III. the Restorations by MICHAEL J MARFLEET

Home , KV38, KV39, KV41, KV55, KV57

Most sitting New Kingdom kings would have played their part in restoring the rifled tombs of their forebears, but it was the ruling priesthood of the XXIst Dynasty who turned the restorations into a business.

III. The Restorations by MICHAEL J MARFLEET

Almost all the king tombs in the Valley of the Kings (VoK), have been thoroughly robbed and/or ransacked in antiquity. The notable single exception, of course, is KV62, the tomb of Pharaoh Nebkheperure - birth name, Tutankhamun, (Tech- nical Essays 5 & 6 appearing on this website December 31st, 2021 & January 14th, 2022). Roughly half the tombs were plundered, the remainder semi-respectfully relieved of their bullion in order to meet the economic imperatives of the XXIst Dynasty. Most of the violated mummies were subsequently restored and re- buried in existing, open tombs (so-called 'mummy caches'), although one or two may have been specifically commissioned.

The Mummy Caches There are four principal caches of restored mummies in the VoK and one related to them immediately outside, close to Deir el-Bahari. An unfinished tomb, possibly intended as a mummy cache, also lies just outside the VoK and nearby Deir el-Bahari. An additional two inside the VoK may have been cut specifically for re-burials. I will touch on these first and the unfinished tomb last.

