The Four Large Shrines

Immediately behind the blocking of the burial chamber entrance, Carter and his team workers were confronted by what appeared to be a wall of gilded wood inlaid with faience. It proved to be the outermost of a nest of floorless shrines of carefully joined wood.

The shrines were placed in the burial chamber when they dismantled the outermost shrine. The second shrine came to sight then the third one, then the innermost shrine. They reminded them of the Chinese boxes or the Russian dolls; each one is fitting inside the other.

Inside the innermost shrine a sarcophagus of quartizite was found with a lid of granite. On its four corners there were the four protective goddess; Isis, Nephtys, Selket and Neith sculptured in high relief. Inside the sarcophagus, three anthropoid coffins were found. The outer two were made out of gilded wood while the 3rd is made out of pure gold and inside it the mummy was found completely wrapped with the mask over it.

Function:

These shrines are the only ones discovered so far in Egypt “one of a kind”. They probably were used to replace the long corridor normally found in the tombs of the 19th dynasty, on the walls of which inscriptions were depicted. The tomb of Tutankhamen was too small to contain the inscriptions and representation required or needed to guarantee the protection or the safety of the king or the deceased in the underworld. We didn’t find something like these shrines however, most probably the royal sarcophagus especially dating to this period incised in similar ways with shrines, for example in the tomb of Ramsis IV we found around the sarcophagus squares, so probably they meant to indicate those shrines.

These shrines were made out of wood then a layer of gesso was added while it was still wet, sheets of gold were added. The construction of each of these shrines was symbolic.

The 1st shrine:

Its battered walls and the double sloping roof resemble the Hb sd pavilion. It’s decorated with two famous signs on the long side; the Dd pillar symbol of god Osiris and the tyet knot symbol of goddess Isis. On every leaf of the double door there is a rectangular panel which has a representation on it. On the first one there is a divinity holding the anx sign with the turned up beard. He wears a Headdress consisting of two plumes, sun disk and two ram horns. On the other leaf there is a paw less and head less Leonean creature. It may indicate that the animals that ancient Egyptians were afraid of and worshipped during their life time were represented like that to avoid their harm and prevent them from coming once again in the other world. Inside the shrines there are spells of the Book of the Dead extracts from the book of the divine cow “the legend of the destruction of mankind” as inside the shrine there is a representation of a cow.

When the shrine was opened a wooden frame gilded in between the outermost shrine and the 2nd one was found. Over it there was a dark brown linen pall decorated with rosettes made out of gilded bronze and had been sewn to the fabric. It is said that this roll of dark linen covering the frame represents the night sky.

N.B: these shrines were constructed inside the tomb.

The 2nd shrine:

It has a sloping roof that reaches its maximum height above the entrance door. It takes the pr wr shape of the upper Egyptian shrine of goddess nxbt. It has a cavetto Cornish, torus molding. It is made out of wood covered with gesso and gilded.

There are three registers:

We could see a cobra breathing fire on the forehead of a divinity. There is a star “symbol of night” sending rays of fire to the forehead of divinities. There is a human headed bird standing in front of each divinity. Then we could see beheaded mummies whose heads are on disks from which fire is coming from, fire coming up from as well as fire coming up from the necks. There are also including figures sending rays from the forehead to the sun disk. Two reclining figures from back of which there is a serpent surrounded by a fire. Above it there is a sun disk, in front of them there are lion headed divinities hiding their hands inside their cloaks breathing fire to the sun disk.

The 3rd register: contains a cobra breathing a fire to a lion head placed on a disk under it there is a star then a TAw sign breathing the fire, sending from the cobra to the lion, then the cobra to a lion and soon between the representations of the sun disk with the cobra. There are Osiris figures. Then there are some beheaded figures, women divinities breathing fire to the sun disks and pouring water to the serpents. As we could see the whole scene is fire to the sun so these scenes are extended from unique journey book dealing with creation and refilling the sun with fire. On the other side of the shrine there is a figure in the middle whose name is “He who hides Horus”, his head and feet are surrounded by a serpent. Inside his belly there is a disk with ram headed bird an indication of a night sun.

In the middle register there are divinities holding ropes connected with the disk in the belly of the figure. They are trying to pull the sun out of the belly as indication to rebirth once again.

On the other side of the same panel there is a stand over it a ram head as indicator to the head of Re.

In the 2nd register a stand over it a jackal head as indication to the neck of Re. from other things we know that the head and neck of Re are creative powers. We could see some divinities are up and others are down. The sun passes through them to regain power and energy to be reborn. The last 4 divinities are having their chests in forms of scarabs xpry. So here we could say that the process of transformation of the sun is accomplished.

There are divinities in shrines, figures of Osiris and surrounded by human headed serpents.

The 3rd shrine:

It has a sloping roof reaching its maximum height over the entrance door as imitation of pr wr shrine. It is decorated with the cavetto cornice, torus molding. On its exterior left panel there are three registers. The most important one that is in the middle “2nd division” this whole scene is from the imy dwAt “what is in the under world”.

It shows the journey of god Re in the underworld as we could see the boat of Re is preceded by four boats in the first there is a divinity sitting holding a feather of mAat in front of him a crescent, a disk. The 2nd carries the symbol of Hathor between two legs XXXXXXXXXXXX.

In the 3rd ther is the wArnA “king of crocodile”. The 4th is empty “a stand – two trees”. The 5th boat has god Re standing in his shrine her his name is Iuf. In front of him stands nbt dpt lady of the boat with two horns and the sun disk. sAiA is shown next to the opener of the road wp wAwt. In the front of the boat there are tow cobras “Isis and Nephtys”.

Up and down there are a group of divinities the most significant one that of two faces. In the upper register it has a falcon head “Horus” and a humain head “seth”. In the lower register it has two humain faces.

N.B: there is a similar scene on the back.