CHAMBER G (continued)

South wall

As on the north wall, the scenes of the upper two registers relate to the activities of the underworld, whilst the bottom register concerns the terrestrial activities.

Again, the styles in which Inerkhau and his wife are dressed remains the same as on the north wall.

1) - The upper register

Scene I

() In what should be the final vignette, which concludes both this register and the journey in this chamber, Inerkhau is portrayed with a short beard of the living, a cane in his right hand and an Isis knot in his left hand. He moves away of his tomb, whose door is fully open. Above, a red sun projects five rays. This exit is made possible by the auspices of Amenophis I, on the east wall.
The text removes all ambiguity as to the interpretation given to this image: "Formula for leaving on the day and not to die again". This vignette corresponds to §64 of the BoD. Nevertheless, the second part of the sentence belongs to §44.
In other words, Inerkhau accomplished in the depths of the tomb the rituals and the necessary operations for his rebirth; he can now come and go as he pleases between two worlds: the Realm of the Dead and that of the Living.

Scene II

This occupies the upper half of the register height.
A barque navigates from east to west on the hieroglyphic "pet"-sign of the sky (). It is provided with two rudder/oars and their supports, all are painted with concentric bands and are surmounted with a falcon head. The barque is operated by "his son Inerkhau, justified". The deceased and his wife are seated on chairs with the usual feet and are located under a canopy. They are sheathed in a shroud in the likeness of Ptah. With both hands, Inerkhau holds a flabellum.
This scene is a reminder of the traditional iconography of the journeys to Abydos, the Holy City where the head of the god Osiris was buried. The accompanying text starts with "Formula to sail northwards" and doesn't correspond to any known section of the BoD. It could be a mistake of copying by the scribe.

Scene III

Under the celestial barque we find a representation of a Hathoric Menat collar whose counterweight is represented by a large Kheper scarab, black and set in gold (). It acts as a vignette to §30B of the BoD, but the accompanying text is that of §76 : "Formula to turn into any form that one desires.".

Scene IV

Inerkhau preceded by Thot walks towards Osiris. Wearing a short beard and having naked feet, Inerkhau raises his two arms in homage to the God. Note the Isis knot which hangs from his left arm.
Thot who precedes him is doubly identified : on the one hand by his ibis head, on the other hand by the two representations of the moon (full and quarter) on his head. He holds in his left hand the palette of his function as scribe of the gods, and in his right hand a sign of life, the ankh. Between Thot and Osiris, some offerings are represented on a small table.
Osiris is represented in his canonical form: seated on a low cuboid throne resting on a mat, he holds in his hand a flabellum and a was-sceptre of power. He wears the Atef crown. Silent, as always, the Great God receives Inerkhau into his courtroom. This is represented to the following scene which actually forms a single scene with this one.

Scene V

() The "scene" (for it is actually comprised mainly of columns of text) is situated in a chapel whose doors are open. Each of the forty columns end, at the bottom, with a squatting god-judge.
It seems that every judge is connected to a particular sin, and is ready to subject the applicant to an vigorous interrogation before making a pronouncement.
To avoid this unpleasant moment, the Egyptian scribes proposed to use the magical strength of words, and mirrored the moment in a text in which the deceased addresses every god-judge individually, while naming him (although respectfully) in the manner of an old acquaintance, then affirming not to have committed such and such a loathed sin. This is the "Negative Confession".
It is such an excerpt that is offered here, in reasonable detail : the challenged scribe produced forty judges (normally there would have been forty-two of them), but omitted the continuation of the text, that is the statement of the sin which had never been committed by Inerkhau !! Hopefully the magic of the text will have compensated for the insufficiencies of the scribe.

Scene VI

() Inerkhau, in a transparent white dress, faces towards the west, with his right hand on his left shoulder in sign of respectful greeting. He is led by a god who originally had the head of baboon (Lepsius), who leads him towards a lake of fire, around which were four other baboons who have also now disappeared.

Scene VII

() These are two superimposed scenes of navigation. The barque at the top heads toward the east by crossing the sky. It is decorated with two udjat-eyes. Resting at its centre is the head of a falcon wearing on its head a solar disk surrounded by a snake. This scene represents the vignette from §136B of the BoD, which starts with "Formula for navigation in the great barque of Ra, to pass by the circle of flames.".
According to Inerkhau's text, this is the barque of Soped, which represents the sun in the morning.

Underneath is a another similar barque (but meaningfully without the udjat-eyes, because the deceased is not yet regenerated) travelling towards the west, but this time on water, that of the underground Nile. It transports four divinities : at the front is Isis, then Thot with the head of an ibis, then Khepri with his scarab head, and finally Hu. Inerkhau stands behind them and manoeuvres the barque.

