Could KV 55 be Akhenaten’s tomb? Read on to find out.
The tomb was discovered by E.R. Ayrton, who was working under the direction of Theodore Davis, on January 6th 1907.
They entered the corridor and passed two blockings, both of which had been broken into in ancient times. On top of the rubble that filled the corridor was a single door and a panel from a shrine that Akhenaten had made for his mother, Queen Tye. The rest of the pieces were found farther along the corridor. All of the cartouches on the shrine that had contained the name Akhenaten had been removed in antiquity.
When they reached the Burial Chamber, it was a big disarray of objects scattered everywhere. On the southern side of the room was a water-decayed wooden coffin. The hands held a crook and flail and on the brow there was a bronze uraeus. Any cartouches on the coffin had also been cut out, and the gold face had been torn away. When the fragments of the lid of the coffin were removed, a mummy lay inside, crowned with a golden vulture pectoral, and one arm lay across the chest.
The Egyptologists excavation the tomb believed that the mummy was that of an elderly woman, most likely because the hand was crossed over the breast, like was customary for the queens of the period. They quickly jumped to the conclusion that the body was that of Queen Tye. Theodore Davis was sorely disappointed when he was informed that the body was a mans, but in his excavation report, he still labeled the find as The tomb of Queen Tye.
But why was Tye’s shrine there but her body wasn’t?
Well, when the tomb workers were carving the tomb of Ramses IX, they realized that their chisels made a hollow sound when hit against the ground. KV 55 was right below them! So they decided to explore. When they would the tomb, they found Tye’s mummy as well as the males, which can very well be Akhenaten. Since there was still a great hatred against Akhenaten because of the changes he had made in the land of Egypt, they immediately removed the Queen’s body from the tomb. The shrine was too large, so they decided not to take it. Before they left they removed every cartouche bearing the name Akhenaten. Then they stripped off the gold facemask from the coffin, as to completely destroy the King’s hope of an Afterlife (The Egyptians believed that the Ka, or spirit, needed to have a representation of the deceased to keep on living in the Afterlife. The tomb workers believed that by removing the face from the coffin, the Ka would die and the Pharaoh would be completely dead).
Then, just to make sure that they had completely destroyed the Pharaoh, they hurled a rock onto the face of the coffin (A BIG rock).
But where was the mummy of Queen Tye moved to?
It was recently identified as a body that was found in the cache of royal mummies in the tomb of Amunhotep II in 1898. The identification was made by comparing hair samples with those found on the mummy of the “Elder Lady” with a lock of hair found in the tomb of Tutankhamen.
Has the mummy of the male ever been identified?
As of yet, not for a certainty. Some have said that the body is of a man in his mid-twenties, meaning that it wouldn’t have been Akhenaten, who would have died in his mid-thirties. The mummy could belong to Smenkhkare.
But some other reports say that the man was in his thirties when he died. In that case it could have been Akhenaten.
But if it were Smenkhkare, why would the tomb workers have gone to such trouble to destroy the coffin?
After Akhenaten died, Smenkhkare became the next Pharaoh. He only ruled for three-or-so years. But in that time, he kept the customs of his father, and worshipped only the Aten. So he would have been as bad as Akhenaten because he didn’t change the laws on worship, he just went along with them.
