Another Mr. Theodore Monroe Davis find . The tomb lies
near those of Setnakht, Tuthmosis I and Seti II, in the west side of the valley
. Siptah was, it will be remembered, the Pharaoh who was the first husband of
Queen Tausret, and who, indeed, attained the royal title by his marriage with
that lady, who was queen in her own right .
His tomb was discovered in 1905, by Mr. Edward Russell
Ayrton and Mr. Theodore Monroe Davis, the tomb is accessible, and part of the
funerary furniture is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York .
It consists of a flight of steps, three corridors, an antechamber, and a
four-pillared hall, of which only a single pillar was standing when the tomb
was discovered, and that in a very bad condition .
Beyond the hall were two more corridors leading into a square room ; but
the condition of these last portions of the tomb was disastrous, the rock
having collapsed .
The tomb had been rifled in ancient days, and, indeed
the mummy of Siptah was one of those found in the tomb of Amenhotep II . One
curious feature is that the cartouches of Siptah had everywhere been erased and
subsequently restored .
Some of the paintings are of great merit . Mention may
be made of the beautiful figure of the kneeling Isis, admirably reproduced in
Mr. Davis's volume on the tomb, and of the vulture-ceiling of the main corridor
.
' Ayrton penetrated as far as the second chamber, but
owing to the bad state of the rock he abandoned it as being " most unsafe
to work in " … Mr. Davis and I inspected the tomb in February, 1912, and
so no further collapse had occurred … we decided to complete its excavation ' .
By : Harry Burton .
History and archaeology
Discovered by Edward Russell Ayrton in November 1905,
KV47 was excavated down to the antechamber, but only cleared fully by Harry
Burton in 1912 . In 1922 Howard Carter cleared the area around KV47,
discovering several ostraca and other small objects associated with the tomb .
From the finds recovered by Ayrton and Burton, it seems that KV47 received the
burials of both Siptah and his mother, Queen Tiaa . The burials were eventually
disturbed, however, and the king's cartouches erased from the tomb walls – only
later to be restored . Unfortunately, the evidence is complex and there is no
agreement among Egyptologists as to the exact timing, sequence and motivation
of these events .
The bones found by Burton in the sarcophagus of KV47 seem to have
belonged to an intrusive burial of the Third Intermediate Period . The mummy
identified as that of Siptah by the 21st Dynasty necropolis priests
was discovered in the Amenophis ( Amenhotep ) II cache ( KV35 ) in 1898 . Apart
from the somewhat withered and shortened left leg, which was apparently caused
by poliomyelitis, the king's body had been much battered in the search for
valuable amulets . The mummy's right arm had been reattached with splints at
the time of the reburial .
Architecture and decoration
While
the outer part of the structure follows the plan of Seti II's tomb ( KV15 )
quite closely ( with the addition of the entrance sarcophagus ramp found
Amenmesse's tomb [ KV10] ), the interior of Siptah's monument is unusual in a
number of ways . Two corridors, rather than a corridor and stairway, were
constructed beyond the pillared hall and, uniquely, a side passage was cut to
the left of the corridor after the antechamber . This was abandoned when it ran
into the nearby tomb KV32 . The shattered burial chamber is also exceptional in
having no ancillary storerooms ; perhaps this was due to the unsuitable nature
of the shale in which this hall was cut . The abandoned passage may have been
intended to lead to storage rooms, though it is also possible that a separate
sarcophagus hall for the king's mother Tiaa was intended .
Only the outer passages of Siptah's tomb were plastered and decorated,
and although the motifs are standard ones, the quality of the decoration is
high . Beyond the usual entrance motif, perhaps the finest examples of Maet
seated on the heraldic plants of the Upper ( lotus ) and Lower ( papyrus )
Egypt occur on the reveals of the entrance .
The litany of Re appears in the first
passage and at the beginning of the second, and is followed by a number of
scenes stressing underworld deities, including Anubis before the bier of Osiris
. Also, we can see in the first passage a youthful Siptah before Re-Horakhty
receiving life from him . Scenes from the Amduat were also placed in the
third passage, but these are now largely destroyed .
Funerary equipment
The
sarcophagus of Siptah was discovered in the burial chamber of the tomb by Harry
Burton in 1912 . The sides of the coffer are decorated with alternating triple
kheker-ornaments and recumbent jackals, above a lower register of underworld
demons, a design followed by a number of Siptah's successor . The cartouches
are recut, like many cartouches within the tomb, though this fact does not
necessarily indicate that the monument was usurped from an earlier king .
Among the mass of as yet unpublished calcite fragments brought to light
during the excavations carried out on behalf of Theodore Davis are said to have
been discerned the remains of a rectangular sarcophagus, two anthropoid coffins
and two canopic chests . These, for the most part, are probably to be divided
between Siptah himself and his mother, Queen Tiaa . However, some of the coffin
fragments are said to carry the name of Merenptah, and to be associated with the
anthropoid coffin fragment of this king now in the British Museum in London .
Their presence within KV47 has not yet been explained . Davis found hundreds of
fragments of Egyptian alabaster . Many of these belonged to between 40 and 50
shabtis inscribed with the names of Siptah . Some were sections of funerary
vessels, all these fragments now in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York .
The burial chamber and the sarcophagus of Siptah
The
burial chamber is rectangular, its Dimensions is 13.73 m in width by 9.07 m in
length, and an average height of 5.3 m, with four square pillars in one row and
it is unfinished . The red paint contours on the back wall show where the
additional pillars were to be cut . There is a rectangular shallow pit in the
floor of the compartment . The vaulted ceiling was fallen in the area where the
sarcophagus lay . The traces of the ceiling can be seen on the back, left and
right walls . Due to the poor condition of the rock, the front of the chamber
and its pillars have collapsed . There are no side compartments ( chambers ) .
The sarcophagus is of red granite, and has the effigy of the king on the
lid, with traces of yellow and red paint in the hands, the scepter and the face
. The upper edges of the sides were damaged when the lid was raised .
The sarcophagus of the king Siptah is in cartouche-shaped in form with
effigy on led . The box's exterior and interior decorated with excerpts from
the Book of the Earth . Also, we can see on the exterior of the lid Siptah as Osiris surrounded by Isis, Nephthys that they
kneeling around Siptah's cartouches, a pair of cobras with human heads and
arms, a snake and a crocodile .
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