Aspects of Re-use in the Tomb of Tutankhamun (2023)

ASPECTS OF RE-USE IN THE TOMB OF TUTANKHAMUN Nicholas Reeves Tutankhamun’s tiny tomb has puzzled scholars for generations. It has always been assumed that the humble affair had been cut for a favoured member of the royal court, granted the great privilege of burial in the Valley of the Kings. In 2015, however, British Egyptologist Dr. Nicholas Reeves presented a new theory: that Tutankhamun’s tomb was built for a pharaoh—and a female one at that; but what we now regard as Tutankhamun’s tomb was simply the outer part of the much larger tomb of Nefertiti, who lay undisturbed beyond a false wall. Reeves’ proposal is that Nefertiti, as co-regent, outlived her revolutionary husband, Akhenaten, to become pharaoh in her own right. When she died, Nefertiti (or Smenkhkare as she was then called) was given a full royal burial in KV 62. Tutankhamun’s early death a decade later caught his officials by surprise, leading to Smenkhkare’s tomb being reopened and pressed into service for the hasty burial of this young, second pharaoh. In November last year, to a packed meeting room in Luxor, Dr. Reeves presented the full suite of archaeological evidence for his theory as part of a centennial celebration of the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb. In this article, NILE Magazine presents that analysis, and challenges you to consider that KV 62 may still holds splendours that would astonish the world. (ABOVE) The remarkable similarity between between Nefertiti’s famous bust (left) and the outermost of the three nested coffins in which Tutankhamun was buried. This coffin sports a half-male, half-female headdress which suggests it was made originally for a queen of semi-regal status—Nefertiti as Akhenaten’s co-regent. NILEMAGAZINE.COM.AU 27 1. INTRODUCTION Who was Queen Nefertiti? As Apple CEO Steve Jobs famously said, you can only connect the dots looking backwards. While Nefertiti was likely born into a wealthy elite family, she could never have imagined the incredible journey ahead— from queen to co-regent, and finally, sole, female pharaoh, ruling over Egypt. Here is a summary of Nefertiti’s brilliant career: As Queen: There’s nothing like a royal wedding to bring powerful families together, and, if she was not a foreign princess, Nefertiti’s marriage to Akhenaten may have been to cement a bond between the Theban royals and regional nobility. Akhenaten subsequently ushered in a religious revolution by elevating the life-giving solar disc to the role of supreme creator god, with he and Nefertiti as creation’s first couple. As Co-Regent: Towards the end of Akhenaten’s reign, Nefertiti became co-regent and adopted a double-cartouched name: Ankhkheperure Neferneferuaten. These names occur frequently on Tutankhamun’s burial goods, in combination with epithets alluding to the husband on whom her status depended. As Sole Pharaoh: Upon Akhenaten’s death, as last co-regent standing, Nefertiti became de facto sole-reigning king and duly changed her Throne Name from Ankhkheperure to Smenkhkare. The Akhenaten-dependent epithets disappear, confirming that this reign followed her husband’s death. As pharaoh, Nefertiti was due a burial equipment fit for a king, and so abandoned what had previously been prepared. The big questions are, buried with what, and where? This image shows the left-hand door panel of the second of four gilded shrines that enclosed Tutankhamun’s sarcophagus. As with much of Tutankhamun’s core burial equipment, this shrine had originally been prepared for Nefertiti as the co-regent Ankhkheperure Neferneferuaten. Page 58 compares the face of Osiris (above right) with that of Nefertiti: they are almost a perfect match. © SANDRO VANNINI / LABORATORIOROSSO 28 NILE #34 | MAY 2023 1. INTRODUCTION PHOTO: DAVID COLE / ALAMY.COM PHOTO: MARTIN NORRIS TRAVEL PHOTOGRAPHY / ALAMY.COM The dining room table at Carter House—the residence built for Howard Carter at Luxor by Lord Carnarvon—is covered with replicas of Carter’s journals, drawings and favourite photographs of his exacavations. Carter is today often praised for his meticulous note-keeping, and while the famed Egyptologist recorded A significant problem with Egyptology’s current approach to the tomb of Tutankhamun is the assumption that Howard Carter had all the answers, and that now, with online access to most of his Griffith Institute notes, all the data is to hand and the tomb has effectively had its say. Nothing could be further from the truth. Not only were Carter’s investigations very much a work in progress, with conclusions subject to constant change as yet another piece of the jigsaw fell into place; it is increasingly clear that much of what the excavator did and thought in relation to the find was never committed to paper. A dependence on Carter’s notes alone— NILEMAGAZINE.COM.AU instances of reuse among Tutankhamun’s burial goods, he fell short of realising the full implications of what he observed. The number of objects with revised cartouches—but with the former owner’s names still readable—now suggests that Tutankhamun had been buried with someone else’s burial suite. incomplete first-assumptions which are now a century old—is unlikely ever to reveal the full story. In fact, Carter’s records represent merely a beginning, and to have any hope of moving forward in our understanding of this complex find it is essential we revert to the archaeology itself—to a close, physical examination of the actual objects found, and of every aspect of the tomb in which these finds were deposited. As we shift the emphasis to this primary evidence, a very different picture of Howard Carter’s discovery is seen to emerge, and it is one in which a single concept dominates: re-use. 29 1. INTRODUCTION PHOTO: HASSAN MOHAMED / ALAMY.COM Today’s priorities in the analysis of Tutankhamun’s tomb: not archival studies alone, but the closest possible examination of the burial equipment and its setting. Here, Egyptian conservator Hend Hassan of the Grand Egyptian Museum tends to a section of flaking gold leaf on the head of the protective goddess Isismehtet on the “Feline Couch”. This is one of the three funerary couches encountered by Carter in the tomb’s Antechamber. © THE GETTY CONSERVATION INSTITUTE February 2009. Using a portable microscope linked to a laptop computer, conservators Lori Wong (right) and Afaf Mohamed Mahmoud examine the paintings on the west wall of Tutankhamun’s Burial Chamber. The Getty Conservation Institute spent a decade 30 carefully studying, cleaning and conserving the tomb. Their ultra-close examination has helped reveal the stages of decoration in the tomb’s Burial Chamber—most significantly for us, on the chamber’s north wall (see opposite page). NILE #34 | MAY 2023 1. INTRODUCTION Painted on white background Painted on yellow background © FACTUM ARTE / MINISTRY OF ANTIQUITIES, EGYPT The final scene on Burial Chamber’s north wall shows the deceased Tutankhamun, accompanied by his ka (spiritual double), being embraced by Osiris, with whom he was now identified. A sliver of white on the heel of NILEMAGAZINE.COM.AU the ka figure’s front foot reveals that it had been painted on the original, white background. In contrast, traces of yellow beneath the rear foot of Tutankhamun identify his figure as a subsequent addition. 