Reading Qs 7

Woseribre Senebkay was a previously unknown pharoah of the Second Intermediate Period in the late 1600s BC[E] who was buried with other unknown rulers of the period near the Middle Kingdom cemetery in South Abydos.

We'll talk about the following questions: How did his circumstances of death and physical/ecological issues impact his burial? What happened to him and his tomb after their original sealing?

From Part 1

1. What parts of Senebkay’s tomb and tomb equipment were made from reused materials? Where did his people get these materials? (pages 1-6, 8)
2. Why do you think they reused stuff rather than building or making it from scratch? (You may want to revisit this question after looking at Part 3.)
3. What does it seem to mean that his grave is a “passage-style” tomb? The pictures may help. (pages 10-14)
4. What were the archaeologists able to determine about what the first set of tomb robbers did? (page 23)
5. What happened to the burial chamber, and why do the archaeologists think this means that the tomb was robbed a second time? (pages 25-26)
6. What evidence suggests that the decoration of the burial chamber was done in a hurry? (page 35; notice the pictures on pages 37-40, 46-49)

From Part 3

1. How old and how tall was Seneb-kay? (page 106)
2. What is a muskuloskeletal stress marker (MSM)? (page 107)
3. Why did Seneb-kay have dental problems? (page 108)
4. What do his MSM’s suggest about his activities? Why might a person in this period of Egyptian history perform this activity? (page 117)
5. How did Seneb-kay probably die? (pages 130-134) – Trigger warning for violence. If you can’t watch the battle scenes in the Lord of the Rings movies (for example) you can skip this question.

You don’t have to read any of Part 2. There are some really cool examples of how to reconstruct an artifact from a few fragments in that section, if that is something that interests you.