Elite Theban Tomb Making during the 18th Dynasty. Developing an Emic Descriptive Protocol based on Archaeological, Art-Historical, and Textual Evidence

In taking into consideration the ideal and actual sequence of elite tomb-making during the 18th Dynasty from an Ancient Egyptian perspective, this chapter aims at offering an emic protocol that can be used for the description of Theban Tombs. The chapter analyses the process involved in the tomb-making of elite painted tombs of the 18th Dynasty from the perspective of archaeological, art-historical, and textual evidence. It recreates the ideal stages of the working process as suggested by the lexicographical study of administrative texts. Subsequently, it compares these ideal stages with the reality of what can be observed in the tombs from an archaeological perspective and with the study of the structure and content of the administrative texts themselves—focusing on the simultaneous presence of different stages and the various factors that can be encountered at each stage. In turn, these variabilities are studied from an art-historical perspective, which also make use of experimental techniques in the reconstruction of the original techniques.