TT100

The tomb follows the inverted T scheme typical of its period, and its wall paintings are among the best preserved and largest in the Theban Necropolis. A particularity makes it unique in the area: from the transverse room, about 21 m wide, 2.30 m deep and 3.30 m high, a corridor branches off perpendicular to it. This corridor is just over 2 metres wide and almost 27 metres long, and its ceiling rises progressively from 3.30 metres at the entrance to over 8 metres at the far end. Almost every metre of the tomb is covered with paintings, generally on several superimposed registers.

The hall carries scenes of Rekhmire inspecting officials, the text of the duties of a vizier, tax collection, autobiographical text, foreign tribute, his installation as vizier before Thutmose III, temple workshops and provisions, agriculture, a family group, and a desert hunting and fowling scene. The foreign tribute scenes show Keftiu offering decorative vases, Nubians with animals such as leopards, giraffe and cattle, and Syrians offering chariots, horses, a bear and an elephant. The passage is decorated with scenes of the preparation and storage of temple provisions, craft industries, a funeral procession, offerings by his sons, a banquet, and rites before statues of the deceased. A niche at the back shows Rekhmire offering to Osiris; a false door from the niche is now in the Louvre Museum.

Rekhmire, who lists over a hundred official titles in the tomb, began his career at the end of the reign of Thutmose III, and his position was confirmed by that king's successor, Amenhotep II. Sometime during the reign of Amenhotep II, traces of him were erased. Images of Rekhmire, his wife Meryt and their children were removed, in places easily reached by covering their remaining silhouettes with red colour, in others by erasing only the face. It appears certain that Rekhmire fell from favour in the reign of Amenhotep II, and there is no evidence that he was ever buried in the tomb he constructed. A further intervention affecting the paintings took place about 100 years later, in the reign of Akhenaten, when all symbols relating to the god Amun were removed.