Ways and methods of the ancient Egyptians in protecting their tombs from theft and destruction
The belief of the ancient Egyptians about the other world and eternal life was based on preserving the integrity of the body and the place in which it is located, and then the interest in making coffins and constructing cemeteries in which the designer was keen to develop his means to protect the burial chamber and set special measures to secure it from theft and protect its contents, especially the mummy and what was placed with it.
Cemeteries and coffins in ancient Egypt carried a special sanctity derived from other worlds and eternal life, which the Egyptians believed in. They worked to prepare for it by placing everything that the deceased needed on his journey to the afterlife with him in the burial room, which made it coveted by many tomb thieves.
 
The first attempt to protect the “burial chamber” appeared in the terraces of the First Dynasty by making the burial chamber at the bottom of a carved well ranging from two to three meters deep and closing the chamber itself with a large block of stone, so that tomb robbers could not reach the burial chamber and steal its contents. After the Early Dynastic Era, the means and methods used by the ancient Egyptians to protect tombs developed.
The ancients used coffins to protect mummies, as they considered it one of the most important guarantees required by eternal life after death. The development of the coffin over the ages was in the Old Kingdom (the Third Dynasty) in the form of a huge white limestone box, rectangular with a cover of the same stone, As for the coffins of kings and dignitaries, they were made of more solid stones, such as granite and quartz, to represent a more difficult challenge for thieves, and religious texts were inscribed on them aimed at deterring the thief and warning him of the consequences of storming the rooms of the dead.
The coffin is then placed in a hole in the floor of the burial room, as in the pyramid of King Khafre. In the New Kingdom, the size of the coffin increased in an attempt to protect the king’s mummy by surrounding it with several tons of granite and placing the mummy in more than one wooden coffin, as is the case with Tutankham Amon.
Sliding doors and stone and granite closures were used in the corridors of the pyramids of the fourth to the sixth dynasty, especially in the corridors leading to the burial chamber and to provide greater protection, camouflage corridors, and secret doors were prepared to mislead thieves, such as the hidden passages hidden by secret doors in the pyramid of King Amenemhat III in Hawara, as Egyptian architects sometimes baptized in the tombs of dignitaries and leaders to erect a mock burial room to deceive the thieves.
The ancient Egyptian resorted to magic as a second line for defence and to protect the cemetery, and his dependence on magic increased greatly in later times, as some amulets were intended to add general protection to the mummy, and some of them were specialized in specific functions such as amulets that represent the human body organs, which can be returned To him his sensual queens and amulets took many forms, including the snake shape that protects the deceased from his bite, but it is one of the most important forms of amulets that achieve full protection, the Isis knot (Tate) and provides protection by Isis and the column (Jed) that represents the protection of Osir, and the eye of Horus (Wagit)
Graves were placed on the graves with expressions warning against violating the sanctity of the cemetery, for example, what was written at the entrance to the burial chamber of Tutankhamun, the phrase (death will touch his wings. Whoever will worry about the eternity of the king who lies in this place)
During King Tuthmosis’s reign, the royal cemetery was protected in a secluded valley behind the slopes of Deir el-Bahri known as (Valley of the Kings). King Thutmose, I was the first to be buried there, who had commissioned his engineer, Anini, to search for the appropriate place and prepare his tomb there, and the royal cemetery was also provided. On the western mainland in Thebes, with a wall blocking the way to the front room of the burial chamber as one of the distinguishing features of the royal cemetery, as the well as a means to protect the cemetery from thieves and from the torrential waters that might seep into its interior.
In the twenty-second and twenty-sixth dynasties, they introduced a new way to protect the cemeteries, based on digging a wide well of about 10 meters and a depth of about thirty meters. At the bottom of this well, a square-shaped burial chamber was constructed. A parallel, less spacious well connected to the burial chamber was dug through A vestibule or narrow, horizontal corridor blocked by three massive stone blocks.
And after the completion of the burial ceremony and closing the coffin that was previously placed in the room during its construction, the burial chamber is filled with sand, then it is closed with three stone blocks and finally the well is filled with sand as well, which makes any thief trying to steal it be buried under it by the sand collapsing on it, and from The best example of this type is the cemetery of Amun – Tef – Nakht, in Saqqara, and this style, despite its effectiveness in protection, is limited to the Memphis cemetery, and there was another way to protect the royal cemetery by building it inside the main temple campus instead of establishing it in a remote and remote location, which provides the thieves with the opportunity To work thus, the royal cemetery became under the eyes of the priests, and this method was used in the tombs of the kings of the twenty-first and twenty-second dynasties in Tanis, as well as the kings of the twenty-sixth dynasty inside the wall of the temple of Nate.
And papyri are illustrating the robbery operations despite the strict procedures and the multiple means to protect the cemeteries, as it was shown that the tomb of Tutankhamun was opened in ancient times through two successive openings that were repainted, as it was during the reign of Seti II that the most famous thief appeared and was called Pinab, who was among the workers for constructing the tombs of the kings. Pine stormed the tomb when King Seti II died three days after the burial, and he started wandering freely and stealing what he wanted, but the guards saw him. He was arrested, tried, and then executed, and there are many papyri bearing facts about trials of tomb robbers dating back to the family era. Twenty of them (the Mayer Papyrus B) contain a description of the confessions of those accused of stealing the tomb of Ramses VI.