There’s no sarcophagus in TT100, and that’s the point. Rekhmire’s actual burial may lie somewhere in the Valley of the Kings, still undiscovered — this tomb in Sheikh Abd el-Qurna was built purely as a mortuary chapel, a public monument to a career rather than a resting place for a body. What it preserves instead is rarer than any burial goods: a full text outlining exactly what a vizier was supposed to do.
Rekhmire served as vizier — effectively prime minister of Upper Egypt — under Thutmose III and Amenhotep II, holding responsibility for justice, taxation, temple construction, and the day-to-day administration of Thebes. TT100’s inscriptions include the “Installation of the Vizier,” a text on fairness, impartiality, and loyalty that makes this tomb as much an administrative record as an art gallery.
Everyday Craft, Rendered in Precise Detail
TT100’s real strength is its wall paintings of ordinary work: metalworkers casting tools and jewelry, potters shaping vessels, weavers at the loom, brickmakers building walls. These are some of the clearest surviving images of skilled labor in the New Kingdom — evidence historians rely on for how things were actually made, not just what they looked like finished. For the wider world of these craftspeople, see Artisans of Ancient Egypt.
Foreign Tribute and the Machinery of Empire
Elsewhere, foreign delegations — Nubians, Syrians, and others — arrive bearing ivory, exotic animals, and luxury goods, each group shown in distinctive dress. For more on Nubia’s cultural role in Egypt, see Nubian Art & Culture. Priests perform offerings nearby while Rekhmire himself receives blessings, positioning him as mediator between the earthly administration and the divine order it served.
A Tomb That Was Twice Attacked
Rekhmire’s own image didn’t survive intact. Not long after his death, during the reign of Amenhotep II, his portrait — along with those of his wife Meryt and their children — was deliberately erased in several places on the tomb walls. About a century later, the Amarna period brought a second round of damage, when all references to the god Amun were chiseled out under Akhenaten’s religious reforms. It’s a fate TT100 shares with the nearby Tomb of Menna (TT69), where a different set of erasures raises similar unanswered questions about political and religious fallout among Thebes’s elite.
Visiting the Tomb of Rekhmire
- Ticket: TT100 is sold within the Sheikh Abd el-Qurna Tombs of the Nobles cluster ticket system. Which specific tombs are bundled together shifts periodically — rather than assume a fixed pairing, check the current grouping and pricing on our Tombs of the Nobles guide and entrance fees page before you go.
- Time needed: 20–25 minutes; the long corridor layout makes it a quick, linear visit.
- Photography: Usually requires a separate camera ticket; confirm on arrival.
- Accessibility: Rock-cut tomb reached via unpaved paths; not wheelchair accessible.
- Best time: Early morning for light and lower heat.
TT100 rewards readers as much as viewers — it’s one of the only places in the Theban Necropolis where you can read, in the deceased’s own words, what good government was supposed to look like.