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Irynefer's tomb no 290 at Deir el-Medina

The tomb is located at the far end of the western cemetery and shares the forecourt with the earlier tomb of Nu and Nakht-Min TT 291. It consists of an entrance, an antechamber and a burial chamber. The owner of the tomb was Irynefer, a necropolis workman of the Ramesside Period. He lived in the village in the 19th dynasty during the early part of Ramesses II's reign. His title was the "Servant in the Place of Truth".
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Photography © Elvira Kronlob 2011
The entrance to the tomb was identified by Bernard Bruyère during the season of 1922/1923.
Bruyère's drawing of the exact position of the tomb and its surroundings can be found in his manuscript MS 2004 0144 017, dated Januray 31st 1923, which was digitised by IFAO. It marks the outline of the tomb and numbers it as 290:
http://www.ifao.egnet.net/bases/archives/bruyere/?id=MS_2004_0144_017
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Bruyère's dig diary MS_2004_0144_018 from January 27th 1923 mentions excavations in the Northern area of the Western necropolis, where a large court with 2 tomb entrances was discovered. Each entrance had a shaft in front of it. Bruyère suggested that P1 (on his plan) could be entrance into Irynefer's (AriNefer) tomb. Fragments of several ancient Egyptian objects and a lamp from Christian times were found in this area.
http://www.ifao.egnet.net/bases/archives/bruyere/?id=MS_2004_0144_018
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Another, later, plan dated February 9th 1923 comes from Bruyère's manuscript MS 2004 0144 027 and shows the name of AriNefer with a question mark:
http://www.ifao.egnet.net/bases/archives/bruyere/?id=MS_2004_0144_027
The photographs of the entrance to the tomb and its immediate surroundings in November 2011.
Unless otherwise stated, all the photographs on this page are © Elvira Kronlob 2011-2012
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The steps leading down towards
the entrance into the antechamber
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The tomb is one of the most interesting of the Ramesside tombs due to its beautifully decorated vaulted burial chamber. A short passage leads to the burial chamber. It is decorated with hieroglyphs and a reclining jackal of Anubis looking towards the entrance of the tomb. The brick vault of the burial chamber was plastered and decorated with colourful scenes and inscriptions giving the names and titles of family members. The background of the scenes was painted yellow.
The scenes include illustrations of various spells from the Book of the Dead, images of funerary deities, demons and manifestations of the deceased's ba and shadow.

All photographs of the interior of the burial chamber are © by Elvira Kronlob 2012 and were taken in autumn 2012. I am very grateful to her for taking them and for giving me permission to publish them on our website.
We will start the tour of the tomb by looking to the right of the entrance towards the north wall. Irynefer stands in the centre with his hands raised in worship towards a frieze that decorates this wall and extends over the western wall. It is interspersed with protective symbols and hieroglyphs in which the baboon is followed by an uraeus separated from the next by a feather, symbol of Ma'at (Germond, 2001, 244).
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The right side of the upper register is mostly destroyed. Below the destroyed scene in the middle register, Irynefer kneels before Osiris and two gatekeepers.
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The upper register of the northern wall shows a representation of the god Khepri seated in front of an offering table and a sep priest standing behind him.
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At the entrance the visitor faces the western wall and the frieze described above. In the shrine within the frieze Ma'at and Shu are seated on the left. In front of Shu there are 42 judges of the dead (Osiris is the 43rd judge). Here Irynefer swears that he has not committed any of a list of 42 sins (each judge is responsible for 1 sin) and recites a text known as the "negative confession" from the Book of the Dead. "...I did not cause the suffering of the people, nor of my relatives.... "
The upper register above the frieze depicts various deities.
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Next to the shrine is a representation of Irynefer worshipping Horus in the form of a falcon. Horus holds a flagellum, the symbol of regeneration and rebirth, which gave him the power to decide who would enter the afterlife.
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The lower register on the far side of the western wall shows Anubis leading Irynefer to Osiris seated on his throne.