31 2. RE-USE WITHIN THE BURIAL EQUIPMENT © NICHOLAS REEVES GRANGER HISTORICAL PICTURE ARCHIVE / ALAMY.COM Re-use is an aspect of the burial to which Carter himself seems to have given little connected thought. Where he and his team encountered the phenomenon, usually in the context of an altered text such as that on the box knob seen here, it would of course be noted. But more often than not, the evidence would be missed or allowed to pass. A case in point is the nested funerary shrines: here the altered cartouches would be left for others to observe and think about—initially Rex Engelbach in 1940, and more recently Marc Gabolde and myself with our independent revelations of both physically concealed and intact feminine grammatical forms (see opposite page), and, as we shall consider, in the recognition of at least one familiar, recurring, female face. 32 The round-fronted box (Carter No. 79, Cairo JE 61495) that bears this knob was discovered in the Antechamber of KV 62. Howard Carter noted that Tutankhamun’s cartouche had been superimposed over the name of a royal predecessor, Neferneferuaten. This is the name adopted by Nefertiti in her role as Akhenaten’s junior co-regent, which is found repeatedly underlying that of Tutankhamun throughout his burial equipment. . NEW INSCRIPTION “Tutankhamun” 1 t ! jK! ! t V1 eeee u b V 5 t OLD INSCRIPTION “Neferneferuaten mery Waenre” As co-regent, Nefertiti’s cartouched names were accompanied always with one of a range of epithets associating her with the king. In this instance, it is “mery Waenre”, which translates as “beloved of Waenre”. Waenre itself was an epithet of Akhenaten, meaning something like “sole one of Re”. NILE #34 | MAY 2023 2. RE-USE WITHIN THE BURIAL EQUIPMENT In this screenshot from the French documentary, “Toutankhamon: Le trésor redécouvert” (“Tutankhamun: The Treasure Rediscovered”), Egyptologist Marc Gabolde points to the filling of a suppressed, feminine t-hieroglyph ( ) on Tutankhamun’s second shrine. The odd imbalance of signs that results is a tell-tale signal that the feminine word ending had been plastered over and regilded when it was reused for Tutankhamun’s burial. ! © TOUTANKHAMON, LE TRÉSOR REDÉCOUVERT Tutankhamun’s sarcophagus was enclosed within four nested, gilded funerary shrines. Each shrine was fitted at its eastern end, as erected, with a pair of folding doors. Inside, the shrines were inscribed with extracts from the Book of the Dead and the Book of the Divine Cow (the Legend of the Destruction of Mankind) and the Amduat. In 1940, Egyptologist Rex Engelbach published his observation of patches on the second of these shrines (Carter 237, JE 60666), where an alloy of visibly lighter colour had been used to re-gild the cartouche interiors. His photograph clearly shows these replaced names. ©P ETE RG RE MS E, C ON ZEP TZO NE R. ENGELBACH, MATERIAL FOR A REVISION OF THE HERESY PERIOD OF THE XVIIITH DYNASTY ANNALES DU SERVICE DES ANTIQUITÉS DE L’ÉGYPTE (ASAE) 40 (1940), PL. XXIV NILEMAGAZINE.COM.AU .DE 2. RE-USE WITHIN THE BURIAL EQUIPMENT The goddesses at the western end of the sarcophagus were carved to traditional 18th-Dynasty proportions, unlike the female deities at the eastern (foot) end, which followed the Amarna Period style. This tells us that when the sarcophagus came to be adapted for Tutankhamun’s use it was unfinished. This is as good an indication as we might hope for that Neferneferuaten never used it—that it had been rejected, like the rest of her co-regent status burial equipment. The western side (head end) of Tutankhamun’s sarcophagus shows traces of an earlier hieroglyphic text (arrowed) that was cut too deeply to be fully ground out when the piece was reused. BURTON P0646 © GRIFFITH INSTITUTE, UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD We find re-use as well on the sarcophagus itself, where close study by Marianne Eaton-Krauss has revealed multiple traces of adaptation—of earlier hieroglyphic signs erased and over-written. Observable too were significant 34 alterations in the iconography, these last including the addition of kingly wings to the goddesses’ enfolding arms—a change plainly intended to upgrade, for kingly use, an earlier, sub-pharaonic iconography. NILE #34 | MAY 2023 2. RE-USE WITHIN THE BURIAL EQUIPMENT PHOTO: IMAGEDOC / ALAMY.COM (ABOVE) (RIGHT) Tutankhamun’s stunning, innermost coffin of solid gold (Carter 255, JE 60671). Noticeable too is the distinctly feminine lines of the stomach and hips—an evident carry-over from its original owner, Neferneferuaten. Additionally, just like the famous gold mask (page 40) and the king’s canopic coffinettes (page 38), the holes in the ears are pierced fully through the lobes—a feature which identifies the owner as an adult female. See page 39 for more. We encounter appropriation too among the burial equipment’s rich imagery: the Tutankhamun statue on a leopard (above) displaying obvious female breasts, with the pharaoh’s solid gold inner coffin, on the right, showing distinct, womanly hips and thighs. NILEMAGAZINE.COM.AU © SANDRO VANNINI / BRIDGEMAN IMAGES This statuette nominally portrays Tutankhamun standing on the back of a leopard (out of frame). Here we focus on its most intriguing feature: the figure’s feminine breasts, which identify it as a piece taken over from the burial equipment of Nefertiti as Akhenaten’s female co-regent, Neferneferuaten. 35 2. RE-USE WITHIN THE BURIAL EQUIPMENT © AKG IMAGES / WERNER FORMAN SAHER GALAL / SHUTTERSTOCK.COM NON-TUTANKHAMUN FACES IN THE TOMB’S BURIAL EQUIPMENT The ancient Egyptians conceived of the afterlife as including the unwelcome possibility that the dead might be required to carry out agricultural labour. Even the royals weren’t above being called upon to get their hands dirty. This requirement, however, might be avoided by creating small, mummy-shaped figurines of the deceased to magically perform the work on behalf of their owner. These figurines were called shabtis (later, ushabtis) and A curious feature of a good number of the larger wooden shabti figures from Tutankhamun’s tomb is their decidedly female facial cast. This suggests an identification as Nefertiti in her capactiy as the coregent Neferneferuaten, the demonstratable original owner of other re-used pieces within the tomb. The shabti shown above left (Carter 458, Cairo JE 60829) combines the kingly nemes headdress with 36 were a regular feature of tomb equipment from the Middle Kingdom to the Ptolemaic Period (around 1900–30 b.c.). Tutankhamun was buried with a staggering 413 shabti figures. A number of the finer specimens carry faces that are distinctly non-Tutankhamun in character, and, like many other pieces in the tomb, appear to be re-used from the burial of a royal woman. a characteristically feminine face and elongated neck; that above right (Carter 330h, Cairo JE 60833) featuring a bobbed version of the predominantly female Nubian wig, with gilded headband. The femininity of these figures goes unremarked by Carter, perhaps because he considered them as merely exaggerated versions of the effete, male Amarna style. NILE #34 | MAY 2023 2. RE-USE WITHIN THE BURIAL EQUIPMENT © LILY JUNG The headdress on the first (outermost) coffin (top) is a unique combination of the queenly tripartite wig, worn, for example, on the coffin of the 18th-Dynasty Queen Close scrutiny reveals other intriguing features also, this time among the nested coffins: long-overlooked combinations of pharaonic and sub-pharaonic iconography, such as that we see here in the outer container’s unique headdress—a design which proves to resolve into a halfNILEMAGAZINE.COM.AU Meritamun (Cairo JE 53140) (left), and the (kingly) khat wig of one of the guardian figures (Carter 29, Cairo JE 60708) from Tutankhamun’s tomb. male, half-female mixture of kingly khat-headdress arranged over a woman’s tripartite wig. The combination suggests that the coffin had been designed not for a full pharaoh, but for a queen of semi-regal status: Akhenaten’s co-regent, Nefertiti Neferneferuaten. 