Scene VIII

() This scene includes four of the mythological locations or underworld regions (it omits ten of them) where the deceased had to surrender. They are designated as "the first of the regions"; "the second region, the god who resides there is Horus of the two horizons (Horakhty) "; "the third region, the Akh-spirit lives"; "the fourth region, (the one of the) Ka". The first and the last have the aspect of a house plan or interior room of a mastaba, the second represents the horizon, the third is an oblong enclosure surrounded by a wall closed at one extremity by a half circle with the other end remaining open, this is of obscure significance.

2) - The middle register

Scene IX

() The first scene of this middle register is mutilated by the disappearance of the text which accompanied the representation of Inerkhau. According to Bruyère, he is in the position called "Khefet her neb=s". In front of him is a lotus standing out of the water and which inclines its open corolla toward him.

This relates to a lotus named Sechen, therefore clearly the blue lotus (Nymphea caerulea), which is very fragrant; it follows the solar cycle, emerging and opening up at dawn while in the evening closing again and disappearing under the water. The name was in the text copied by Lepsius and which today is missing; this text (based on §81 of the BoD) made allusion to the exit of Nun every morning. Nun represents the water of the primordial ocean, and it is also assimilated by the theologians to the amniotic fluid.
By achieving a new cycle every renewed day, where it manages to extract itself from the primordial and obscure aquatic environment, the full symbolic value of this plant in the Egyptian imaginary of rebirth can be understood.
Furthermore, from the point of view of the myth, the lotus is capable of returning from the bottom of the water that which has been lost there, notably the eye of Horus which was torn from him by Seth.

Scene X

( and ) Here, Inerkhau is knelt with his hands raised in worship. He wears neither wig nor necklace. He stands in front of his Bas, often referred to as his "souls" and which it would more correct to call his "Powers" of Nekhen (Hierakopolis). In a canonical manner these are represented here as andromorphic divinities with the head of a canine, in the "henu" position : one knee on the ground, a hand on the chest in a tight fist and the other raised at 90° behind.
Similar Bas are also met in Heliopolis and in Buto in the Delta. These latter ones have the head of a falcon.
It is uncertain as to what these entities really refer : former gods of the place? ancestors of the kings?

Scene XI

() This time, Inerkhau, in his long festive dress and usual wig, is standing facing west in worship in front of the Benu bird (the phoenix). Morphologically, it represents a heron. It wears the Atef crown. It was identified at one time with Osiris and with Ra, representing the linear time and the cyclic time, and by this fact included in the funeral myths. The text which accompanies it logically is §83 of the BoD : "Formula to turn into the Benu by the Foreman in the Place of Truth, Inerkhau, justified".

Scene XII

() The scene takes place on a thick mat. Anubis presents a heart (HIS heart) to Inerkhau (who here is in the form of his anthropoid sarcophagus). Between the two, is a large basket holding an oblong bread and two round breads; remembering that this type of "basket" is traditional every time that one is in the presence of a Ba.
Behind the god we find a standard supporting what is called an Abydos fetish, a shrine which is supposed to contain the head of Osiris. This ensign, called the Ta-wer ("the great land") is that of the Thinite nome in which is located Abydos, one of the main holy cities in connected with Osiris. The deceased were supposed to make a pilgrimage to Abydos, real or fictional (see scene II, above).
After this they will be able to accompany Sokar and be able to partake of food and drink reserved for the blessed.

Scene XIII

( and ). Here, Inerkhau kneels facing west with his arms raised. On his chin is a black dotted line indicating a beard of some days, usually a sign of masculine mourning. In front of him stands a large falcon on a small elevation of sandy land, holding a whip and looking towards the east. This is "a golden falcon, the great god who puts in festival the Two Lands.".

Scene XIV

() This very-known scene is one of those which created the reputation of the sepulchral vault, It is inspired by the 7th hour of the Am Duat (which exists only in the Royal Tombs) and it then passed into the Book of the Dead. A striped fawn cat with long ears is seated on its rear end, facing West. In its front left paw, it brandishes a knife with which it is killing a very big snake on whose head it is resting its right paw . The snake, similar to a grass snake, sticks out its forked tongue and is convulsed under a persea laden with red berries.
It is the solar cat scene ("the Great Cat of Heliopolis"), killing Apophis, the enemy of the sun, under the persea (Iched Tree) of Heliopolis. This scene is to be found in several tombs of Deir el Medina, notably and .

