Jawan Tomb Report Page 3
When the people who had built the tomb had finished their job, they covered the entire building with a mound of earth and sand, rather firmly packed. In order to study the construction of this mound, and to find out if any remains in it would give any indication of the date of the tomb, as well as to investigate the onstruction of the external wall of the building, I decided to dig a trench (visible in fig.1), all around the outside.
During this work the four exterior boxes mentioned above appeared. These four burials had not been touched since the day they had been covered. The first robbers had not thought of anything but the main part of the tomb. The villagers had missed one of the burial boxes by less than 12 inches, where their destruction of the eastern alcove stopped. The burial cists were not touched until the trench had been completed to bedrock, and all of them had been completely photographed and measured. The southern box, as an example, is given in fig. 5. The other three were similar, the northeast one only being somewhat lower.
Figure 5 - View of the southern burial cist before evacuation
The northeast box was occupied by a girl, approximately six years old; the three boxes in the south were each occupied by an adult male, their ages ranging from 21 to 50 years. The four people in these tombs had been buried inside palm wood coffins, with their personal belongs. The only remains of garments showed that these people used cotton clothing. The coffins had been closed with the help of iron nails.
The four occupants of the outside burials had not died a natural death, but had been murdered by being hit on the head with a heavy weapon, and at least also in one case stabbed on the left side of the head, right above the ear.
The remains found in these four tombs were as follows:
Southwest: The skeleton was laid out with its head pointing south. The wood of the coffin was in recognizable shape, but the bones were badly damaged. The only artifact was a small gold hair ring.
South: The skeleton was laid out with the head pointing west. The wood of the coffin showed that its upper part was curved. The artifacts found were two gold hair rings of the same size, and an iron sword in very poor state of preservation. This sword was short, and of the broad, leaf shaped type, and was along the left side of the skeleton. The scabbard was made of wood, and had a cover of leather. The handle was of ivory. The shape of the remains was so poor, that all identifications had to be made with the help of the microscope. The sword is shown in fig. 6.
Figure 6 - The sword found in the southern cist
