Amarna, Before and After

[Wepwawet]

1 hour ago, Aldebaran said:

Hawass again.  What does he have to do with DNA-testing these days?  By "clear" do you mean at least a full set of eight markers, such as some females didn't yield?  Did you know that it was admitted in "Scanning the Pharaohs" that KV20 A  consists of the body parts of more than one individual?  Makes one wonder.  I know [from a contact] that there is some interest in the remains recently discovered at Amarna of a person who actually had some jewelry and was not just placed into a common grave or shallow grave.  Most interesting is that the female had a ring with the words "sAt nbt tAwi" on the bezel meaning "daughter of the queen" as only the chief wife was known as "Mistress of the Two Lands".  Of course, "sAt" could also stand for "granddaughter".  I think the DNA of this person is worth a shot.  Why was the individual not mummified?  Well, once the king and the court/administration left Akhet-aten, what embalmers remained?  Yet some people probably stayed on there for awhile.  It's true, also, that the royal tomb can have been robbed after that and the jewelry of the royal children redistributed.  What happened to their mummies?  Still, it's unlikely that "sAt nbt tAwi" was an actual personal name, so....

 

I think we are stuck with Hawass having control over this until Anubis comes for him.

By "clear" I certainly do mean a full set of markers, and that the results cannot be reasonably contested. My opinion is that KV21B is not going to be Nefertiti, though as I think that as Hawass is going to make an announcement, well, hopefully, then he does actually have something tangible. I doubt he would make an announcement if he did not have positive news, meaning that if he could not get a good DNA result I think he would not be making an anouncement in September, and we may never hear anything of this again. If she proves to be a full sister of Akhenaten, then Sitamun ? probably old enough. The result that will cause a stir of course will be if she is not a sister of Akhenaten, but is the mother of the boy, who is found to be a half brother of Tutankhamun and son of KV55. I suspect Hawass already knows that he is a brother to Tutankhamun and son of KV55, hence him stating that he was the key to this. Doesn't prove Nefertiti though, one of the daughters needs to be positively indentified to see if she is a sister or half sister of the boy, and her relationship to Tutankhamun.

I suspect that the mummies of the three daughters buried in TA26 may have ended up in WV23 with Tiye, with her then being moved into KV55, but though her shrine was there, I'm not 100% convinced that she was, I think maybe her shrine was used for Akhenaten. Tiye, after being robbed in WV23 along with AIII and the YL, if she was there, and the boy, being moved to KV35. The mummies of the three daughters, two very small, may have been damaged so badly that they may have been unrecognizable, and left to rot in WV23 with nothing significant left to find millenia later. I don't think we will ever know, or ever find them. Meritaten and Ankhesenamun, who knows, KV21A? maybe she might be indentified in September as very likely to be Ankhesenamun, but it really needs to be as close to 100% as reasonably possible to close the argument.

Edited April 20 by Wepwawet

[Aldebaran]

WV22--I was just recently reading a paper on that tomb and all I can recall of it [not even the title] was that the shabti of Tiye was not actually found in it.  I must go to Academia.edu, where I usually get my papers, and try to find this one as It was quite informative.  But I have been dealing with health issues lately and have been rather distracted.

I don't know why I recall this about the shabti but, according to Kawai, Napoleon's expedition did find one inside the tomb.  Anyway, this is an interesting paper.

https://www.academia.edu/1469598/_Some_Remarks_on_the_Funerary_Equipment_from_the_tomb_of_Amenhotep_III_KV22_P_P_Crewman_ed_Archaeological_Research_in_the_Valley_of_the_Kings_and_Ancient_Thebes_Papers_Presented_in_Honor_of_Richard_H_Wilkinson_University_of_Arizona_Egyptian_Expedition_2013_pp_149_172

Edited May 1 by Aldebaran

[Wepwawet]

What I take from from Kawai is that we have just one complete shabti and a number of fragments found in KV22, with some fragments at Highclere fitting some of the fragments found in the tomb. There is no indication of the total number of shabti, but clearly it is very small. Also it would seem that the tomb was restored in an un-named king's 3rd year, and that this king was either Neferneferuaten or Tutankhamun, with it being more likely to have been Tutankhamun after he moved the court back to Memphis in his year two, the reasoning being that why would Neferneferuaten move the royal mummies out of Amarna to Thebes when she was still ruling from Amarna.

It's worth reiterating the facts we know about Tiye and anything connected with her burial/s. Initial burial in the royal tomb at Amarna, TA26. One complete shabti and fragments found in the tomb of Amunhotep III, KV22. Her shrine found in KV55. Her mummy found in KV35, the tomb of Amunhotep II, though unwrapped and with nothing on the mummy or in the tomb to indentify the mummy as Tiye's. I'll add that the golden statuette of Sekhmet and a few other gods found wrapped in shrine type boxes in KV62 are thought to have been part of Tiye's funeral equipment, but, I need to do some digging to find where I came across this as I've forgotten.

I'm certain that wherever Tiye had been before KV35, she was with the Younger Lady and the boy. There they are alone in a side chamber side by side, and we can now rule out any of them being members of the family of Amunhotep II. Whoever moved them into the tomb knew who they were and knew they were all related. But where had they come from. The easy answer is to say that it must have been KV22 along with Amunhotep III, but this does not fit with the condition of KV35 when found, why would these three unidentified mummies have a chamber all to themselves, and a spare arm. Amunhotep II was stripped but still in his sarcophagus, otherwise the burial chamber was in chaos, with probably his son Webensenu being the "body on the boat", and two skulls in the well, just skulls, how odd. All the mummies forming the cache were stacked in coffins in good order, and with their mummies still wrapped.

