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the Unas causeway, but apart from their position there is no detailed information available. The geographical distribution of the burial places of ‘royal wh3s’ and ‘royal wdpws’ does not serve as an adequate base of information regarding the place of function of the officials in itself. While during the late 18'" dynasty and the Ramesside period the two places, the functional and the burial one, seem to coincide since both of them are in the northern region, the tendency to construct the sepulchres either in Thebes or in the Memphite necropolis — even at Amarna —, was in accordance with the general burial customs of high ranking officials based on religious ideology related to the king and the kingship during the period of the whole New Kingdom, rather than with personal needs and considerations. Nevertheless, the design and decoration of the inner rooms of the individual tombs do provide valuable information about the duties of these personages in the royal palace and around the king, even if the architectural construction of the tomb itself does not imply that they were honoured members of the highest social circles. 1.3. PRESENCE OF ‘ROYAL wh3s’ AND ‘ROYAL wdpws’ UNDER RULERS The representatives of individuals bearing the functional titles ‘royal wb?’ and ‘royal wdpw’ are continuously attested during almost the entirety of the New Kingdom, to be precise from the reign of Thutmose II until the reign of Ramesses XI, except for the short turbulent period at the end of the 19" dynasty.’ As a matter of course, depending on the length of each reign as well as the amount and type of available sources, the number of the officials attested under certain rulers are higher in some periods than in others. (See table 4. in the Appendix.) It is obvious from the sources that the activity of the officials was not restricted to the reign of only one ruler. They were not necessarily dismissed from their positions upon the accession of a new ruler, on the contrary, the new monarch might have utilised the advantage of relying on the high ranking officials to ensure the smooth process of the © Ramessesemperte is the only official who is supposed to have served under the reigns of the last rulers of the dynasty from Amenmesse to Sethnakht, however, he does not have any available monuments dated to this period. Otherwise, Ramessesemperre is attested from Merneptah until Ramesses III but he must have started his career under the reign of Ramesses II based on his basiliphoric name as well as his epithet pn R-ms-sw mrj-Jmn ‘he of (=son of) Ramesses Meriamun’. For a discussion on him, see p. 201, for his inscriptions, see p. 493.