Above the scene with Osiris is the vignette of the unusual
Spell 135 of the Egyptian Book of the Dead.
Although the text of the spell is not present, the depiction of 5 deities, 7 stars and a disc against a dark background occurs in 5 other 19th dynasty tombs from Deir el-Medina.
According to David G. Smith, the spell could be a reference to the flash of the solar corona and to "Bailey's Beads", flashes of light that occur at the precise moment of a total eclipse (for source see below bibl. 11, 12).
"Another spell to be said when the moon is new on the first day of the month. Open, O cloudiness! The  bleared Eye of Re is covered, and Horus proceeds happily every day, even he the great of shape and weighty of striking-power, who dispels bleariness of eye with his fiery breath." (Faulkner, 2000,123)
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The image on the south wall, on the left side of the burial chamber, shows the mummification of the deceased, who is lying on a bed with lion heads. The mummification is performed by Anubis, the jackal-headed god of the dead.
The last wall to be described within the burial chamber is the eastern wall. In the lower register, we see Irynefer standing in the solar barque worshipping the
phoenix, the symbol of the sun god of Heliopolis. The phoenix in the form of a grey heron wears the solar
disk, the image of Re and assures Irynefer of his future rebirth in the manner of the sun (Germond, 2001, 258).
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In the register above, the couple is praying to a young bull-calf standing between 2 sycamore trees, the sacred trees of Heliopolis, the calf being a prefiguration of the solar bull moving through the sky (Germond, 2001, 239).
Horus with the cow goddess Hesat, a manifestation of Hathor, on a reed mat by a pond, are depicted above the calf scene.
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The following scene spans both registers: Irynefer's parents, whose age is indicated by their white hair, pay homage to Ptah, the patron deity of craftsmen. Irynefer himself kneels in front of Ptah's throne and offers a figure of the goddess Ma'at (Hawass, 2009, 195-197).
The rear part of the eastern wall is divided into two
registers. The upper register is dominated by an
extraordinary scene: it shows the worshipped god
Ptah standing in front of the enshrined black shadow
of the deceased and two ba-birds. One flies, the
other sits in front of a black sun.
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Just above the arch of the entrance to the chamber is the green-skinned winged goddess Nut, whose name is indicated by the hieroglyphs above her head. Nut kneels before Horus and Hesat.
We now turn to the last representation in the chamber, which is located at the top of the eastern wall near the entrance.
The scene is very similar to a scene in TT3, the tomb of Pashedu: Irynefer kneels before a dom palm and drinks from a pool of fresh water (Dodson, 2008, 266-269). The illustration belongs to a spell for "drinking water in the necropolis" in the Book of the Dead. The design had to accommodate 3 different viewpoints: the pool is seen from above, Irynefer is kneeling on the bank on the far side so as not to obscure the water, and the tree is growing on the near side of the pool so as not to obscure the kneeling figure (Málek, 2003, 242).
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To view more photos of the inside of the tomb, follow the link to Claudia Ali and Ali Na'im's web site at
http://www.leben-in-luxor.de/luxor_kultur_graeber_tt290_irunefer.html
 
In the summer of 2010 Irynefer's tomb was briefly opened to visitors;  by autumn 2010 it was closed again. In the middle of December 2011 the tomb opened while Sennedjem's TT1 closed. Jane Akshar described her visit to the tomb on her blog at
http://luxor-news.blogspot.com/2010/08/new-tomb-opens-at-deir-el-medina.html
 
Objects from the tomb are scattered around the globe in several museums.
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Photography Lenka Peacock
© Petrie Museum, UCL
Stela of Irynefer
19th dynasty
From Deir el-Medina
Sandstone
Musee du Louvre. C311
Painted stela of the 'Artisan of the Royal Tombs', Irynefer and his family. The stela comes from the tomb chapel.
Upper register: from left: Anubis seated behind Osiris, both facing the divine Amenhotep I and his mother Ahmose Nefertari.