To me, Tiye and her two companions, due to their condition and location, do not form part of the cache, even if Tiye's husband is part of that cache. In the KV35 cache there are only kings, and possibly, as a monarch in her own right, Queen Tawosret on a coffin lid bearing the name of king Setnakhte. The salient point being that there are no known spouses or children of these kings with them. One of the kings is Thutmose IV, and still in his own tomb, KV43, are one of his sons and a daughter, so why not move them into KV35 if, supposedly, Tiye and her two companions had been moved in with Amunhotep III, or any other family member of any of the kings in the cache bar Amunhotep II. It is of course possible that that was the intention, but at the point that had all the kings in the cache, they sealed the tomb, we can never know. I'll leave it here for the moment.

[Wistman]

With all the hubbub and disappointment last year re: Hawass's quashed revelations about Nefertiti's mummy, I'm reminded that we also had a few images of the KV35 boy's mummy being examined, possibly scanned, and presumably genetically investigated (which so curiously was not done to the boy earlier when Tiye and Younger Lady and the other Thutmosids were forensically profiled.)  It's frustrating to think there's data on the boy but nobody's given access to it.

[Antigonos]

4 minutes ago, Wistman said:

With all the hubbub and disappointment last year re: Hawass's quashed revelations about Nefertiti's mummy, I'm reminded that we also had a few images of the KV35 boy's mummy being examined, possibly scanned, and presumably genetically investigated (which so curiously was not done to the boy earlier when Tiye and Younger Lady and the other Thutmosids were forensically profiled.)  It's frustrating to think there's data on the boy but nobody's given access to it.

What do you think might be the reason, if there is one?

[Wistman]

3 minutes ago, Antigonos said:

What do you think might be the reason, if there is one?

Others here might have a better take on this question than myself.  But I  would guess that Hawass's humiliation at having pumped up the world's interest last year by his announcement that he'd reveal Nefertiti's mummy at the important Cairo celebration and conference coming that fall, but apparently couldn't in the end present the genetic proof he'd promised (we guess he'd expected to receive genetic information about one of the highly degraded mummies from WV21, which was previously unavailable due to extreme deterioration of the mummy's genetic material) but his hoped-for data was not forthcoming and he ended up silent on the entire matter...to everybody's surprise.

Photos provided to us by @Wepwawet showed that earlier last year the KV35 boy's mummy was removed from the tomb and examined in at least a mobile lab outside the chamber.  So we guess (!) that data from the boy's mummy was retrieved and was planned to be part of  Hawass's October presentation, but when the principal genetic results which he'd been crowing about didn't materialize, he quashed the entire program, including the KV35 boy's data.  I think he probably is retaining it to be able to make his hoped-for splash of Amarna revelations when (or if) the WV21 mummy's genetic material is successfully retrieved.  Which may not happen...as @Aldebaran has pointed out more than once.  Which leaves the boy's data closely held by Hawass's team, and not in public discourse.

[Wepwawet]

1 hour ago, Wistman said:

I'm reminded that we also had a few images of the KV35 boy's mummy being examined, possibly scanned, and presumably genetically investigated (which so curiously was not done to the boy earlier when Tiye and Younger Lady and the other Thutmosids were forensically profiled.

I've posted these before, but a few years back so it's worth posting them again. The first image shows the boy being slid under a scanner, not a CT btw, at the VoK in early 2003. The image is from the very beginning of the NatGeo documentary "Nefertiti and the Lost Dynasty". This was part of the University of York investigation. They conducted a physical examination of the three mummies and published their results in 2003, but not a single scan of any of them has ever been published, which is truely bizarre.

The second image is from 2007 and shows the boy about be DNA sampled in KV35. This was done at the same place and time as for Tiye and the Younger Lady, and as we know, no results for him were every published, neither was it even admitted that he was tested at that time, yet here is the photo, and this scene was not included in the documentary "King Tut Unwrapped", which I think had a different title in the US. It was announced in 2022 that the boy had been DNA tested at the Luxor children's hospital, so no matter what on earth had been going on since 2003, he has been tested, but still not a single scan image, and as there is a possibility of foul play, potentially being thrown out of a window, or, more mundane, fell off the back of a chariot, this is information that is needed to help fill in the gaps in the Amarna jigsaw.

 

Edit, in the photo above he looks to be as tall as the adults, but it's an optical illusion, he's, from memory, only about 4' tall. Also worth mentioning is this from the UoY report. They state that the large wound to his thorax was probably caused not long after mummification and before the tissues had fully hardened. They can tell this due to the fact that the skin has been rolled back to expose the chest cavity, if the skin had been brittle it would not have rolled back, but cracked and splintered. They also note that within the wound they found no traces of his wrappings, something you would expect to find if robbers had just hacked into him. It is suggested that the wound may have been caused before mummification. This, btw, is the same as with the facial wound to the YL. It was first thought that this was robber damage, but on examination in 2003, no traces of wrappings were found in the mouth cavity, therefore the wound was pre mummification. So, two Amarna mummies side by side with no identification, and both with suspicious wounds, you could write a book about this.

