KV56 – The Gold Tomb
In 5 January 1908, Mr. Edward Russell Ayrton and Mr. Theodore
Monroe Davis discovered in this tomb part of the jewellery of Queen Tausret and
Seti II, which had perhaps been cached here by Setnakht, when he usurped KV14,
the queen's tomb . This tomb is uninscribed and unidentified .
KV56 represents one of the most splendid finds of
jewellery ever made in the Valley of the Kings . Ayrton's excavation in 1908
unearthed, in the lower of the two strata in the burial fill among other items,
a circlet, several finger rings, bracelets, a series of necklace ornaments and
amulets, a pair of silver gloves and a silver sandal . Since the deposit
included objects inscribed with the names of both Seti II and Queen Tawosret,
Maspero concluded that this was a cache of material salvaged from the burial of
Tawosret when her own tomb was usurped by Sethnakhte . Cyril Aldred, however,
offered a rather more imaginative interpretation . KV56, he argued, was an
essentially intact burial, in which the " stratum about a half inch thick
of broken gold leaf and stucco covering an area of some four square feet "
represented all that remained of a completely rotted coffin . The pair of
silver gloves, containing eight finger rings when found, were presumably
coverings for the hands of the mummy .
But whose was this tiny, disintegrated burial ? .
Perhaps, as Aldred suggested, a child of Seti II and Tawosret, buried during
the reign of the former .
In type, the location and design of this tomb clearly
assign it to the late 18th Dynasty, whatever its subsequent use .
The shaft, which is approximately the same depth as that of WV24, but even
wider, is the largest in the valley ; and the single room, had it been
completed, would have been larger than that of any comparable KV pit chamber .
KV58 – The Chariot Tomb
The tomb was discovered on January 1909 by Ernest
Harold Jones, and the excavations was made by Harold Jones for Theodore Davis
on 1909 .
" … next day we began going down the pit finding
very interesting fragments of furniture all thrown about in the debris and of
an interesting period – the end of the 18th Dynasty the objects
bearing cartouches of the Pharaoh Ay and another called Tut-ankh-Amon, the
latter of whom has not yet been discovered or his tomb … " . By : Harold Jones
.
KV58 was the one big discovery which Harold Jones, in
early January 1909, would make for Davis in the valley . It is therefore rather
sad that, in his publication, Davis should give credit for the find to Edward
Ayrton in 1907 .
The tomb, consisting of a shaft with a single chamber
leading off from the bottom, was clearly a satellite tomb of Horemheb's
sepulchre, KV57 . The bulk of the finds recovered by Jones, however, with the
possible exception of a beautiful calcite shabti figure, had no connection with
the original owner . Fragments of chariot harness, they seem rather to have
originated in the tomb of Ay in the West Valley, and to have been dumped into
the half-filled shaft at a later date .
The contents of the tomb included a number of crumpled-up
sheets of thin gold foil, in a variety of shapes and embossed with a range of
decorative motifs . These, together with three or four calcite knobs and two
faience box handles, had been dumped or washed into the tomb's open shaft in
antiquity . The name of Tutankhamun occurred three times ( twice with that of
Akhnesenamun ), that of Ay before his elevation to the throne four times, and
Ay's name as king a further three times .
The assemblage evidently originates from a single
source – the West Valley tomb of Ay – and was deposited in KV58 at the end of
the New Kingdom, at the time the tombs in the necropolis were being dismantled
. Its presence in KV58 may reflect the reinterment of Ay's body in nearby KV57,
which other indications suggest was perhaps being employed as a cache at this
time .
This tomb assigns to the cache in which Mr. Theodore Monroe
Davis and his assistants in 1907 found a number of objects, including a fine
alabaster statuette and several pieces of gold leaf bearing the name of Tutankhamun,
which must have been discarded from the loot taken from the real tomb of
Tutankhamun when it was robbed in ancient times .
This tomb, which is close to the tomb of Horemheb, is
merely a small pit-tomb, and can never have been intended for a royal burial
tomb .
Part ( 37 ) .. Coming
SoOoOon .....
Uploading ..... ↻
Follow us to receive
our latest posts, Leave your comment and Tell your friends about our Blog ..
Thank you ☺☺
No comments:
Post a Comment