We know little of Pashedu except from the texts in his tomb.

He lived at Dayr al-Madina during the reigns of Sety I and Rameses II and was a Servant in the Place of Truth on the West of Thebes. His specialty was stone masonry, which is to say he was responsible for digging the royal tombs in the Valley of the Kings, overseeing their cutting with chert hand axes to create corridors, chambers, and pillared halls.
Pashedu’s tomb was apparently discovered in 1834 during illicit digging by Egyptian army draftees. Shortly thereafter, it was visited by the Scottish artist, Robert Hay, who recorded its decorated walls.

The BURIAL CHAMBER is entered through a short, vaulted passage at the bottom of the entrance stairs. The side walls of the passage are beautifully painted with Anubis jackals that lie atop large white chapels with cavetto cornices. The jackals have short snouts, a cloth wrapped around their necks, and a flail above their haunches. The background is an elaborate and meticulously painted cloth or mat pattern.

Above the doorway in the burial chamber, the god Ptah-Sokar-Osiris is shown as a falcon. His elaborately painted wings (of unequal size) stretch out below a wedjat-eye and short columns of text. His stylized body, drawn with smoothly curving lines, sits on a simple boat. At right, one of Pashedu’s sons, Kaha, kneels before the god. At left, another son, Menna, kneels before gods depicted on the chamber’s vaulted ceiling.

On the right side of the door, three registers show various members of Pashedu’s family. In the top register, four men and one woman face right in poses of adoration. These are Pashedu’s father, Menna, and mother, Huy, a colleague named Nefersekheru, and two sons. Pashedu’s father has snow-white hair, an unusual but not unknown feature in tomb paintings of this period. In the middle register, Pashedu’s mother- and father-in-law (the parents of his wife, Nedjem-Behdet) stand with four female relatives of the wife’s family: three sisters, and at far left, a niece. The parents and a relative are shown with salt-and-pepper hair (perhaps an attempt to show that Nedjem-Behdet’s parents were somewhat younger than Pashedu’s). In the lower register, five of Pashedu’s sons and daughters stand, honoring their parents. All the figures on this wall have white fingernails and wear elaborately pleated costumes, and all but one wear long and elaborately coiffed hair.

In the upper register immediately to the right of the door. a tiny drawing of a tree goddess  fills the space beside the vaulted entry passage. It is a delightfully drawn sycamore fig tree standing next to a rectangular pond. In its branches the goddess Nut pours out a libation for Pashedu, and the water can be seen falling onto his body. He kneels at left on the edge of the vault. At the lower right, his wife stands in adoration.

On the chamber’s left wall, Pashedu, his wife, son, and granddaughter stand facing a rather squat but nicely detailed Horus falcon. Fifty columns of text, written in black ink, are taken from chapter 78 of the Book of the Dead. This is the Formula for Being Transformed into a Divine Falcon. Note how the long hair of Nedjem-Behdet at the far left end of the wall has spilled over onto the adjacent front wall. She is elegantly decked out in jewelry and fine linen and there is a cone of scented fat on her head. At the far right end of the wall, the couple sits before an offering table in a small boat, with one of their daughters. This scene is repeated on the wall opposite.

On the rear wall of the chamber, Osiris wears a nemes-crown and sits on his throne holding a flail and scepter. Before him, a seated god presents a bowl with burning tapers. Behind, the arms of a wedjat-eye also offer up a bowl of tapers, while below it Pashedu kneels in a pose of adoration. His feet are large and crudely drawn. At left, the Horus falcon stands beside the red granite mountain of the west. Note how the falcon’s tail has been bent and trimmed down to fit the limited space in the corner. Below this scene and on the side walls, modern mud plaster covers over the original sarcophagus emplacement.

On the right wall, Pashedu, his wife, and daughter Nebnefret sit before four male deities and a djed-pillar. The first is the falcon-headed Ra-Harakhty, followed by a human-headed Atum, the scarab-headed Khepri (the morning form of the sun god), and the god Ptah.

Certainly the best-known scene in this tomb—indeed, one of the best-known in Thebes—is that on the left front wall of the chamber. Pashedu kneels and bows down beneath the branches of a dom-palm at the edge of a pond. Behind him, twenty-one columns of text, seventeen of them from chapter 62 of the Book of the Dead, the Chapter for Drinking Water in God’s Domain, are written in simple fashion. Oddly, they are filled with errors, and this carelessness stands in marked contrast to the beautiful scene before them. This is a wonderful scene, a model of clarity and composition. The palm tree even shows such minute detail as small fibers along its trunk. But look closely at Pashedu: his figure is little more than an oval lump, his torso badly proportioned, with little detail save the fingernails (which are wrongly painted, showing a left hand instead of a right).

The vaulted ceiling has eight deities on each side. On the right: Osiris, Thoth, Hathor, Ra-Harakhty, Neith, Serqet, Anubis, and Wepwawet. On the left: Osiris, Isis, Nut, Nun, Nephthys, Geb, Anubis and Wepwawet. Between the two sides are forty columns of text from chapter 181 of the Book of the Dead, The Chapter of Going into the Tribunal of Osiris and the Gods Who Govern the Netherworld. Here too, there are numerous errors in grammar, spelling, and text.

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