Tomb KV54 is located in the
Valley of the Kings, in
Egypt
Egypt ( , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a country spanning the Northeast Africa, northeast corner of Africa and Western Asia, southwest corner of Asia via the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to northe ...
. 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 tomb of Seti I, it contained about a dozen large sealed storage jars. Within the jars were equipment and objects that had been carefully packed. It contained pottery, dishes, bags of
natron, animal bones, floral collars and linen containing text dated to the final years of the then (1907) little-known
pharaoh
Pharaoh (, ; Egyptian language, Egyptian: ''wikt:pr ꜥꜣ, pr ꜥꜣ''; Meroitic language, Meroitic: 𐦲𐦤𐦧, ; Biblical Hebrew: ''Parʿō'') was the title of the monarch of ancient Egypt from the First Dynasty of Egypt, First Dynasty ( ...
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 ...
.
In 1909, Davis donated the finds he was allowed to take out of Egypt (the contents of six of the storage jars), which were of little intrinsic value, to the
Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, colloquially referred to as the Met, is an Encyclopedic museum, encyclopedic art museum in New York City. By floor area, it is the List of largest museums, third-largest museum in the world and the List of larg ...
in New York City, where they now reside on display. Davis declared to the press that he had found the tomb of Tutankhamun, and he published his findings in a book called The ''Tombs of Harmhabi and Touatankhamanou'' (using the then-current French spellings for the pharaohs
Horemheb and Tutankhamun respectively) in 1912.
One of the critical finds from KV54 was a piece of linen marked with
hieratic text saying "The good god, Lord of the Two Lands, Nebkheperure
prenomen of Tutankhamun">Prenomen_(Ancient_Egypt).html" ;"title="he Prenomen (Ancient Egypt)">prenomen of Tutankhamun beloved of Min (god)">Min. Linen of year 6." Recognizing that KV54 did not represent Tutankhamun's actual tomb, and that it ''did'' signal the existence of a yet-to-be discovered tomb, archaeologist Howard Carter, who would eventually find the real KV62, Tomb of Tutankhamun, corresponded with the Metropolitan Museum's Egyptological Director Herbert Winlock on this subject in 1915.
In 1923, Winlock, who had subsequently found similar contents in other excavations throughout the
Theban Necropolis
The Theban Necropolis () is a necropolis on the west bank of the Nile, opposite Thebes, Egypt, Thebes (Luxor) in Upper Egypt. It was used for ritual burials for much of the Ancient Egypt, Pharaonic period, especially during the New Kingdom of Egyp ...
, instead identified the contents of KV54 not as an actual tomb, but an
embalming cache, representing the refuse left over from the mummification of the pharaoh, rather than his "tomb". The food and other related items likely came from a funerary banquet held at the pharaoh's interment. He estimated that there had been a total of eight official mourners who had attended the burial.
When the
tomb of Tutankhamun
The tomb of Tutankhamun (reigned ), a pharaoh of the Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt, Eighteenth Dynasty of ancient Egypt, is located in the Valley of the Kings. The tomb, also known by its List of burials in the Valley of the Kings, tomb number KV ...
was discovered in 1922, similar items were found in the entrance corridor,
[Reeves, Nicholas. Wilkinson, Richard H. The Complete Valley of the Kings. Thames & Hudson. 1997. (Reprint) ] and it is thought that after the first robbery attempt of the tomb, the embalming cache material was moved to the pit that was KV54, and the corridor filled with rocky debris in order to stop future robbery attempts.
Gallery of images
Image:KV54-FloralCollar_MetropolitanMuseum.png, Floral collar found in tomb KV54, on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.
Image:Linen from Tutankhamun's Embalming Cache MET DP225290.jpg, Linen from KV54 containing hieratic writing bearing Tutankhamen's prenomen (Nebkheperure) and the regnal date Year 6, on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.
Image:KV54-LongNeckedBottleFromEmbalmingCache_MetropolitanMuseum.png, A long-necked bottle with a decorative floral pattern from KV54, on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.
Image:KV54-Pottery-Dishes-OtherItems_MetropolitanMuseum.png, Pottery, dishes and other miscellaneous items from KV54, on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.
References
* Davis, Theodore M.
''The Tombs of Harmhabi and Touatânkhamanou''. London: Duckworth Publishing, 2001.
* Reeves, N & Wilkinson, R.H.
''The Complete Valley of the Kings'', 1996, Thames and Hudson, London
* Siliotti, A.
''Guide to the Valley of the Kings and to the Theban Necropolises and Temples'', 1996, A.A. Gaddis, Cairo
* Winlock, H.E.
''Materials Used in the Embalming of King Tut-ankh-Amun'', 1941, New York.
Notes
External links
Theban Mapping Project: KV54– Plans of the tomb and other details
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kv54
1907 archaeological discoveries
Valley of the Kings
Tutankhamun