The Ancient Egypt: KV62 – Tomb of Tutankhamun .. Part ( 28 )

General view

The discovery of this tomb, with its priceless contents, by far the most valuable find of modern Egyptology from an artistic point of view, though less important historically, was made by Mr. Howard Carter, working in collaboration with the late Earl of Carnarvon, on 4^th November, 1922 .

The tomb was opened up on 26^th November by Mr. Carter and Lord Carnarvon ; and the opening of the actual burial-chamber, with its great shrine containing the sarcophagus and various coffins took place on Friday, 16^th February, 1923 .

It was found that the tomb had been broken into in ancient days ; but the robbers had evidently been interrupted in their work, and though the confusion in the antechamber was great, the contents of the tomb had not suffered to any extent . As a tomb, KV62 is comparatively insignificant ; its interest lies almost entirely in what it contained .

A flight of sixteen steps leads down to a door which was found sealed with the seal of the Theban necropolis at the discovery in 1922, the seal having evidently been applied by the royal inspectors when they visited the tomb after its violation by the robbers .

The doorway leads into a corridor, and this through a second doorway into an antechamber which is the largest chamber in the tomb, measuring 26 feet by 8½ feet . A doorway in the left-hand corner of this chamber opened into an annexe, and both of these rooms were absolutely packed with funerary furniture, some of it of the richest and most artistic character and workmanship . The most striking piece, where almost all were striking, may have been the golden throne, now in the Cairo Museum . On the north side, the antechamber was closed by a plastered wall, before which stood two life-sized statues of the king in varnished wood, with gold headdresses, kilts, and adornments . When this wall was broken through, the outermost shrine of wood overlaid with gold foil was disclosed, and this proved to have three similar canopies within it before the actual sarcophagus was reached . A fourth room, which was used as a store-chamber, opened off the burial-hall, and some of the finest articles, including the exquisite Canopic chest, were found in this small chamber .

The sarcophagus is of red granite and painted yellow . It measures 9 feet long by 4 feet 10 inches broad, and 4 feet 10 inches high, and is exquisitely carved, with a cavetto cornice, and figures of the four guardian goddesses, Isis, Nephthys, Neith, and Selqet, at the corners, enveloping the sarcophagus with their outstretched wings . The proper lid ( original cover ) had evidently been lost, and had been replaced by a broken lid of red granite, which was repaired, and the sarcophagus covered with a red wash to match the colour of the lid . Within the sarcophagus were two wooden anthropoid coffins overlaid with thin sheet gold, each presenting a portrait image of the dead Pharaoh, with the crook and scourge of Osiris ; and within the second of these was the third coffin, of pure gold, also moulded into an image of the king, and most wonderfully chased and inlaid with semi-precious stones and coloured glazes . This held the much-decayed mummy of Tutankhamun, who proved to have died at the age of eighteen or thereabout . Over the mummy's head was a fine gold mask of the young Pharaoh, inlaid with semi-precious stones and coloured glazes .

Most of the treasures of the tomb have now been removed to the Cairo Museum, where they can be seen . There still remain in the burial-chamber the sarcophagus, with the outer of the two wooden coffins, and the mummy of the king . The wooden coffin, with its gold overlay and beautiful modeling, is a beautiful piece of work .

The paintings of the tomb are confined to the burial-hall, and are poor, compared to many others in the valley . They represent the king's funeral, the divine father Ay, his successor, performing as a priest the ceremony of the " Opening of the Mouth " of the mummy, and the Pharaoh offering to various gods .

Discovery

" All next day we worked at high pressure, and ere long uncovered what proved to be a sunken staircase cut in the living rock of the valley's bed . The deeper we descended the more evident it became that a find of importance was before us . It was late in the evening when a doorway, blocked and sealed, was disclosed . The seals were those of a king – King Tutankhamun ! . And then beyond all doubt we knew that we were on the edge of a great discovery . I spare you my feelings ! " . By : Howard Carter .

