Tomb of Hetepheres I

A shaft, more than 27 meters deep, leads to a chamber that still contains large parts of the queen's burial objects.

On February 2, 1925, while the photographer of the American team was looking for a suitable place to take good pictures on the east side of Khufu's Pyramid, a leg of the camera tripod slipped into an unusual crevice in the rock, which turned out to be the hidden mouth of a shaft and a staircase.

After two weeks of removing debris from the shaft and stairs, the archaeologists discovered the entrance to the burial chamber, which had been closed since ancient times.

The work was dangerous: a stone fell from the ceiling of the chamber and Dunham escaped unharmed only because he was wearing a helmet.

This made it possible to determine the original position of the disintegrated objects and also to reconstruct the arrangement of all the tomb furnishings.

[4] On March 3, 1927, after the entire chamber had been cleared, the eagerly awaited opening of the sarcophagus took place in the presence of a prestigious society.

The width soon narrows to between 1.35 m and 1.55 m. At the upper edge of the shaft, incisions were found for beams, which were probably used to lower the sarcophagus.

In addition, there were two wine jars and a limestone, which Rowe believes was used for the ritual breaking of the bull's skull, a piece of silver, and some fragments of basalt and charcoal.

This leads 5.22 m to the south, with a varying width of 2.67 to 2.77 m. Directly behind the entrance, in the northwest corner, there is a 1.21 m deep and 1.40 m × 1.60 m large depression in the floor, which has been filled with debris and dust.

Another cut, 75 cm deep and 2.76 m long, contained the canopic jar and was carefully sealed with masonry and plaster.

The objects bear both the inventory numbers JE (Journal d'Entrée du Musée) and RT (Registre Temporaire).

Smaller pieces and faithful copies of larger objects can be found in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston (MFA).

Roman Gundacker divides the grave goods into two groups based on the inscriptions: On the one hand, those objects that originally belonged only to the court or to King Snofru and only came into their possession after his reign, and on the other hand, more recent objects whose date of manufacture falls into the reign of Khufu and thus presumably belonged to the household of Hetepheres as the king's mother.

[10] The uninscribed alabaster sarcophagus (JE 51899) stood on the east wall of the burial chamber, one meter behind the entrance.

The excavators found that a metal tool had been used along the top edge of the box to pry open the lid, and fragments of the top edge were found along the wall side, in a box filled with linen in the south corner of the tomb, and along the south wall of the tomb.

The inside of the footboard is the only part that is decorated with alternating inlaid feathers and rosettes in the typical blue-green and black colors.

The feet, in the shape of the lion's legs, face the headboard and are attached to the sides with thin leather cords.

The position of the very fragmentary lion's feet indicates that it originally stood at right angles to the first, facing the entrance, with its back to the bed and the palanquin.

Each of the long sides bears an inscription, separated into two mirror-image parts by two representations of the vulture goddess Nekhbet.

[19] The canopy could be disassembled relatively quickly and reassembled at another location by inserting the poles through the copper-plated pegs into the copper recesses.

The gold casing was mainly decorated with mat patterns, except for the smooth surface of the bars and the inside of the door frame, which were inscribed with the title and name of Snofru.

Below the inscription on the right side, a scribe has written the word "bracelets" in black ink, perhaps during an inspection of the tomb equipment.

To the west of the chest was another group of fragments that could be assembled into a tubular leather case (JE 89619) with metal-studded discs at the top and bottom.

[23] The grave furnishings included around eight other wooden caskets with linen, pottery, stone vessels, clay seals, and flints.

[25] The tomb of Hetepheres provides a large corpus of ceramic vessels in a well-dated context, making it particularly valuable for archaeological analysis.

[27] The tomb furnishings of Hetepheres have some special features:[28] George Andrew Reisner was also known in Egyptological circles as a reader of detective novels.

To give his mother a more secure resting place, Khufu had a secret tomb built for her in Giza near his pyramid.

[36] It can also be assumed that the sarcophagus was opened by skilled personnel, as grave robbers would probably have simply smashed it to pieces.

Lehner considered a pit carved into the rock south of G I-a and east of G 7000x, which he called G I-x, to be the unfinished entrance to a pyramid that was never built.

[43] Furthermore, the title "Head of the Slayers of the House of Acacia" attests to Hetepheres' function in the death cult of a king.