37 2. RE-USE WITHIN THE BURIAL EQUIPMENT Analogous female/sub-pharaonic characteristics are apparent in the design of Tutankhamun’s middle coffin also, with its en suite canopic coffinettes. These pieces all display a kingly upper half, with nemes headcloth and hands brandishing the pharaonic crook and flail, combined not with the usual pharaonic, secondary pair of embracing goddess wings (see page 35) but with a simple, rishi-feather design (right). This is a characteristic of coffins prepared for queenly use. Again, this half-male, half-female configuration references the middle ground occupied by Nefertiti in her capacity as Akhenaten’s co-regent— neither traditional queen, nor full pharaoh (yet). KINGLY UPPER SECTION RISHI-STYLE QUEENLY LOWER SECTION This is one of four canopic coffinettes appropriated for Tutankhamun’s burial from the unused equipment prepared for Nefertiti as co-regent. It housed the king’s embalmed liver, which was protected by the god Imsety, who, in turn, was watched over by the goddesss Isis. The column of text reads: si ! 1t ! _ “Words spoken by Isis, :t 1P p 0# \ b \ b !7 [ 1 b : Pg 1 t 1 P p # w b B !7 I protect Imseti, who is within me, Pg " ! Vx 5 B 1 < 7t > Imseti of the Osiris King Nebkheperure,” B 3| GL \ cK" M True of voice before the Great God.” Inside, the original owner’s cartouche is still readable: Neferneferuaten. See also the companion coffinette on page 41. 38 © ROBERT HARDING / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO My arms hide that which is in me, NILE #34 | MAY 2023 2. RE-USE WITHIN THE BURIAL EQUIPMENT On his object description card for Tutankhamun’s innermost coffin, shown here, Howard Carter noted: “The ears pierced, holes when discovered being covered with gold.” © NICHOLAS REEVES Although the lobe appears to be merely indented, it and its matching pair had in fact been drilled fully and only subsequently plugged with gold foil. This is more significant than it may at first appear. In adults, the wearing of earrings was a fashion of women alone. For males, earring-use did not extend beyond childhood, and no adult pharaoh is ever shown wearing ear ornamentation. The ears on male imagery were marked by symbolic dimples alone. The presence here of fully-drilled ear holes—once fitted with ornamention—tells us that this coffin was made for a woman. DRAWN BY AND © MARK GABOLDE PHOTOGRAPH BY AHMED AMIN, EGYPTIAN MUSEUM, CAIRO More subtle evidence of previous female ownership is detectable too in Tutankhamun’s innermost, gold coffin. Here, the excavator’s documentation records earlobes deliberately prepared with fully-drilled holes—that is, practical, cylindrical piercings specifically intended to display separate ear ornaments; holes which, on the coffin’s adaptation for Tutankhamun, had been sealed over with gold foil so as to present the normal, representational kingly dimple. The reason? Because, in the case of a post-pubescent male pharaoh, earrings were never worn; not a single instance of adult male earring-usage can be cited. Here again, therefore, it looks very likely that the innermost coffin’s original owner had been a woman. NILEMAGAZINE.COM.AU Proof of Tutankhamun’s appropriation of a predecessor’s funerary gold mask came when a close examination brought to light traces of an earlier name on its right shoulder (above left). Beneath Tutankhamun’s Throne Name, Nebheperure, could be seen lightly chased traces of an earlier, erased name. The cartouche surrounding this name had originally been longer, with the space filled with two signs declaring that the king was “true of voice”, that his heart had been judged by the gods as that of a good and honest man. The drawings above illustrate the present, Tutankhamun-era inscription (in green), with visible portions of the earlier, underlying text (red). The lower drawing reveals the original name (in yellow) as reconstructed on the basis of these still-visible traces (red). That original name is Ankhkheperure with the epithet “beloved of Neferkheperure” (i.e. of Akhenaten). It is the Throne Name of Akhenaten’s female co-regent, Neferneferuaten—the original owner of Tutankhamun’s famed golden mask. 39 2. RE-USE WITHIN THE BURIAL EQUIPMENT BURTON PHOTOGRAPH 0744 © GRIFFITH INSTITUTE, UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD (COLOURISED BY DYNAMICHROME) This 1925 photograph shows Tutankhamun’s gold mask in situ on the king’s mummy, still inside the innermost gold coffin. Arrowed are the dislodged gold foil patches This conclusion is supported by the presence of identical pierced lobes in the celebrated Gold Mask (Cairo JE 60672, Carter 256a). Once again, these piercings had been patched-over for Tutankhamun’s final use but, fortunately for our understanding, these had fallen out; the displaced plugs may still be seen in Harry Burton’s in situ photograph, above, one dished circle of gold foil resting on each lappet of the royal headcloth. Here was 40 that had been used to fill the female ear piercings— irrefutable evidence for Tutankhamun’s appropriation of an earlier piece, fashioned for a female. my first hint that the mask, too, had been intended for a woman. Other evidence would follow: clear indications that the actual, original face had been cut out and replaced; and, to definitively identify that original, intended owner, the presence beneath Tutankhamun’s current prenomen of a still-legible palimpsest reading “Ankhkheperure, beloved of Neferkheperure”—the throne-name of Akhenaten’s co-regent, Neferneferuaten (see page 39). NILE #34 | MAY 2023 2. RE-USE WITHIN THE BURIAL EQUIPMENT ALTERED Beneath the royal Birth Name “Tutankhamun, ruler of Upper Egyptian Heliopolis” (above), is an earlier royal name: “Neferneferuaten, she who is beneficial for her husband“ (below). On the right is the interior of the trough of the canopic coffinette that contained Tutankhamun’s mummified intestines. Its surface is chased with extracts from the Book of the Dead, and on line seven, almost hidden beneath the Birth Name, “Tutankhamun, ruler of Upper Egyptian Heliopolis” (above, top), is the name of the original owner, incompletely erased before being over-written: “Neferneferuaten”, accompanied by a remarkable epithet: “she who is beneficial for her husband” (above, bottom). This epithet comfirms, without any shadow of a doubt, the gender of the co-regent Neferneferuaten. It also frames the woman’s relationship to the king in the same way that Akhenat! B en’s own name relates the king to his god: 1 t V 9t “He who is beneficial for the Aten”. This confirms that the female co-regent Neferneferuaten had been none other than Akhenaten’s consort, completing the Aten triad of god, king and queen—the pharaoh’s former Great Royal Wife, Nefertiti. This is the same individual whose names are found, again partially erased and over-written, on the interior of Tutankhamun’s canopic coffinettes (above). And here the epithet employed by Neferneferuaten is particularly revealing: it reads not “beloved of Neferkheperure” (i.e. NILEMAGAZINE.COM.AU © SANDRO VANNINI / BRIDGEMAN IMAGES ORIGINAL of Akhenaten) as on the golden mask, but “she who is beneficial for her husband”. The epithet confirms not only this original owner’s female sex but, crucially, her specific identity as Akhenaten’s former great royal wife, Nefertiti. 