Amarna, Before and After

[Wistman]

2 hours ago, Wepwawet said:

No, missed that so I'll have to have a skip through it as 2 1/2 hours is a bit steep at the moment.

I doubt there's much there you don't already know, but thought it might interest you anyway at some point.

 

[Wepwawet]

I've not gone all the way through it yet, but in the first 35 minutes two things stand out. First is the possibility of another large artificial lake and new city on the east bank at Thebes, and the second is the tomb of Meryre II. Naunton says that as the year 12 durbar scene is next to the unfinished scene of Smenkhkare and Meritaten, therefore, in his opinion, means that the two scenes are contemporary and that Smenkhkare was co-ruler in year 12, several years earlier than thought. My take on this, and my level of knowledge is way below that of Naunton, is that it seems odd then that Meritaten is a GRW with Smenkhkare, but just as a princess in the durbar scene. It also seems odd that despite the position of Nefertiti, it is her with Akhenaten and not his assumed co-ruler Smenkhkare. Then there is the issue of the durbar scene having been finished, while the depiction of Smenkhkare and Meritaten is only roughed out. The tomb was never finished and used by Meryre, and this looks like an add on at a later date. It is also the case that what we see in a tomb is not necessarily what happened in real life, either in what we see and the temporal relationship between scenes. For instance, there are statue groups found in tombs that were once thought to portray a grandfather, his son and his grandson all holding hands, but they are in fact all representations of the same man at different points in his life from boy to old man. Likewise in scenes from Netherworld books it may look as if at times we are seeing a series of consecutive events starting at, say, the top left of three registers and ending at the right side of the bottom register, but everything is happening at the same time, and this varies from scene to scene, and quite a few are in fact consecutive and not concurrent.

So, due to the Smenkhkare scene not being finished, the lack of the GRW title for Meritaten in the durbar scene, and the lack of Smenkhkare with Akhenaten, and their propensity to play fast as loose with space and time in a tomb, I doubt that this is evidence that Smenkhare was co-ruler in year 12. Also in the deathbed scenes in TA26, Meritaten is just a princess, not a GRW, and those scenes must date from after year 12 and the durbar scene showing all six daughters as still alive. Year 14 or 15 for Smenkhkare becoming co-ruler still looks the more likely, to me.

[Wepwawet]

Having now watched the entire thing, I would say that it would be worth watching as an introduction for anybody new to Amarna. Apart from the points noted above, the only other things that stood out, not counting nitpicking, is that he quoted Fletcher saying that the YL injury was post mortem, and therefore a damnatio memoriae, which she would say as it reinforces her contention that the YL is Nefertiti, yet Fletcher was part of the University of York team that examined all three KV35 Jc mummies and concluded that the injury to the YL was ante mortem, and this has been confirmed by Saleem since 2002. Naunton also states that KV55 is 20 years old, the initial estimate made by Elliot Smith in 1912, and adhered to since by a number of other anatomists, but not all, including the latest by Saleem, though, could her findings, like the 25-35 age range for the YL, have been influenced by Hawass who wants these to be Akhenaten and Nefertiti. I would say that presenting any mummy as Smenkhkare older than about 14 just throws up more difficulties, namely that he would have to be a younger brother of Akhenaten, and that makes not a bit of sense when Tutankhaten would have been alive and the heir before Smenkhkare died, except if Smenkhkare was his older brother, and aged around 13 at death, not 20.

A divergence onto crown prince Thutmose. Naunton goes with the view that the prince in KV35 is Thutmose, and therefore eldest son of Amunhotep III and heir. This is bonkers. This prince died at 12 or 13, so to be eldest son of AIII would have meant that he died perhaps within the first 15 -20 years of his reign, depending on how many sisters, or brothers who died very young, there were before him. Akhenaten appears in year 30 as the heir, therefore do we really have a 10 to 15 year period with no visible crown prince, a bit of a stretch even for the 18th Dynasty, or, was the eldest son of AIII only born in his about his year 17. We really need DNA results to help sort this out.

[Wistman]

Zahi's failure to release any investigative data on the KV35YM needs some explanation.  The suppression of the data on him casts a ripple over the team's findings.  And there seems to have perhaps been some pressure put on them to conform to selected age groupings.  It's been over a decade, plenty of time to fix or explain the data gap of the younger male.

Edited April 18, 2022 by Wistman

[Wepwawet]

A link was posted elsewhere to a third paper by Nicholas Reeves about Nefertiti being Smenkhkare and buried in an extention to KV62 Nefertiti 3

It's from October 2020 and I missed it first time around. Mostly it's just a recap of what he has said before, but this one goes into some detail on the scans, and that's the reason I've put the link here as no matter what opinion anybody has about his Nefertiti theory, the scan information looks very good for there to be an extention of KV62.

