All eyes were on the Valley of the Kings the morning of February 5, 2006, when our expedition first looked into the chamber now known as KV63, the first tomb found in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings since that of Tutankhamun (KV62) in 1922.
Press speculation was rampant over what the tomb might hold. Would our expedition find the mummies of royal women from the late 18th Dynasty, such as Queen Nefertiti, thought by some to be Tut’s mother? Or the six princesses she bore to the pharaoh Akhenaten, including Tut’s queen, Ankhesenamun? The mummies of these women have either not been found or identified. Perhaps they were removed from Akhenaten’s capital at Amarna when a later king, presumably Tut, returned to the traditional capital of Thebes on the Nile opposite the Valley of the Kings. Did Tut rebury them in the Valley?
After taking out several stones blocking the doorway from the tomb shaft into the chamber, we peered through the narrow opening. Inside, we could see many large ceramic jars and several wooden coffins, some with yellow-painted faces. The press speculation was incorrect on all counts. We found no mummies in any of the tomb’s seven coffins and no inscriptions to tell us for whom these coffins were initially intended.
But while studying the coffins, I discovered–in the eyes of faces painted on three of them–an intriguing link to Nefertiti, the queen whose name means, simply, “the beautiful one has come.” While none of the coffins held Nefertiti’s remains, the eyes may tell us something unexpected about her celebrated beauty. Was it in part the result of a genetic syndrome?
If not a royal tomb, what was KV63? Finds include the seven coffins, a small gilt coffinette, two large alabaster vessels, floral garlands, pillows, natron (the natural salt used in mummification), and many ceramics. It seems to have been a cache of material used by embalmers, but including coffins, unused or salvaged from disturbed burials, suitable for upper-class, but not elite or royal, funerals.
Although KV63 didn’t yield the mummies of Nefertiti, Ankhesenamun, and the rest, the tomb is linked to Tutankhamun’s time. Seal impressions found there match some discovered in Tut’s tomb, which is just 50 feet away. KV63′s date should fall within or close to Tut’s reign (1343-1333 B.C.), but association with his burial is uncertain at this point. Perhaps we will gain further evidence for the date of KV63 from the contents of the remaining 16, of 28 total, storage jars that we plan to open this season.
Otto Schaden, our expedition director, asked me, as staff art historian and object analyst, if any information could be gleaned from the coffins to narrow this date range. I began with the four coffins that had yellow-painted faces. The KV63 coffins were almost totally destroyed by termites, but the faces were made separately. Faces on coffins were often covered with thin plaster or gesso as a base for gilding or painting (as in the KV63 coffins). The termites seem to prefer untreated wood, so while the remainder of the coffins were mostly consumed, the gessoed and painted faces survived.
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