41 PHOTO: JOSE LUCAS / ALAMY.COM 2. RE-USE WITHIN THE BURIAL EQUIPMENT Similar reuse with the same underlying female name and revealing epithet is found on this pectoral (Carter 261p1, Cairo JE 61944). Dominating is a glass-inlaid image of the goddess Nut, wings outstretched. The background is filled with the goddess’ words, uttered in favour of Tutankhamun, although this piece, too, was intended originally for Nefertiti as co-regent. Beneath the name, ! 1. t!K j n <: Tutankhamun, ruler of Upper Egyptian Heliopolis, is an earlier cartouche: ! Bt 1t V eee e !9 B Neferneferuaten, she who is beneficial for her husband. © TOUTANKHAMON, LE TRÉSOR REDÉCOUVERT It has to be understood that, because the Egyptians were such consummate craftsmen, evidence of re-use is visible only in those rare works where adaptation had been carried out in a less than thorough manner. By the character and distribution of these more lazily adapted pieces, it is nonetheless clear that the phenomenon of alteration applies to Tutankhamun’s core burial equipment in its entirety. Shrines, sarcophagus, coffins, mask and canopic equipment—all had originally been intended for someone else, and, as 42 (LEFT) Egyptologist Marc Gabolde’s disentangling of Nefertiti’s co-regent name from beneath the signs superimposed for Tutankhamun’s re-use. texts and iconography reveal, for the use of Akhenaten’s great royal wife Nefertiti in her later role as the co-regent Ankhkheperure Neferneferuaten. Moreover, that this equipment had been available for Tutankhamun to take over wholesale would indicate that, following its manufacture, the material had gone unused by Neferneferuaten and been placed directly into storage— most likely because, in the end, the lady had had access to something significantly better. NILE #34 | MAY 2023 2. RE-USE WITHIN THE BURIAL EQUIPMENT Female physical and facial characteristics The evidence for re-use among Tutankhamun’s burial equipment makes an overwhelming case for the young king having been supplied with the adapted burial equipment of a co-regent queen, Neferneferuaten. But that is not all. Equally compelling, as we will see in the next section, is that evidence which points to KV 62 being merely the outermost section of a larger tomb of queenly design. 1. 2. Half-kingly, half-queenly iconography Entirety of core burial equipment originally prepared for Akhenaten’s female co-regent Ankhkeperure (+ epithet) Neferneferuaten (+ epithet) = Nefertiti 3. Palimpsest inscriptions 3. RE-USE WITHIN THE TOMB “Then came another puzzle. In the lower strata of rubbish that filled the staircase we found masses of broken potsherds and boxes, the latter bearing the names of Akh.en.Aten, Smenkh.ka.Re and Tut.ankh.Amen. . . . The balance of evidence so far would seem to indicate a cache rather than a tomb. . . brought from Tell el Amarna by Tut.ankh.Amen and deposited here for safety.” To turn now from buried treasures to the tomb proper. Re-use here similarly passes without substantive comment, despite Carter’s evident suspicions that something was amiss. Early on in the discovery, he and others on the team had speculated that KV 62 might not be a regular tomb at all, but rather a cache containing the burials of several Amarna mummies: (Tut.ankh.Amen I, H. Carter and A.C. Mace). As we now discover, this was a possibility that Carter quietly held onto throughout the next decade, finally deciding to investigate as the work of clearance drew to a close in 1932 (see page 45). KV 62, highlighting its assortment of burial goods as discovered by Howard Carter, crammed into the outer chambers of Nefertiti’s tomb. NILEMAGAZINE.COM.AU © ER PET , CO MSE GRE E E.D ZON PT NZE 43 3. RE-USE WITHIN THE TOMB PHOTO: CHRONICLE / ALAMY.COM At the northern end of KV 62’s Antechamber was a partition wall with a central blocked doorway. When it was opened (officially) in April 1923, Carter and Carnarvon were confronted with “an astonishing sight”. As Howard Carter later described, Griffith went on to compare KV 62 with the tomb of his father, Akhenaten, which he described as, “axial with a lateral group of chambers for his daughter, who died in childhood.” With this design in mind, Griffith suggested that Tutankhamun’s tomb may have been originally cut for Akhenaten, who returned to it later in life: “there, within a yard of the doorway, stretching as far as one could see, and blocking the entrance to the chamber, stood what to all appearances was a solid wall of gold.” This “wall of gold” turned out to be the side of an immense gilt shrine—the outermost of several— that covered and protected the royal sarcophagus. The image of this “wall of gold” thus revealed was imagined in 1923 by Sphere newspaper artist Donald Macpherson (above). Soon, Egyptologists were speculating about what might lie behind other walls in the tomb. Such partition walls, designed to fool thieves, were well known among Egyptologists, and Francis Llewellyn Griffith, reader in Egyptology at Oxford University, was quoted by the New York Times, 18 February 1923 edition (right), as pondering the possibility of another, hidden burial in the tomb: 44 “To those who follow the reports at a distance, a great mystery overhangs the axial chamber. Has any one yet obtained a view of its inner wall that would assure him of there being nothing beyond but solid rock?” “After he made the tomb at Tel-el-Amarna, the desire to be buried in the same desert valley as his mighty forefathers may have been reawakened. If that be so, the Carnarvon tomb [KV 62] may have contained the sarcophagus of Khu-n-aten [Akhenaten] in its main axis, that of Smenka-Ra in an inner side chamber [the Annexe], and that of Tut-ankh-Amen in a side chamber [the Burial Chamber] at the door of which the whole civilised world seems to be listening.” It seems that Griffith’s questioning remarks would stick in Carter’s mind: might there indeed be more to Tutankhamun’s tomb than they had so far found? NILE #34 | MAY 2023 3. RE-USE WITHIN THE TOMB © FACTUM ARTE (ABOVE) The Burial Chamber’s north wall as colour-coded by Factum Arte, a Madrid-based art conservation company. Blue patches show inadvertent damage—scrapes and scuffs—suffered since the tomb’s discovery. Areas of pink denote sections of wholesale repainting. The largest restoration, presumably by Carter (but not mentioned by him), covers the kilt and legs of Tutankhamun’s “ka” figure, here embracing the king (arrowed above and shown in detail to the right). We learn about Howard Carter’s last-minute, clandestine investigation within the Burial Chamber not from Carter himself, but from direct observations made by the digital recording company Factum Arte within the tomb. Here, in the decoration of the north wall, Factum made a surprising discovery: that one large section of the decoration roughly a metre across—shown above arrowed in yellow, and in detail on the right—was modern restoration. The odd thing is that a pre-investigation photograph from 1931/32 (page 46) shows that there was no obvious need for repair or restoration in this area—no loose plaster, and not a trace of accidental damage. We are obliged to conclude that the damage inflicted at this point had been deliberate, with the culprit none other than Carter himself. We can detect his artistic talents in the subsequent restoration, in a concealing spatter of painted “mould-growth” presum-ably applied to distract the eye away from the investigation area, and in the somewhat inaccurately restored stripes of the figure’s kilt and its badly redrawn knees. What had the excavator been