Very briefly, we have this situation. The scans made in 2015 by Watanabe showed a void, the scans made in 2016 by a NatGeo team were publicised as showing nothing, but were in fact inconclusive. The scans made by Porcelli the year after were said to definitively show there to be no void, but were in fact also inconclusive. The ground scans made by Porcelli do show a large void right by KV62. Reeves, using information by an expert on these scans, points out that a lot of filtering has to be done to eliminate noise from the signal, and that the internal shape of KV62 creats so much noise that a high level of filtration needs to be done, and this is an automatic process. Reeves points out that so much filtering has to be done that most of the definition of the scans are lost, leading to inconclusive results. On my observation, Watanabe, before his death, was the most proficient in this having spent decades scanning in Egypt, so it is not surprising that he was the only one to get a more positive result. What should ring bells is that Reeves says that due to the ground scan results, Hawass cleared the ground around KV62 down to the bedrock, something that I had no idea about. Hawass found nothing at all, and declared that there was nothing to find. Reeves points out the bleedin obvious that if the void is a continuation of KV62, then of course Hawass will not have found an entrance on the surface because, in Reeve's view, and I think common sense, the entrance is via KV62.

So, I still don't think Nefertiti is Smenkhkare, but I'm more convinced that there is an extention to KV62, but, if so, containing who.

Edited April 18, 2022 by Wepwawet

[Jon101]

Thank you all for continuing to bring your expertise to this thread.

 

So..... KV55 is a twenty year old?.

And the younger male isn't Webensu?.

 

Is there any in depth information about the 'body on the boat from KV35?.

Thanks again.

 

[Wepwawet]

1 hour ago, Jon101 said:

Thank you all for continuing to bring your expertise to this thread.

 

So..... KV55 is a twenty year old?.

And the younger male isn't Webensu?.

 

Is there any in depth information about the 'body on the boat from KV35?.

Thanks again.

 

Thank you.

Michael Habicht has some very good charts in his book, "Smenkhkare", dealing with the age of KV55, original ownership of the coffin and other aspects. I think I would be breaking copyright if I replicated any of his charts. What I can do though is just give the age ranges, which come from eight researchers covering the period from 1912 to 2010, and I'll present them in that order.

25-26

Not more than 30

17-25

More than 35

About 35

18-23, 25 at most

35-45

19-22

I'll add to that list a reaffirmation of 35-45 by Hawass in 2016, and you may have read in a previous post that his co-author of "Scanning the Pharaohs" Sahar Saleem, a medical expert, unlike Hawass, seems to have broken ranks over the 25-35 age range for the YL, so I do wonder if Hawass's estimate, the highest of all of them, has much validity as he is known to want KV55 to be Ankhenaten. As to indentities, all the ages below 25 are said by the respective researcher to be Smenkhkare, while all the ages over 25 are said to be Akhenaten, though not all the researchers attributed an identity.

Considering that Akhenaten had a 17 year reign and was old enough to father children from the get go, his eldest known child, Meritaten, being born probably some time in year 2, he really needs to have been aged 31 as a minimum at death, thus being no less than fourteen on becoming king. I'll leave it up to you or anybody else interested to come to your own conclusions, though I will point out that the younger a mummy is, the easier it is to age them, not least because you have fewer years in total to deal with, but technically because of dentition and the "joining of bones", and these events happen within a short time frame. As an aside, T.rex had the same growth pattern as humans, slow and steady-ish from birth to about 13, then they shoot up to reach full adult height at about 18, just as we do.

My own opinion is that, after flip flopping around over the years, KV55 is Akhenaten. An age of, say, 32 at death is not unreasonable, and I think does fit into the range presented for KV55, particulalry removing the lowest and highest and going for the median-ish, it's Amarna, so everything is an "ish".

The prince is, by his wiki page, and a number of Egyptologists, Dodson for one, assumed to be prince Webensenu, a son of Amunhotep II. This is based on knowing that AII had a son of that age who died young, and his name appears on some artifacts in KV35, so it is a perfectly reasonable assumption. However, I find it odd that if Webensenu, why was he placed between Tiye and the YL in  a chamber all to themselves, bar a "spare arm". I suspect that when KV35 was turned into a cache, these three mummies were already there, and of course Webensenu would be, but in a chamber with two Amarna mummies, and placed there, not thrown, or propped against a wall like a bundle of firewood as happened to a son of Thutmose IV in KV43. The fact that  one of his toes had come off and was found in another chamber is used as evidence that he is Webensenu, but I don't see this. Mummies are very fragile, and since being found with both his feet still attached to his ankles, both have now fallen off due to bad handling. So he could well have been placed in another chamber before ending up in Jc, I don't think it should be used as evidence for indentification, only of transportation. This is why DNA results are needed so that he can either be confirmed as Webensenu, or add to the Amarna mix if he is a son of Tiye or the YL, which I suspect to be the case. His features show a familial likeness to Tye, and Loret commented that his face was very much like that of Tutankhamun as Khonsu. So, just waiting on the DNA, waiting, waiting.....

The body on the boat could potentially have been Webensenu. For a start is was out in the burial chamber amongst all the chaos found there. Loret made a a diagram of the mummy and the boat, giving measuments. It's difficult to judge from the two garish photos that is all that remains, but the mummy is really quite short, certainly not an adult, and, roughly it has to be said, seems about the same height as the chamber Jc prince, that's about four feet one-ish. The problem is the hair as we see it in the photo. Is that a full head of hair mussed up, or a sidelock mussed up, it looks like a full head of hair, and if so, it's not a prince, but we will never know of course.

