THE FIRST PILLARED HALL

We resumed work in the First Pillared Hall where we stopped last year. We completely cleared the debris starting from the western-most part of the hall to the area in front of the tomb entrance. The same archaeological situation as last year was found. Many complete vessels were discovered which belong to disturbed burials of the early centuries of our era.

In the northwest corner of the hall, many fragments of a Book of the Dead were found scattered all around the last pillar of the northern row (Fig. 1). Most of the fragments had the typical cursive hieroglyphs of the Ptolemaic period on them. Some of them bore traces of polychrome vignettes. Other fragments had parts of a text in hieratic script, probably to be identified with the colophon of the papyrus. We performed a preliminary cleaning of the papyrus and we placed the fragments between pieces of glass.  For conservation, we followed the instructions sent through e-mail by Angelika Lohwasser and Myriam Krutzsch of the Berlin Museum.

The cleaning of the western-most part of the hall led to the discovery of a sandstone base in the centre of the main axis of the tomb. We believe that it was intended to support a small sandstone offering table, some fragments of which we discovered on the top and among the limestone debris in the southeastern corner of the hall.

In the northern aisle, parts of the ceiling were recovered.  One fragment had traces of a  zigzag decoration suggesting that the ceiling was decorated with geometrical motifs directly inspired by those of the New Kingdom Theban tombs which imitate colourful mats.

Before beginning to clear the squares in front of the entrance, we removed all the debris from the subsidiary room attached to the northeast corner of the hall. Among the debris, we discovered the upper part of a faience ushabti with traces of a painted hieroglyphic inscription on the body (Fig. 2). At the end of a line, the name of Harwa was clearly legible. Another fragment of an identical ushabti had been previously discovered in the southwestern part of the First Pillared Hall. The typology was quite different from that of the stone ushabtis of Harwa we had discovered up to now as well as, generally speaking, from the faience ushabtis dating to 25^th Dynasty. This evidence begs the question of whether the two fragments can be attributed to Harwa himself or to a later person with the same name.

In the area around the entrance we discovered many fragments of wall decoration with splendidly carved images of offerings-bearers (Fig. 3). The men and women were originally depicted on superimposed rows on the western face of the half-pillars beside the entrance. They were represented as coming into the tomb, and we can safely assume that they were intended to repeat for eternity the moment when the funeral procession entered the tomb.

A row with three images of Harwa was discovered at the bottom of either wall near the entrance. The high dignitary is represented standing and facing outside as if to greet the eventual visitors to his monument.

A very well-executed head of a stone ushabti of Harwa was discovered among the surface debris in the northeastern corner of the hall (Fig. 4).

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