CT: "Obviously something was troubling the writer."

CK: "Granted but anything written so long after the fact has to be suspect."


Lets put your "so long after the fact" into perspective. If Imhotep and Hardedef's tombs were looted in the FIP, then the inscription in the Dyn 11 tomb of Intef was near contemporary with this, so it's hard to see why this should be "suspect" for the reason you give.


CK: "More importantly it clearly states the Gods rest in their pyramids. While all the kings may have been Gods there's less certainty that all the gods were kings and that only kings might have been buried in pyramids."


The remains of some / all / many? of the kings may well have still been untouched in Dyn 11 - the fact is we do not know when each pyramid were first broken into.


CK: "80,000 cubic feet of sand is a prodigious undertaking to ransack a grave but it would seem that if they wanted to protect a grave with 6,000,000 tons of stone that it could be several orders of magnitude more secure."


One would think so. However millions of tons of stone mean very little to a looter if there is a weak spot - a passage leading through the millions of tons of stone to the sarcophagus chamber for example. In this case its just a question of finding the passages and clearing any obstruction or tunneling around the obstruction.


Looting of tombs was probably going on already in the OK. In the case of M17, a huge mastaba about 104m long, and 52m wide, there was not even an entrance passage, yet the looters were still able to dig their tunnel to the exact spot where they could break into the chamber system. How do you think they did that without inside knowledge?


The sarcophagus and personal items of Hetepheres, the wife of Snefru and mother of Khufu, were found in an undisturbed underground chamber next to Khufu's pyramid. The sarcophagus was empty however, so what happened to the body? One theory is that she was buried near one of her husband's pyramids, but the tomb was looted and the body burnt to remove the valuables within the wrappings. Her sarcophagus and personal items were later reburied next to her son's pyramid for safe keeping as the area around Sneferu's pyramids could no longer be guaranteed safe from looters.


Later, in the Valley of the Kings, the builders of one of the royal tombs dug their own secret tunnel into the tomb. After the interment, they began removing the valuable objects and sold them little by little. After a while the authorities became suspicious when so many many royal goods began appearing on the market and after an investigation caught the culprits and sent them to work in the quarries as punishment.

CT