up to? NILEMAGAZINE.COM.AU © FACTUM ARTE / MINISTRY OF ANTIQUITIES, EGYPT 45 3. RE-USE WITHIN THE TOMB © GRIFFITH INSTITUTE, UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD The photograph above was taken before Howard Carter’s 1931–32 probings into the Burial Chamber’s north wall. Note how comparatively mould-free the ka-figure’s kilt and legs are. Curiously, the same area now bears extensive mould-like blotches, despite the fact that the microbiological growths are now proven to be long dead. Something is amiss here. A closer look reveals that this new “mould” is artificial—dabs of brown paint applied as camouflage. When was it done? Acomparison of the above photograph with one taken a few years later, in 1936, shows that the area changed in appearance during that time. The sole person with the opportunity and skill was Howard Carter. Total number of diagonal stripes: 24 A close comparison between the 1931–32 image (above) and the recent hi-res imagery by Factum Arte (right) reveals a modern cover up by Howard Carter: 1) Mould effect mimicked in brown paint 2) A difference in the number of stripes 3) Changes in the delineation of the knees 4) The shape of the ankh 46 FAULTY CARTER RESTORATION © FACTUM ARTE / MINISTRY OF ANTIQUITIES, EGYPT © GRIFFITH INSTITUTE, UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD CONDITION AS FOUND Total number of diagonal stripes: 27 2 1 4 3 Had Howard Carter been checking for further chambers beyond the north wall of the Burial Chamber? On the one hand it is hard to imagine him being willing to damage such irreplaceable art, while, on the other, he had already encountered the riches that lay behind one partition wall. The possibility of still more treasures would have been a strong motivator. NILE #34 | MAY 2023 3. RE-USE WITHIN THE TOMB WV 22 TOMB OF AMENHOTEP III KV 57 TOMB OF HOREMHEB KV 62 TOMB OF TUTANKHAMUN / NEFERTITI Carter’s failed test within KV 62 in search of a hidden door was similarly on the left side of the wall. PILLARED CHAMBER x PILLARED CHAMBER Access to this tomb’s inner burial suite (arrowed) was on the left, concealed by a painted scene on the well chamber’s far wall. WELL CHAMBER Here too the tomb continues on the left beyond the well behind a painted scene (below). BURIAL CHAMBER TREASURY WELL CHAMBER DESCENDING CORRIDOR ANTECHAMBER ANNEXE ADAPTED BY MONET BURZACOTT FROM PLANS BY THE THEBAN MAPPING PROJECT © CHRIS NAUNTON / WWW.CHRISNAUNTON.COM Although Egyptian tombs were never meant to be visited, some included a protective well, as described by Francis Llewellyn Griffith: “a deep square pit, cutting the passage completely and intended to trap not only intrusive rainwater but also an indiscreet robber.” The above view across the well in the Tomb of Horemheb (KV 57) shows how a painted false wall was Given his early expectation of multiple burials, the likelihood is that Howard Carter had been checking for a continuation of Tutankhamun’s tomb. He evidently chose to investigate where he did, on the left-hand side of the Burial Chamber’s north wall, because this was where, in kingly tombs of the dynasty, such tomb continuations were traditionally found, beyond a sunken “well” (which NILEMAGAZINE.COM.AU intended to conceal the passage through to the rest of the tomb. Carter believed that the sunken floor of KV 62’s Burial Chamber began its life as a notional well. He also understood that in an 18th-Dynasty king’s tomb, any passage beyond will have been located on the left-hand side of the facing wall. What he did not know was that KV 62 had been prepared for the burial of a queen, and thus the position will have been reversed. Tutankhamun’s Burial Chamber resembles) and camouflaged by a painting (see Horemheb’s tomb, above). Within Tutankhamun’s tomb, however, Carter hit bedrock at once and promptly abandoned the search. Concluding there was nothing to be found, he made good the damage, kept quiet about the investigation and hoped that none would be any the wiser. 47 3. RE-USE WITHIN THE TOMB S KV 62 began life for the burial of a queen, with the decorated “Well Chamber” cut to the west when Nefertiti became sole pharaoh after the death of Akhenaten. This room later became the Burial Chamber for Tutankhamun. E The dimensions of the hidden partition wall (and corridor continuation) as measured by various geophysical tests precisely match the width of the Antechamber. W N © PETER GREMSE N But had Carter been right to give up so easily?—had he been right to conclude there was nothing more to find? I ask this because, in his choice of investigation site, he failed to take into account one vitally important fact: that Tutankhamun’s Burial Chamber had begun its life not as a chamber at all. As residual chisel marks on the ceiling demonstrate, it had started off as a simple corridor, and was expanded towards the west to form a room only subsequently. If we follow the line of these chisel marks to their destination on the Burial Chamber’s north wall, we observe a curious alignment— a feature picked up not only in Factum Arte’s surface scanning, but by the ScanPyramids team’s thermal imaging, by (some) of the radar scan data so far reprocessed, and by a plotting of the wall’s ancient mould-growth. What this data combines to reveal looks like nothing less than a blocked partition with smaller, inner doorway—that is, a construction identical to that encountered in 1922 between the Antechamber and the Burial Chamber. In other words, it looks very much like the continuation Carter had been seeking, but on the north wall’s right hand rather than its left-hand side. 48 Residual chisel marks define original corridor edge Corridor’s secondary expansion towards the west E W Burial Chamber ceili ng N © NICHOLAS REEVES NILE #34 | MAY 2023 3. RE-USE WITHIN THE TOMB © FACTUM ARTE In 2014, art documentation company Factum Arte published high-resolution scans of the Burial Chamber walls that revealed for the first time what lay beneath the painted decoration. With it now possible to examine the physicality of the underlying walls at leisure, Reeves was struck by what looked like “ghosts” of two unknown doorways on the north and west. Here above we see the (dotted) course of a bedrock fault on the Burial Chamber’s north wall, and, at right, seemingly the partial outline of a partition wall with internal doorway. The width of this doorway matches pre cisely that of the tomb’s Antechamber—”an equivalence,” Reeves states, “surely beyond chance. The details beneath the decoration on the west wall can be seen on page 52. THERMAL IMAGING BY SCANPYRAMIDS, BASE PHOTO: FACTUM ARTE Radar tests seem to confirm differences in the density of the north wall’s left and right sides, while thermal imaging, shown here, conducted by an Egyptian-French team, mimics the scanning results. With thermal imaging, the idea is that bedrock and artificial construction will generate different temperatures. The results of 2015 showed precisely that. NILEMAGAZINE.COM.AU According to then Egyptian Minister of Antiquities, Mamdouh Eldamaty, “the preliminary analysis indicates the presence of an area different in its temperature than the other parts of the northern wall.” He went on to say that more research was needed to verify the findings, though he was encouraged that archaeologists might well uncover adjacent rooms. 