IN THE TOMB

Since this was the first time the tomb had been entered in many years, the main task was to perform a preliminary inspection of the huge tomb to verify its current state.

The floor of each hall was covered with fragments of limestone which had fallen from the walls and the roof during the centuries. Many fragments were decorated and inscribed thus we decided to move them (not far away from their original position) so as to create paths leading to the most important parts of the tomb (Fig. 1). In doing so, we preserved the integrity of the fragments. During the operation, one limestone fragment with some hieroglyphs referring to the "twelfth hour of the night" was found in the first pillared hall.

This strongly suggests that the pillars (now completely destroyed) were inscribed with the Book of the Hours. A sandstone fragment of an offering table was also found in the southwest part of the first pillared hall. As our main purpose was the study of the texts, the inscribed fragment and the fragment of the offering-table were left in situ.

The walls of the second pillared hall were carefully examined. A large part of the northern wall was found to be in danger of collapsing. Conservation was carried out by Carlo Usai to prevent the collapse. The delicate area was secured by means of bandages.

The texts on the walls were almost completely preserved, but were covered by bat urine. A preliminary examination led us to believe that they could be recovered by an accurate cleaning.

The texts and the images on the walls of the passages between the various rooms were carefully copied and documented (Fig. 2). They seem to demonstrate that the deceased  undergoes a special ritual in the second pillared hall (where there is a shaft leading to the funerary apartments of Harwa) giving him renewed youth, before his entrance into the Netherworld (Fig. 3). His arrival into the Realm of the Dead takes place in the room found immediately after this second pillared hall, a sort of sanctuary where an image of the god Osiris is carved on the rear wall.

In the northern wall of the sanctuary, right of the image of Osiris, there is a niche containing the remains of a seated statue of Harwa. The fragments of the statue were scattered in front of the niche. The statue was placed facing the southern wall where a door opens leading to a subsidiary room with a deep shaft.

There is another room to the left of the sanctuary through which it is possible to enter the corridor surrounding the entire subterranean complex of Harwa. In the northern branch of the corridor (Fig. 4) we discovered a hole in the wall giving access to the pillared hall of the Tomb of Padineith (TT 197). We sealed the hole using cement and stones in order to secure the tomb of Harwa. The entrance to the pillared hall of Padineith (undecorated) was blocked with a stone wall covered with the sand.

Inside the first pillared hall of the tomb of Harwa near the gate, a small plastic bag was found containing objects derived from a superficial cleaning of the forecourt. This was carried out by Salah Bayoumi, Inspector of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, on December 3rd, 1994, after the massive rainstorm of that year. Dr. Zsuzsanna Varek (Eötvös University, Budapest) examined the fragments of ushabtis to provide a preliminary dating. This proved to be very interesting as the pieces examined can be dated from 25th Dynasty to the Greco-Roman period, suggesting that the tomb was used over a long period of time.

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