[From Spring 1997 issue of A&S Perspectives]
On a sweltering February morning in 1995, archaeologist and UW alumnus Kent Weeks opened a door that changed his life forever.
The door, located at the end of a small chamber in an Egyptian tomb, had been buried under 3,000 years of dirt and debris. When Weeks discovered the door, he anticipated that there might be a small room on the other side. Instead the door led to a corridor extending more than 100 feet, flanked by another 20 doors, some opening into whole suites of rooms. Weeks quickly realized that this was no ordinary tomb.
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| UW alumnus Kent Weeks |
"Suddenly we were not in a tomb with two decorated rooms but one with 67 decorated chambers," recalls Weeks. "When we realized how big this set of rooms was--larger and different in plan than anything that had come before--we were just dumbstruck. It was overwhelming."
Given its size and location directly across from the tomb of Ramesses II in the Valley of the Kings, Weeks believed that the unusual tomb, named KV5, might house Ramesses' 52 sons. But he kept the news quiet for the next three months so that he could investigate further. When he finally announced the discovery in New York and Cairo, the response was nothing short of frenzied.
Within a month, the discovery was written up in "about 4,000 articles all over the world, making it the most publicized archaeological discovery since the discovery of Tutankamen's tomb," recalls Weeks. The story even made the cover of Time magazine.
Not bad for a kid from Longview and Everett, Washington. Weeks says that he knew by age 8 that he wanted to be an Egyptologist. At the University of Washington, he majored in anthropology but also took courses in history, classics, anatomy, English literature, and poetry. "It was a broad liberal arts background, and I found it extremely rewarding," says Weeks. "I'm a real advocate of a liberal arts education."
When he wasn't studying, Weeks was working at the Burke Museum, where he met his future wife, Susan Howe, also a UW undergraduate. Several decades later, the couple's two children attended the UW as well.
Just after receiving his B.A. in 1963, Weeks had the opportunity to work on a project in Nubia, Egypt for the summer-with only a few weeks notice. He jumped at the chance. And although he returned to the UW for a master's degree in anthropology and received a Ph.D. in Egyptology from Yale University, he continued to visit Egypt every year. Weeks is now a professor at American University in Cairo.
First You See It, Then You Don't
Weeks is not alone in his fascination with Egypt. The Valley of the Kings, used as a burial place for pharaohs in Egypt's New Kingdom (about 1200 B.C.), has attracted busloads of visitors every day for years. In fact, the increasing tourist traffic indirectly led Weeks to explore KV5.
In 1979, Weeks began working on an archaeological map of the Valley of the Kings, recognizing that such information would be critical in deciding how to deal with regularly increasing tourism while protecting the tombs. The project entailed surveying the site by air, visiting all known tombs, and poring over historical materials. The historical materials included references to five tombs seen by travellers in the 1800s but no longer visible. One of the "lost" tombs was in an area soon to be excavated to widen the bus entrance to the Valley of the Kings. That tomb turned out to be KV5.
Although the tomb's entrance had been discovered previously, no one had attempted substantial excavation. And for good reason: while it took only two weeks for Weeks and his crew to uncover the entrance to the tomb, it took six years of intermittent excavation for them to clear two small rooms just beyond the entrance. "The debris that filled the tomb had the density of concrete," recalls Weeks. Beyond those rooms the debris has been less dense, but excavation remains slow and arduous.
A Tomb Filled with Muck
Since his discovery, Weeks has been able to accelerate his excavation efforts. Previously, he worked at the site for no more than four weeks each year due to limited funding. Now he has sufficient financial support to work there for six months each year, with a full-time staff assisting him. (The remainder of the year is spent analyzing the excavated material.)
Does that mean that Weeks is unearthing treasures at a steady clip? Hardly.
"What we've found is a tomb filled with muck," he explains. "In that muck are broken pottery, fragmentary inscriptions on the wall, fragments of sarcophoghi, mummies, and so on, each of which has a story to tell. Together they provide an enormous amount of information. But meticulous digging and analysis are required."
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That analysis, says Weeks, is really what his work is all about. "Crawling into a set of corridors for the first time is truly exciting, but the fun part is then taking all the little pieces of this incredible puzzle and putting them all together," he says. "It's like being a detective at a crime scene and trying to figure out, from little bits of data, what is going on."
To complicate matters, the tomb was robbed thousands of years ago, about 50 years after the burials. "The thieves did significant damage," says Weeks. "We're just getting the bits and pieces they left behind."
Those pieces have been telling nevertheless. Based on what he's found, Weeks is now certain that KV5 was a tomb for the sons of Ramesses. In fact, four fragmentary mummies of young adult males were recently unearthed; DNA testing will confirm whether the four mummies are related, which would suggest that they are Ramesses' offspring. As questions are answered, however, more arise.
"Why did Ramesses II give his sons more prominence than any other pharaoh before or after him? What religious views and mortuary customs had to change to allow the digging of such a tomb? These are among the questions we're asking," says Weeks. "In the process, I think we will learn more about court life and family life among the royals in Egypt during one of the most important periods of their history."
Perhaps the most unanswerable question is when Weeks' work at KV5 will be finished. "This is the largest tomb ever found in Egypt, with a plan unlike any other tomb--or any other monument--in Egypt," says Weeks. "In 1995, we discovered that there were 67 rooms. Now we're up to 118 rooms and I'm certain that the total will be more than 150. The tomb is going in every conceivable direction. It looks like the tentacles of an octopus." Weeks adds with great relish, "I know what I'll be doing for the rest of my life."