of Khnum-Nakht The brothers'
tomb was found untouched in 1907 on a dig led by
Flinders Petrie at the
Deir Rifeh cemetery. Petrie first described the burial in his excavation report of Rifeh. After the finds went to the
Manchester Museum,
Margaret Murray published a monograph on this tomb group. The burial chamber of the two individuals was found in a small chamber placed within the
courtyard of a bigger tomb, perhaps once belonging to a governor buried at Deir Rifeh. The
chamber tomb contained a set of two
coffins, one outer wooden box coffin and one inner anthropoid coffin for each of the tomb owners. The coffins are decorated on the outside with a palace facade motif and several text lines. The coffins and the texts are very close to coffins found at
Asyut and it seems possible that they were produced there.
Coffins of Nakht-Ankh of Nakht-Ankh The rectangular outer coffin bears on the lid three text columns. On the long sides there are four double columns on each side. At the top of the long sides there are two horizontal text lines. The short ends have two columns and again two horizontal text lines. On the lid Nakht-Ankh bears the title
son of a governor and is called
begotten of Khnumaa. The middle text column is an offering formula addressing
Anubis with the wish that the deceased may cross with a ferry, that he might be buried and that he might ascend to the great god. The other spell expressed the wish that Nakht-Ankh might sit in the boat of the sun god, that will cross the heaven. Evidently the spell made sure that Nakht-Ankh will be in the circle of deities after death. The third spell on the lid finally expresses the wish that the deceased becomes the son of the sky goddess
Nut to be under her protection. The texts on the coffin box have different functions. Some of the spells are part of the modern corpus of
Coffin Texts (on the coffin there are the coffin text spells 30, 31, 32, 609 and 345). Interestingly, the coffin is almost identical to the coffin of a certain Djefahapy that was found at Asyut.
Further objects in the burial Next to the coffins was found a
canopic box with four
canopic vessels. There were three statuettes of the tomb owners. Also, some wooden models of servants, models of boats and some pottery vessels. == The tomb owners ==