The vignette is an illustration of a passage from chapter chapter 17 of the Book of the Dead: "I am the cat who split the Iched Tree in Heliopolis the night when the enemies of the Master of the Universe were annihilated". The Geat Cat represents and incarnates the solar God Khepri-Re. Each night he must anihilate the serpent Apophis to permit himself to rise in the Eastern horizon, the horizon representing not just a line, but the exact point where the star appears, which corresponds mythologically to the gates of heaven before the Iched tree. Valérie Angenot has shown that the image has several levels of reading betraying visual and phonetic allusions. A profound examination has revealed that the abnormally large ears of the feline are not those of a hare, as was thought, but those of a donkey, which gives a hybrid animal, a cat-donkey, "miou.aa" in Egyptian, which may also be read "Great cat"!
Elsewhere, under the knife-cuts of the cat, the contortions of the serpent make two loops which suggest the two loops which conjure up the two hills which surround the horizon, like the hieroglyph Akhet and, between these loops, we find the Iched tree which is an avatar of the sun. Thus the message is clear, that the allies of the sun have triumphed over the shadows and the star will rise as it does each day.

The says :
"Formula to separate the enemy, to cut the backbone of Apophis. This god is happy in the middle of the other gods. I came toward you, my heart full of truth (by) the Ka of the Osiris, master craftsman of the Place of Truth to the west of Thebes, Foreman in the horizon of eternity (= the necropolis), Inerkhau, justified. His sister, (= wife) the mistress of house, the chantress of Amon of Pa-Khenty, Wab, justified, . Made by his brother, the scribe of the contours (= painter) of the place of eternity, Hor-Min, justified.".
Thus we can be certain that this picture was painted by Hor-Min. We notice a detail in the text (framed in red, in the plate). The determinative sign of the serpent Apep is crammed with knives! In fact, Hieroglyphic symbols, like other representations, are susceptible to be animated in the after-life and no precaution should be ignored.

Scene XV

The register ends with a scene composed of two superimposed sub-registers.

The top section represents an empty yet closed net trap. The text stipulates that, instead of him taking the net, the deceased must be able to name the parts of the net, so that he will have power over them.

The lower part shows a man standing and facing the east. He wears a wig which is shorter than found elsewhere on this wall and also has a short square beard. He is dressed in the usual long white garment with long sleeves. He holds in his right hand a long thin cane. From the text we learn that this man is the chief of works, Nakhtemmut, whose son is called Khonsu, who was also a chief of works. Both succeeded Inerkhau in this responsibility during the XXth Dynasty. His presence in this place illustrates the relations woven between the two men, so could this be a reward for Nakhtemmut, who probably helped Inerkhau to create his chamber.

3) - The bottom register

On the lowermost register, the terrestrial activities are once more resumed.

Scene XVI

() In the first (left-most) scene, the deceased and his wife sit facing the east on chairs once again with lion's feet. They receive fumigation of incense and libation of water from two men wearing sandals, dressed in a long and pleated and transparent skirt, their naked chests are again crossed with a white band, their heads are covered by a long wig. According to a text, which today is missing, they represent two sons of the couple.
The incense is provided by the first of the two men who holds a small altar fire in his right hand; the libation is made by both men with aid of a small pitcher. Inerkhau and his wife are dressed in long white dresses with long pleated sleeves. Inerkhau's dress is more voluminous than that of his wife and also has a pleated apron. With the exception of the earring worn by Wabet, neither of them wear any jewelry. Both of them wear sandals on their feet. The deceased holds a sekhem-sceptre in his left hand and advances the half open right hand, palm upwards. His wife holds her husband with her right hand placed on his shoulder and she raises the left hand in front of her face. Her long divided wig hangs down in sections to her waist.

Scene XVII

Still in their beautiful attire but with only Inerkhau wearing sandals, the couple are represented seated in front of a pedestal on which stand four flaming "candles", with their smoke heading towards the two deceased. They have a conical shape, with a wick which spirals down the outside, from top to bottom. Inerkhau (once more stubbly) passes his left arm lovingly around his wife's shoulder and holds her left hand. With his right hand, he pours water on himself, in an act of libation. Wabet wraps her right arm around her husband, her hand resting on his right shoulder close to his neck.
() In front of them stand six men with shaven heads, their naked chests are crossed by a broad white band which finishes at the hips in a long white skirt. They all wear wear sandals on their feet. The first is a sem-priest, who additionally wears a panther skin. He presents the censer with the head of a falcon with his left hand raised to height of his shoulder and holds a dripping ewer with his lowered right hand in front of his body.
Behind him is a man whose skirt is transparent thus allowing his legs to be seen below his flat triangular apron. He holds, like the four who follow him, a ewer in his raised right hand to the height of his face. Behind him, the four men, who stand side by side, all wear a long non-transparent skirt without an apron.