Edited May 3 by Wepwawet

[Wepwawet]

33 minutes ago, Wistman said:

I think he probably is retaining it to be able to make his hoped-for splash of Amarna revelations

I think that looks the best reason. He likes to make a big splash, so as well as announcing that he has "found Nefertiti", he can also loudly proclaim that he has also found Tutankhamun's brother. Stepping aside, we discuss this so it's not a surprise, but the general public will not have a clue so it will have an impact on them. He's been ignored, deliberately, for a long time, so I guess he will have his day later this year, maybe...

Edited May 3 by Wepwawet
typo

[Antigonos]

21 minutes ago, Wistman said:

Others here might have a better take on this question than myself.  But I  would guess that Hawass's humiliation at having pumped up the world's interest last year by his announcement that he'd reveal Nefertiti's mummy at the important Cairo celebration and conference coming that fall, but apparently couldn't in the end present the genetic proof he'd promised (we guess he'd expected to receive genetic information about one of the highly degraded mummies from WV21, which was previously unavailable due to extreme deterioration of the mummy's genetic material) but his hoped-for data was not forthcoming and he ended up silent on the entire matter...to everybody's surprise.

Photos provided to us by @Wepwawet showed that earlier last year the KV35 boy's mummy was removed from the tomb and examined in at least a mobile lab outside the chamber.  So we guess (!) that data from the boy's mummy was retrieved and was planned to be part of  Hawass's October presentation, but when the principal genetic results which he'd been crowing about didn't materialize, he quashed the entire program, including the KV35 boy's data.  I think he probably is retaining it to be able to make his hoped-for splash of Amarna revelations when (or if) the WV21 mummy's genetic material is successfully retrieved.  Which may not happen...as @Aldebaran has pointed out more than once.  Which leaves the boy's data closely held by Hawass's team, and not in public discourse.

Excellent. Thank you for your detailed answer.

[Aldebaran]

On 5/2/2024 at 7:48 AM, Wepwawet said:

To me, Tiye and her two companions, due to their condition and location, do not form part of the cache, even if Tiye's husband is part of that cache. In the KV35 cache there are only kings, and possibly, as a monarch in her own right, Queen Tawosret on a coffin lid bearing the name of king Setnakhte. The salient point being that there are no known spouses or children of these kings with them. One of the kings is Thutmose IV, and still in his own tomb, KV43, are one of his sons and a daughter, so why not move them into KV35 if, supposedly, Tiye and her two companions had been moved in with Amunhotep III, or any other family member of any of the kings in the cache bar Amunhotep II. It is of course possible that that was the intention, but at the point that had all the kings in the cache, they sealed the tomb, we can never know. I'll leave it here for the moment.

I agree that the three are not part of the cache in the other chamber.  It looks to me like those were intended to be "king's only", including one female pharaoh--maybe [but without ID].  And no kings who had begun life as commoners, either.  Akhenaten certainly had been the son of a pharaoh, but he was excluded for other reasons and left in KV55.  Setnakht's coffin is present, divided between two other rulers, but he is not there for the reason I gave.

Otherwise, the fact that the shabti of Tiye has "mwt nsw" [king's mother] inscribed can mean one of two things.  If original to the burial of Amenhotep III [for some reason] it means when he died his son was already a king--in other words, a coregency.  Or the shabtis were made during the sole reign of Akhenaten and accompanied Tiye in a re-interment with her husband.  The fact that there was a sarcophagus for Tiye in the royal tomb at Amarna and a funerary shrine depicting Akhenaten as the pharaoh [instead of A III] indicate for me she died and was buried there.

As for the graffito with "Year 3" inside WV22---just because there is as yet no proof of a co-regency between Tutankhaten/amen and Neferneferuaten doesn't necessarily mean none existed.  Of course, Neferneferuaten would have been the main ruler, the adult, while the other was nominal until he reached manhood/puberty.  Regardless, that Neferneferuaten was the first to understand that the Amarna royal dead had to be moved to the Theban necropolis makes sense.  There was no more ruler at Akhet-aten.  Did Neferneferuaten begin as regent for Tut with Year 3?  Since she was already a coregent with Akhenaten for an unknown duration--it's possible.  Were all the Amarna royals attempted to be placed in KV55?  Akhenaten was there, I feel sure, and also his mother--or why did one try to put her gilded shrine in there?   But what of the children of Akhenaten who were interred in the royal tomb?  What became of them?  No clue.  And what of the many shabtis Tiye surely once had?   

KV55 seems to have been sealed with the seal of Tutankhamen.  If it was during his Year 3, he would have still been a boy no matter what.  But KV55 was still re-entered and maybe more than once.  Neferneferuaten had her own burial place.  We simply don't know where it was.  Ditto for the young prince--but all three ended up, en familie, in KV35, stripped of all valuables and not even a replacement coffin.  Without DNA there would not have been any kind of identification possible that anyone could trust--at least no family relationship.  That Queen Tiye was ultimately separated from Akhenaten is also meaningful. He certainly wasn't anathema in the reigns of Neferneferuaten or Tut--his cartouches were found in KV62.  Why KV35 for the others?  Who knows?  But it looks like someone in antiquity knew they belonged together.  At the time of the death of Tut, were they ejected from KV62 and that was painted for the young king?  In no way do I agree with Reeves that any painting in there had anything to do with Nefertiti.  Not all tombs were decorated but those of the pharaohs in the VOK all were.  Neferneferuaten was only a temporary king,  How that was handled when a regent died is uncertain.

