«Área de acesso reservado»: tradição e mudança na organização da necrópole tebana

In ancient Egypt, the sacred is delimited by means of taboo. The necropolis was a sacred space and, as such, was delimited by a set of prohibitions that encoded its use. The 21st Dynasty has undergone important changes in the pattern of use of the necropolis. The looting of the royal necropolis, the Valley of the Kings, is usually taken as the glaring example of the great social and political instability of the time. With this article we intend to demonstrate that the theft and re-use of the tombs detected throughout the Theban necropolis in this period corresponded to a deep reorganization of the necropolis and not just to a critical and anomic moment of disorder. On the contrary, it represents the lifting of prohibitions that underlie a conception of the sacred territory which seemed obsolete. This work of reorganization, undertaken by the priests of Amun, illustrates the emergence of a new notion of sacred space where it implies an unusual «freedom» of movement of funerary goods and, for the first time, we witness a more significant participation of women in the economy of the necropolis. We also want to point out that this apparent «liberation» of the sacred territory was constrained by a new conception of religious power that presided over the organization of the necropolis at that particular time.