Edited April 19, 2022 by Wepwawet

[Jon101]

Thank you Wep, that's incredibly gracious of you and far more than I was expecting.

It's also very interesting in its entirety.

 

I see I have a great deal of reading in my future.

 

Thanks.

 

[Jon101]

It's such a shame these artifacts weren't properly guarded.

Neither the photo or drawing enlightenment, (me, anyway), greatly, regarding the Mummy.

 

That boat would have been a lovely thing to have been able to study.

[Wepwawet]

22 minutes ago, Jon101 said:

It's such a shame these artifacts weren't properly guarded.

Neither the photo or drawing enlightenment, (me, anyway), greatly, regarding the Mummy.

 

That boat would have been a lovely thing to have been able to study.

Thanks for posting those. You can see what I meant about the hair, is it a mussed up full head, or a mussed up sidelock. On the bottom photo it looks like a sidelock, which would have been on the right of the head, has been dragged over the rest of the head. The boat, according to Loret was six feet long, so you can see the mummy is quite short, even adding the torn off right foot.

There's another aspect to this that I didn't go into before. It's clear that the mummy has been hacked up and left on the boat by the robbers. This does in fact show that this mummy was already in KV35 before the cache was made, because none of the mummies from the cache were touched, at least not in KV35. They had been robbed, and some hacked up like Thutmose III, in their own tombs before being re-wrapped, re-coffined and placed into KV35. As they were still in those new coffins and still wrapped shows that the tomb had not been robbed after the cache was made, though it was in a bad state. This means, IMO, that this mummy was an original inhabitant, and it's small size, and rather large head to body ratio, indicates a child, and as it was male, is probably Webensenu, though there were two skulls without a body to go with them found in the tomb, like the arm without a body. What a mess.

[Wistman]

Here's an excerpt from an article by Dodson in 2018 (for the Amarna Research Foundation) regarding KV55 :

Quote

[...]   The presence of the magic bricks of Akhenaten (and the shrine of Queen Tiye) was explained by Cyril Aldred in 1968 as being the result of the tomb originally having contained the mummies of Akhenaten, Tiye, and Smenkhkare, but with the first two removed elsewhere.  Aldred dated this to the early Ramesside period (with Nicholas Reeves later suggesting the reign of Ramesses IX), but recent assessments of the ancient flooding of the center of the Valley of the Kings by Stephen Cross indicates that KV55 must have been covered by a flash flood soon after the death of Tutankhamun.  Hence, the desecration of KV55 would seem to have taken place around the time of Tutankhamun's funeral.  As noted below, the mummy of Tiye ultimately found its way to the tomb of Amenhotep II (KV35), but it seems not unlikely under this scenario that Akhenaten's may have been destroyed.

The possibility that after all the body may be that of Akhenaten was resurrected by a new examination by Fawzia Hussein in 1991, which raised the potential age to 35.  However, her report was never published, and two more examinations is 2000/1 concluded once again that the person had died no later than their early twenties.  Yet, in spite of this broad consensus, across a range of seperate examinations over nearly a century, the age was reassessed as '35-45' following CT-scanning in 2010, thus apparently 'proving' the body to be Akhenaten (or at least not ruling it out).  However, no discussion of how this new age-range was arrived at, and why it differs so greatly from almost all previous examinations, was included in the publication, and no such data has yet been published.  Rebuttals were, however, immediately forthcoming; one issue is that while CT scans have allowed access to still fleshed-out mummies, the skeletonized state of the KV55 body makes it difficult to see how CT scans can have so wholly superceded  the results of direct examination of the bones.

In addition, the coffin in which the mummy was found presents problems for those arguing that the latter belongs to Akhenaten.  It seems clear (although denied by a small number of scholars) that the coffin had been made for Akhenaten's later-disgraced junior wife Kiya, and then elaborately re-worked to hold a king.  It is difficult to produce a credible scenario for this to have resulted in a coffin for Akhenaten, who will have had no need for such a recycled piece, yet for the ephemeral Smenkhkare such an emergency provision following sudden death might seem quite reasonable.

The CT scanning of the KV55 remains was done in conjunction with a series of DNA determinations on mummies known, or surmised, to date from the late Eighteenth Dynasty.  As a result, a series of conclusions were published in 2010.  However, these have been questioned on two grounds.  First, there is a school of thought that denies that it is possible to extract any meaningful DNA from materials of this age and/or nature, and that all results must, by definition, be the results of contamination. The latter view might be supported by the fact that some remains tested nominally as 'controls' turned out to be apparently royal family members.  On the other hand, the results seem to produce results difficult to see as merely the outcome of the presence of modern DNA.  Nevertheless, if one does assume that the extracted DNA is 'real', there is a further problem in that the full range of options for their interpretation was not all set out in the publication.