The first step of the staircase leading down to the tomb of the boy-king Tutankhamun was uncovered on 4 November 1922, beneath the foundations of Ramessid workmen's huts near the entrance to the tomb of Ramses VI ( KV9 ) . By the following day, 5 November, the outer blocking had been revealed and Lord Carnarvon was wired in England . With his arrival, work began on emptying the corridor of its rubble fill ; and by 26 November – " the day of days " – Carter, Carnarvon, Arthur Callender and Lady Evelyn Herbert were able to poke their flickering candle through into the outermost room ( the antechamber ) and gasp with stupefaction . They were witnesses to an impossible vision : a virtually intact royal tomb, just dripping with gold, from one of the highest points of Egyptian civilization .

" At first I could see nothing, the hot air escaping from the chamber causing the candle flame to flicker, but presently, as my eyes grew accustomed to the light, details of the room within emerged slowly from the mist, strange animals, statues, and gold – everywhere the glint of gold " . By : Howard Carter .

The clearance of the tomb and the final preparations for transporting the finds to Cairo would take almost a decade of Carter's life . The cost for Carnarvon would be dearer still : bitten by a mosquito ( for some, the agent of Pharaoh's revenge ), septicaemia set in, Carnarvon sickened, and death soon followed – on 5 April 1923 .

Architecture and decoration

While in its essential plan and dimensions KV62 is not unlike private tombs of the period, its complexity is unparalleled among those structures . As Carter pointed out, by rotating the chambers 90 degrees, KV62 could be seen to resemble the typical royal groundplan of the 18^th Dynasty, and this fact might well indicate the architectural goal of the ancient architects faced with the adaptation of a preexisting private tomb . After the entrance stairway, the single passage descends to the antechamber with its annexe and, to the right, the sunken burial chamber with the subsidiary room known as the treasury . These last two rooms may have been added at the time of the king's death .

Only the burial chamber received decoration, and this is very similar to that later encountered in the tomb of Ay ( KV23 ) . There is no kheker-frieze or dado, and the walls all share the same uniform golden ground .

On the west wall are depicted the apes of the first hour of the Amduat ; while on the north wall the king appears before Nut in a similar manner and, again, with the royal Ka embracing Osiris . Further along this same wall King Ay performs the opening of the mouth ceremony before the mummy of Tutankhamun, thereby establishing his claim to the throne .

On the south wall the king is followed by Anubis as he appears before Hathor, Mistress of the West . The south wall of the burial chamber shows Tutankhamun welcomed into the realms of the underworld by Hathor, Anubis and Isis standing behind him ( the figure of Isis was destroyed when the plastered partition wall was dismantled to allow the extraction of the shrines ) .

On the east wall, Tutankhamun's mummy is shown being pulled along on a sledge in the procession to the necropolis – the funerary cortege including the two viziers ( distinguished by their dress ) and a single, final figure who is perhaps to be identified as the general and future king, Horemheb . Although such representations of the funerary procession are common in private tombs of the New Kingdom, they are otherwise unattested in the royal necropolis .

All the figures in this tomb are rather curiously represented, with those of the north, east and west walls being depicted with the exceptional proportions current during the Amarna period, and those of the south in more traditional style .

The burial of an Egyptian king

With the discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb it was possible to see for the very first time the riches of an Egyptian royal burial – and they were immense . More staggering still is the realization that Tutankhamun was a young and relatively minor king, and that space within his tomb was severely restricted . Imagine the wealth once stored in a tomb the size of that of Ramses II ! .

Robberies

" Plunderers had entered …, and entered … more than once " . By : Howard Carter .

One of the most interesting aspects of the Tutankhamun burial is the evidence it preserved of at least two robberies, carried out within a short time of the interment and perhaps by individuals drawn from the burial party .

At the time of the first break in the entrance corridor was empty, save for jars of embalming material and other items which had been stored there for want of space within the tomb proper . Both the outer and inner corridor blockings were broken through at the top left hand corner, giving access to the antechamber which the robbers ransacked primarily for metal but also linen, oils and perfumes . The robbery was soon discovered, order restored, the corridor emptied of funerary goods ( and the materials reburied in pit KV54 ), filled up to the roof with limestone chippings, and the tomb resealed with the seal of the necropolis administration .