Fig. 1

KV38 & KV60 (Fig. 1): These likely represent two of the earliest tombs to be cut in the VoK. They may have been prepared during the reign of Tuthmosis III for the re-burial of violated mummies originally interred in KV20, including Queen Hatshepsut and her father, Tuthmosis I. KV38 is small and crudely cut. Its freeform design with cartouche-shaped burial chamber may be likened to an abbreviated facsimile of KV20, (Bib. 68). It once housed the mummy of Tuthmosis I. When discovered by Victor Loret in 1899 the yellow quartzite sarcophagus in the burial chamber was empty. The mummy it had contained was later identified as one of the eleven kings encount- ered amongst the DB320 mummy cache, (see below). Its architecture also shares features commonly associated with queen tombs - stairway, corridor, stairway, burial chamber with single pillar, and storeroom - and could have been originally intended as the tomb of Tuthmosis's Great Wife. KV60 also is small and crudely fashioned, but being linear and square cut otherwise it has little in common with KV20 or KV38. Some of its architectural features appear more akin to later queen tombs. When discovered it contained two badly damaged female mummies lying in its unfinished burial chamber. One of the mummies had the left arm across her chest suggesting it was that of a queen. The mummy lacked any identification docket, but in 2009 was identified* through DNA testing to be Queen Hatshepsut. Inscriptions on the coffin in which the other lay identify its mummy as that of a wet nurse to the queen. The tomb was plundered in antiquity, perhaps very early on, but certainly by 1126bc when its entrance stairway became exposed during cutting of the tomb intended for Ramses VIII/KV19, (Essay VI appearing August 27th). The entry to KV60 is situated just 40m from KV20. This contrasts with KV38 which lies over 400m away. The difference may reflect the contempt Tuthmosis III held for his mother who had assumed the regency during his formative years. KV35 (Fig. 2): This tomb was cut for Amenhotep II whose restored mummy was found in place (replaced) in his sarcophagus when Loret discovered it in 1898. Loret was astonished also to find a number of damaged mummies, some restored, in three chambers. Many of these have since been identified and include Queen Tiye, the wife of Amenhotep III, himself found alongside the coffined and restored mummies of seven other important kings in a side chamber to the burial chamber of Amenhotep II. While it appears the tomb has been violated more than once, the situations of the restored mummies suggest in antiquity it was ultimately put in order and thereafter remained luckily undis- turbed until the end of the 19th Century. KV57 (Fig. 3): The elaborate tomb of Horemheb was discovered by Ed- ward Ayrton and Theodore Davis in 1908. It had been completely ransacked. The disaggregated human bones discovered in and around the burial chamber remain anonymous. They comprise at least six individuals, one of whom was likely Horemheb himself. Because there is evidence of several destroyed mummies the tomb can be considered an abandoned mummy cache - one that was thoroughly and probably repeatedly violated in antiquity until it was beyond effective restoration. In this respect, but no other, KV57 is similar to KV39. KV39 (Fig. 4): John Rose excavated this roughly cut, uniquely reticulate, three-chambered tomb in the 1990's, (Bib. 61). Its most intriguing finds are a host of human remains, including whole skulls and skull parts, distributed largely in the extremities of its three arms. Hundreds of fragments of textiles, pottery, ala- baster, wooden coffins, furnishings, gold, etc. were also found liberally distributed about the tomb and on its threshold. A few of the identifiable artifacts have been attributed to kings who have since been identified in DB320 (see below), plus possibly a couple from KV35. From the evidence collected it is reasonable to conclude the tomb was used in antiquity as a 'restoration warehouse' for many of the mummies recovered from violated and plundered tombs within the VoK prior to their transfer to DB320, and perhaps also for restorations of mummies stored in KV's 35 & 57 that had themselves become subject to violations. The seven remaining whole skulls and the skull parts are a mystery. No mummy would be restored and re-interred absent its head - all the restored mummies found in DB320 and KV35 have heads - so it stands to reason the heads found in KV39, all of which were discovered in the burial chambers, likely came from those originally laid to rest in that tomb, their mummies now destroyed and their other bones scattered beyond restoration. Who could these seven, possibly more, bodies represent? Why were they found in the extremities of the tomb and in such a parlous state? We shall revisit KV39 in Technical Essay 8 appearing February 11th, 2022. KV55 (Fig. 5): Otherwise known as the 'AMARNA Cache', this tomb remains a puzzle to this day. It was discovered by Edward Ayrton and Theodore Davis in 1907. The puzzle derives largely from the peremptory way in which it was excavated. The discoverers were less than thorough, bordering on negligent. The only human remains comprise just the one, badly decomposed mummy of a male that was found lying in the rotted trough of a queen coffin, its lid cracked due to collapse of a portion of the burial chamber ceiling. The lid lay askew with most of its gold faceplate torn away, the crook and flail symbols of royalty missing, and its identifying cartouche precisely excised. This notwithstanding, the tomb does not appear to have been wantonly plundered. The inside of the coffin was covered in gold sheet and a number of gold ornaments lay on the mummy. In the entrance corridor, on the floor of the burial chamber and against the walls were the disassembled (or unassembled) panels and roof of a single shrine covered in gold leaf. In a niche stood four anonymous canopic jars with stoppers fashioned in the form of female heads. Four magic bricks were found, plus some seals, and a piece of a coffin bier. The shrine has been attributed to Queen Tiye, the seals to Tutankhamun, the magic bricks to Amenhotep IV, and the canopic jars to either Tiye or Kiya, a likely secondary wife of Amenhotep IV. The singular human remains have lately been identified as the father of the boy king. Some puzzle! We shall revisit KV55 in Technical Essay 4 appearing December 17th. DB320 (Figs. 6 & 7): This important tomb lies just outside the perimeter of the VoK proximal to and south of Deir el-Bahari. The tomb likely had been originally designed as a mausoleum for the burial around 970bc of a high priest - Pinudjem II - along with members of his family; (but see 'Conclusion 4' below). It is entered via a 12m deep vertical shaft. At the bottom of the shaft a low corridor leads off in an 'L' shape terminating in a burial vault. About half way along the crudely cut and meandering second arm of the 'L' there is an uneven, descending stairway along which a chamber has been cut to one side. The restored remains of eleven kings (plus high priests and other nobles) were found distributed along the corridors and stacked inside this 'niche' chamber. These may not be their original locations, however. The tomb was discovered by local Arabs a decade before it became public knowledge in 1881, by which time the locals had removed any number of artifacts and one mummy and may have re-arranged the remaining bodies in their search for items of value. There is worse: the first archaeologist to enter the tomb was Emile Brugsch. Within 48hr he had removed all the mummies without bothering to document their locations. He ultimately placed them by recollection, hence the varying interpretations of later scholars. KV41 (Fig. 1): This is another shaft tomb located west of Deir el-Bahari and, like DB320, just outside the perimeter of the VoK. The entry shaft was found incomplete and empty, terminating at a depth of around 11m. Its design might have been similar to that of DB320. It may well have been intended to double as a mummy cache.