49 3. RE-USE WITHIN THE TOMB (ABOVE) The spread of mould provides a further hint of an artificial blocking concealing a corridor continuation beyond the north wall. This was highlighted by Factum Arte’s founder, Adam Lowe: “If you look at the areas of mould/microbacteria on the North wall [there] is a greater density of [genuine] mould to the right hand side of the vertical line than there is to the left of this line—this would imply the presence of fresher plaster and more moisture”. © NICHOLAS REEVES And what lifts this hidden continuation from possibility to probability is a single, extraordinary feature pointed out to me in 2015 by the former Minister of Antiquities, Dr. Mamdouh Eldamaty: the presence, on the wall, in 50 (LEFT) An extraordinary detail, highlighted in raking light, of the surface above the first and second cups of incence, as pointed out by Mamdouh Eldamaty in 2015. Observe the clear line where the softer plaster of the north wall partition meets the hard and exceptionally gritty surface of its internal “service doorway”. Although muted by the added layers of paint, this surface is identical to the texture of the various door blockings encountered by Howard Carter in 1922. the area of this newly perceived inner doorway, of a hard, gritty plaster—the same distinctive surface Carter had encountered on each of the door blockings broken through in 1922/23, and only on such blockings. NILE #34 | MAY 2023 3. RE-USE WITHIN THE TOMB © PETER GREMSE / NICHOLAS REEVES, BASE PHOTO: FACTUM ARTE Peter Gremse’s conceptualisation of what perhaps lies beneath the north wall decoration. As revealed by a chiseled line on the ceiling of Tutankhamun’s Burial Chamber (see page 46), the room had begun as a simple corridor that was subsequently expanded west. These ceiling traces define that corridor’s course and connect precisely with the westert edge of the feature picked up not only on Factum Arte’s surface-scanning, but also in thermal imaging, in radar tests, and even in a plotting of the wall’s ancient mould growth. In combination, what these traces define is a large, blocked partition with a smaller, inner doorway—precisely the type of construction that separated the Antechamber from Tutankhamun’s Burial Chamber. © PETER GREMSE / NICHOLAS REEVES, BASE PHOTO: FACTUM ARTE Each of the four walls of Tutankhamun’s Burial Chamber contained a small niche which held an inscribed mud brick surmounted by a different magical figure. The height of the niches on the east, north and west walls are cut at the same height (as indicated by the colour band, above). The niche on the southern wall, however, is positioned above this band. NILEMAGAZINE.COM.AU While no definitive traces may be discerned in the surface plaster of the south wall, the anomalous height of this niche—identical in size to that leading to the Annexe—may hint at the presence of a fourth Tutankhamun-era storage chamber. The builders would have naturally wished to cut the niche into solid bedrock rather than the dry-wall blocking of the doorway. 51 3. RE-USE WITHIN THE TOMB © PETER GREMSE / NICHOLAS REEVES. BASE PHOTO: FACTUM ARTE When Factum Arte was employed to create a hi-res replica of Tutankhamun’s tomb they posted their digital scans online so that anyone could examine, at an unprecedented level of detail, both the Burial Chamber’s decoration and what physically lay beneath. On the west wall, beneath the painted baboon decoration, digital surface scanning revealed lines that appear to outline a further blocked doorway. Two parallel lines are seen to run vertically up from the floor, with their identification as door jambs seemingly confirmed by a natural fault—a feature commonly encountered above a rock-cut doorway—extending down from the ceiling to disappear at the point the two verticals stop. BURIAL CHAMBER | WEST WALL ANTECHAMBER | WEST WALL ACCESS TO ANNEXE © PETER GREMSE / NICHOLAS REEVES. BASE PHOTO: FACTUM ARTE It is surely significant that the dimensions of this putative doorway match precisely those of the adjacent doorway into the Antechamber’s Annexe, a room which is thought to have been cut for Tutankhamun’s funerary storage a decade after Nefertiti Smenkhkare was interred within KV 62’s farther, still hidden reaches. These shared dimensions suggest that any room to which the Burial Chamber’s west wall doorway gives access had been cut at the same time. And what’s behind? Again, very likely a further, undisturbed, satellite storeroom, potentially stocked with more fabulous burial equipment. But quite possibly more: both Amenhotep III and Horemheb’s tombs include 52 similar chambers adjacent to the head of the royal sarcophagus that had evidently been adapted, prior to storeroom usage, to receive subsidiary burials. The west wall was the focus and culmination of the tomb’s decorative scheme—every figure of the king on the north and south walls faces westward. The twelve squatting baboon deities represent the twelve hours of the night through which the sun (and therefore the king) must travel before achieving rebirth at every dawn. This decoration, with its original yellow background, was employed when Nefertiti’s Well Chamber was adapted for use as a Burial Chamber for Tutankhamun, a decade after her burial. NILE #34 | MAY 2023 3. RE-USE WITHIN THE TOMB Tellingly, the figures on the Burial Chamber’s north wall display proportions different from those on the other walls. The above image of Tutankhamun’s ka from the north wall employs an Amarna-era, 20-square grid, which runs from the soles of the feet to the hairline on the brow to produce shorter legs and a longer neck and face. So, it looks like we do indeed have Carter’s suspected continuation: but a continuation leading to what? To understand this, we must turn to the decoration of the Burial Chamber’s walls. These prove to display a number of odd and remarkable features. First, the layout of the north wall follows an earlier, Amarna-period 20-square grid, these proportions being quite distinct from the post-Amarna, 18-square format encountered on the companion south, east and west walls. Secondly, as the Getty Conservation Institute has NILEMAGAZINE.COM.AU © FACTUM ARTE / MINISTRY OF ANTIQUITIES SOUTH WALL: Traditional 18-Grid Style © FACTUM ARTE / MINISTRY OF ANTIQUITIES NORTH WALL: Amarna 20-Grid Style Elsewhere in the chamber, the pre- and- post-Amarna, traditional 18-square grid was used, as in the above figure of Tutankhamun on the south wall. Different grids reflect the tomb’s two stages of use, with the north wall painted for the burial of Nefertiti Smenkhkare, and its companion scenes added a decade later when the room was taken over for Tutankhamun’s burial. established, unlike the south, east and west walls, the decoration of the anomalous north wall had been applied on an original white background; the yellow we see today on the north is secondary, having been achieved by simply painting around this wall’s principal decoration to provide a superficial match with its later fellows. Clearly, therefore, the north wall is the adapted work of a different and earlier team of artists—and not only that, but a different and earlier team of artists working on an entirely different project. 