Scene XVIII

() The deceased and his wife sit facing the east listening to the song of a harpist crouched down in front of them on a mat. They are both dressed as in the previous two scenes, but this time Wabet is also adorned with a broad usekh-necklace in addition to her disk earrings. Both have naked feet. With his right hand on his heart Inerkhau holds the sekhem-sceptre; his left hand is placed palm down on his knee.
Wabet's right hand, which cannot be seen, probably rests on her husband's right shoulder. Her left hand is raised in front of her face.

The harpist is an obese man, with a shaven head, with a pierced earlobe, squatting on a mat. The body is shown in full profile according to the conventions of the Ramesside period. He is not blind, as almost always portrayed. His mouth is open because he sings while accompanying himself on the harp. He is portrayed with the usual inaccuracies: strangely shaped hands in the strings, very skinny arms for the plumpness of the rest of him, badly dimensioned feet, a malformed skull, feminine breasts and a very pleated abdomen. It should also be noted that both of his arms are drawn of the same side of the harp, which is a typically Egyptian style shown to enhance them and to show that handling the instrument definitely requires two hands.
The harp rests on the ground behind the deceased's feet and ends at the top in the form of a falcon's head. The number of strings (22) and keys (36) are a mismatch.

The song is an example of what is called , which is a hymn to the enjoyment of terrestrial life ().

 West wall

Still recognisable from the time of Bruyère () is the hole in the arched summit which received the beam formed by two half palms, and which extended to the east wall. This beam was supported at its middle by a wooden pillar. Beam and pillar have disappeared completely, taking with its removal the whole section of the wall which held the upper part of the image of the god Ptah.
This unique scene, which constituted the centre-piece of the whole chamber and which occupied the whole wall, testified by its measurements to its special importance.

The deceased crosses the north wall in a series of phases which terminate on the west wall with Osiris. He leaves the west by assimilating his new life with that of the sun with which he traverses the cycle of resurrection with the assistance of Ptah, on the south wall.
Osiris and Ptah are standing back to back (Egyptian translation of the position of these two gods, is that they both face east). They are mummiforms and each stand on a bevelled pedestal representing Ma'at. Osiris faces towards the north wall : This is the final outcome of the mysteries of death; Ptah faces the south wall : this is the starting point of the mysteries of the second life.
Osiris has his torso covered with pearl netting, the large usekh-necklace, the red belt of the chthonic gods (gods of the underworld), the white crown of Abydos decorated with the two Libyan feathers of Amentit, the long curved beard of the dead, the bracelets, the royal attributes: sceptre and flagellum.
Ptah holds his usual composite sceptre.

The deceased, (in festive dress with the triangular apron, long wig and sandals) offers to each a portable altar where three pellets of incense fumigate. On the right side, the deceased is followed by "his son, the wab-priest of Ptah, Qena, justified" giving adoration to Osiris. Of the left side, the deceased is accompanied by "his son, the scribe of the contours (= painter) in the Horizon of Eternity, Hor-Min" giving adoration to Ptah.
The two sons (naked chest, long skirt and naked feet) make the salute of worship, with the left hand for Osiris, with the right hand for Ptah. The offering of incense by the deceased is also made with the opposing hand.

MATERIAL RECOVERED IN AND AROUND THE TOMB

The heavily compacted and uninteresting floor of the chamber was covered by a thick layer of rubble and with the remnants of funerary material and the remains of mummies.
In the courtyard situated in front of the porch of Qaha had been found :

The bottom part of the left doorpost of the entrance doorway to the chamber was still in place at the time of discovery. On the left, is a supplication to the cobra goddess Meretseger, protector of the Theban summit and therefore of the community of the craftsmen, as well as to Ptah-Sokar-Osiris. On the right, the two supplications are to Osiris and Anubis.

Another gatepost in well-preserved limestone (see , left) of 1.20m x 0.18m was also found. It includes two columns of inscriptions in blue text on yellow base of gold.

Several other fragments of lintels of doors or doorposts have been recovered but they don't deserve to be described here.

Fragments of a with a rounded top dedicated to Thot-moon in a barque journeying towards the summit of the west. It is uncertain if it belonged to Inerkhau.

A on a limestone fragment dedicated to baboon-god Thot wearing the lunar disk and dedicated to the cobra goddess Meretseger.

Two years after the excavation, a stela belonging positively to Inerkhau appeared on the Luxor antiques market and was bought for the Museum of the Oriental Institute of Chicago by the Prof. Seele (see , based on Bruyère).
The top part of a stela also belonging to him is preserved in the Louvre () and represents a procession carrying the statue of the divine Amenophis I. The lower part could be at the Museum of Marseille under the .