A short time later, the tomb was clearly entered again, though this time with far more difficulty than previously since the thieves now had to burrow through the corridor fill . This second band of robbers gained access to the entire tomb, and among their booty was perhaps 60 percent of the jewellery stored in the treasury . They evidently entered the tomb at least twice ; on the last occasion they must have been apprehended : a knotted scarf filled with booty – eight gold rings – had been confiscated by the authorities and casually tossed back into one of the antechamber boxes . The breached entrances to the burial chamber and at either end of the entrance corridor were closed and resealed with the same jackal-and-nine-captives motif, and the hole dug through the corridor fill reblocked . One of the officials involved with this restoration was the scribe Djehutymose, of whom Carter had earlier found traces, together with his chief Maya, in the tomb of Tuthmosis IV ( KV43 ) . Here, in the tomb of Tutankhamun, Djehutymose repacked in a rough-and-ready manner the items the robbers had displaced, and docketed the boxes with their new contents ; he left no official record of his visit, but contented himself with a scribbled name in hieratic on the undersurface of a calcite jar stand .

Although the outer shrines had been opened, the robbers had not progressed as far as the king's mummy – the burial proper was intact .

The mummy

The unrifled remains of Tutankhamun ( KV62 ) show that the royal mummy itself was prepared with items both to protect and to sustain in the beyond . The carefully crafted face mask preserved the image of the deceased ruler and associated him with named deities whose powers or attributes would be beneficial in the afterlife, while the items of insignia placed upon him guaranteed his rulership in the next world . The various amulets enclosed within the mummy wrappings also provided magical assistance in various ways with some, for example the vulture amulets placed at the neck, apparently being reserved for royal mummies alone . Understandably, few items from this group survived the robbers and dismantling parties .

The coffin

The royal mummy was contained within a coffin – usually itself nested within one or two further coffins – made of gilded wood or precious metal . While many early Egyptian coffins were decorated to resemble tombs and houses, by the Middle Kingdom an anthropoid coffin shape had appeared which copied the appearance of the mummy and symbolically provided an alternative " body " for the deceased's spirit . This is the form used in New Kingdom royal burials .

As with the sarcophagus, the figures of the goddesses Isis and Nephthys, the four sons of Horus ( Duamutef, Imsety, Qebehsenuef and Hapi ) and other deities connected with Osiris were routinely added to the decoration of the coffin walls in order to provide a ring of protection around the deceased " Osiris " . Many attributes of the god Osiris – such as his curved beard, tripartite " divine " wig, and hands crossed on the breast – could be added to the form of the royal coffin . Another type of anthropoid mummy case, which developed in the Theban area during the Second Intermediate Period, is the so-called rishi ( Arabic for " father " ) coffin, named for the patterning which covers much of the lid . This feather patterning represents the mummy as a bird-like ba or " soul " of the deceased himself, it is often augmented by the overlay of the enfolding wings of goddesses such as Isis, Nephthys, Nut and Nekhbet . Although abandoned in private burials early in the 18^th Dynasty, this coffin type continued to be used for royal burials throughout the New Kingdom – for example in the coffin from the tomb of Tutankhamun, which combine the symbolism of the basic anthropoid from with that of both the Osiris and rishi types .

The sarcophagus

Stone sarcophagi were used for royal burials at least from the time of Hatshepsut, and were designed to hold the inner coffin or coffins . In the 18^th Dynasty, sarcophagi were at first made of quartzite : the earliest known models were copies in stone of the wooden coffins used throughout the Middle Kingdom, but with the upper surface of the lid carved in the form of the royal cartouche . Eventually, corners became rounded and the box itself followed in the shape of the cartouche . During this time the figures of Anubis and the four sons of Horus were carved on the sides, and Isis and Nephthys adorned the head and foot ends of the box . Radical stylistic changes took place during the second half of the 18^th Dynasty . From Amenhotep III on, the favoured material was red granite . The sarcophagi of Tutankhamun, Ay and Horemheb are all rectangular, shrine-like boxes with a cavetto cornice running around their tops . The protective figures of the goddesses Isis, Nephthys, Neith and Selqet adorn the four corners, though Anubis and the four sons of Horus continue to be represented on the sides . In the 19^th Dynasty, royal sarcophagi were usually constructed of red granite and were made considerably, being as much as 3.7 m ( 12 ft ) in length and 2.7 m ( 9 ft ) in Height . Weighing many tons, they thus became part of the security of the tomb itself, with inner anthropoid sarcophagi, of calcite, sometimes placed within . Ramessid royal sarcophagi were inscribed with scenes and texts from books of the netherworld ; and from the time of Merenptah, the top of the sarcophagus lid was decorated with an image of the king, carved in raised relief between Isis and Nephthys, while the underside of the lid depicted the outstretched form of the goddess Nut . Under Ramses VII ( KV1 ) standards declined, with the presumably coffined royal mummy being simply buried in a pit cut into the burial chamber floor and covered with a huge granite lid .