53 3. RE-USE WITHIN THE TOMB Pharaoh Smenkhkare welcomed by Osiris Smenkhkare welcomed by Nut Tutankhamun ‘Opens the Mouth’ of the mummified Smenkhkare ORIGINAL NORTH WALL SCENE Tutankhamun figure added and Smenkhkare becomes his ka. Smenkhkare changing into Tutankhamun Ay now ‘Opens the Mouth’ of the mummified Tutankhamun THE NORTH WALL IN THE PROCESS OF ADAPTION Face of Nefertiti retained in figures of Osiris and royal ka. Face of Nefertiti kept in figure of Tutankhamun. Face of Nefertiti in Osiris figure. Face of Tut in Ay figure. TODAY AS FINALLY ALTERED © PETER GREMSE / NICHOLAS REEVES, BASE PHOTO: FACTUM ARTE 54 The original scene on the north wall, painted on a white background. The cartouche ovals occupied their present placement, though bearing the names of the original tomb owner: that is Smenkhkare rather than Tutankhamun, who was shown officiating on the far right. The Smenkhkare north wall in the process of its adaptation and repurposing for use in in the Burial Chamber of Tutankhamun. The original white background was overpainted in yellow, with the cartouches whited out and renamed for Tutankhamun as the deceased pharaoh. The north wall today. The insertion of Tutankhamun before Osiris meant that the text above had to be squeezed into the minimal available space. Note the misalignment of this figure’s cartouche in comparison with the ovals at right and centre, as indicated by the two yellow bands. NILE #34 | MAY 2023 3. RE-USE WITHIN THE TOMB © FACTUM ARTE / MINISTRY OF ANTIQUITIES, EGYPT By placing emphasis on specific facial characteristics, the Egyptians could ensure that the principal subjects in royal tombs would be individually recognisable among the sea of standard faces. For Tutankhamun, becoming pharaoh at such a young age (around nine years old) meant that many of his images show a youthful plumpness and feature a childlike notched under-chin. The image above is the north wall figure currently labeled as “Ay”, seen performing the “Opening of the Mouth” on a mummified “Tutankhamun”. This ritual re-enabled the senses of the reborn king and established And this we can demonstrate. Consider the officiating figure on the north wall’s far right, today labelled as a depiction of the god’s father Ay “opening the mouth” of the mummified Tutankhamun (see page 57). Schematised though royal imagery may have been, it nevertheless followed a distinctive pattern. As direct comparison confirms, the plump, babyish features of “Ay” bear only a limited similarity to this older man’s normal profile elsewhere (see figure to the right). What they do match, and with some precision, is the facial outline of the chubby child-king Tutankhamun, as represented above-right in a relief found in Luxor Temple. NILEMAGAZINE.COM.AU © MANNA NADER Ay’s place as his successor. The features bear no resemblance to Ay, however. Rather, the snub nose and chubby under-chin (arrowed) identify the facial outline of Tutankhamun. Above is an image of Tutankhamun from the Colonnade enclosure wall at Luxor Temple, which bears the same shape nose and chubby under-chin as that found employed for the sem-priest’s representation in the tomb. As for the face of the recipient mummy on the tomb’s north wall, this carries the indisputable features of Nefertiti (see page 60). © MELEGYRN This is Ay, who succeeded Tutankhamun as pharaoh. The relief is from his Amarna tomb (TA 25), built when he served Akhenaten as royal fan-bearer and head of the royal stables. Ay’s facial outline bears no close resemblance to the figure standing below his cartouche in Tutankhamun’s Burial Chamber. 55 3. RE-USE WITHIN THE TOMB Beneath Ay’s cartouches, traces of the names of his predecessor can still be seen (arrowed) Trace of i ( 1 ) reed leaf Curve of nb (> ) basket Shorter length of original scarab body What is more, the accompanying texts prove this identification. Not only does Ay’s Birth Name overlie clear traces of an earlier name beginning with a reed-leaf i ( 1 ) (shown in the middle panel in blue), i.e. “Tutankhimn”; the bizarre misspelling of Ay’s prenomen can now be revealed as in fact a lazy adaptation of Tutankhamun’s own throne name, “Nebkheperure”, in a variant writing employing three scarab beetles. Using DStretch enhancement software, the original, underlying nb (>) of Nebkeperure is readily observed (bottom panel in blue), as is the original smaller and darker body of the third scarab whose legs and body had visibly been extended to fill the nb-sign’s vacated space. The visible traces of Tutankhamun’s names are highlighted in blue (TOP-LEFT) The cartouches of Ay on the north wall of Tutankhamun’s Burial Chamber as they appear today in their mis-spelled/abbreviated forms. Shown below are the standard writings, accompanied by their usual epithets: V xx b b b < L ! THRONE NAME Kheper Kheperu Re “Everlasting are the manifestations of Re” EPITHET Iri Maat “Who does what is right” BIRTH NAME The identity of the figure originally conducting the “Opening the Mouth” ritual now stands revealed: it is Nebkheperure Tutankhamun "3 1 1 "1 1 3n> It netjer Ay “God’s Father, Ay” EPITHET Netjer heqa Waset “Divine ruler of Thebes” The KV 62 misspelling of Ay’s Throne Name is explained as a lazy adaptation of Tutankhamun’s own Throne Name in a variant version employing three separate scarabs rather than a single scarab and three plural strokes. THE REGULAR WRITING OF TUTANKHAMUN’S THRONE NAME V x © PETER GREMSE / NICHOLAS REEVES, BASE PHOTO: FACTUM ARTE 56 b b b > Neb Kheperu Re “Lord of the forms of Re” NILE #34 | MAY 2023 3. RE-USE WITHIN THE TOMB Original cartouches of his predecessor presumed to lie beneath those of Tutankhamun Original cartouches of Tutankhamun beneath those of Ay Original representation of Tutankhamun’s predecessor, Nefertiti Smenkhkare Original representation of Tutankhamun The “oromental groove” at the corner of Nefertiti’s mouth is a distinctive feature of her representation as queen/co-regent/pharaoh. © THE GETTY CONSERVATION INSTITUTE The first scene on the Burial Chamber’s north wall is the “Opening of the Mouth” ritual being performed on Tutankhamun’s mummy by the young king’s successor, Ay, shown standing on the right. This interpretation relies, of course, on the current version of the texts before each figure; close examination, however, reveals In short, the “Opening of the Mouth” scene not only overlies a partition wall with a smaller, internal blocked doorway; its original subject matter had been very different—depicting not the burial of Tutankhamun by his successor Ay, but rather the burial by Tutankhamun, NILEMAGAZINE.COM.AU that Ay’s cartouches had been painted over texts naming Tutankhamun in the role. Not by chance are the facial features those of Tutankhamun. In its original state, the scene had clearly been executed by Tutankhamun to close-off the inner burial apartments of his predecessor and legitimize his succession. a decade earlier, of the young king’s own royal predecessor. A separate study of sequential alterations in the texts on the rear stiles of the Golden Throne (shown opposite) definitively confirms this predecessor to have been the obscure pharaoh Smenkhkare. 57 3. RE-USE WITHIN THE TOMB © SANDRO VANNINI “What. . . could be more charming than the tableau upon the throne, so touchingly represented? Such impressions, for the moment, seem to lift us across the gulf of years and destroy the sense of time. Ankh.es.en.Amen, the charming girlish wife, is seen adding a touch of perfume to the young king’s collar. . . before he enters into some great function in the palace.”