The 2 lower registers show Irynefer and his wife censing in front of his parents and brothers. In contrast to the wall painting in Irynefer's tomb, where both Irynefer and his wife wear white wigs, this stela shows Irynefer's father Siwadjyt as a white-haired man. These two examples, of which there are only a few, suggest an old age. They all seem to come from the New Kingdom, especially from the tombs of Deir el-Medina (Janssen, 2007, 159-161).
Stela of Irynefer
19th dynasty
From Deir el-Medina, tomb 290
Limestone
Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology,
University College London, UC14545
The lower part of this round stela is missing. The upper part shows the remains of a raised relief of the god Ptah facing forward. At the bottom of the right side of the stela there are remains of a man with his arms raised in worship - his head is turned to the left and his hands survive. The lower left side shows the remains of a pile of offerings. The rest of the stela is filled with 5 columns of hieroglyphic inscriptions identifying the worshipper as Irynefer, the Servant in the Place of Truth.
Height: 22 cm
Width: 20.5 cm
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Photography Soloegipto 2009
© Musée du Louvre
To view Bruyère's drawing of the place where the stela was found, go to
http://www.ifao.egnet.net/bases/archives/bruyere/?id=MS_2004_0144_035
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Irynefer before a table of bread
19th dynasty
From Deir el-Medina
Musee du Louvre. E12965
Found in the tomb of Irynefer.
Irynefer is seated on a rock, brandishing two knives. The short text above the offerings indicates that the knives are sharpened. The text of five vertical lines above gives the names and affiliations of Irynefer. The knives are supposed to express Irynefer's power over evil. Perhaps this ostakon was intended to invoke protection.
Photography Su Bayfield 2008
© Musée du Louvre
Further web sites featuring the tomb:
http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/Irunefert.htm
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​To view and browse the digitised version of The Topographical Bibliography of Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphic Texts, Statues, Reliefs and Paintings, (also known as Porter & Moss or TopBib) for this tomb, go to
http://www.griffith.ox.ac.uk/topbib/pdf/pm1-1.pdf#page=372
Material for the Bibliography is gathered from an ever-expanding range of multi-lingual sources, encompassing both specialist and semi-popular Egyptological and Near Eastern publications, periodicals, museum guides, exhibition and auction catalogues, together with the growing wealth of web resources. The Bibliography also analyses a range of unpublished manuscripts, including those housed in the Griffith Institute Archive. Published in May 2014 by the Griffith Institute, University of Oxford, the volumes are constantly revised and augmented.
Sources:
1. Dodson, Aidan - Ikram, Salima: The tomb in ancient Egypt : royal and private sepulchres from the early dynastic
period to the Romans
London : Thames & Hudson, 2008.
2. Janssen, Rosalind and Janssen, Jac. J.: Growing up and getting old in ancient Egypt
London : Golden House Publications, 2007.
3. Hawass, Zahi: The lost tombs of Thebes : Life in paradise.
London : Thames and Hudson, 2009.
4. Germond, Philippe and Livet, Jacques: An Egyptian bestiary : animals in life and religion in the land of the Pharaohs.
London : Thames and Hudson, 2001.
5. Bierbrier, Morris : The tomb-builders of the pharaohs
Cairo : The American University in Cairo Press, 1982.
6. Les artistes de Pharaon : Deir el-Médineh et la Vallée des Rois : Paris, musée du Louvre, 15 avril - 5 aout 2002
Paris : Réunion des Musées Nationaux, 2002.
7. Faulkner, R. O.: The Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead
London : British Museum Press, 2000.
8. Málek, Jaromír: Egypt : 4000 years of art
London : Phaidon Press, 2003.
9. http://www.ifao.egnet.net/bases/archives/bruyer
10. http://www.leben-in-luxor.de/luxor_kultur_graeber_tt290_irunefer.html
11. http://www.diskdoctor.co.uk/texts/Solar%20Eclipses%20%28Dave%20Smith%29%20-%20Part%201.pdf
12. http://www.diskdoctor.co.uk/texts/Solar%20Eclipses%20%28Dave%20Smith%29%20-%20Part%202.pdf
Further bibliography
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