The funerary shrines

The largest items placed in the royal tomb were the gilded wooden shrines enclosing the sarcophagus . The Turin plan of the tomb of Ramses IV ( KV2 ) shows a similar configuration to that actually encountered in the burial of Tutankhamun : four shrines, nested one within the other, with a pall-frame covered with a sequin-studded shroud inserted between the outermost and second-outermost shrines . The dimensions of a number of burial chambers in the Valley, together with the recovery of several gilded bronze pall-sequins and actual shrine fragments, indicate that such structures were standard fare . The remains of a gilded wooden shrine recovered by Theodore Davis from the tomb of Tiye ( KV55 ), prepared by Akhenaten for the Amarna burial of his mother Tiye, indicate further that their use was not restricted solely to the king himself . Whereas Tutankhamun's shrines are decorated with texts and scenes from the underworld books, Tiye's shrine was decorated in pure Amarna style, with images of the royal family under the protective, life-giving rays of the solar disc .

The canopic chest and containers

The mummification process involved the removal of the internal organs, or viscera – liver, lungs, stomach and intestines . These organs were embalmed and wrapped separately and placed in four containers known as canopic jars within a canopic chest . ( The term " canopic " is a misnomer, coined by early antiquarians linking these jars with the pilot of Menelaus ( the king of Sparta, husband of Helen and brother of Agamemnon . Helen was stolen from him by Paris, an event that provoked the Trojan War " Troy " ), who was worshipped at Canopus in the Delta in the form of a human-headed jar ) . Several complete and fragmentary sets of canopic equipment are known from the Valley of the Kings .

The royal canopic chests of the early New Kingdom were at first made of quartzite like the sarcophagi they resembled, calcite later becoming the favoured material from at least the reign of Amenhotep II on ( KV35 ) . That of Ramses II was inlaid ( KV7 ) . Decoration ( except for the canopic chest of Akhenaten from el-Amarna, which employed figures of the falconiform Re-Horakhty ) consisted of the protective presence of the goddesses Isis, Nephthys, Selqet and Neith usually set at the corners . Shrine-like in shape, the chests were divided internally into compartments to receive four jars, or else made with four cylindrical borings in the solid stone into which mummiform canopic coffinettes, perhaps of gold ( as in the tomb of Tutankhamun ), containing the embalmed viscera could be inserted . The jars or hollows were closed with human-headed stoppers .

The canopic chest could be inserted in a pit dug at the foot-end of the sarcophagi, or stored in a separate niche or small room – as, for example, in the tomb of Tutankhamun, where the canopic furniture was installed in the treasury – off the burial chamber . The boy-king's equipment was further enclosed within a large shrine of gilded wood, and fragments of other shrines have been tentatively identified in the tomb of Amenhotep III ( WV22 ) . The use of canopic chests was evidently abandoned in the 20^th Dynasty, when individual jars of large size again came into vogue . One surviving example is that of Ramses IV ( KV2 ) .

Ritual figures and models

The tomb of Tutankhamun has preserved the largest and most spectacular array of ritual figures ever found, stored in upright, resin-coated wooden shrines . Many of the figures are heavily gilded, unlike the less complete and more modest sets which have been recovered from ransacked tombs in the valley in the Valley of the Kings ( including those of Amenhotep II – KV35 – Tuthmosis IV – KV43 – and Horemheb – KV57 ) . The two principal figures in Tutankhamun's burial were the life-size Ka statues guarding the sealed entrance to the burial chamber .

