It had already suffered badly and continued to do so for another century.

 For many years, locals lived in it and their fires blackened its walls with smoke and soot. Attempts at cleaning were made by Sir Robert Mond in the early 1900s—“scrubbing with soap, water and elbow grease,” he boasted—but that did more harm than good and removed whatever paint still remained on the wall. Early Egyptologists made squeezes of the wall relief, damaging them further, and pieces of decorated walls were hacked out in the nineteenth century and shipped to European museums. Nevertheless, the tomb is still worth a visit, both because of the fine quality of its reliefs and the range of its scenes.
 
The tomb lies on the west side of a small courtyard cut into bedrock 50 meters (150 feet) or so south of the tomb of Ramose, TT 55. Inside the FIRST CHAMBER, left (south) of the doorway on the front (east) wall, Khaemhet stands to receive offerings. Farther along, he presents offerings to the Lady of the Granaries, the goddess Renenutet ( known to the Greeks as Termuthis), who nurses the young pharaoh. Khaemhet’s hair and the collar and necklaces around his neck are meticulously carved. His hands are finely shaped, the nails well manicured. The work is done in the same conservative style as  in the tombs of Ramose and Kheruef, but there is less modeling of facial features and musculature, and in contrast to those other noblemen, the figures of Khaemhet seem soft and less athletic.

Most of this wall has been destroyed, but at the right (south) end, in the lower register, you can still see transport ships unloading wheat at the port of Thebes. Some of the twisted ropes in the rigging are carved in  great detail, even showing the knots. The handles of long oars end in finely carved heads of the king. Nearby, longshoremen unload cargo for delivery to temple warehouses and perhaps to the market shown nearby.

Behind you, at the left (south) end of the rear (west) wall of the chamber, scribes drive bulls to be tallied and presented to Amenhetep III. The animals are extremely fat (note how the skin on the back of their neck lies in folds), their legs unusually short, and they stand just tall enough that their heads reach the waists of the herdsmen. To the right, Khaemhet reports to Amenhetep III on the status of the many projects he was responsible for.

 Beneath the chairs of the king and his wife are figures of bound Nubian and Asiatic captives. On the other side of the doorway, Khaemhet and his aides stand before Amenhetep III, and in the upper register, the king presents him with a gold necklace.

The most elaborate scenes lie at the left end of the front (east) wall. They are more restrained versions of painted scenes in the tomb of Menna. A comparison between the two will show how greatly conservative decoration late in Amenhetep III’s reign differed from the more relaxed style of the first decade of his reign. Here, in six registers, we watch Khaemhet’s workmen ploughing, threshing, winnowing, and tabulating the grain harvest. Note the kneeling man in the second register from the bottom, drinking from a water skin tied to the branch of a tree (far left), and the elaborately carved folding stool on which Khaemhet sits (at right). In the third register, a man jumps into the air trying to force more grain into an already full basket. He wears well-made sandals, an unusual touch since everyone else in the scene is barefoot. Left of this vignette, in a half-register, a lone man sits and plays a double flute, his music perhaps intended to spur on the workmen.
In the fourth register, two horses, their bridles carefully carved, are  harnessed to chariots.

One horse reaches down to eat from a bowl of grain, his taut muscles drawn with great accuracy. The horses’ manes are carefully clipped, their tails well brushed. The charioteer is asleep, and so is the man at left seated beneath a tree. Four other horses and chariots appear in the fifth register. Scenes such as this first appear in the New Kingdom. The horse and chariot were introduced into Egypt only two centuries earlier, and the animal appeared more often in military scenes on temple walls than in private tombs. Egypt’s geographical conditions were such that the horse was used primarily in the desert for military transport, not as a beast of burden in the Nile Valley. In the fifth register, Khaemhet supervises the felling of trees. Trees were a rare and valuable commodity in ancient Egypt, and to harvest one required permission from the highest civil authority, the vizier.

In the upper register, Khaemhet supervises teams of men surveying property boundaries. These often had to be re-checked every year because the annual Nile flood destroyed or moved the markers, and land disputes were among the common legal problems of ancient Egypt. The knotted rope the men carry was used for  measuring field dimensions.
The SECOND CHAMBER of TT 57 is almost completely destroyed. Originally, several chapters of the Book of the Dead were carved on the walls and in the doorway leading into the next chamber. Such emphasis on religious texts is unusual in a nobleman’s tomb.

Three pairs of statues were cut into niches in the INNER CHAMBER, one of Khaemhet and his wife, another of Khaemhet and an unknown woman, the third of Khaemhet and the Royal Scribe, Imhotep, a close friend. (Imhotep is also seated with Khaemhet in a fourth statue pair in the tomb’s first chamber.) Copies of a Dynasty 5 offering list were carved beside each of the four statue pairs .

A plaster cast of  a relief of  Khaemhet  has been mounted on the front  wall of the inner chamber . the original , cut away in the nineteenth century , is now in the Egyptian Museum , Berlin.
 

From" The Illustrated Guide to Luxor" by kent R.Weeks ,published by the American University in Cairo Press. Copyright © 2005 White Star S.p.a