Volume 135, Issue 2

During the spring season of 2007, the burial chamber (built of large white limestone ashlars and vaulted inside) has been unearthed at the bottom of the main shaft in the Late Period tomb of Menekhibnekau. The inner sides of the chamber, as well as the sides of the outer and inner sarcophagi (made of white limestone and greywacke respectively) are largely decorated with texts and representations in sunk relief, among them personifications of the day and night hours, excerpts from the Book of the Dead, Pyramid Texts, etc. Although the burial chamber has been robbed already in Antiquity, a few items of the original burial equipment have been preserved. In a separate shaft, serving as an embalmers’ cache, a number of large storage vessels have been examined. On nineteen of them, late hieratic and early demotic inscriptions have been found that mention materials used during mummification.

Both men and women consulted the oracle of Amenhotep I in Deir el-Medîna, but women seldom appear in texts and images generated by oracular consultations. Most texts mentioning women refer to property matters; the same is true for men, but issues relating to the men′s professional lives, such as wages and appointments, are not mentioned in connection with women. O Berlin P 10629, where a woman consults the oracle in a property dispute with her family, is a particularly intriguing text. If the goods the plaintiff′s mother took away from her are family property, the petitioner is asking the oracle to confirm her future inheritance rights and establish the value of the objects. However, the family quarrel may be about whether the mother is making a false claim to the daughter′s personal property, in which case the oracle is asked to establish the truth.

Papyrus Prisse line 168 can be best explained as the second tense construction conveying a hypothetical sense: “Should he (= man of character) seize, he would be like a crocodile in the court of magistrates.”