Conservation around the Millennium (Hungarian National Museum, 2001)
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were sheltered, as those in the Theban tombs carved into the rocks, survived the millennia some minor damages. Thus the rock tombs became the inexhaustible sources of ancient Egyptian art and religion. Tomb no. 65 is exceptional, in many respects, even among them. Nebamun5, the first owner, who filled in a high position at the time of Queen Hatshepsut, started the construction of his monumental rock tomb at the beginning of the New Kingdom but only the grandiose first chamber, the transverse-hall was completed (fig. 3). The nearly 4 m high, 20 m long and 5 m wide chamber was divided by six polygonal columns of sixteen sides, each with a diameter of 1 m. According to the original plans, high quality artistic reliefs would have ornamented the walls, but only smaller surfaces of the front wall were finished.6 Three hundred years later the above mentioned priest of Karnak chose the abandoned tomb for his burial place, towards the end of the New Kingdom when Egypt’s position as a great power was declining and when decorated rock tombs became a rarity. He enlarged the tomb with an about 10 m long undecorated axial corridor perpendicular to the first colonnaded chamber, and a so- called “sloping passage" leading from it deep into the hill with a burial chamber cut at the end of it. (fig. 3). Earlier reliefs were plastered over and had the walls and the ceiling richly decorated with paintings and minutely elaborated hieroglyphic texts. He broke with the traditional depiction of picture strips, and arranged the scenes in panels. He intended to create an imitation of the burial temples of rulers and the tombs of the kings, and that is where the archetypes of the decoration of the tomb should be looked for. He supplemented these motifs with personal elements such as the life-size depiction of his own relatives7 (fig. 4). The history of the tomb did not end with Imiseba’s death. Similarly to the neighbouring tombs, it was also robbed probably soon after it had been completed.8 In the course of the centuries to come, more people were buried here in shafts and niches cut into the walls. In the 5th-7th centuries A.D. when Christianity spread in Egypt, Copt anchorites built a monastery in the area, which is named today “the Monastery of Cyriacus” after the only known superior 3. Ground plan of tomb no. 65. From the terrace carved from the rock we enter the transverse-hall of six columns, then proceed in the axial passage, which leads to the sloping passage that turns to the right and ends in the burial chamber. (Drawing by Zsolt Vásáros architect)
