TT110: A Private Tomb with Royal Depictions

From 2012 to 2016, ARCE undertook projects to excavate the courtyard, entrance, rear chamber, and burial shaft of tomb TT110, and conserve and prepare the tomb for public visitors. A second project from 2014 to 2022 worked on recording the scenes and inscriptions.

An Egyptian team of ARCE conservators and trainees worked to stabilize the ceiling and repair cracks in the tomb’s walls. They also cleaned the tomb walls and consolidated those areas where the plaster was becoming detached from the walls in order to preserve the surfaces and  inscriptions. 

Djehuty was the owner of the tomb and an important royal official during the New Kingdom. He served as a Royal Butler under Hatshepsut and  Royal Herald under Thutmose III, positions that carried great social and cultural weight in the Pharaonic period.  

Epigraphy, the study of inscriptions, was an essential part of the project in TT110. The work involved both traditional and digital methods to record the tomb and study the scenes and texts.

ARCE ran several archaeological field schools from 2012 to 2016 to explore and clear the courtyard and entrance. The field school provided hands-on experience and training for the participants, all of whom are now conservators and archaeologists for the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities.

The Htp-di-nsw inscription in the tomb’s first chamber contains a lengthy formula extolling  Djehuty’s virtues and giving the titles he held under both Hatshepsut and Thutmose III. 

The necropolis where TT110 was built was just beyond the floodplains of the Nile River, the lifeforce of the ancient Egyptian civilization. The dry conditions of the desert have helped preserve the tomb and its contents.  

TT110 is located in Sheikh Abd el-Qurna, a cemetery on the West Bank of Luxor. It has the largest concentration of private tombs in the area, with many belonging to high-ranking officials of the 18th Dynasty, like Djehuty, and is also a living community that has endured for centuries.

During the project, the team uncovered unfinished paintings in the tomb’s entryway and inscriptions on the façade for the first time. 

The debris dumped in the forecourt was anything but garbage. The material yielded over 500 objects of interest, including funerary cones, portions of funerary furniture, an ostracon, and wood coffin fragments like the one pictured here. One person’s trash is another’s treasure!

The English Egyptologist Norman Weigall first entered the tomb in 1909, followed by Norman de Garis Davies, who partially published its texts and wall scenes in 1932. However, extensive excavations to clear the tomb did not start until decades later, in 2012.