Гизегийн Их пирамидын ойролцоо судалгааны багийн гэрэл зурагчны штатив газарт шигдсэний улмаас 4500 жилийн турш битүүмжлэгдсэн эртний булшны орц нээгдсэн байна.
1925 оны эхээр Харвардын их сургууль болон Бостоны дүрслэх урлагийн музейн хамтарсан экспедицийн гэрэл зурагчин Мохаммедани Ибрахим Их пирамидын зүүн талд зураг авах үеэрээ шохойн чулуун доор байрлах битүүмжилсэн нүхэн гарцыг санамсаргүйгээр олжээ. Уг гарц нь фараон Хуфугийн эх, хатан хаан Хетеферес I-ийн оршуулгын танхимд хүргэсэн бөгөөд уг олдвор нь Египетийн Хуучин хаант улсын үеийн хамгийн баялаг эд зүйлс бүхий булшнуудын нэгд тооцогддог. Судлаачид малтлагын явцад 12 шат бүхий босоо нүх, булшны орцонд өргөл болгон тавьсан бухын гавлын яс болон дарсны савнуудыг илрүүлсэн байна.
Археологич Жорж Рейснер болон түүний багийнхан 321 хоногийн турш маш нарийн нямбай ажиллан булшны доторх эд зүйлсийн байршлыг тэмдэглэж, алтаар бүрсэн тавилга, хатан хааны нэр бүхий алтан иероглифтэй дамнуурга, эрвээхэй хэлбэртэй үнэт чулуун шигтгээ бүхий бугуйвчны хайрцаг зэргийг сэргээн засварлажээ. Гэвч 1927 оны гуравдугаар сарын 3-нд судлаачид алабастр чулуун авсыг нээхэд дотор нь юу ч байгаагүй нь археологийн түүхэн дэх хамгийн их хүлээлт үүсгэсэн ч үр дүн багатай олдворуудын нэг болсон юм.
Хожим нь тус багийнхан хатан хааны дотор эрхтнийг хадгалдаг канопийн хайрцгийг булшны нэгэн хэсгээс олсон боловч авс яагаад хоосон байсныг өнөөг хүртэл эцэслэн тогтоогоогүй байна. Жорж Рейснер уг булшийг дээрэмдүүлсний дараа нүүлгэн шилжүүлсэн гэсэн таамаг дэвшүүлсэн бол археологич Марк Ленер үүнийг яаран оршуулсан үйл явцтай холбоотой байж магадгүй хэмээн үздэг. Одоогоор уг олдворууд Гизегийн ойролцоох Гранд Египетийн музейд хадгалагдаж байгаа бөгөөд эртний бичээчдийн үлдээсэн тэмдэглэлүүд нь тухайн үеийн бүртгэлийн тогтолцоог судлах чухал баримт болж байна.
Дэлгэрэнгүйг эх сурвалжаас харах
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The ground under the camera was supposed to be solid limestone. When the leg of the tripod sank, it exposed a patch of plaster, and beneath it lay a shaft that had been sealed for about 4,500 years.
The man behind the camera was Mohammedani Ibrahim, staff photographer for the Harvard University–Boston Museum of Fine Arts expedition at Giza. He was setting up a shot on the east side of the Great Pyramid in early 1925. National Geographic dates the moment to February 2. A 2017 study of the expedition records notes that some accounts give February 9 instead.
The shaft led to the burial chamber of Hetepheres I, mother of Pharaoh Khufu, the king who built the Great Pyramid. It held some of the richest furniture ever found from Egypt’s Old Kingdom. Two years later, it also produced one of Egyptology’s most famous anticlimaxes.
A Staircase Under the Plaster
Expedition director George Reisner was in the United States at the time. His staff, led by deputy Alan Rowe, began clearing the find, and the plaster turned out to cap a 12-step staircase that dropped into a vertical shaft packed with stone blocks.
About 7.5 meters (24.5 feet) down, workers reached a small walled-up niche in the shaft’s west wall. Inside lay the skull of a bull and three of its leg bones wrapped in a rotting reed mat, along with two wine jars. The excavators read it as an offering made while the tomb was being filled.
The shaft kept going. At 27.4 meters (about 90 feet), it ended at the doorway of a rock-cut chamber, and on March 8, 1925, according to the tomb’s Wikipedia entry, Rowe looked inside for the first time.
Gold Leaf on the Floor
The room was crammed. Every wooden object had rotted to dust and splinters, leaving behind the thin gold sheets that once covered them. They now carpeted the floor.
It was clear this was not an untouched burial. Pots lay smashed and linen was scattered around the room. Word leaked anyway, and the London press speculated that the expedition had found the tomb of Sneferu, the pharaoh generally believed to have been Hetepheres’ husband.
Reisner wanted to excavate it himself. On March 12, he ordered the chamber resealed. The team did not reopen it until January 21, 1926, with Reisner on site.
321 Days in a Small Room
What followed was one of the most painstaking jobs in the history of archaeology. Over 321 working days, mostly under young Egyptologist Dows Dunham, the team recorded the position of nearly every fragment before lifting it. The work was dangerous: a stone once dropped from the ceiling, and Dunham walked away unhurt only because he was wearing a helmet.
The effort filled 1,701 pages of notes and plans and produced 1,057 photographs. That record let conservators work out where each piece of gold had sat on its vanished wooden frame and rebuild the furniture around it.
The results included a gilded bed, two armchairs, a frame for a bed canopy and a carrying chair, designed to be lifted on the shoulders of attendants. Its back carries gold hieroglyphs set in ebony that spell out the queen’s titles, including “Mother of the King of Upper and Lower Egypt.”
The chamber also held a small gilded box containing 20 silver bracelets, inlaid with carnelian, lapis lazuli and turquoise in the shape of butterflies with spread wings.
An Empty Coffin
The last object left was an alabaster sarcophagus against the east wall. On March 3, 1927, Reisner lifted its lid in front of invited guests, including Egyptian officials.
“George, it’s a dud!” the artist Joseph Lindon Smith blurted out, according to his later account. The coffin was empty. Reisner told the gathering that the queen was not receiving visitors, then invited them back to camp for refreshments.
The queen had not vanished entirely. On May 21, the team opened a plastered-over recess in the west wall and found her sealed canopic chest, the box that held the organs removed during mummification. Three of its four compartments still held a few centimeters of yellowish liquid containing the remains of her organs. Pry marks along the sarcophagus rim showed that a metal tool had been used to open it in antiquity.
Reisner, a fan of detective novels, built a theory around these clues. He proposed that robbers stripped Hetepheres’ first tomb at Dahshur, near her husband’s pyramid, that officials hid the theft from Khufu, and that the empty coffin was quietly reburied beside the Great Pyramid. Egyptologist Mark Lehner later argued that the evidence points instead to a hasty burial, with the mummy moved to another tomb afterward. Nearly a century on, no explanation has won out.
Her furniture, bracelet box, sarcophagus and canopic jars are now on display at the Grand Egyptian Museum near Giza. On one side of the bracelet box, below a formal hieroglyphic label, someone in ancient times added a single word in black ink: “bracelets.” Excavators believe it may have been written by a scribe checking the queen’s belongings off a list.
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