The KV55 remains were concluded to be those of a son of Amenhotep III and Tiye, and taken with the re-aging to represent proof that they were those of Akhenaten.  Nowhere was it pointed out that Akhenaten would have shared a DNA profile with any full brother, and that this has long been a leading suggestion for Smenkhkare's origins.  The KV55 individual (or his brother, to follow the point just made) was also assessed as being the father of Tutankhamun --- and by a woman whose remains are represented by the so-called 'Younger Lady', found in the tomb of Amenhotep II (KV35).  [...]

Dodson, since 2018, may have changed some of his conclusions, as he has done several times before over the last 25 years regarding the Amarna episode, but the stated history as well as the points of contention still remain more or less valid for discussion I think.

FWIW, @Wepwawet, I'm inclined to agree with you that Tiye's mummy was most likely never present in KV55

https://www.theamarnaresearchfoundation.org/articles.html     Scroll down to "2018, Fall, Vol 24, #2", click to open pdf, the Dodson article is first in the volume.

Edited April 19, 2022 by Wistman

[Wepwawet]

9 hours ago, Wistman said:

Here's an excerpt from an article by Dodson in 2018 (for the Amarna Research Foundation) regarding KV55 :

Dodson, since 2018, may have changed some of his conclusions, as he has done several times before over the last 25 years regarding the Amarna episode, but the stated history as well as the points of contention still remain more or less valid for discussion I think.

FWIW, @Wepwawet, I'm inclined to agree with you that Tiye's mummy was most likely never present in KV55

https://www.theamarnaresearchfoundation.org/articles.html     Scroll down to "2018, Fall, Vol 24, #2", click to open pdf, the Dodson article is first in the volume.

Yes, all the points Dodson raises are valid, though subject to scrutinization themselves. For instance he says that there is no actual evidence to show that Tiye is the mother of Akhenaten, on the presumption that KV55 is not Akhenaten but another son of hers. I can see what he means, but then you have to look at the circumstantial evidence which does point to her being his mother. If Tiye were not his mother, why is she shown with him in the tomb of Kheruef at the start of his reign before it seems he had married Nefertiti. Then, later on, why is Tiye shown with him in the tomb of Huy. It's a similar situation to saying that Smenkhkare was co-regent during year 12 with Meritaten as his wife, but there she is in the durbar scene as just a princess, and likewise after year 12 in the TA26 deathbed scenes.

When Dodson says that Akhenaten had no need of a second hand coffin is a problem. Not him saying it, but of working out if this would actually be the case. The magic bricks with the name of Akhenaten and the alterations to the text on the foot of the coffin do point to Akhenaten being the occupant. Yet the coffin was for a female, so why was, presumably, Akhenaten inside it and not one of his own coffins. Well, if him, then he is also not in his sarcophagus, or shrines, or tomb, and that his names were left on two of the four magic bricks may be an oversight, and the position of parts of Tiye's shrine in the corridor suggest some haste during the final treatment of him by the state before the tomb was closed for the final time. I go with the view that he was buried in KV55 with his name and a minimum of magical protection intact, and that for whatever reason it was decided to strip this from him. If we look at the coffin and imagine it before the cartouches were removed, then it was already a coffin almost devoid of his name, and I think that was deliberate. Tutankhamun's coffins have his names all over the place, and I would think this was the same with Akhenaten's original coffins. Therefore, when it was decided to remove him from TA26 and give him a much reduced re-burial, part of that reduction was to remove his name almost entirely. It would have been difficult to have done this to his original coffins I think, or they just did not want to bother, so he goes into a coffin, a decent one, but never made for a king and so without the name of a king all over the place. Then even the few instances of his name were removed. So, IMO, he has a decent but second hand coffin in order to greatly reduce the presence of his name. It may be that his original coffins were re-used if not stripped down for the gold. What may they have wanted to do with his presumed inner coffin of solid gold, melt it, or re-use it with only needing to change the cartouches, does it still exist?

[Jon101]

I know that Nicholas Reeves thinks that parts of Tutankhamen's Inner coffin was cobbled together from previously made equipment.

Could it have been made from bits of Nefertitis and Akhenatens grave goods?.

 

If Nefertiti did die violently in some kind of power struggle, and Akhenaten was already in disgrace - these might have been on hand?.

 

It could explain quite a few other things too, though it pains me to speculate about things I have no expertise in.

[Wepwawet]

1 hour ago, Jon101 said:

I know that Nicholas Reeves thinks that parts of Tutankhamen's Inner coffin was cobbled together from previously made equipment.

Could it have been made from bits of Nefertitis and Akhenatens grave goods?.

 

If Nefertiti did die violently in some kind of power struggle, and Akhenaten was already in disgrace - these might have been on hand?.

 

It could explain quite a few other things too, though it pains me to speculate about things I have no expertise in.

Reeves thought that the face of the mask belonged to Tutankhamun, but that the rest of it had belonged to Nefertiti. He points out a cartouche that seems to have been altered, but this is not thought to be the case.