Among the smaller royal images may be noted statuettes of the king striding, harpooning or set upon the back of a leopard . Some 28 statues of the gods included Atum, Duamutef and Sekhmet, as well as more obscure deities such as Mamu and Menkeret .

Tutankhamun was buried with a staggering 413 shabti figures – magical fieldworkers for the next life, produced in stone, faience and wood . Most other royal tombs seem to have contained far fewer ( Hatshepsut had only one ), or none at all ( as with Tuthmosis III and Ay ), though the tomb of Seti I ( KV17 ) is said to have contained as many as 700-1000 when first uncovered by Belzoni . With the figures were often interred model hoes and other implements, the tools of the shabti's trade .

Other classes of ritual object frequently encountered in 18^th Dynasty royal burials are the " Osiris-beds " - wooden trays in the shape of this god planted with seeds of grain which would germinate after the tomb had been closed, to symbolize the continuation of life after death . Model boats and chariots were also included in the burial, perhaps as a symbolic means of transporting the dead king through the underworld, and large ritual couches with a similarly symbolic purpose .

Their meaning usually more obscure than obvious, a host of other ritual objects have been found buried in the royal tombs, including faience forelegs, amulets, amuletic vessels and other arcane offerings . Most of the large royal burials also included protective deposits of " magic bricks " surmounted by divine images, placed in niches in the walls of the burial chamber . The tomb of Tutankhamun possessed four such niches, that of Amenhotep III as many as eleven .

Objects of daily life

Although a great deal of the material buried with Pharaoh was ritualistic in nature, an extraordinary number of objects of daily life was also deposited in the tomb so that the god-king's life in the next world would be not too different from that on earth . In this respect, the royal tomb was much the same as that of the well-to-do commoner .

The inventory typically included personal clothing and precious jewels, perfumes and cosmetics, games and game-boxes, musical instruments, writing materials, weaponry, heirlooms and other personal mementoes, elegant tableware in precious metals, stone, pottery and glass, and plentiful food supplies – such as boxes of preserved meats, grain, fruits and copious supplies of wine and beer . Practical furniture, too, has been found, including chairs, stools, beds ( both folding and fixed ), boxes, chests and baskets, and lamps .

The reuse of royal burial equipment

Although a new royal tomb was normally cut for each monarch, old excavations were occasionally taken over and adapted for a new owner . In the same way, a number of funerary objects can be recognized as having been taken over and reused by later individuals . Two types of reuse should be distinguished : the earlier, in which unused and surplus burial equipment never actually removed from store was pressed into service by a later king to bolster his funerary trousseau – as with Tutankhamun's employment of funerary objects demonstrably discarded by Akhenaten ( a number of the ritual figures, as well as other items ) and Ankhkheprure Nefernefruaten ( including the canopic coffinettes and mummy bands ) ; and a later type of reuse, when previously used burial furniture was taken over by a new, and not necessarily royal, owner at the time the earlier burial was dismantled, because of its inherent magical potency .

KV54 – Tomb of Tutankhamen cache - The Embalming Cache

" Originally the jars contained perhaps more than half a dozen flower collars that had been worn by those present at the banquet . Some were torn by Mr. Theodore Monroe Davis to show how strong they still were … Three have survived almost intact … " . By : Herbert Winlock .

Little more than a small abandoned pit, KV54 was pressed into use shortly after the burial of Tutankhamun within KV62, and following the first robbery . The contents consisted of a dozen or so large storage jars containing among other things small clay seal impression bearing the name of Tutankhamun, fragments of linen bearing hieratic dockets dating to Years 6 and 8 of the reign, some 50 bags of natron ( the naturally occurring salt used in embalming ), 180 or more linen bandages, 72 offering cups, bones from numerous joints of meat, faded floral collars and a gilded cartonnage mask from the foetus of Tutankhamun's second still-born child . Clearly this was a mix of embalming refuse and materials left over from the funerary meal, which seems originally to have been stored in the corridor of the tomb, and to have been transferred when it was filled with rubble . Most of what Davis spared was rescued by the American Egyptologist Herbert Winlock and is now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York .