Edited May 3 by Aldebaran

[Wepwawet]

1 hour ago, Aldebaran said:

As for the graffito with "Year 3" inside WV22---just because there is as yet no proof of a co-regency between Tutankhaten/amen and Neferneferuaten doesn't necessarily mean none existed

I'm certain that Tutanhkaten followed Thumose III and began dating his reign from the death of his father, therefore it opens the possibility that if Neferneferuaten lived to just about the end of her year 3, she co-ruled, even if not publicly, for almost 4 complete years with him, if she became co-ruler with Akhenaten only shortly before he died. There's a lot of wiggle room because of course we simply do not know at which point in a regnal year any of them died. That example was at one extreme, but at the other end, if Neferneferuaten had become co-ruler at the start of Akhenaten's year 17, and she had died shortly after the start of her year 3, then she would have been with Tutankhaten only into the start of his year 2, say only 13 months and not about 46 or so. What's a realistic middle point, maybe her dying sometime around the end of his year 2 and start of year 3. God knows.

1 hour ago, Aldebaran said:

And what of the many shabtis Tiye surely once had?   

And Nefernferuaten, and Smenkhkare, and Meritaten, and for that matter Akhenaten, though I guess they did a thorough clean sweep with him. Are there really tombs to be found, even tombs where they may have been stored for a time before being moved to where we found them 3,300 years later, those who moved them leaving non valuables such as shabtis behind, and we have yet to find these tombs, which even empty of mummies, would be invaluable in helping to solve the mystery.

[Wepwawet]

In a way KV21 looks like KV35 as regards Amarna mummies, if the so far incomplete results for KV21A and B are at least correct in tying them to the Amarna period.

Three Amarna mummies in KV35, unwrapped and without coffins or a single shred of identifying material. Two probable Amarna mummies in KV21, unwrapped and without coffins or a single shred of identifying material. Due to zero shabtis, fragments of shabtis, or anything else, let alone coffins, none of these five mummies have been found in their original tombs.

Both KV22 and KV55 are possibilities, though only Tiye can be associated with both tombs, though not in a very conclusive way. Her shabti and fragments in KV22 could be for her burial, or could be votive shabti for Amunhotep III. Her shrine in KV55 is better evidence for her being buried there at some point, but why just her shrine and not any other goods, like shabtis that could be left behind overlooked. I suspect her shrine was deliberately used for Akhenaten and that it's presence in KV55 is not solid evidence for Tiye ever being there. I'll explain why. None of Akhenaten's original burial equipment survives apart from the "magic bricks", and I would suggest it is because his name would be absolutely everywhere, as it is on Tutankhamun's burial equipment. If the idea was to give him some sort of royal burial, though low key and far less "Atenist", would it not be easier to use another persons equipment, where his name is present, but not overwhelmingly so. He needs a shrine, so why not use Tiye's, which has his name, but not many times so easy to cut out. The coffin may show a double change of plan. Turfed out of his presumably solid gold Atenist inner coffin plastered with his name, he is initially just "downgraded", so the KV55 coffin is altered for him, and does have his name in cartouches. Then, perhaps in Horemheb's time, it is decided to do a full damnatio memoriae and his name removed. Perhaps not wanting to associate Tiye, even if just in the form of her shrine, with the "rebel", it is removed, or was in the process of being removed when for unknown reasons it was decided to seal the tomb right away and leave it there, seemingly just dropped to the floor. What could the haste have been?

So, five unwrapped and un-coffined mummies with nothing to identify them, and apart from the questions about Tiye, no tomb, apart from TA26, being found that has any trace of these mummies ever being in them, and with TA26 it's only Tiye and Akhenaten on mummies that we have. No trace whatsoever has been found of the three daughters who we know were buried in TA26, and who surely would have been moved out to the VoK by Neferneferuaten/Tutankhaten/amun when the court moved back to Memphis.

From TA26 we have five mummies we can be sure of that need re-burying, the KV35 boy is an unknown here as while it looks certain, to me anyway, that he is going to be proclaimed to be a brother of Tutankhamun this September, was he older or younger? when did he die?, if somewhat younger he may have died well into Tutankhamun's reign in Memphis, or even after Tutankhamun, or of course died in Amarna, and as in life, so as a prince he was "invisible" in death. And I'll complete this speculation later.

[Wepwawet]

Michael Habicht's "The Complete Royal Mummies of Ancient Egypt" available as a pdf here It of course covers all the Amarna mummies, with his opinions, and is worth having for those who do not have "Scanning the Pharaohs" by Hawass and Saleem and "An X-Ray Atlas of the Royal Mummies" by Harris and Wente, old but has information not found anywhere else, not least of course X-Rays of the mummies in print and microfiche form.

[Wepwawet]

On 5/3/2024 at 7:53 PM, Aldebaran said:

At the time of the death of Tut, were they ejected from KV62 and that was painted for the young king?  In no way do I agree with Reeves that any painting in there had anything to do with Nefertiti.

It was of course very interesting when Reeves first came up with this, then Watanabe's positive scans, and I'm sure most of us, even if skeptical, and I was not I will admit, I thought it was a thing, wanted something to be found. But, while there is still this large void right by KV62, it's not Nefertiti, and may be nothing to do with KV62 at all. What changed my mind was the second set of scans made by Factum Arte which looked through the paint to the surface, and did not detect any signs of palimpsests where Reeves was, and still is, convinced they exist.