M. Traugott Huber, in his book "Who was the Father of Tutankhamun", says that the inner coffin has been reworked, indicating a previous owner. The areas on the front middle section of the coffin that he points to have in fact been re-worked, but whether this was due to a change in ownership, or rectifying some sloppy work, is open to question. he also says that the face is that of Akhenaten, not Tutankhamun, but I don't see that.

Where Huber is correct, I think, is in his asssertion, and that of many others now and in the past, that the second coffin was not originally Tutankhamun's, and the face is certainly that of an older individual. Dodson was able to physically examine the coffin a few years back, but was not able to find any traces of cartouches being changed, though he does state that the cartouches on the outside of the coffin could have been changed in their entirety without leaving any trace, but not the ones on the inside. Quite baffling as the face of that coffin and of the four canopic coffinettes, which did have their cartouches changed, are the same, and not of Tutankhamun. Here we get to one of those annoyances. The cartouches inside the coffinettes originally had the name Ankhkheperure, but, and this is the issue, is this Ankhkheperure, therefore Smenkhkare, or Ankhetkheperure and therefore Nefertiti. All the books just say Ankhkheperure without qualifying this. No mention is ever made of any trace of the names Smenkhkare or Neferneferuaten having been found. I would presume that if the name Smenkhkare had been found we would all know about it.

Difficult to say if there was a power struggle or not. There seems to be some faint evidence that there may have been, and this in the form of cartouches of Akhenaten being defaced on buildings at Amarna, but cartouches of Neferneferuaten on the same building not being touched. Could this be Nefertiti erasing her husband, or of her followers deciding to erase him, I doubt we will ever know. Could the wound to the face of the YL indicate a power struggle if it is not a kick from a horse, potentially no matter who the YL is. It's also very curious that in a culture where kings tend to mention their mothers and fathers, Tutankhamun has, by the surviving records of him as king, neither. Disowning Akhenaten is understandable, and likely the result not of his desire, but that of, presumably, Ay, but not recognising your mother in any way shape or form is odd, against human nature even, unless, and this is my own opinion, she died when he was far too young to have any memory of her, and that would generally be before the age of three. Nefertiti he would have known as she would have died when he was eight or nine.

[Wepwawet]

16 hours ago, Wistman said:

Here's an excerpt from an article by Dodson in 2018 (for the Amarna Research Foundation) regarding KV55 :

Dodson, since 2018, may have changed some of his conclusions, as he has done several times before over the last 25 years regarding the Amarna episode, but the stated history as well as the points of contention still remain more or less valid for discussion I think.

FWIW, @Wepwawet, I'm inclined to agree with you that Tiye's mummy was most likely never present in KV55

https://www.theamarnaresearchfoundation.org/articles.html     Scroll down to "2018, Fall, Vol 24, #2", click to open pdf, the Dodson article is first in the volume.

Need to revist this as I have contradicted myself in the post about KV35. I stated that the three Jc mummies would have been in the tomb before the cache was made, and that Tiye would have been moved first to KV22 to be with AIII, and then to KV35. But this cannot be so as why move her out of KV22 and leave AIII there for another, what, up to several hundred years. Makes no sense at all, therefore, Tiye, and presumably the YL and prince, were never in KV22. The pattern of robbery is I believe different between AIII and the Jc mummies, who all have a tell tale hole in the top of their skulls, caused by using an adze to strip the mummies of their wrappings from the head down, which AIII does not. This of course does bring back, if it ever went away, KV55 as the tomb they were in before KV35, though I am still doubtfull. What, for instance, was going on in KV62 before being used by Tutankhamun, as it was already in existance.

So we run around in circles until we get dizzy and fall down, then we run back the other way and hit a brick wall, then we run into the center of the circle and get stuck in tar, then we get out of that and run out of the circle and end up in a thick fog. Then the alarm goes off and we go off to work and start to realise that everything has happened before, before, before, before.....

[Wistman]

On 4/19/2022 at 10:50 AM, Wepwawet said:

[...]

The prince is, by his wiki page, and a number of Egyptologists, Dodson for one, assumed to be prince Webensenu, a son of Amunhotep II. This is based on knowing that AII had a son of that age who died young, and his name appears on some artifacts in KV35, so it is a perfectly reasonable assumption. However, I find it odd that if Webensenu, why was he placed between Tiye and the YL in  a chamber all to themselves, bar a "spare arm". I suspect that when KV35 was turned into a cache, these three mummies were already there, and of course Webensenu would be, but in a chamber with two Amarna mummies, and placed there, not thrown, or propped against a wall like a bundle of firewood as happened to a son of Thutmose IV in KV43. The fact that  one of his toes had come off and was found in another chamber is used as evidence that he is Webensenu, but I don't see this. Mummies are very fragile, and since being found with both his feet still attached to his ankles, both have now fallen off due to bad handling. So he could well have been placed in another chamber before ending up in Jc, I don't think it should be used as evidence for indentification, only of transportation. This is why DNA results are needed so that he can either be confirmed as Webensenu, or add to the Amarna mix if he is a son of Tiye or the YL, which I suspect to be the case. His features show a familial likeness to Tye, and Loret commented that his face was very much like that of Tutankhamun as Khonsu. So, just waiting on the DNA, waiting, waiting.....

