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A papyrus records the confession of robbers who
entered the tombs of kings and commoners alike
and stripped the mummies of their jewelry. A
great deal is known about the activities of tomb
robbers, and the measures taken to deal with
them, from a collection of papyri dating from
the end of the Twentieth Dynasty (c. 1069 BC).
At this time there seems to have been a general
breakdown in law and order, and the robbing of
tombs was a symptom of these troubled times. The
papyri contain the names of the tombs that had
been robbed, the confessions of the robbers, and
the results of the official inspections of the
tombs undertaken in answer to allegations of
theft. The confessions, from both men and
women, were often extracted under torture. The
punishments meted out to the robbers are known
from the oath that they were required to swear
when they gave testimony: 'As Amun lives and as
the ruler lives, if I be found to have had
anything to do with any one of the thieves may I
be mutilated in nose and ears and be placed on
the stake'.
The tombs of priests and other commoners were
not immune from violation by the robbers, who
dragged the bodies out of their coffins to strip
off their jewelry, and left them out in the
desert. |
