KV21 – Unknown Tomb .. Part ( 30 )

This tomb is one of a group of four uninscribed and unidentified tombs not far from the tomb of Hatshepsut, and between it and the tomb of the vizier Userhet ( No. 45 ) .

" The entry corridor ends with a steep flight of steps, which usher one into another corridor leading to the burial chamber . The latter is a fairly large room with a single pillar at its center . Deep ledges or shelves carved in the limestone run along two of the walls . The floor is littered with small stones, along with bits of human and animal mummies, pottery shards, wood fragments and other miscellaneous fragmentary artifacts … " . By : Donald Ryan .

KV21, opened by Giovanni Battista Belzoni on 9 October 1817, was found to be blocked " at the end of the first passage " by " a brick wall, which … had been forced through " . This breach led, via a further corridor, into " a pretty large chamber, with a single pillar in the centre " . In one corner of this chamber " we found two mummies on the ground quite naked, without cloth or case . They were females, and their hair pretty long, and well preserved … " . A room off the burial chamber contained " fragments of several earthen vessels, and also pieces of vases of alabaster … " . An intact pottery jar, " with a few hieroglyphics on it, and large enough to contain two buckets of water ", was found " On the top of the staircase " .

A re-excavation of KV21 and study of the surviving contents were undertaken by Donald Ryan beginning in 1989 . James Burton, writing in the 1820s-1830s, had described it as " a clean new tomb – the water not having got into it " . By 1989 the situation had changed dramatically : the entrance had been buried under many feet of flood debris, the water having penetrated the roughly blocked entrance doorway leaving a tide mark several centimetres above the flood level – carrying in with it half of a calcite shabti of Ramses VI or VII and other debris .

The walls were well cut, with red and black masons' marks still in evidence, and apparently never intended to receive plaster . Several of the items noted by Belzoni were still present, including fragments of 24 large pottery storage jars of typical mid-18^th-Dynasty form, dating post-Hatshepsut and pre-Tuthmosis IV . These had contained small linen packages of natron, presumably left over from the embalming process, and a number of them were found scattered around the side chamber . Fragments of a blue-painted vessel from the corridor, datable to no earlier than the reign of Amenhotep II, may be intrusive . Other finds included pieces of decorated wood and parts of a canopic jar, and five small seals bearing the jackal-and-nine-captives motif .

The most intriguing of Ryan's discoveries, were Belzoni's two female mummies, still present in the tomb, albeit dismembered . Nothing has yet been discovered to suggest their identity, but Ryan was able to observe that they had been " embalmed in a special pose with their left arm bent at the elbow across the chest … with the left hand clenched, the right arm held straight at its side " . This is an attitude adopted by queenly burials such as that of the " Elder Lady " from the Amenhotep II cache ( KV35 ), thought by some to be Queen Tiya, wife of Amenhotep III ; in all probability, therefore, the two ladies from KV21 were members of the 18^th Dynasty royal line .

The close similarity in the plan of KV21 to that of the two " queens' suites " prepared for Tiya and ( probably ) Sitamun in the tomb of Amenhotep III ( WV22 ), added to the pose of the mummies, is further evidence that KV21 too was a queenly tomb of comparable date .

Part ( 31 ) .. Coming SoOoOon .....

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