The Tomb of Nakht the Scribe and Astronomer of Amun - Hieroglyphics explained

In the burial chamber of Nakht the Scribe and Astronomer of Amun during the 18th Dynasty  a statue of Nakht holding a stela with the ‘Hymn to Re, was packaged for transportation to America, unfortunately the statue  was lost at sea in 1915 during the first world war when the ship was torpedoed by a U Boat,  so only copies of  the statue remain today.

The tombs of the Nobles are unique and a joy to visit as they each offer a glimpse into the lifestyle of the Official or Noblemen. TT52 is the tomb of Nakht who was a scribe, holding the title, 'Astronomer of Amun' at the Karnak temple during the 18th dynasty. His job was to study the location of stars, the sun and moon in order to schedule festivals and cult rituals for the temple. His wife, Tawy, was a musician of Amun, and in the reliefs she is referred to as 'His sister, his beloved, the Chantress of [Amon], Tawy. 'Mistress of the House', 'His sister, his beloved, with a place in his heart'

The tomb of Nakht is a very small tomb,  you can only comfortably get four people inside, This tomb is not large, and consists of a small corridor, a vestibule, another short corridor and the chapel, which includes a niche for a statue and a shaft, the tomb has some of the most beautiful and famous reliefs of all Ancient Egyptian tombs.  A naked maidservant is shown helping three ladies to prepare themselves for the banquet, the female figures, are young, sensual and sophisticated. Their rounded proportions are revealed through the plaits of their hair and translucent dresses, they have beautiful almond eyes. A blind harpist sits with his legs crossed before the festivities. One of the most famous pictures from any Egyptian tomb is in the centre of the banquet scene where a group of three female musicians entertain the guests with flute, lute and harp, it is a delightful scene 

The relief's show a farmer ploughing the fields with oxen, and many rural activities, including the cultivation of grain, digging of small canals for irrigation, harvesting, hunting, fishing and gathering grapes, while others press them to make wine,  flocks of birds rising and being dragged into a net, plucking and cleaning the birds. Nakht is portrayed with his wife and two small sons in a papyrus boat, grasping a hunting stick. 

There is a false door that is painted to look like pink granite, with four registers of offering bringers at the sides and a sub-scene of Nut as a tree-goddess gathering offerings. The ancient Egyptians believed that the dead could pass through the false door and inhabit statues in order to receive funerary offerings. This idea is reinforced on the door by six offering bearers who, while kneeling, offer water, beer, wine, clothing, unguent, fruit and vegetables. Turning the corner once again, we find bearers of the purification of offerings and priests before Nakht and his wife. 

Nakht's Tomb is located on the hillside of Abd el-Qurna, where the infamous tomb robber Ahmed Rassoul and his brothers lived who found a tomb with over fifty members of royalty that had been taken from their own tombs in the Valley of the Kings, this village was known as the village of the tomb robbers. The tomb was discovered by the villagers prior to being cleared by the Antiquities Service in 1889. In 1917, the English Artists, illustrators, and Egyptologists, Norman de Garis Davies and his wife Nina, published information on the tomb which received worldwide attention.

My daughter Kirsty used to work for Thomas Cook, and one Christmas as a surprise she bought me what turned out to be one of my favorite books 'The Nile - Notes for Travelers in Egypt, written by  E.A.Wallis Budge, who was an English Egyptologist, and Orientalist who worked for the British Museum and who wrote many books, including 'The Nile - Notes for Travelers, was written in 1895, and obviously there have been found many inaccuracies, but Wallis visited the tomb of Nakht, and deciphered a few of the registers, so I thought that you might like to read his interpretation of the hieroglyphics