- El-Kab. Rock-cut tombs of Nekheb - Renini (or Renni) was the High Priest and Nomarch of Nekhen during the reign of Amenhotep I (XVIII Dynasty). His tomb, known under the catalog number EK-7, is carved in a sandstone cliff in the north-west of the ancient city of Nekheb - the capital of the III Nome of the Upper Egypt. The beginning of the research of the rock-cut necropolis of Nekheb, including the tomb of Renini, goes back to the time of the French expedition of Napoleon (1798-1801), as evidenced by the drawing of the fragment of the eastern wall of the tomb in his "Description de l'Égypte." 1812, Vol. 1, Pl. 70, where a funeral procession of Renini is depicted.
The plan of the tomb is very simple: an arched corridor forms a kind of a tunnel, leading to the wall with a niche in it. Below is a scheme of the tomb, taken from Joseph Tylor's book "Wall drawings and monuments of El Kab". The total length of the tomb together with the niche makes 11.3 m, and 9.1 m without a niche; width of the tomb is 3.4 m, and height 3 m. At the end of the corridor, in the east wall, once, there was an opening (now blocked), which led to a small room with an area of about 3 sq.m, with a burial pit in it's floor.
Despite the simplicity of the architectural design, the tomb of Renini represents a great interest, as it is one of the rare examples of ancient Egyptian tombs dating back to the reign of Amenhotep I, who went with military campaign to Nubia for the expansion of Egypt's borders. As a result of this campaign, the Nubian regions were annexed to the southern Nomes of the Upper Egypt. The capital of the established region was the city of Nekhen (Greek Hierakonpolus, modern Kom el-Ahmar), located opposite to Nekheb ( modern El-Kab).
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