We're in the foothills of the western banks at Thebes. Over the past century or so, over 800 private tombs dating mainly from the New Kingdom have been discovered in these foothills, although the decoration of these tombs was designed mainly to ensure a successful afterlife for the tomb owner.
Many of the scenes also give us glimpses of what life on Earth must have been like for these people and allow us to explore differences and similarities between the past and the present.
You have hundreds of tombs there, and the tombs are unique because they have beautiful scenes.
There are many sites that are not known. Egypt does not only have the Pyramids, Luxor, and Aswan, it has thousands and thousands of sites that are not known at all.
The scenes in the tomb, in my opinion, tells us about daily life, religious scenes, all of these unique scenes that connect the king with his people.
There are many lost tombs that nobody knows anything about. They were completely sealed inside. Can you believe that inside some of the tombs there were mummies? That nobody really cared to take the mummies out of the tomb.
We need people to go to these types of tombs, and open them and record them, and photograph them. And also at the same time, gives us information that can add important evidence to history.
The scenes are beginning to fade away. I took one photograph when I went on a trip to Upper Egypt 15 years ago to a scene in the Temple of Esna. And every year I go, I found out at least 5 per cent of the scene has deteriorated. That means in 50 years, the scene will be gone completely.
This is the burial chamber and lets just look at what we have here. Here we have the mummy of Amun-Nakht on a line headed bed, traditionally used in embalming in mummification.
And this is Anubis, the Jackal-head or a priest wearing the head of Anubis all within a shrine made out of reeds. These are the fields of the Yaru, the fields of the blessed and this is where, if you successfully reach the afterlife and have done everything right and your heart has been weighed properly, this is where you end up in an idealised existence.
In other tombs, we see different types of scenes relating to the jobs of their owners. Men of the owner of TT69 worked for the agricultural estates of the king and the garamun so we find scenes of agriculture in his tomb chapel. The duties of TT79's owner included supervising the making of wine.
The public, and even a scholar, they know only very few tombs the famous one - the tomb of Rekhmire. A vizier that once his king gave him orders to rule through Madt. Just to send the truth.
And this is really, in my opinion, one of the most unique examples that shows the relation between the person, and the king. A vizier, or a priest, or a high priest or a treasurer, or a workman, or artisans - those are the people who actually made Egypt.
They built Egypt. And they built the Golden Age of the New Kingdom.
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