Deir El-Bahari - Royal and Non-royal Tombs

Royal and Non-royal Tombs

A tomb in a hidden recess in the cliffs to the south of the temples contained a cache of forty royal mummies, moved there from the Valley of the Kings. The bodies had been placed there by Twenty-first Dynasty priests, most likely to prevent further desecration and looting. The tomb was probably originally built for priests of the 21st Dynasty, most likely the family of Pinedjem II.

In the cache were found the mummies of Ahmose I, along with the Eighteenth and Nineteenth dynasty leaders Amenhotep I, Thutmose I, Thutmose II, Thutmose III, Ramesses I, Seti I, Ramesses II, and Ramesses IX. In a separate room were found Twenty-first dynasty High Priests and pharaohs Pinedjem I, Pinedjem II, and Siamun. Later on, a cache of 153 reburied mummies of the priests themselves also were found in a tomb at the site.

Private tombs dating from the Middle Kingdom through the Ptolemaic period may be found here. There are two most notable private tombs at Deir el-Bahari. The first is that of Meketre (TT280), which contains many painted wooden funerary models from the Middle Kingdom and the first recorded human-headed canopic jar.

The second, the 'secret' tomb of Senenmut—the architect and steward who oversaw the construction of the temple for Hatshepsut—was begun in the complex also. Senenmut's tomb was vandalized in antiquity, but some of the relief artwork still is intact. It was meant to be a very large tomb and its corridors are over one hundred yards long, however, it was never finished and Senenmut was not interred there. He has another tomb, not far from Deir el-Bahari, where his body may have been placed, but it, too, was vandalized and robbed.

The discovery of the mummies cache is depicted in the Egyptian movie "The Night of Counting the Years" (1969).