The ways and methods of the ancient Egyptians to protect 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. Then the interest was in the manufacture of coffins and the construction of tombs. The designer was keen to develop his means to protect the burial chamber and set special procedures to secure it from theft and protect its contents, especially the mummy and what was placed with it.
Tombs and coffins in ancient Egypt carried a special sanctity derived from the other world and eternal life in which the Egyptians believed. They prepared for it by placing everything the deceased needed on his journey to the afterlife with him in the burial chamber, 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 placing the burial chamber at the bottom of a carved well whose depth ranges from two to three meters and closing the chamber itself with a large block of stone, so that tomb thief could not reach the burial chamber and steal its contents. Following the early dynastic period, the means and methods used by the ancient Egyptians to protect tombs developed.
The ancients used coffins to protect the mummies, as they considered it one of the most important guarantees that eternal life requires after death. 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 to thieves, as religious texts were engraved on them aimed at deterring the thief and warning him of the consequences of storming the chambers of the dead.
The coffin is then placed in a hole in the floor of the burial chamber, as in the pyramid of King Khafre. In the modern state era, the size of the coffin increased as an attempt to protect the mummy of the king by surrounding it with several tons of granite and placing the mummy in more than one coffin of wood, as is the case with Tutankha Amon.
And sliding doors and stone and granite stoppers were used inside the corridors of the pyramids of the fourth to the sixth dynasty, especially in the corridors leading to the burial chamber. Hawara, The Egyptian architects, sometimes set up a fake burial room in the tombs of dignitaries and leaders to deceive the thieves.
The ancient Egyptian resorted to magic as the second line of defence and to protect the cemetery, and its reliance on magic greatly increased in the later ages, when the goal of some amulets was to add general protection to the mummy, and some of them specialized in specific functions such as amulets that represent the organs of the human body, which can respond To him his sensory faculties and amulets took many forms, including the shape of the snake that protects the deceased from its bite, but it is one of the most important forms of amulets that achieve complete protection, the Isis knot (Tet) and provides protection by Isis and the column (Jed) that represents the protection of Osiris, and the Eye of Horus (Wajit)
And phrases were placed on the tombs warning of the assault on the sanctity of the cemetery, for example, what was written in the entrance to the burial chamber of Tutankhamun the phrase (death will touch his wings who will worry in the eternity of the king who lies in this place)
And during the reign of King Thutmose I, the royal cemetery was protected in a secluded valley behind the slopes of Deir el-Bahari known as (Valley of the Kings). On the western bank of 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, the well as a means of protecting the cemetery from thieves and torrential water that might seep into its interior.
As for the twenty-second and twenty-sixth dynasties, they developed a new method for protecting the tombs, 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 burial chamber was built, then a parallel well was less wide and connected to the burial chamber through A vestibule or a narrow horizontal corridor blocked by three huge stone blocks.
After the burial ceremony is completed and the coffin previously placed in the room during its construction is closed, the burial chamber is filled with sand. 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 burial under it due to the collapse of the sand on it; and from The best examples of this type are the tomb of Amun-Tef-Nakht, in Saqqara. Despite its effectiveness in protection, this model is limited to the cemetery of Memphis. There was another way to protect the royal cemetery by building it within the precinct of the main temple instead of erecting it in a remote and remote location, which provides the thieves with the opportunity. Thus, the royal cemetery became under the gaze of the priests. This method was used in the tombs of the kings of the twenty-first and twenty-second dynasties in Tanis and the kings of the twenty-sixth dynasty within the walls of the temple of Neith.
And papyri show the theft operations despite the strict procedures and the multiple means to protect the tombs. It was found that the tomb of Tutankhamun was opened in ancient times through two successive holes that were repainted, as it was during the reign of Seti II that the most famous thief appeared called Beneb, who was among the construction workers of the tombs of kings, where Binab stormed the tomb when King Seti II died three days after the burial. He roamed freely and stole what he wanted, but the guards watched him, and he was arrested, tried and then executed. The twenty of them (Mayer Papyrus B), which includes a description of the confessions of those accused of stealing the tomb of Ramses VI