However, the previous use of KV62 is of interest. Obviously it was made for somebody other than Tutankhamun, but who, and we will never know unfortunately. Nefertiti had a tomb, presumably for her anyway, within TA26, but never finished. This raises questions as to where Nefertiti died, Amarna or Memphis, and if Memphis, then she was responsible for the move out of Amarna?. But at this point a lot of rabbit holes present themselves and it would be easy to get tied in knots. For simplicity I go for her dying at Amarna, with her mummy perhaps being intially placed in TA26, if not in the unfinished part of the tomb thought meant for her, then in the main burial chamber. This gives us not five, or potentially six mummies if the boy was dead by then, but seven. Against this would be the KV62 sarcophagus, presumably for Nefettiti, and probably a full set of burial equipment. Very crowded in that burial chamber I think, maybe too crowded with three sarcophagi and three sets of shrines.

But a rabbit hole appears and we have Akhenaten's and Tiye's sarcophagi smashed to pieces in TA26, and Nefertiti's not? so I think it was never there. KV63 is too small, and it seems that it was only ever a store room for coffins stuffed with high quality pillows, really. This only leaves KV62 and 55. As the paint seems still to have been drying when Tutankhamun moved in, then I guess it was occupied for most of his reign, but by who, where did the sarcophagus come from, was it original to that tomb, or in storage somewhere. I'll agree that it's likely that at least some of the TA26 mummies, plus Nefertiti, were in KV62, and with undecorated walls. Then Tutankhamun dies and the fun begins, or rather continues as he was responsible for KV55, or at least how it was originally.

Edited May 13 by Wepwawet

[Wistman]

8 hours ago, Wepwawet said:

It was of course very interesting when Reeves first came up with this, then Watanabe's positive scans, and I'm sure most of us, even if skeptical, and I was not I will admit, I thought it was a thing, wanted something to be found. But, while there is still this large void right by KV62, it's not Nefertiti, and may be nothing to do with KV62 at all. What changed my mind was the second set of scans made by Factum Arte which looked through the paint to the surface, and did not detect any signs of palimpsests where Reeves was, and still is, convinced they exist.

However, the previous use of KV62 is of interest. Obviously it was made for somebody other than Tutankhamun, but who, and we will never know unfortunately. Nefertiti had a tomb, presumably for her anyway, within TA26, but never finished. This raises questions as to where Nefertiti died, Amarna or Memphis, and if Memphis, then she was responsible for the move out of Amarna?. But at this point a lot of rabbit holes present themselves and it would be easy to get tied in knots. For simplicity I go for her dying at Amarna, with her mummy perhaps being intially placed in TA26, if not in the unfinished part of the tomb thought meant for her, then in the main burial chamber. This gives us not five, or potentially six mummies if the boy was dead by then, but seven. Against this would be the KV62 sarcophagus, presumably for Nefettiti, and probably a full set of burial equipment. Very crowded in that burial chamber I think, maybe too crowded with three sarcophagi and three sets of shrines.

But a rabbit hole appears and we have Akhenaten's and Tiye's sarcophagi smashed to pieces in TA26, and Nefertiti's not? so I think it was never there. KV63 is too small, and it seems that it was only ever a store room for coffins stuffed with high quality pillows, really. This only leaves KV62 and 55. As the paint seems still to have been drying when Tutankhamun moved in, then I guess it was occupied for most of his reign, but by who, where did the sarcophagus come from, was it original to that tomb, or in storage somewhere. I'll agree that it's likely that at least some of the TA26 mummies, plus Nefertiti, were in KV62, and with undecorated walls. Then Tutankhamun dies and the fun begins, or rather continues as he was responsible for KV55, or at least how it was originally.

Tantalizing possibility of an undiscovered tomb perhaps.  I wonder if Hawass is now done with the west valley, after his Ankhesenamun dig failure.

[Wepwawet]

3 hours ago, Wistman said:

Tantalizing possibility of an undiscovered tomb perhaps.  I wonder if Hawass is now done with the west valley, after his Ankhesenamun dig failure.

From his explorations there a potential pointer to where at least some of the mummies were stored emerged, but not perhaps recognized as being tied to Amarna at that time. He found the remains of a workmans hut, and scattered about were fragments of rishi pattern coffins and other bits and bobs. I think he said that they were either making coffins there, or they were the result of the removal of the kings to form the caches. I don't think they were making coffins way out in the west valley, and it was recorded at the time that they used the tomb of, offhand, Ramesses VI as their workshop to strip and re-wrap the mummies. So, could what Hawass found have been connected with stripping the burials and mummies of varies Amarna personages, buried in either KV22 or 23, before Ay moved in.

[Wepwawet]

And continuing. While it can be speculated that at least some of the Amarna mummies may have gone into KV22 straight from Amarna, and then subsequently moved and ending up in KV35, there's a problem, there has to be, it's Amarna.

