The tomb belonged to Roy, a royal scribe and steward in the estates of king Horemheb and the Temple of Amen, and to his wife Nebtawy. It dates to late Dynasty 18-early Dynasty 19. The decoration treats with Roy’s funeral in an informal style that is more reminiscent of rapidly-drawn sketches than the idealized and formal funerary style of, say, Ramose’s tomb.
FRONT WALL Four registers are painted on the right side of the front wall. At the top, a servant leads a young cow and brings jars sealed with leaves before Roy and his wife. In the second register, an unusual scene shows two cattle, one white, one brown, passing each other in opposite directions while plowing a field. The cattle themselves are elongated and stick-like, but the composition is imaginative. To their left, a man stands with a child, and above them is a crudely drawn tree, perhaps a sycamore fig, in whose branches a water bottle and a lunch basket have been tied. In the third register, a laborer ploughs a field. Behind him, another man sows seed. Above these figures, a young boy stands next to a tree, apparently drinking from the water bottle. In the bottom register, a foreman in a white gown leans on a staff, supervising a woman and two men harvesting flax. The scene is now largely destroyed.

LEFT WALL In the upper register five scenes from the Book of Gates are painted in a style that contrasts markedly with that in TT 13: Shuroy. At left, the overseer of the royal granary, Amenemope and his wife Tai stand in adoration before a shrine housing Ma’at and Nefertum. To their right, Roy and his wife stand before Hathor and Ra-Harakhty, making food offerings. Next, the deceased couple—she holding a sistrum and a roll of papyrus—stands before the Ennead. Much of this scene has been destroyed. At right, Horus leads Roy and his wife before a balance on which two Ma’at statuettes perfectly balance their two hearts.

Such paired hearts and Ma’at symbols are not unknown, but they are not common. Anubis and Thoth record the favorable judgment. Finally, the couple is presented by Horus-son-of-Isis to the god Osiris, who sits in an elaborately painted naos. Roy is wearing a heart amulet around his neck. Note how the string from which it is suspended has been incorrectly drawn, as if his right arm were caught within it. In front of Osiris stand the four Sons of Horus, emerging from a lotus blossom. Behind the god are two goddesses, probably Isis and Nephthys.

In the lower register, Roy’s funeral moves forward. The representations are standard ones, but they are well-painted and the details of the mourners’ faces show variety and emotion. It is worth comparing these scenes with the more elaborate funeral procession in TT 55, the tomb of Ramose, which was painted about thirty years earlier. At left, four officials, friends of the deceased, stand with their hands to their mouth. A woman kneels below a casket with the jackal-god Anubis atop it. Eight women, dressed in mourning, precede it. Roy’s coffin is pulled on a sledge being censed by Thutmes, Roy’s servant, who wears the panther skin of a sem-priest. Men drive forward the four cattle that pull the sled. At right, six women and eight men are shown in mourning and they are preceded by a row of officials, now badly destroyed, two of whom make an offering of water. Note that one of the men, clearly the eldest of the group, is shown with white hair.

At right, the mummy of Roy stands upright as a priest wearing a mask of Anubis prays for it and Roy’s wife kneels, weeping, at its feet. The destination of this procession, Roy’s tomb, stands at the far right, a pyramid-topped structure built before the slopes of the Mountain of the West.

Across the top of this wall (and repeated, but without text, on the right wall) runs a frieze of an Anubis-topped chapel, faces of Hathor, double kheker friezes, and double columns of text, repeated six times, in very well preserved colors.
REAR WALL Much is destroyed here; the painted plaster was applied in a thick coat on rough-cut bedrock and it has fallen to the floor because of its wieght. Scenes of adoration show the deceased before figures of the king’s wife, who holds two sistra before the god Osiris. At bottom left, a few traces remain of Hathor as Lady of the Sycamore emerging from her sacred tree before Roy and his ba. Above, Roy stands before an offering table piled with various kinds of bread, and Amenhetep I and his mother, Ahmes-Nefertari stand in adoration and offer bouquets before Anubis.

RIGHT WALL At left, Roy and his wife sit and receive offerings from a sem-priest. An offering table stands between them. Behind the priest, two female mourners accompany two caskets. Farther right, Roy and his wife again are seated to receive further offerings including a platter covered by a huge and elaborately-made cover of reeds and flowers. Behind, Roy’s parents sit in an upper sub-register; other unnamed relatives sit in the lower.

It is interesting that many scenes in this tomb have red-painted columns laid out to receive text but have no text written in them. Some speculate this indicates either that the tomb owner died suddenly before the walls could be completely inscribed, or that tombs such as this were cut and decorated on speculation and the names and titles of their eventual occupants were added later, after the purchase agreement was signed.

At the right end of the wall, Roy sits on a chair with his wife on an elaborate cushion before a priest and two mourners. There is a large hole in the wall here, perhaps where a piece of chert fell from the surrounding limestone or where a wooden beam was installed to help lower a sarcophagus down the shaft in the floor in front of it. Instead of filling in the hole with plaster, the ancient artist covered its surface with a thin plaster on which he then painted bunches of grapes. This is similar to the technique used on the ceiling of TT 96, the tomb of Sennefer.
 
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