—Howard Carter in The Tomb of Tut.ankh.Amen II, 1927. The Golden Throne described above was discovered by Howard Carter in the tomb’s Antechamber. In its final form, the spectacular backrest shows Tutankhamun being anointed by his wife (and probable half-sister), Ankhesenamun. Nicholas Reeves has now recognised that the two figures we see here in fact began life as representations of Akhenaten and his queen, Nefertiti. The throne’s diminutive size, around a metre high, was previously thought to have been crafted for a young Tutankhamun at the Amarna royal palace (when he was 58 still called Tutankhaten), before perhaps being refurbished prior to its introduction into the tomb. The most noticible alteration is in the couple’s head ornaments which cut brutally through the life-giving rays of the sun. The queen’s wig showns signs of having been reduced in size also, leaving the pleated ribbons of the head band floating unattached. The space behind the queen is occupied by a broad collar on a stand. As Reeves states in The Complete Tutankhamun, “Parallels reveal this stand to be a ‘filler’. . . to substitute for an excised physical presence. . . here the replaced figure will have been a princess, almost certainly Meritaten, revealing an original backrest scene of familiar Amarna composition—king, queen and daughter.” Reeves has charted several phases of the chair’s ownership and alteration. Changes in the texts of the rear stiles reveal a clear sequence of rule: from the time of the chair’s manufacture for Nefertiti as Akhenaten’s Great Royal Wife, through to Tutankhamun. NILE #34 | MAY 2023 3. RE-USE WITHIN THE TOMB KV 62 as NEFERTITI’S TOMB The dominant orientation of a queen’s tomb—to the occupant’s left. The original KV 62 was a leftturning corridor tomb built for a senior queen. N WADI A-1 TOMB OF QUEEN HATSHEPSUT ADAPTED BY MONET BURZACOTT FROM PLANS BY THE THEBAN MAPPING PROJECT This left-turning tomb was originally intended for Hatshepsut as the Great Royal Wife of Thutmose II, but was abandoned once she ascended the throne. She was eventually buried in the Valley of the Kings, in tomb KV 20. KV 43 TOMB OF KING THUTMOSE IV © RICHARD SELLICKS The entrance to the tomb constructed for Queen Hatshepsut, principal wife of the 18th-Dynasty’s Thutmose II, is located high on a cliff face in a wadi (dry river valley) southwest of the Valley of the Kings. As a queenly tomb, its corridors follow an anticlockwise route from the burial chamber to the outside (see plan, centre right). Hatshepsut, however, was destined for bigger things: a long co-regency with Thutmose III and eventual burial in the Valley of the Kings itself. Hatshepsut’s queenly tomb, today designated Wadi A-1, was left empty and undecorated. This photo, taken in 2004, features for scale the photographer’s young son, Mark, emphasising the tomb’s impressive height and location. Who was this Smenkhkare, now revealed as KV 62’s original owner? To determine sex, we need look no further than the ground-plan. In a regular kingly tomb like that of Thutmose IV, the dominant orientation is to the tomb occupant’s right. What we find in the tomb of Tutankhamun, however, is a turn to the occupant’s left—which, as Hatshepsut’s queenly cliff-tomb WA D confirms, is the NILEMAGAZINE.COM.AU The dominant orientation of a king’s tomb, from the point of view of the reborn pharaoh emerging from the burial chamber—to the occupant’s right. lesser orientation employed by a royal consort. In other words, not only had Tutankhamun been interred with the adapted burial equipment of a co-regent queen, Neferneferuaten; it seems that his grave, KV 62, had been established within the outermost section of a female tomb which, by the evidence of its concealing north wall, gives every appearance of continuing deeper into the gebel beyond. 59 3. RE-USE WITHIN THE TOMB QUEEN CO-REGENT PHARAOH Berlin 21300 Shrine II (No. 237) (Reversed) North Wall, Figure 2 PHOTO: MAGNUS MANSKE © SANDRO VANNINI © FACTUM ARTE These three images of Nefertiti capture her appearance as her status progresses from Great Royal Wife to junior co-regent, to pharaoh in her own right. Notice the shared lines of the brow and nose, straight jawline and small, rounded chin. The bust and the face of the mummified king on the tomb’s north wall both feature a significant “oromental groove” running down from the QUEEN corner of the mouth, unique to Nefertiti. Below we can see how the queen’s name evolves from role to role. Early in Akhenaten’s rule, Nefertiti added the prefix “Neferneferuaten” to her name, appropriate to her husband’s increasing obsession with the Aten. Upon her elevation to co-regent, Nefertiti adopted this prefix as her new identity. CO-REGENT Vjx 6 ! t ! V 1 eeee e 7 2 g v Neferneferuaten NEFERTITI Vjx w ANKHKHEPERURE ANKHKHEPERURE (+ Akhenaten-dependent epithet) (no epithet) ! t 1 V ee e e plus epithet Ve \T plus epithet NEFERNEFERUATEN SMENKHKARE (+ Akhenaten-dependent epithet) (+ non Akhenaten-dependent epithet) And it is the evidence of this same, decorated north wall which establishes precisely who this woman-owner was. While, as we have seen, the profile of the scene’s sem-priest is indisputably that of Tutankhamun as a child, the face of the recipient of these ministrations proves equally familiar: it carries precisely the same distinctive profile as we encounter in the famed Berlin bust of Nefertiti, which is the very same profile we encounter yet again in the gilded second shrine appropriated by Tutankhamun from Neferneferuaten (see above). As these three portraits reveal, and as the queen’s, co-regent’s and successor’s leap-frogging name-forms confirm, Nefertiti, Neferneferuaten and Smenkhkare were all three one and the same individual. To sum up: evidence of re-use is encountered everywhere 60 plus epithet PHARAOH within Tutankhamun’s burial—in the tomb’s architecture, in its decoration and in its burial equipment. An assessment of this re-use reveals both the equipment and its enclosing tomb to have been prepared for a woman, Nefertiti, and subsequently adapted for her as Akhenaten’s co-regent, Neferneferuaten, and latterly full pharaoh, Smenkhkare. Within this new reality we see Tutankhamun relegated to the status of cuckoo in a much larger nest—buried with essentially queenly burial equipment and occupying the outer chambers only of Nefertiti’s ancient place of burial. A larger tomb within whose farther reaches, it appears, Nefertiti lies still, undisturbed and surrounded by a new, kingly burial equipment, far richer, I suspect, than anything archaeology has yet seen, anywhere in the world. NILE #34 | MAY 2023 4. CONCLUSIONS THE TOMB OF TUTANKHAMUN KV 62 as it was discovered by Howard Carter in 1922, showing the false wall erected between the Antechamber and the king’s Burial Chamber. A similar wall appears likely to hide the continuation of the tomb beyond the Burial Chamber’s north wall, leading to the undisturbed burial of Smenkhkare: Nefertiti in her elevated, pharaonic role. MORE TO COME? The potential locations of two “missing” Tutankhamun store chambers, and an apparent corridor-continuation towards Smenkhkare’s burial chamber further north (yellow areas likely, purple room speculative). As Nicholas Reeves was quoted when he first publicised his theory: “If I’m wrong I’m wrong, but if I’m right, this is potentially the greatest archaeological discovery ever made!”. © PETER GREMSE, CONZEPTZONE.DE Nicholas Reeves is an Egyptologist with a particular interest in the Amarna period and the tomb of Tutankhamun. He has held curatorial positions in the former Department of Egyptian Antiquities, British Museum, the Myers Museum of Egyptian and Classical Art at Eton College, and the Department of Egyptian Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. His revised edition of The Complete Tutankhamun, which further details the evidence for the reuse of KV 62, was published in 2022. (LEFT) Nicholas Reeves and then Egyptian Antiquities Minister, Mamdouh Eldamaty answer questions at a press conference in November 2015 following an inspection of Tutankhamun’s tomb. NILEMAGAZINE.COM.AU 61