A few posts back, and in others in the past, I've stated that it does not look as if Tiye and her two companions had been moved into KV35 at the same time as Amunhotep III. They were unwrapped, had no coffins, not even the most basic, and had zero identification, further, the families of the other kings in the cache were not moved into KV35 with them, Thutmose IV being an example. Therefore it is reasonable to assume that they had been moved into KV35 before the cache was made, in fact I think it's obvious. It's here we have a problem in trying to place them in KV22, or KV23 for that matter. Let's presume though that they had been in KV22 with Amunhotep III. No matter the scale of the robbery, or robberies, of KV22, and no matter what happened to any of these mummies, what possible reason could there be to move out the Amarna mummies and leave Amunhotep III behind. I cannot think of a single reason, it makes zero sense to do this, therefore I cannot see that they were ever in KV22.

Let's then look at KV23, the tomb of Ay. This tomb had been desecrated, presumably by Horemheb, and stripped of just about everything, the sarcophagus smashed to pieces, though the lid was undamaged, and it is likely that it had never been placed on the sarcophagus. A mummy had been interred there as various pieces of a mummy had been discovered scattered about. Had the three Amarna mummies been in KV23, possibly, though why not KV22 down the road in the western valley, Tiye in with her husband. As Horemheb would have known the location of KV62, and he had not desecrated Tutankhamun, I see no reason for him to have desecrated the three Amarna mummies, no matter which tomb they were in at that time, and even Akhenaten in KV55, while losing his name and in very rudimentary burial, was still in a burial and not ripped to pieces. So even if the three Amarna mummies had been in KV23, they had been moved out, but not to KV22, in my opinion.

Now KV55. Setting aside Akhenaten, we know this tomb and KV62 across the way were covered by flood debris probably early in the reign of Horemheb, and remained undisturbed for the next 3,300 years. If the three Amarna mummies had been in KV55, they had been moved out by Horemeheb, but not to KV22 or 23, which Horemheb was trashing. He would have been aware that KV62 was stacked full, and did not put them there, a pity, as otherwise we would have found them in their coffins, unrobbed and with their names, then what would we talk about. Where then did Horemheb, and I'm convinced it was he, place these mummies.

KV35, it must have been KV35 because that is where they were found, and it fits with them being buried there before Amunhotep III and the other kings in that cache. Nope, he did not move them there, but somewhere else. Why, well, they were found in KV35 unwrapped and without coffins or anything to identify them. If Horemheb had moved them into KV35 it would have been only a short time after their deaths, or a comparitively short time. Both Tutankhamun and Akhenaten are in their tombs and both undamaged, even if Akhenaten is now anonymous. I do not believe that by this time the three Amarna mummies were in the condition they were found in, and wherever Horemheb put them, they would still have been wrapped, in their coffins and with their names. Had this been KV35, then some evidence of them other than their mummies would remain, robbers just want the valuables and are not interested in "robbing their names", or in laying them out neatly side by side after robbing their mummies. Therefore, these three mummies had not been robbed in KV35, but somewhere else, and not in any of the tombs previously mentioned.

At this point I draw a total blank, I have no idea where they had been immediately before KV35, or why there was a spare arm with them, and no armless mummy in KV35 it could have come from.

Edited May 14 by Wepwawet

[Wepwawet]

There is another factor, though I'm not sure if it has a bearing on the travels of these various mummies. This is the break down in order at the end of the Amarna period, for which some evidence exists, though not as clear cut as would be liked. One thing we do know that happened is that royal tombs were robbed in the VoK and had to be restored. Very clear evidence for this exists in the form of graffiti in KV43, the tomb of Thutmose IV, which shows that the treasurer of Egypt during the reign of Horemheb, Maya, the same Maya who held this position under Tutankhamun, was tasked with restoring the tomb.

This is a translation of the relevant graffito, taken from an article by Stephen Cross.

‘Year 8, 3rd month of the Akhet season, day
1, under the majesty of the King of Upper and
Lower Egypt, Djeserkheprure-Setepenre, Son
of Re, Horemheb-Mereyamun. His majesty life!
prosperity! health! commanded that the fan
bearer on the king’s right hand, the king’s
scribe, overseer of the Treasury, overseer of
the works in the Place of Eternity and leader
of the festival of Amun in Karnak, Maya, son
of the noble Iawy, born of the lady of the House
of Weret, be charged with to renew the burial
of King Menkheprure (Thothmosis IV), true
of voice, in the noble mansion upon the west
of Thebes.’

One thing this does show apart from the fact that royals tombs had been disturbed is that Horemheb is being busy in the VoK, either in performing damnatio memoriae, KV23 and KV55, or renewal in KV43, and though other graffiti from other tombs from this period do not exist, I would think that more than the tomb of Thutmose IV had been robbed. It does raise the question as to whether during the period when the capital was at Amarna the VoK was even guarded.

However, the mummies in question are Amarna mummies, so therefore can be presumed not to have been disturbed while still at Amarna, and when the court moved back to Memphis and the VoK re-activated as the royal necropolis, would have been guarded wherever they were, or at least nominally guarded as Tutankhamun was robbed twice immediately after burial, so their security was not exactly the best, in fact surviving evidence shows that it was the tomb builders who carried out the robberies, and that there was corruption at the highest levels, such a vast amount of gold would tempt anybody.