The body on the boat could potentially have been Webensenu. For a start is was out in the burial chamber amongst all the chaos found there. Loret made a a diagram of the mummy and the boat, giving measuments. It's difficult to judge from the two garish photos that is all that remains, but the mummy is really quite short, certainly not an adult, and, roughly it has to be said, seems about the same height as the chamber Jc prince, that's about four feet one-ish. The problem is the hair as we see it in the photo. Is that a full head of hair mussed up, or a sidelock mussed up, it looks like a full head of hair, and if so, it's not a prince, but we will never know of course.

Just to note that, supposedly based on one of Victor Loret's photographic negatives of KV35 contents ( "found" among the Loret Archives at University of MIlan and first published 2012), picturing the mummy on his boat, D.C. Forbes proposes that it is King Setnacht.  (I don't have a link, but here's the reference to chase down if you will:  "New light on a Missing Mummy", D.C. Forbes, Kmt 23:2, (Summer 2012) 35-36.  I've not seen this picture myself nor read Forbes's article since I don't subscribe to Kmt and my searches have otherwise proved fruitless.)

eta:  Maybe AlpinLuke knows about this, being Milanese.

Edited April 23, 2022 by Wistman

[Wistman]

Something minor to add:  We normally see the three Amarna mummies from KV35 as pictured by Howard Carter, after the mummies had been removed from their chamber, analyzed by Carter/Maspero, then returned to the chamber to get a clearer set of photographs.  In doing so, their sequence was reversed, ie: Carter arranged them with Tiye on the left, whereas Loret's blurry photo of the three as discovered in situ had Tiye on the right.

    Carter's photo, Tiye on the left.

 

     Loret's original photo of in situ placement, Tiye on the right.

[Wepwawet]

4 hours ago, Wistman said:

Just to note that, supposedly based on one of Victor Loret's photographic negatives of KV35 contents ( "found" among the Loret Archives at University of MIlan and first published 2012), picturing the mummy on his boat, D.C. Forbes proposes that it is King Setnacht.  (I don't have a link, but here's the reference to chase down if you will:  "New light on a Missing Mummy", D.C. Forbes, Kmt 23:2, (Summer 2012) 35-36.  I've not seen this picture myself nor read Forbes's article since I don't subscribe to Kmt and my searches have otherwise proved fruitless.)

eta:  Maybe AlpinLuke knows about this, being Milanese.

I also don't subscribe to Kmt, but I do have Forbes's book on TT320 and KV35. It was published in 1998, so before his latest thinking on this. I'll have to re-read the book tomorrow to see what he wrote. But, I don't see that mummy as being anybody except either an original inhabitant, ie, a member of the family of Amunhotep II, or a mummy brought in with the Jc mummies, and I don't see that either as the robber damage is very different. But Forbes knows more about this than me so I'll see what he says.

[Wepwawet]

4 hours ago, Wistman said:

Something minor to add:  We normally see the three Amarna mummies from KV35 as pictured by Howard Carter, after the mummies had been removed from their chamber, analyzed by Carter/Maspero, then returned to the chamber to get a clearer set of photographs.  In doing so, their sequence was reversed, ie: Carter arranged them with Tiye on the left, whereas Loret's blurry photo of the three as discovered in situ had Tiye on the right.

    Carter's photo, Tiye on the left.

 

     Loret's original photo of in situ placement, Tiye on the right.

I've always wondered why Tiye was covered in wrappings, but the other two not. I would say the the YL and the prince were carried into that chamber in the condition we see them on the original photo, and that is unwrapped apart from a few scraps, yet Tiye is covered in ripped up wrappings. The later photo is very deceptive as to their original condition, and it looks as if the lower half of the YL and the prince have been strewn with wrappings fromTiye. I also wonder if their coffins had been used for any of the cache mummies. Let's say they were in KV22, then while robbed there, I doubt they would have been transported to KV35 in anything other than a coffin or they may have fallen to pieces. We know the prince had lost a toe in another chamber, so perhaps all three were there and in coffins, not the ones they would have originally been buried in as they would have long gone I think, but at least half decent plain ones, then turfed out and placed into Jc, presumably as a family group, indicating that initially they did have some indentification when placed into KV35, probably names on their coffins, and that those were then excised for the new occupants. So, I wonder to what level of scrutiny the cache coffins have been subjected to to see if they were new, but plain ones for the kings, or recycled with traces of original names, the names of the Jc mummies, now that would be a thing. Though surely somebody has already thought of this and those coffins have been subjected to meticulous scrutiny, or....

Edited April 23, 2022 by Wepwawet

[Wistman]

20 hours ago, Wepwawet said:

I also don't subscribe to Kmt, but I do have Forbes's book on TT320 and KV35. It was published in 1998, so before his latest thinking on this. I'll have to re-read the book tomorrow to see what he wrote. But, I don't see that mummy as being anybody except either an original inhabitant, ie, a member of the family of Amunhotep II, or a mummy brought in with the Jc mummies, and I don't see that either as the robber damage is very different. But Forbes knows more about this than me so I'll see what he says.