Timing of the Restorations Judging from the efforts of Tuthmosis III in re-burying the violated remains of his grandfather, Tuthmosis I/KV38, and his mother, Queen Hatshepsut/KV60, it is possible plundering activity in the VoK began as early as c1482bc, (Fig. 8). It is very likely plundering was rife during the years the center of worship had moved to Akhetaten - c1345bc. During this decade or so the VoK was essen- tially abandoned as a necropolis and probably unguarded and open to all comers with an appetite for gold. At the time there may have been up to eleven king tombs lying prey to the looters. One of these, KV43/Tuthmosis IV, we know was restored during the reign of Horemheb immediately following the end of the AMARNA Period - c1321bc, (Fig. 8). A graffito statement to this effect is penned on a wall in KV43. Since the restored remains of Tuthmosis IV were found in KV35 we may determine KV35 was being actively used as a mummy cache from at least 1300bc. And because KV35 includes kings as late as Ramses VI, it is likely this cache remained in use, on and off, for at least two centuries. Before KV35 had been requisitioned as a mummy cache, and prior to his early death, the boy king would have been in the process of executing his plan to restore the violated remains of the AMARNA Royals recovered from the rifled tombs in the Royal Wadi necropolis at Akhetaten. Judging from the scattered pieces of evidence in KV55 he likely used this tomb as a temporary resting place for the AMARNA Royals while preparing new tombs for each of them elsewhere in the VoK. The KV55 burial chamber was certainly large enough.** Following Tutankhamun's untimely demise KV55 would have continued in use as a mummy cache while Horemheb was preparing KV39. During this time the remains of Pharaoh Ay, Horemheb's predecessor, recovered from the recently violated KV23 in the 'Valley of the Aten', likely would have joined the restored bodies of Amenhotep IV, Neferneferuaten Nefertiti, their five deceased daughters, Queen Tiye and Tutankhamun's parents in KV55. Once KV39 was complete the cadavers in KV55 were relocated - the AMARNA Royals to KV39 (Amenhotep IV and his daughters to the south chamber, Queen Neverneferuaten nefertiti to the upper chamber, and Ay to the east chamber); Queen Tiye was moved to KV35 to lie close by her husband, Amenhotep III; the daughter of Tiye and mother of Tutankhamun likewise was placed in KV35; the father remained in KV55. (The rationale behind this scenario is explored in Technical Essay 8). KV57 may have been violated soon after the burial of Horemheb. The five or more other destroyed mummies found in amongst the debris in the burial chamber could at least in part represent the once restored remains of some of the royals currently missing from the list of identified New Kingdom pharaohs. It would appear their fate was very similar to the original burials in KV39 of, to quote Rose, 'at least nine persons, both male [sic] and females'. The pathetic, disaggregated remains in KV39 remained in the extremities of the tomb through- out its later use as a restoration factory. It became a temporary resting place for recovered, violated mummies and those removed during the systematic search for bullion that started with the accession of High Priest Herihor, ruler of Thebes around 1070bc, (Fig. 9). It is likely KV35 was re-commissioned around this time and KV39 utilized during the re-restoration of mummies in this earlier cache which had likely become much vandalized. Later came the addition of those kings whose tombs, to this point at least, had remained whole, only to be relieved of all items of value by the ruling Theban priests (the harvesters) attempting to ameliorate the economic realities of the late XXth and the XXIst Dynasties. It may be reasonable to conclude KV39 remained in use until well after the burial of Pinudjem II, the high priest whose family vault was cut at the extreme end of DB320. DB320 likely had not been completed past the second corridor stairway much before 990bc, (Figs. 6 & 9). Assuming original placement of the restored royal mummies found in this tomb was as indicated in Fig. 6 would suggest those said to have been discovered in the 'elevated niche chamber' off the main passageway preceded interment of the Pinudjem family. Because access through the first two corridors would have been blocked by the introduction of the coffins of the kings Amenhotep I, Tuthmosis I & II and Seti I, among other nobles, it is clear the arrival of these mummies would have post-dated interment of Pinudjem II and his relations. Seti I was found closest to the first doorway and therefore may have been the last restored pharaoh laid to rest in DB320. However, this interpretation is based upon many assumptions. As stated above (paragraph headed, 'DB320'), since all we have to rely upon are the recollections of Brugsch and the uncertainty of the degree of disturbance caused by the Arabs who discovered DB320 prior to 1881, the locations of the kings as found are tenuous at best.

