KV54-Pottery-Dishes-OtherItems MetropolitanMuseum

An embalming cache is a collection of material that was used by the

ancient Egyptians Ancient Egypt () was a cradle of civilization concentrated along the lower reaches of the Nile River in Northeast Africa. It emerged from prehistoric Egypt around 3150BC (according to conventional Egyptian chronology), when Upper and Lower ...

in the

mummification A mummy is a dead human or an animal whose soft tissues and organs have been preserved by either intentional or accidental exposure to chemicals, extreme cold, very low humidity, or lack of air, so that the recovered body does not decay furt ...

process and then buried either with or separately from the body. It is believed that because the materials had come in contact with the body, they had possibly absorbed part of it, and needed to be buried in order for the body to be complete in the afterlife. The best known embalming cache is

KV54 Tomb KV54 is located in the Valley of the Kings, in Egypt. It was originally excavated by Edward R. Ayrton on behalf of the American lawyer Theodore M. Davis, who funded the work. History Not as much a tomb as a small pit located near the tom ...

, sometimes called the Embalming cache of Tutankhamun, discovered and excavated by

Edward R. Ayrton Edward Russell Ayrton (17 December 1882 – 18 May 1914) was an English Egyptologist and archaeologist. Early life Ayrton was the son of William Scrope Ayrton (1849-1904), a British consular official in China, and his wife Ellen Louisa McClatc ...

in 1907.

Theodore M. Davis Theodore M. Davis (May 7, 1838 – February 23, 1915) was an American lawyer and businessman. He is best known for his excavations in Egypt's Valley of the Kings between 1902 and 1913. Biography Theodore Montgomery Davis was born in Springfield, N ...

showed the find to Herbert E. Winlock who could not see much in it at that time, so Davis donated the whole lot to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1909. In 1940, Winlock took the matter up again and bones from food in a storage jar were examined in the American Museum of Natural History as well as analysis of the bandages made. The

hieratic Hieratic (; ) is the name given to a cursive writing system used for Ancient Egyptian and the principal script used to write that language from its development in the third millennium BCE until the rise of Demotic in the mid-first millennium BCE ...

and hieroglyphic inscriptions from the cache have been discussed by scholars of that time. Winlock presented the results 1942 in his book ''Material used at the embalming of king Tut-Ankh-Amun''. Not so much a tomb as a pit, it contained about a dozen large sealed storage jars. Within them were contained pottery, dishes, bags of natron, animal bones, floral collars and linen containing text dated to the final years of the then little-known

18th Dynasty The Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt (notated Dynasty XVIII, alternatively 18th Dynasty or Dynasty 18) is classified as the first dynasty of the New Kingdom of Egypt, the era in which ancient Egypt achieved the peak of its power. The Eighteenth Dynasty ...

Pharaoh

Tutankhamun Tutankhamun or Tutankhamen, (; ), was an Egyptian pharaoh who ruled during the late Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt, Eighteenth Dynasty of ancient Egypt. Born Tutankhaten, he instituted the restoration of the traditional polytheistic form of an ...

. It was later determined that that material not only contained material used in the embalming process (such as bags of

natron Natron is a naturally occurring mixture of sodium carbonate decahydrate ( Na2CO3·10H2O, a kind of soda ash) and around 17% sodium bicarbonate (also called baking soda, NaHCO3) along with small quantities of sodium chloride and sodium sulfate. ...

and linen), but the remains of food used in the funerary banquet held at the conclusion of the pharaoh's interment. When Tutankhamun's tomb was discovered in 1922, many small items similar to those found in the KV54 cache were found in the initial entryway, leading to the suggestion that following the initial robbery of the tomb, the embalming materials and burial party refuse were moved to KV54. Tomb

KV63 KV63 is a chamber in Egypt's Valley of the Kings pharaonic necropolis. Initially believed to be a royal tomb, it is now believed to have been a storage chamber for the mummification process. It was found in 2005 by a team of archaeologists led b ...

, in the

Valley of the Kings The Valley of the Kings, also known as the Valley of the Gates of the Kings, is an area in Egypt where, for a period of nearly 500 years from the Eighteenth Dynasty to the Twentieth Dynasty, rock-cut tombs were excavated for pharaohs and power ...

, is also thought by many to be another embalming cache. Like the KV54 cache, it contained no mummies, but its many jars contained similar materials, including natron, wood, seeds, shells, carbon, assorted pottery, small animal bones, papyrus fragments, mud trays, mud seals, and pieces of twine or rope.KV63, accessed November 10, 2007
/ref> Not all embalming materials were necessarily kept separate from their owners. At least two non-royal interments in the Valley of the Kings, KV36 (The Tomb of

Maiherpri Maiherpri was an ancient Egyptian noble of possibly Nubian origin buried in tomb KV36 in the Valley of the Kings. He probably lived during the rule of Thutmose IV, and received the honour of a burial in the royal necropolis. His name can be tran ...

), and

KV46 The tomb of Yuya and Thuya, also known by its tomb number KV46, is the burial place of the ancient Egyptian noble Yuya and his wife Thuya, in the Valley of the Kings. They were the parents of Queen Tiye, the chief wife of Pharaoh Amenhotep III, ...

(Tomb of

Yuya Yuya (sometimes Iouiya, or Yuaa, also known as Yaa, Ya, Yiya, Yayi, Yu, Yuyu, Yaya, Yiay, Yia, and Yuy) was a powerful ancient Egyptian courtier during the Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt ( 1390 BC). He was married to Thuya, an Egyptian noblewoman a ...

and

Thuya Thuya (sometimes transliterated as Touiyou, Thuiu, Tuya, Tjuyu or Thuyu) was an Egyptian noblewoman and the mother of queen Tiye, and the wife of Yuya. She is the grandmother of Akhenaten, and great grandmother of Tutankhamun. Biography T ...

), contained dozens of jars within their tombs holding embalming refuse.

Notes

{{Reflist Egyptology