The mummy of Unknown Woman D (sometimes identified as Tausret, but there's little evidence for that) was discovered in side chamber Jb of KV35, laid out on the overturned upper lid of a coffin inscribed to Setnakht.  Setnakht's coffin base was also found in side chamber Jb containing the mummy of Merenptah.  Here's UWD's mummy and here's Setnakht's coffin:

Because of her position on this coffin lid, the mummy of UWD was misidentified as Setnakht until it was unwrapped in 1905 by Smith with the assistance of Daressy and Carter, and its gender determined to be female.

This likely played some role in Dennis Forbes's thinking as regards the identity of the mummy on the boat.

Edited April 24, 2022 by Wistman

[Wepwawet]

19 hours ago, Wistman said:

The mummy of Unknown Woman D (sometimes identified as Tausret, but there's little evidence for that) was discovered in side chamber Jb of KV35, laid out on the overturned upper lid of a coffin inscribed to Setnakht.  Setnakht's coffin base was also found in side chamber Jb containing the mummy of Merenptah.  Here's UWD's mummy and here's Setnakht's coffin:

Because of her position on this coffin lid, the mummy of UWD was misidentified as Setnakht until it was unwrapped in 1905 by Smith with the assistance of Daressy and Carter, and its gender determined to be female.

This likely played some role in Dennis Forbes's thinking as regards the identity of the mummy on the boat.

I thought my copy of Forbes's book was just a re-print, but I missed something before that shows that it is in fact a re-write as he mentions that DNA has shown the EL to be Tiye, something not known in 1998. So, in 2015, Forbes is saying that Seknakht was not found KV35, and on the boat mummy is in general agreement with Loret's original guess that it was prince Webensenu. Also, showing that I should have had a thorough re-read of his book earlier, he does say that Loret found that the top of the boat mummy's head had a hole the same as the Jc mummies, and that Loret used this to link all four mummies. I would assume that they all show the same robber damage as they were all robbed by the same robbers at the same time as the hole in the top of the head is unique, ie, none of the other mummies in the tomb had this specific damage. Also, as mentioned before, only those four mummies were unwrapped and not in a coffin, indicating I think that they were victims of a robbery of KV35 before it was turned into a cache.

Looking at the garish close up photo of the boat mummy taken from above it is still difficult to work out if this mummy had a full head of hair, or during the course of being unwrapped and somewhat hacked up, the hair seen strewn over the head is a mussed up sidelock. There is no hair around the left ear, and no hairline is visible, so I think that despite there being a lot of hair strewn over the head, it may well be a mussed up sidelock, but this is very subjective. However, Loret, being able top examine the mummy, must have had reason to say that this may have been prince Webensenu, and I would guess that he did see that the mummy had a sidelock, and that it was too short to be an adult. The four boats were measured at over 6ft, Amunhotep II was 5' 5" and would have filled most of the boat's length, Tutankhamun at 5' 7" would have done the same, the Jc prince is 4' 1", about the same height as the son of Thutmose IV in KV43, and, as I suggested before, would fill about as much as the boat as the mummy actually found on it.

As the three JC mummies and the body on the boat were, presumably, robbed by the same robbers at the same time, and that this was some time before KV35 was turned into a cache, why was Tiye, if nobody else, not in KV22 with AIII and moved into KV35 with him. I've already said that I thought the sequence was TA26 - KV22 - KV35, but thinking about this it cannot have been. Tiye, at least, must surely have never been in KV22, and then initialy robbed there, as otherwise her and the mummy of AIII would show the same pattern of damage, but they don't. Then, if all three Jc mummies were in KV22, why move any except AIII, and possibly Tiye, out, for instance, two children of Thutmose IV, a son and daughter, were left in KV43. So, I have to accept, Tiye was in TA26, KV55? KV62? anywhere except KV22, which simply does not make sense, unless they had lost track of where it was, which I doubt as assuming an 8 year AIII-Akhenaten co-regency, only 22 years would have passed between the burial of AIII and that of Tutankhamun, presumably the time that the JC mummies ended up in KV35, or not long after, Horemheb maybe.

 

 

[Wistman]

On 4/23/2022 at 4:38 PM, Wepwawet said:

I've always wondered why Tiye was covered in wrappings, but the other two not. I would say the the YL and the prince were carried into that chamber in the condition we see them on the original photo, and that is unwrapped apart from a few scraps, yet Tiye is covered in ripped up wrappings. The later photo is very deceptive as to their original condition, and it looks as if the lower half of the YL and the prince have been strewn with wrappings fromTiye. I also wonder if their coffins had been used for any of the cache mummies. Let's say they were in KV22, then while robbed there, I doubt they would have been transported to KV35 in anything other than a coffin or they may have fallen to pieces. We know the prince had lost a toe in another chamber, so perhaps all three were there and in coffins, not the ones they would have originally been buried in as they would have long gone I think, but at least half decent plain ones, then turfed out and placed into Jc, presumably as a family group, indicating that initially they did have some indentification when placed into KV35, probably names on their coffins, and that those were then excised for the new occupants. So, I wonder to what level of scrutiny the cache coffins have been subjected to to see if they were new, but plain ones for the kings, or recycled with traces of original names, the names of the Jc mummies, now that would be a thing. Though surely somebody has already thought of this and those coffins have been subjected to meticulous scrutiny, or....