Plunderers vs. Harvesters It is easy to differentiate between those king mummies restored following the depredations of plunderers and those restored following respectful, if acquis- itive, defoliation by the priests. So far as the coffins are concerned, any of solid gold, of course, will have disappeared - melted down for bullion. And the re-used, often orphaned wooden coffins enclosing the restored mummies will have been stripped of any gold or precious ornamentation. The plunderers would adze off the gold in their haste, damaging the wooden coffins and rendering them almost featureless. The harvesting high priests, conversely, will have carefully relieved the coffins of their rich veneer, leaving the carved features relatively unharmed, (eg: Bib. 36, pp.630 & 637). As for the mummies, those found with a hole in the top of the skull reflect the quick-strip methods of the plunderers - the point of a small pickaxe or pike driven into the cranium to hold the rigid mummy vertical while the bandages are stripped down in search of the precious amulets and jewelry bound in with the wrappings, (eg: Bib. 36, p.690)***. Robbers in more of a hurry often resorted to hacking through the layers of bandages around the chest of the mummy, the usual location for most of the jewelry including the collars and pectorals hung about the neck of the corpse, (cf: Bib. 21, Pl. XXX; & Bib. 75). The priests would have unwrapped the hitherto un-violated bodies systematically in reverse of the order in which they originally had been wrapped, retaining the bandages for later re-wrapping. Disarticulated and/or punctured cadavers clearly will have suffered at the hands of robbers. If the rich hoard discovered in KV62 represents anything like the 'average' amount of gold in a king tomb, a conservative estimate of the bullion plundered and harvested from the king tombs in the two valleys may lie in the region of four or five tons - at 2020 prices getting on for three-hundred-plus million US dollars worth of pure bullion. Paradoxically to us this does not sound like much, but to the ancient Egyptians the value of gold as a weapon of trade would have been orders of magnitude greater.

Conclusion To varying degrees many aspects of these mummy caches remain both curious and baffling: 1. The identities of some of the restored king mummies are disputed. A comprehensive analysis of mummy DNA may throw some light on these un- certainties. 2. A dated identification docket gives us the timing of the latest restoration. But caches, like individual burials, probably experienced repeated violations and several restorations. One example is the restored mummy of Amen- hotep III in KV35 where the docket dates restoration at c1050bc during the reign of Masaherta, the fourth of the high priests to rule Thebes in the XXIst Dynasty. This restoration occurred 300yr after the death of Amenhotep III and his burial in KV22. It is hard to believe this king's mummy remained un-abused for three entire centuries, (Technical Essay 8). 3. Central to the linkage between the mummy caches is KV39, John Rose's 'double archaeological enigma', (Bib. 61). Of all tombs in the VoK it must rank at the very top of the 'curious & baffling' list, (Technical Essay 8). From some of the more legible dockets retrieved from the chaotic refuse left in KV39, Rose attempts to rebuild a snapshot of the sequence of restoration events, (Bib. 61, pp.144-148). But, as he admits, there are several other possible scenarios. 4. Rose also raises the possibility that DB320 'may have been built in the early XVIIIth Dynasty', and re-used by Pinudjem II. That scenario opens the field to creation of a whole new set of theories, (Essay IV appearing July 30th). 5. Finally, and perhaps with a touch of whimsy, there is an intriguing connection between the five principal mummy caches KV35-KV39-KV55-KV57- DB320 and the arrangement of five of the principal stars in the system most closely associated with the ancient Egyptians' uncompromising belief in regener- ation - the constellation of Orion, (Fig. 10 & Essay IV). ------* 'Identified' is a relative term. Only a handful of mummies can be identified with 100% con- fidence. The body identified as Queen Hatshepsut was one of twenty-two royal mummies ceremonially paraded through the streets of Cairo on April 3rd, 2021 as they were transferred to a new permanent display center. ** Egyptologists critical of this concept cite the absence in KV55 of any fragmentary evidence of restored mummies other than that of the anonymous male. However, poor excavation practice aside, since these mummies likely would have been secured inside recycled coffins and removed before any natural damage (water invasion or ceiling collapse) had occurred, this may be less than surprising, (Technical Essay 4 appearing December 17th). *** At least two of the seven skulls found by Rose in KV39 have these sorts of puncture wounds in the top of the cranium, (Bib. 61, Pl. 63, 64 & 70).

Fig. 1 - Locations of the mummy caches

Fig. 2 - KV35 mummy cache

Fig. 3 - KV57 mummy cache

Fig. 4 - KV39 mummy cache

Fig. 5 - KV55 mummy cache

Fig. 6 - DB320 mummy cache

Fig. 7 - DB320 mummy locations à la Brugsch

Fig. 8 - XVIIth through XXth Dynasties

Fig. 9 - XXIst Dynasty & approx. locations of restored king mummies found in DB320

Fig. 10 - Possible alignment of mummy caches with five principal stars of Orion

Next: ESSAY IV 'Undiscovered tombs in the Valley(s) of the Kings' published July 30th, 2021