A new hidden passage?

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Horus
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A new hidden passage?

Post by Horus »

This news item should start a few debates ;)
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/archaeologist ... ml#r6T4vhx


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Re: A new hidden passage?

Post by LovelyLadyLux »

Am sure this new news will start a few debates. I'm not enough of an Egyptologist to even have an opinion BUT I personally do believe there are more things buried in VOK than have been discovered. Wouldn't surprise me at all if one day new tombs are discovered and unearthed.

Just hope there are lots of Archeologists + Cinematographers so I can watch it all on TV in a nice documentary ;)
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Re: A new hidden passage?

Post by Kiya »

It will be interesting to what they find beyond :) watch this space eh!
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Re: A new hidden passage?

Post by Grandad »

I am convinced that in many parts of the world there are still secrets to be uncovered, and Egypt is among the most likely. How great if they found an untouched tomb full of treasure like Tut's. Egypt, still archaeologically one of the most exciting countries in the world.....
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Re: A new hidden passage?

Post by Horus »

The problem is that Nicholas Reeves is currently persona non grata in Egypt, but he is a very good researcher. It would also take a lot of exploration work using all the latest ground penetrating radar and the likes to find out exactly where any hidden room may be concealed. Anyone who has ever visited the tomb will know that it is very small and hastily decorated and hardly in keeping with a Pharaoh or even the treasures it contained.

Anything connected with Tutankhamun has to be considered within the timeline of when he ruled. His father Akhenaten was of course the ‘heretic’ Pharaoh because of his conversion from the worship of a pantheon of gods and mainly the god ‘Amun’ to monotheism or the worship of a single god, namely the ‘Aten’ or the solar disc.

Did this Pharaoh have a conversion of faith or was it something else? My belief is that Amenhotep IV his birth name prior to changing it to Akhenaten and which means “Amun is satisfied” was a bit more savvy than that. Although he was the Pharaoh and reigned for many years (around 17) he inherited a dynasty from his father who had a long reign of nearly 40 years that saw Egypt become very prosperous, it is also likely that he ruled as a co-regent with his father for some years.

He would also have seen where the real power lay and that was with the priests of Amun. They had become extremely wealthy and powerful due to all the tribute they received for the temples and because they controlled the religion of Egypt and therefore held huge sway over the masses. It was a period in Egypt’s history when the tail was really wagging the dog and in fact they were more powerful than the Pharaoh himself.

There are many examples of ‘The High Priest of Amun’ becoming a Pharaoh, especially in Upper Egypt where they often held political and religious control over the masses. Walk into the Karnak Temple area and one of the first things to greet you is the tall statue of Pinedjem (21st Dynasty) with his arms crossed in the regal pose of a Pharaoh, because he was in fact the de facto ruler of the South of the country. One of his sons became Pharaoh Psusennes I and his funerary goods in some ways rivalled those of Tutankhamun as he also had a beautiful golden mask and his inner coffin was made from solid silver, a metal that was prized above gold at the time.

The other example I will give you is the high priest ‘Ay’ who’s tomb is in the Western valley next to the V.O.K. He is the one who succeeded Tutankhamun after his death and his image can be seen on the rear wall of Tut’s tomb as the high priest wearing the Leopard skin and performing the ‘opening of the mouth’ ceremony, a task reserved for the next Pharaoh. So it is quite clear that there were in fact two family power lines running through Egypt’s history, one was the royal Pharaonic line and the other was the position of High Priests of Amum, the later was also an inherited position handed down, these two lines of power often crossed over and intertwined.

My own view is that Akhenaten attempted to wrest the power away from the priesthood by eliminating their power base, which of course came from controlling the temples and the worship of Amun. He started this change by building a complex at Karnak that was dedicated solely to the worship of the Aten, or solar disc. He then very cleverly put himself between that ‘one god’ and everyone else, the Aten’s blessings only flowed through him alone, there were no other gods and the Aten was supreme, this effectively made all the priests and temples of Amun redundant. It was in effect a coup de grâce and by moving his capital to Amarna and away from Thebes and enforcing monotheism he cut off their power base, this did not go down well with the priesthood.

It is my contention that after his fathers death the young boy king Tutankhamum (originally named Tutanhkaten to honour the solar disc) was used by the high priest Ay to re-establish their power. No doubt that the people themselves loved all their many gods and were not so keen on Akhenaten’s brand of religion and no doubt the priesthood did a bit of stirring as well. The young Tut would have had no chance of reigning as Pharaoh without Ay’s support and no doubt that came with a price, ergo the restoration of the cult of Amun, hence the name change.

After Tut’s death it is very likely that the next Pharaoh Ay would want to get rid of anything that harked back to Akhenatens rule and that is why there is so much stuff in his tomb, much of it altered to be suitable, such as the gold mask and the outer granite sarcophagus. Many other things probably from the royal workshops were also thrown in rather than just destroy them, hence such a large cache of funerary goods as well as many personal possessions. I also believe that when Ay became Pharaoh he usurped the tomb in the Western valley originally intended for Tutankhamun which would have been started when Tut came to the throne and fairly well under construction at the time of his death, a luxury not available to the ageing Ay who would have little time to build his own tomb.

The support of the army would have been vital in carrying out this manoeuvre that saw Ay as the next Pharaoh and to that end the ageing Ay was succeeded by the head of the army, namely Horemheb.

So I believe that Ay intended to put to rest once and for all the cult of the Aten, but to physically destroy or be seen to desecrate another Pharaohs tomb or their lineage may not have gone down too well in some quarters. The solution may well have been to move everything into one place and have done with it, so you gather together anything associated with it whether it belongs in that tomb or not and that may well include other family members and possessions and bury them all together forever, or so they hoped.

As a footnote, I remember many years ago another famous name in Egyptology claimed that he knew the location of another tomb in the VOK but as he did not like the way things were going in Egypt (during Mubaraks rule) he would not disclose it, that man was John Romer.
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Re: A new hidden passage?

Post by LovelyLadyLux »

I've a mind that the pyramids they are discovering in Mexico and Central American countries will at some time relate or link to Egypt civilizations. Some of the big pyramids in Mexico have been uncovered and found but the entire area hasn't seemed to attract the professional archeologists in the same numbers as has Egypt. Lots yet to find and explore.
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