Tomb Robbers
My blog is about tomb robbers. To start, tomb robbing is the pillaging of an ancient Egyptian tomb or pyramid. Robbers are thought to be common Egyptians needing money (which they would obviously get lots of if they robbed a tomb!). Since having an intact mummy equipped with the ritual items was needed for survival in the Afterlife, it seems amazing that some Egyptians (the tomb robbers) could sink so low as to rob a tomb of the Pharaohs that once ruled them!
Tomb robbers probably came from the very lowest groups of the society. They were most likely outlaws, driven by greed and starvation, who desperately raided the final resting places for money, where decent, god-fearing Egyptians ‘slept’. It’s actually pretty easy to imagine these people sneaking into the tombs in the dead of night, walking, terrified, in the torch-lit shadows of the coffins of the very dead whose belongings they were robbing, and smuggling their newfound treasure out into hiding places among the mountains and dunes of the desert.
Of course, robberies by desperate individuals did take place, but the big robberies of most tombs were done by the priests and tomb workers who laid the dead to rest!
In our recent times, tomb robbing means where personal belongings that are buried with the dead are stolen (sometimes even the body) for the wellbeing of some other person or people, and is a crime. The Egyptians, however, described the concept of tomb robbing much more casually. There are many examples of Egyptians committing acts that today would be condemned as tomb robbing, but which were accepted by the Egyptians themselves.
For example, we know that it was all right for certain people to enter a tomb and remove objects for use in their own burials. Tutankhamen's inner coffin, four of his miniature coffins, and the golden bands around his mummy were all taken from the grave of his supposed older brother, Smenkare.
The supposed punishment of tomb robbers was death by impalement, as shown here.
http://anubis4_2000.tripod.com/subpages1/robbers.htm
Objects such as these statues of servants were needed in the Afterlife, but often were stolen by tomb robbers.
