The topic

Fresh discoveries in the western part of the Theban burial ground offer a radically different framework for understanding the landscape and economy during the 18th dynasty.

Studies of this area have produced evidence of a cycle of wetter weather in at least four periods, the most extreme of which was during the 18th dynasty. This weather may account for a marginal expansion in the hunting and gathering constituents in the economy. It may also provide an explanation for the rise of the 18th dynasty, the extraordinary expansion of the economy in the dynasty’s early years, and the fall of the dynasty, as well as for the subsequent economic contraction through the 19th and 20th dynasties.

The most recent season saw the discovery of the tomb in which Hatshepsut buried her husband, Thutmose II.

Other discoveries include graffiti revealing that the western wadis were filled with water in the 18th dynasty, and were used in the Third Intermediate Period for watching and trapping live falcons.

In addition, the cliff-tombs of the western wadis were re-cleared and accurately mapped for the first time.

This lecture will consist of two parts, separated by a break of 15 minutes. Each part will run about 50 minutes, plus 10 minutes for Q+A.

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PART ONE: THE SHAFT TOMBS OF WADI BAIRIYA

The excavation of extraordinarily complex royal tombs 10 kilometers into the western desert has identified previously unknown royal wives, royal children and members of the court buried during the reign of Amenhotep III. They were buried with grave goods of the highest standard but for some reason an attempt (successful, until recently) was made in pharaonic times to destroy their memory. The location of their tombs, previously regarded as remote and inhospitable, has been revealed to be part of a vast landscape used in the reign of Amenhotep III and filled with roads, ponds, trees and grassland thanks to a very different climate. According to evidence found over the last ten years it was raining in the 18th dynasty.

PART TWO: THE WESTERN WADIS OF THE THEBAN NECROPOLIS, AND THE RISE (AND DECLINE) OF THE 18th DYNASTY

The rainfall, and the variations in climate revealed in consistent evidence collected from the Western Wadis, have provided an entirely new picture not only of where burials were located in the early 18th dynasty (including the previously unknown burial of a Thutmosid king) but also a very different understanding of how the 18th dynasty rose to power. Changes in the weather and a fresh perspective on the composition of the ancient Egyptian economy provide a new template for explaining the failures of the so-called Amarna Period and the subsequent chronic decline of the New Kingdom and its breakup in the Third Intermediate Period.

The speaker

Piers Litherland has been involved in excavations in the Valley of the Kings and the western wadis since 1999. He is head of the New Kingdom Research Foundation (NKRF), and is the field director and mission head of the NKRF project in the western wadis (affiliated with the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research at Cambridge University), which has been working in that part of the Theban cemetery for the last ten years.

Mr. Litherland is an honorary research associate of the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research at the University of Cambridge, to which the NKRF is affiliated. He has lectured on the work of the NKRF at the universities of Cambridge, Copenhagen, Uppsala, St Andrew’s, and Basel, at the Ministry of Antiquities in Cairo and Luxor, and to Egyptological societies in Britain and the United States. He took his undergraduate degree at Oxford University and holds an MPhil in Egyptology from the University of Cambridge.

His publications include The Western Wadis of the Theban Necropolis, New Kingdom Research Foundation, London, 2013.