Why were pyramids robbed

After the pyramids were built, the pharaohs were interred, and people could give offerings to their new god in funerary temples adjacent to the tomb. It was confusing to me, then, to know that the tombs of bona fide deities had been robbed. If I were an ancient Egyptian, I would not want to rob the tomb of my gods for fear of bringing their wrath down upon me. So how was it, I wondered, that people became brave enough to loot so many pyramids and tombs that we have discovered very few intact?

The answer came to me in the form of the changing of the religion itself. Early on in the Old Kingdom, people worshiped the god Ra as the most powerful and influential god. He is probably the god that most people today associate with ancient Egypt and pharaohs, along with Osiris, god of the afterlife.

The two gods gained popularity around the same time—which is coincidentally also the time that the pyramids were being built. As a crime, robbery was punished by death, which usually meant being burned alive or decapitated and impaled. This presented a religious problem for the thief because if he was burned, there would be only ashes and no body that was able to enter the afterlife. If he was impaled, his body would forever be tied to the place of his impalement.

Less frequent and less severe punishments included cutting off one or both hands, whipping, beating, and torture. These methods were used both for punishment and for extracting a confession from tomb robbers. One of the most famous tombs, that of King Tutankhamen , had been robbed twice prior to its historic opening by Howard Carter early in the 20th century.

The outer doorway contained a hole that had been replastered and sealed; this could only have been done by a tomb robber. The first robbers were thought to have been seeking linen, cosmetics, and metal. Although the cosmetics may seem trivial now, in ancient Egypt they were highly treasured and expensive commodities.

The second robbers were thought to have been interested in the pharaoh's jewels and figurines and Carter estimates that about two-thirds of the jewelry was stolen during the second robbery. King Cheops also known by the Egyptian name Khufu , who ruled during BC and is entombed in the Great Pyramid of Giza, was looted in the 19th century by thieves who used explosives to blast through the thick stone doors.

The tomb of Thutmose II was vandalized by tomb robbers and his mummy severely damaged. Thutmose is thought to have been pharaoh during the time of the Biblical exodus of the Jews, which is further suggested by some of the injuries that his body sustained during his lifetime. Thutmose III also had his tomb and his mummy ravaged by tomb robbers. The damage was so extensive that his wrappings had to be renovated in order to make the mummy firm enough for re-burial.

The tomb of King Tut is estimated to have been robbed for the first time between and BC. Items taken during the first ransacking are thought to have included stone jars, gilded wood, razors, bronze arrowheads, and a gilded staple, all of which were from the antechamber.

If history is any measure, today's antiquity smugglers are following an old and familiar profession. Since the third dynasty in B. In the first intermediate period to B. The great monuments, there for so many centuries, have enticed generation after generation of robbers. A papyrus from the second intermediate period to B. The thief replied, "You say the king is a god. The god has not moved to prevent me. Who are the grave robbers? They tend to be locals, coming from the villages that have existed near or on the archaeological sites since time immemorial.

According to records, during the 22nd dynasty to B. The village of Qurna on the west bank at Luxor has long been a den of antiquities thieves. The villagers link up with merchants and middlemen, who contact dealers outside Egypt.

Modern-day thieves, smugglers, and charlatans have proved to be just as imaginative as their ancestors. In , a German expedition smuggled the famous bust of Nefertili out of Egypt by covering it with a mask of gypsum and telling the Egyptian authorities it was piece of minor value. Then there are the adventures. In , Giovanni Belzoni, an Italian circus owner, dug his way through Egypt, destroying everything in his way from Giza to Abu Simbel in his search for gold and monuments.

He even sought one day to dismantle the third pyramid at Giza to see if it contained a burial chamber, but found the project too expensive.

Perhaps the cleverest ones of all are the counterfeiters. An ingenious old "fellah" farmer in Qurna named Mata'ani made clever copies of Pharaonic scarabs from limestone and faience. He then fed the scarabs to his flock of geese, whose stomach enzymes aged the scarabs 4, years. Mohammed Sha'ar's son Muhammad, a young man with black eyes and a black moustache, can spot the fakes in a heap of stone scarabs on a table in a second.