Is there then the possibility that in the first instance either Neferneferuaten or Tutankhamun has moved these mummies from Amarna to Thebes to an unknown tomb, then at some point between this and Horemheb being busy in the VoK, they had been robbed. Horemheb and Maya would know who they were no matter what condition their burials were in, they would recognise their faces still, and certainly know who the YL was by her facial wound. Then for reasons we can never know, there burials were not restored, but the mummies, plus the spare arm, just bizarre, placed in the chamber in KV35 as this was, for reasons we can never know, the most suitable, perhaps the tomb they had been in was close to KV35, such as KV12 and 48. KV48 is probably too small, and as yet it's full details remain unpublished, I don't even know to which dynasty it belongs. KV12 is 18th Dynasty, does not belong to a king, and is certainly big enough, or, somewhere yet to be discovered. The next closest tomb is KV57, Horemheb's, which I think rules it out.

[Wepwawet]

An issue with all of that above, stating that Horemheb was responsible for the final movements of these mummies into KV35, is that even if he did, why when knowing who they were, would he have placed them, or rather ordered others to do this, in KV35 in the condition they were. I cannot think of a reason why, unless he had as much dislike for them as he did for Akhenaten, but except for lack of name, Akhenaten had a far better burial than them.  Could Horemheb have had something against the these three people. Unlikely with the boy, or Tiye, whose memory, like that of her husband, was not trashed after Amarna. How about the YL, well that would depend on who she actually is, perhaps if Nefertiti he had reason to treat her mummy with disrespect, but they were all together, all equally desecrated, so that doesn't really fit.

Another blank, completely baffling.

[Wistman]

8 hours ago, Wepwawet said:

An issue with all of that above, stating that Horemheb was responsible for the final movements of these mummies into KV35, is that even if he did, why when knowing who they were, would he have placed them, or rather ordered others to do this, in KV35 in the condition they were. I cannot think of a reason why, unless he had as much dislike for them as he did for Akhenaten, but except for lack of name, Akhenaten had a far better burial than them.  Could Horemheb have had something against the these three people. Unlikely with the boy, or Tiye, whose memory, like that of her husband, was not trashed after Amarna. How about the YL, well that would depend on who she actually is, perhaps if Nefertiti he had reason to treat her mummy with disrespect, but they were all together, all equally desecrated, so that doesn't really fit.

Another blank, completely baffling.

It could be something inscrutable to us, like the corruption or negligence of a Horemheb deputy in charge, that left the three mummies un-re-wrapped (!) when the tomb was sealed, without the pharaoh's knowing it.  It seems logical to assume that Horemheb would personally inspect the tomb/cache when it was resealed, but maybe he didn't for some mundane reason.  Horemheb's governance system might have had a few flaws for all we know, though it seems from our perspective to have been excellent.  Human systems have human frailties.

However, with all the goings-on with the Amarna royal mummies - as you show so well - it's foolish not to ponder the state of the three as meaningful and some kind of clue to their story.  I think you're likely right about KV55...Tiye was probably not ever there.  The WV21 ladies hold a major key to Amarna mummy disbursal, so in this and in other ways it's critical for Hawass to nail down their genetic identities.  He's so eager to be the one to crack it, and I can't blame him.

The missing mummies though...  The west valley is scoured clean they say.  And I can't see them being put somewhere even more remote, since the other Amarnans weren't hidden so and it would simply be inconvenient.  And with all the jockeying around and the wrecked state of the WV21 mummies and those in KV35 - it's possible they're not extant or identifiable. 

"Forget it Jake.  It's Amarna."  Cue the soulful jazz Trumpet.

 

Edited May 15 by Wistman

[Aldebaran]

On 5/14/2024 at 12:23 PM, Wepwawet said:

At this point I draw a total blank, I have no idea where they had been immediately before KV35, or why there was a spare arm with them, and no armless mummy in KV35 it could have come from.

The mummy accepted as being that of Seti II has a missing right forearm.  But how to connect that to the Younger Lady, when you and I agree that the three mummies in the one chamber were not brought to KV35 at the same time as those with coffins [or halves of coffins] in the other chamber?

[Wepwawet]

8 hours ago, Wistman said:

The WV21 ladies hold a major key to Amarna mummy disbursal, so in this and in other ways it's critical for Hawass to nail down their genetic identities.  He's so eager to be the one to crack it, and I can't blame him.

And I never even got to mention them as I couldn't come up with scenario that seemed at least half decent, I mean, anybody could make up anything to account for them. The biggest problem is trying to tie them to Tiye and the two others as being in the same place at one stage, and then being separated, why, there was plenty of room in the side chamber of KV35. If only Belzoni had never discovered that tomb, but....

[Wepwawet]

6 hours ago, Aldebaran said:

The mummy accepted as being that of Seti II has a missing right forearm.  But how to connect that to the Younger Lady, when you and I agree that the three mummies in the one chamber were not brought to KV35 at the same time as those with coffins [or halves of coffins] in the other chamber?

I know there have been calls over the years to DNA test the arm, and they would need to DNA test all the rest of the royal mummies as well, though I have a vague memory that maybe it had been tested and found to be from a male. I think this was on a post on ED, but that's gone. The two options that I see are that as it was in amongst the pile of wrappings by the YL, it may have been collected up by accident from where she had been, but why not just take her mummy, why the remants of her wrappings, and that applies to Tiye as well, though not the boy. On the other hand it may belong to a mummy, a member of the family of Amunhotep II, who had been in that chamber, and not picked up when the rest of the mummy was removed, maybe it goes with one of the two skulls in the well chamber. But it's all just so odd and difficult to understand anything about this.

