Interlude: Remarkable Discoveries in a Royal Tomb.
Around 1440 BCE, Egyptians were carving the burial monument of Amunhotep II in the Valley of the Kings. In 1898 CE, a group of excavators were uncovering the edifice once more. In a dual narrative, we explore the design, construction and discovery of a most remarkable tomb…
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The Tomb of Amunhotep II (KV35)
An ancient scribe’s sketch of a royal tomb (Griffith Institute)
Plan of the tomb (Theban Mapping Project).
The King’s burial chamber: sarcophagus at top-center (Theban Mapping Project).
Victor Loret enters the tomb KV35, nearly stumbling into the well-shaft.
The mummy which scared Victor Loret so suddenly; a later addition, buried in the antechamber of KV35.
A funerary boat, discovered in the tomb and reconstructed from fragments.
The sarcophagus of the King (Narmer.pl).
The coffin and mummy of Amunhotep II.
The mummy of Amunhotep II, discovered in his tomb and now in the Cairo Museum (Flickr).
The Cache
The locations of the later burials (Theban Mapping Project).
The bricked-up doorway. What was behind?
The mummies in KV 35 and its Cache (Narmer.pl).
The second cache: two ladies and a prince.
The Elder Lady (Queen Tiye?) hand resting on collarbone; veiled; long flowing hair – an image of eternity.
Mummies of two noble women (left + right), and a boy (center).
Bibliography
Erik Hornung, The Valley of the Kings, 1990.
Erik Hornung, The Ancient Egyptian Books of the Afterlife, 1999.
C.N. Reeves, Richard Wilkinson, The Complete Valley of the Kings, 1996.
Peter der Manuelian, Studies in the Reign of Amenophis II, 1989.
Elliot Smith, The Royal Mummies, 1912.
Online Resources:
- Theban Mapping Project – Tomb of Amunhotep II
- Narmer.pl – The Royal Cache
- Egypt, Land of Eternity – The Royal Cache
- Theban Royal Mummy Project – The Mummies of Dynasty 18
- Egyptian Monuments – Tomb of Amunhotep II
- Saint Louis University – The KV35 Cache
This is easily your most slick and sophisticatedly constructed episode so far in your narrative (excluding your rewrites of the first 6) its a truly wonderful piece of audio entertainment!
I am left with several questions though:
1) How was it that 19th Century Egyptologists were able to assert (prior to this tombs discovery) that Amenhotep II was not in the famous cache, even today we have not identified all the mummies in that cache no?
2) Why was Amenhotep’s tomb selected as the cache for the 9 kings, was it the only (non-lost) tomb in the valley that was unrobbed at the time they were caching the mummies, or was its location particularly hard to reach?
Reading a little bit about Loret, I see he endorsed the crediting of the famed site of ‘Great Zimbabwe’ to “the Phoenicians”
Truly laughable colonial racism, alas not too surprising given the era and his position