Here is another, murkier, photo by Loret of the three Jc mummies (and their lower sections this time), the insert photo (actually, the remaining portion of the Loret photo posted above in my #342, I suspect) clearly showing that - indeed - you were correct in that the wrappings surround the mummy of Tiye only; the other two mummies were entirely uncovered as originally found.

Edited April 25, 2022 by Wistman

[Wepwawet]

Then there is the sequence of movement of mummies within KV35, and just how many times it was robbed, and when.

It's difficult to pin down anything definitive here as not all of Loret's notes and plans have survived, but, going by various authors, it does look like KV35 was robbed after the cache was made. This is a bit of a puzzle as surely the locals, the tomb builders/robbers would have known that all valuables would have been removed from the mummies and the tomb, unless they were just thuggish morons, and that cannot be discounted as this tendency still exists, vide the body on the boat, and the depredations during and after 2012 of our own times.

The three mummies in question were found in chamber Jc, and the other royals mostly in Jb. The boy's missing toe was found in Jd, described by Loret as being knee deep in debris. So at least he was in Jd, unless someone was wandering about the tomb carrying his toe and decided to drop it into Jd to troll us 3,000 years later. What I wonder, presuming all three mummies were originally in Jd, is were they under this debris, mixed up with it, or laying on top of it. We can never know of course, but as apart from the toe no other human remains were found in Jd, I ask why they were moved across the burial chamber to Jc, which would also have been covered in debirs, but then with a space cleared for these three mummies. On the photos the chamber floor looks rough but clear, but Loret says that all the debris had been swept to the right hand side. On my understanding it was within this debris that the wig and spare arm were found, though when you read some sources on this, the wig is described as being by the YL, and the spare arm mixed up in her wrappings, the wrappings that are of course invisible on the original photos, hm. I think over the years a number of authors, perhaps all of those writing about Amarna,  have simply made assumptions. To my knowledge no mummy has ever been found wearing a wig, so to associate this wig with the YL is nonsense as it would have been part of the burial goods originally stored in the four chambers, and that these were for Amunhotep II.

At this point I'll draw attention to what Ayrton, the originator of the Box 001K thread, often mentioned, and that, as an ex policeman, was that all of this should be looked at as if it were a crime scene and a higher degree of analytical, and commonsense, thinking be employed. Archeologists do of course employ forensic techniques, but when most of the original notes are lost, personal opinion/desires/fantasy comes marching in to fill the gap. I'll get shouted at for that, won't I

So, we have, presumably, the Jc mummies moved from Jd that was found filled with debris into a partially cleared Jc, and most of the rest of the cache moved into a cleared Jb, and the rest of the tomb filled with debris, mostly it seems the destroyed remnants of the non valuable burial goods, jars and food containers etc, with a few items that are aesthetically pleasing to us today, but not of interest to a robber.

As it seems that KV35 was robbed after the cache was made, though I cannot track down the evidence that shows this, Loret's missing notes I presume, I wonder if what has happened is this. KV35 was chosen as a cache as it was out of the way, it is in fact at the far end of the valley, and structurally sound. What condition the tomb contents were in when the 19th Dynasty necropolis officials opened it we can never know, but I suspect that it had been robbed and that all it's occupants had been turfed out of their coffins, unwrapped and robbed of their valuables with a minimum of damage done to them, a leg and an arm here and there ripped off is minor to what could have happened, though there is still the very odd case of the two disembodied skulls.

To be continued.

Edited April 25, 2022 by Wepwawet

[jmccr8]

5 hours ago, Wepwawet said:

and just how many times it was robbed, and when

Hi Wepwawet

Short answer every time someone died and soon after death. 

Most of the higher levels of society do not actually believe what they tell us about gods, morals and other human concerns, we wouldn't know what we do now about many cultures and times if it wasn't for robbing graves.

Edited April 26, 2022 by jmccr8
e

[Wepwawet]

4 hours ago, jmccr8 said:

Hi Wepwawet

Short answer every time someone died and soon after death. 

Most of the higher levels of society do not actually believe what they tell us about gods, morals and other human concerns, we wouldn't know what we do now about many cultures and times if it wasn't for robbing graves.

That's true, and there is written evidence from the AE that they did not universally believe in an afterlife to the extent that we assume they did, and could be highly sceptical of the entire thing. For instance bemoaning that "You cannot take it with you" in relation to wealth, and that "Nobody comes back" in relation to there being any real evidence of an afterlife. The Harper's song was used at burials, but is remarkable for it's scepticism and sentiments that are just as valid today.

The issue about the three Amarna  mummies in KV35 though is that they have been robbed and moved multiple times, and that they are the victims not just of common robbers, but also of the state who made them anonymous and "killed" them again after they had died normally, or abnormally for maybe two of them.

Edited April 26, 2022 by Wepwawet