Spanish researchers have found the burials of four personages belonging to the elite of the 17th Dynasty of Ancient Egypt, who lived about 3.550 years ago on the hill of Dra Abu el-Naga in Luxor (ancient Thebes).
These findings, discovered during the 12th campaign of archeological excavations of the project, shed light on a little-known historical period in which Thebes becomes the capital of the kingdom and the empire”s foundations become established with the dominance of Egypt over Palestine and Syria to the north, and over Nubia to the south.
The Djehuty Project is led by the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) researcher Jose Manuel Galan, from the Institute of Mediterranean and Near Eastern Languages and Cultures (ILC), and funded by Union Fenosa Gas and the Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport.
The 17th Dynasty belongs to the historical period called Second Intermediate Period of Egypt (between 1800 and 1550 BC), characterized by the hegemony of rulers of Syrian-Palestinian origin settled in the eastern Delta. This is a period of great political complexity in which the monarchy did not control all the territory and the real power was in the hands of local rulers.
This series of findings confirm, according to Galán and his team, that the Dra Abu el-Naga hill, on the northern edge of the necropolis of ancient Thebes, was the cemetery of the Royal Family of the 17th and early 18th Dynasties, as well as of their main courtiers. Recent findings help to contextualize the work done during previous campaigns in the tombs of Djehuty, supervisor of the Treasure of Queen Hatshepsut (ca 1470 BC), and Hery, a courtier who lived about 50 years before the said royal scribe.
The head of the Djehuty Project concludes: “Unlike what the rest of courtiers of his time did, around 1470 BC, Djehuty did not place his tomb in the surrounding area of Deir el-Bahari, where the Mortuary Temple of Queen Hatshepsut was erected, but he chose the hill of Dra Abu el-Naga for his eternal rest, half kilometer further to the north, because that”s where the members of the 17th Dynasty were buried”. (ANI)