The Tomb of Kenamun - TT93
We meet and work on-site near Luxor, on the West Bank of the River Nile at a place called Valley of the Nobles. It is on the slope of a mountain, where there are hundreds of rock-cut tombs commissioned by nobles that lived over 3000 years ago.
Built very much like sand castles, ancient Egyptians carved doors, passages, stairs and chambers into this sacred mountain, creating unique architectural marvels of different sizes and shapes and filling the tombs’ sculpted walls with beautiful coloured paintings and writings.
As if that wasn’t enough to consider these a treasure, these tombs were filled with magnificent objects made from materials such as wood, coloured stones and precious metals in a refinement and artistic design and splendour that was absolutely unique to Ancient Egypt.
And still… as if that wasn’t enough, all the wall paintings, objects and writings tell us many stories…
Stories about the people who lived at that time and how the world was when they were alive: how they interacted with nature, the River Nile, their gardens, their animals, what they liked to eat, how they worked, how they dressed, how they played music, how they danced, how they loved… how they lived and how they died.
Sounds magical? That’s what we also thought when we entered the Tomb of Kenamun.
TT93 stands for Theban Tomb number 93. A designation given to it in much more recent times to record and locate many tombs of many sizes, from very small to large tombs in Luxor (the ancient Thebes), built in antiquity into the bedrock by digging and carving out stone from the mountain to sculpt the desired architectural design into it.
Kenamun’s tomb has palace-like proportions, with a huge front court, then very high ceilings, spacious halls and a total of 20 known columns. That is the space that we can walk through today, but there are also 3 obstructed underground passages that lead to many more underground chambers, halls and corridors.
The currently known, accessible upper area, measures 731 square metres (2398 square feet), but there is also an underground. Currently unaccessible, this lower area almost doubles the total size, adding at least another 500 square metres (1640 square feet) more. In total, the tomb is at least 1.230 square metres (4035 square feet) for us to study, restore and conserve to the future generations.
The tomb has never been thoroughly excavated or studied, but has been visited by scholars in the XIXth and XXth century. The famous Jean-François Champollion (the first to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphs) and Ippolito Rossellini (the founder of Italian Egyptology) made a 2 year French-Tuscan expedition together to Egypt in 1828 and they visited the tomb of Kenamun.
Champollion described the tomb as having some of the most beautiful wall paintings he had seen in Egypt and, together with Rossellini, took back to Italy objects they found inside the tomb, including a coffin with a mummy that could be of Kenamun himself.
The tomb has been reused throughout all these many centuries, for other people’s burials in ancient times and also as a living place for some. So it will be interesting to put together the clues and evidences of the tomb’s own history throughout all these 3.400 years.
What was Thebes like when Kenamun was building his tomb?
The Valley of the Nobles is part of a much larger complex of funerary temples and tombs for the nobles and pharaohs. It is located in part of what was once the spiritual centre of all ancient Egypt, known as Thebes. On this West bank of the River Nile, where the sun setsOn both sides of the banks of the River Nile, the city thrived with activities.
The River Nile runs vertically from South to North into the Mediterranean Sea and since the sun was strongly associated with life and it rises on the East side of Thebes, the East Bank of the river was full of life. This side of the river had temples, houses, workshops, government buildings, etc. and, very differently from what most would think, ancient cities, especially one as important as this one, was a very large and busy city.
The sun would rise on the East bank with boats coming in and out from the margins and people arriving and leaving through a long network of land routes from villages and towns that transported people and goods in and out of Thebes. Construction materials from all over Egypt were brought in to this ever expanding city that exported and imported goods to other nations beyond its Mediterranean shores.
One can surely imagine the bustling markets, with all of its rich smells, sights and sounds and the festivities that occurred throughout the city.
Then the sun would set on the West side of the River Nile. A much more tranquil place, entirely dedicated to the dead.
There was less bustling, but it was not as monotonous as one would imagine a necropolis and it was far from being anything like a modern cemetery.
In fact, this side of the river became increasingly festive and colourful from 1.500 B.C. onwards, as massive coloured funerary temples of the pharaohs started being built away from the tombs.
Unlike the carved-in resting place of the royal mummies in the valleys, where the art and architectural design wasn’t meant to be seen by everyone, the funerary temples were built with immense stone blocks and sculptures that rose high and colourful from the ground up.
These colossal structures were meant to be seen by everyone.
While funerary temples kept being built at new construction sites, the already finished temples were busy with music, dancing and offerings to keep their owners’ spirits alive in their afterlife.
In this atmosphere is where Kenamun commissioned his tomb to be built, at the West Bank of the River Nile where the sun sets, at the Valley of the Nobles, in front of the pharaohs' funerary temples, in the region today called Sheikh Abd El-Qurna, opposite from today’s Luxor’s City centre.
Kenamun lives in the afterlife thanks to our partners at: