TAA i.3.9.16

                                   –           12            –    

object seeme/<s>d to <have> be<en> to get the job done as quickly as possible.

As I mentioned before, they made no attempt to reseal the door

to the annexe, or to clear up that chamber. In the anti/<e>chamber

they piled everything up against the walls in very precarious

positions and generally made the place look like a cheap second-

hand furniture shop. With every box and casket in the tomb is

an inventory, or list of tii/<hi>ngs which were packed in the box

at the time of the king’s burial; linen in one box, bows and

walking sticks and whips in another, vases in another, an sandals 

in another<,> and so on. But when the boxes were opened last year,

these inventories bore little relation to the objects found in

their boxes, for when the officials cleared up the tomb they just

collected t/<u>p the articles and jammed them in tight into any of 

the boxes, so that one gets ridiculous mixtures of things in

any one box or casket. In many cases they did positive harm to

the boxes/<objects> by “tidying” up<”> in this manner. For example<,> some of

the robes and collarettes would now be in a much better condition

than they are if they had been left lying on the floor as the

thieves threw them, instead of being “tidied up” by the officials.

          In other cases, many of the small objects which should

have been put back in the boxes were just left scattered about

on the floor round the sides of the room. In some cases parts

of the same object were found in three or four widely different

parts of the chamber. On the whole the officials cleared up the 

tomb so hurriedly and so badly that one wonders why they bothered

to clear up at all. But one thing is certainly to their credit –

apparently they did no petty pilfering on their own account al-

though the robbers left many valuable small objects which it would

have been easy to for an unscrupulous official to have purloined