennefer, and the chief steward Wadjet-Renpet. The recovery of a headless statue of Senenmut, engraved with the cartouche of Tuthmosis III and apparently housed for a time in
Djeser-Akhet
, the Deir el-Bahri temple of Tuthmosis III, indicates that the new king may not have wished to entirely obliterate the memory of an outstanding bureaucrat who served his country well.

Many of Senenmut's monuments were attacked following his death, when an attempt was made to delete his memory by erasing both his name and his image. It was originally assumed that these defacements were carried out soon after Senenmut's demise either by Hatchepsut – the unbalanced and irrational actions of a woman scorned – or by Tuthmosis III – the cool revenge of the displaced monarch. Following this line of reasoning, the vandalism must represent a frenzied personal attack aimed specifically against Senenmut. If this is the case, it is reasonable to assume that those responsible for the defacements may also have been responsible for Senenmut's sudden fall from power. However, realization is growing that the attacks on Senenmut's monuments may have been a minor part of a wider plan of defacement, aimed either at the memory of Hatchepsut or at the god Amen who was particularly linked with Senenmut. The assaults on Senenmut's name and image may therefore not be specifically linked to Senenmut's personal story, and may not have been perpetrated by those who schemed to bring
about his death. For this reason, it is not possible to discuss the defacement of Senenmut's monuments without also considering the attacks against Hatchepsut's name and monuments which occurred at some time following the death of the queen.

8

The End and the Aftermath