KV17

KV17 Tomb of Seti I

The grave system KV17 (also Belzoni grave, grave Apis ) in south-eastern Wadi of Egypt's Valley of the Kings is the resting place of the ancient Egyptian King (Pharaoh) Seti I of the 19th dynasty. It is true of the so far identified in the necropolis tombs as the longest and deepest grave and both in construction and in its decor with artistic murals and extensive religious hieroglyphic texts as an example of the highly developed ancient Egyptian culture.

• 2.1 The grave in ancient times
• 2.2 The grave in the modern era

Architecture and Facilities

The vaulted passages have a straight and southwestern axis orientation and measure with seven corridors and ten chambers a previously exposed total length of 137 meters. The tomb of Seti I highly developed ancient Egyptian grave architecture reflects through an extremely complex and almost complete design with wall paintings and religious texts that are created for all of the following in the New Kingdom tombs has set new standards in the Valley of the Kings.

The grave walls depict so on painted and high relief the first time in detail the mythological drama of the journey of the king in the afterlife. Among them is located in the entrance corridor and the following stairwell opening scene as the Litany of Re, in which the Pharaoh unites with the sun god. In addition, the grave also contains the Book of the Dead, the Book of Gates, scenes from the Amduatbuch and the Book of Divine Cow and the mouth opening ceremony. The chambers, corridors and stairways described below are numbered with increasing depth from A to K.

Portico F

The first pillared hall F is an approximately rectangular chamber whose ceiling decorated with stars is supported by four pillars along the axis grave. All wall surfaces are completely painted. The mural on the left wall southeastern contains three horizontal registers, the fifth hour of the Book of Gates. According to the conventional representation of the various 12 deities that are associated with the 12 hours of night, guided along a line that symbolically divide the time. In the middle register of the snake -faceted God of Darkness Apophis is pushed back and displayed the various Ba of the deceased king. The fifth lesson is completed by a typical scene in the lower register, in the Horus four people of different skin color monitors, representative of the four then known populations of humanity Egyptians, Libyans, Nubians and Asiatics, and assures them continued existence in the afterlife.

Grave chamber J

In the grave chamber Belzoni pushed below the sarcophagus of Seti I, which is presently located in London's Sir John Soane 's Museum, an undecorated about 1 meter wide and 1.50 meters high and at least 120 meters long, sloping shaft, which is not completely up today was excavated. 2001 the Egyptian Antiquities Service approved a geophysical survey of this corridor K at the bottom of the grave, but since then no scientific thinking have been published.

Historical development of the tomb

The grave in ancient times

The British Egyptologist Alan Gardiner dated the creation of the monument to a period 1308-1294 BC After the burial of Seti I served KV17 as a temporary hiding place for numerous other royal mummies, including those of the pharaohs Ramses I and Ramses II, before they were reburied after successive TT320.

The grave in the modern era

Giovanni Battista Belzoni discovered the grave after exposure of KV16, when he had to dig again in the immediate vicinity of the foot of a steep hill on 16 October 1817. After the workers at the repetition evening actually came across a rock -hewn, Belzoni was on 18-19. enter the grave and make investment in the first sequence conservation and excavations, during which he penetrated up to 90 meters in the outgoing chamber of the grave shaft. Moreover took Belzoni evaluations of hieroglyphics texts and wall paintings using dental wax and watercolor drawings before. During its work Belzoni moved together with his wife's grave in the short term as accommodation.

James Burton continued the conservation measures in 1825 through the construction of small Umwallungen the grave input to protect against flooding continued and released the well shaft from the rubble of previous excavations. Between 1844 and 1845 was carried out by the German Egyptologist Richard Lepsius for the first time an extensive survey of the tomb, which he recorded in floor plans. Great attention was paid Lepsius thereby also the vaulted astronomical ceiling in the grave chamber. The British Egyptologist Howard Carter then led by 1902-1904 static repairs by the remote of Champollion and Rosellini and in the Louvre in Paris and Florence spent doorpost by masonry replaced. He also knew the entrance to pit K with masonry and put at its upper end to a brick staircase. Unfortunately, the murals were damaged by the many wax copies and lit by candle smoke and moist air and are heavily faded or disappeared compared to the discovery state. Suspecting shaft K leads to the actual stuffed with valuable grave goods grave chamber of Seti I, Advanced Sheikh Ali Abdul Rasul in the 1950s about the corridor by a further 30 meters, but without meeting the hoped from him chamber.

The Theban Mapping Project published in 1979 a completed floor plan of the tomb, including the casing K, the purpose and goal remained unexplained, and argued that the extreme depth of the steeply sloping passage contradicts the theory, the grave of Seti I was east with an underground structure the tomb connected. The Swiss archaeologist and Egyptologist Gerhardt Haeny considers the transition lead water and thus fulfill the same symbolic function as vorliege in the cenotaph of Seti I at Abydos, where, according to ancient Egyptian belief idea the burial place of an underground connection with the abyss Well as symbol of creation and rebirth is received.