There is one thing that does strike me though, not just about this tomb, but others that have been robbed, is that at times the robbers seem to have taken delight in tearing some mummies limb from limb and scattering the parts, and with others they do damage, but are more "clean", such as the three mummies in question, and even Amunhotep II. A sign of multiple robberies, the first one more clinical, the second hoping to find something left from the first, and hence why they ripped them to pieces, another mystery.

[Wepwawet]

Sinking further into the tarpits. Mummies are notoriously brittle, so it's easy for bits to break off, if not fall off on their own accord. The KV35 boy's feet have both been broken off at the ankle at some point between discovery in 1898 and either 2003 or 2007. The robber wound to his thorax, as noted in a post further up this page was deemed by the University of York during their forensic examination of him, to have occured when his flesh was still subtle, so not very long after mummification, how long does it take them to get brittle, I don't know. One of the curiosities of KV35 is that when the boy was discovered by Loret in 1898, one of his toes was found to have broken off. It was subsequently found in another part of the tomb. This has been taken as evidence that at least he had been placed in another part of the tomb at some point, and further used as evidence that he was probably Webensenu, a son of tomb owner Amunhotep II. As this can now be ruled out, and will be definitively when his DNA results are announced this September, maybe, it still has him being an "intruder" in KV35.

The issue here is toes do not break off until they become brittle, therefore he may have been in a brittle state when moved into the tomb, not having been brittle when robbed. He, and the other two Amarna mummies, show signs of only having been robbed the once, or at least their bodies only being robbed once. There is just the one set of robber injuries to them, the top of the head, occuring when the robbers probably used an adze to hack into the wrappings from the head down, and the usual holes in the thorax and abdomen. What does this mean for this toe, well, either it broke of when he was carried into the tomb, which shows that he was not in a coffin, the condition he was found in, or, had been in a coffin in another part of the tomb, and turfed out when the cache was made, and along with Tiye and the YL. However, there was no sign of any unused coffins, or parts thereof, barring a mummy on a coffin lid belonging to Sekhnakht, which rules it out as ever having belonged to any of the three Amarna mummies.

The kings in the cache were all in coffins that had been bashed up for them specifically for the cache, they were most certainly not, as some folks think, their original coffins as they are neither rishi pattern coffins or have a trace of gold on them, they are coffins that a commoner would be buried in, and for the most part, not rich ones either. Therefore I believe that the three Amarna mummies had been carried into KV35 as they were found, no coffins, or perhaps strapped to a board at best. This will explain why where was nothing whatsoever in KV35 to identify them by. This does though raise the possibility that there is a tomb out there that has some trace of them, a coffin fragment with a name, a shabti, some more valuable item that robbers missed.

I suspect more and more that the spare arm is a red herring and that it belonged to a member of the family of Amunhotep II and was already in that chamber when the three Amarna mummies were placed there, and I also suspect that the scraps of wrappings with them, one piece partially covering Tiye's face, belonged primarily to the previous occupants. Modern photos give a false impression as they only show them after they had been moved back from Cairo in, I think, 1912 after G.E Smith had examined them, and then placed on some type of straw matttress with wrappings draped partially over them, when found they were on the bare floor.

Edited May 16 by Wepwawet

[Aldebaran]

6 hours ago, Wepwawet said:

I suspect more and more that the spare arm is a red herring and that it belonged to a member of the family of Amunhotep II and was already in that chamber when the three Amarna mummies were placed there, and I also suspect that the scraps of wrappings with them, one piece partially covering Tiye's face, belonged primarily to the previous occupants. Modern photos give a false impression as they only show them after they had been moved back from Cairo in, I think, 1912 after G.E Smith had examined them, and then placed on some type of straw matttress with wrappings draped partially over them, when found they were on the bare floor.

The modern-day story of KV35 is here:

https://www.academia.edu/49342485/WHERE_ARE_THE_MUMMIES_OF_THE_COMMONER_KINGS

Although the tomb was explored by Loret in the 19th Century, the mummies from the other chamber were brought to Cairo at the beginning of the 20th--but not those three. Loret tried to move all the mummies to Cairo very soon after he explored the tomb but was instructed to take them all back!  Around 1901 the kingly mummies were accepted at Cairo.  When Smith examined the trio from the one chamber I have forgotten [if I ever knew] but it was sometime before 1912 when his book was publlshed.  Did he look at them in situ?

A few years ago Dr. Zahi Hawass instructed that a "quick test" for gender be done on the Younger Lady.  I even read the report of the results as they were once published online.  What was tested?  A bit of bone.  As I wrote at the time, knowing full well the mummy was a female due to her wide pelvis and my faith in Professor Smith. the bone must have come from one of the spare parts found in her wrappings.  Much more recently the Younger Lady has been reconstructed with an unbent right arm replaced near the shoulder with only the right hand missing.  That was never found because very likely it had been broken off and thrown into a robber's sack still wearing the rings the thieves wanted.  If they could not remove certain jewelry items, they broke or hacked off body parts to facilitate that.  Of course, the chest was broken into to get at the valuable heart scarab.  Sometimes it seems to me that when the robbers entered a tomb and discovered the occupants were devoid of valuable items, they took out their disappointment on the helpless dead and tore them to pieces.  That's probably what ultimately happened to those left in KV21.

Anyway, the bone sample taken for the gender test must have been from the forearm with the clasped hand--the part that had never belonged to the Younger Lady and was certainly originally part of the mummy of a male king.