 The Amarna Royal Tombs Project (ARTP) initiated its programme of archaeological survey and excavation in the central part of Egypt`s Valley of the Kings in November 1998, and has now completed three successive seasons of work under the joint field-direction of Nicholas Reeves and Geoffrey T. Martin. The emphasis to date has been on the documentation and investigation of the ancient settlements which once occupied much of the central Valley - those neglected `workmen`s huts` which previous excavators have occasionally noted, sometimes `cleared`, and more rarely planned. A particular focus of ARTP`s work has been that area of settlement located between tombs KV 56 (`The Gold Tomb`) and KV 9 (Ramesses VI), which in the early years of the 20th century was partially explored both by Theodore Davis (who left little record: ef. Davis 1908: 31) and by Howard Carter (Carter & Mace 1923: 87; cf. Reeves 1990a: plate XIV; Reeves & Wilkinson 1996: 84). The greater part of this restricted site - a good deal of its archaeology still intact, despite earlier sondages - has now been excavated down to bedrock, with intriguing results.
Beneath the spoil of ancient workings and more modern excavations a stepped wadi formation has revealed itself, and several distinct phases of activity encountered. Of these, the two principal are:
1 An upper layer of settlement, consisting of a row of modest shelters at first sight of single-room depth but in part, at least, extending beneath the tourist path. These huts, which link up with a series of similar structures positioned around the entrance to the tomb of Ramesses VI (cf. Reeves 1990a: plate XIV), on excavation yielded pottery of Ramesses III-Ramesses VI date and a quantity of small-finds. The latter included inscribed and figured ostraca and jeux de nature - natural flint nodules reminiscent of (and sometimes enhanced by the addition of paint more accurately to represent) lunar discs, a kneeling goddess, etc.
2 Indications of a lower and presumably earlier layer of settlement extending from the east, again running beneath the modern path and still to be investigated. To judge from the neighbouring portions of this settlement which Carter photographed (cf. Reeves 1990b: 51, 75) and plotted (cf. Reeves 1990a: plate XIV), these huts are distinguished from the Ramessid structures which lie above by the slightly smaller scale of the rooms and by the use of somewhat larger stones in their construction.
An interesting find which may prove to have a bearing both on the dating and on the significance of this lower level of huts was made at the end of ARTP`s third season in 2000. This is a large, figured ostracon of limestone, dated not only by the obvious Amarna style of the charcoal sketch it carries - showing an elaborately dressed official with shaven head, scrawny neck, narrow shoulders and pot belly, standing with his arms raised in adoration - but by the discovery nearby, at a similar depth overlying these lower-level huts, of several fragments from a large, blue-painted storage jar of the late 18th Dynasty.
It has for some time now been recognized that the burials of Tutankhamun`s predecessors - Akhenaten and the members of his immediate family - were transferred from el-Amarna to Thebes during or just after the young king`s reign. Here, at Thebes, it seems that extensive portions of the burial equipments belonging to these individuals were reworked for Tutankhamun`s own use, with what was left over being similarly adapted and divided again among the original owners for their re-interments nearby (Reeves 1997). Intriguingly, only one of these reburials has so far been identified: the mix-and-match deposit discovered in January 1907 by Theodore Davis within tomb KV 55 - for this writer, at least, the final resting-place of Akhenaten himself (Reeves 1990c; 2001: 80-84; Hussein & Harris 1988; but cf. still Filer 2000).
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Since objects of Amarna date are of some considerable rarity in the Valley of the Kings, the recent discovery of an Amarna-style ostracon and contemporary pottery in undisturbed layers not far distant from the burial of Tutankhamun and tomb KV 55 is an interesting development - the first clear evidence yet encountered of significant late 18th-Dynasty activity on ARTP`s site. Whether this activity is to be associated with the establishment of one or other of the `missing` Amarna reburials - either in a tomb still unknown to archaeology, or in an anonymous sepulchre such as KV 56 (a queenly tomb of 18th-Dynasty date cleared out for re-use at the end of the 19th Dynasty: Reeves forthcoming) - remains to be determined.
Acknowledgements. The Amarna Royal Tombs Project`s excavatiOnS in the Valley of the Kings are carried out with the generous permission and co-operation of Egypt`s Ministry of Culture and Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA). Grateful acknowledgement is made to the SCA`s Permanent Secretary, Prof. Dr Gaballa Aly Gaballa, and to its ever-helpful officers and inspectors - Dr Mohammed el-Soghir, Dr Mohammed Nasr, Mr Sabry Abd el-Aziz, Mr Mohammed Abd el-Aziz el-Bialy, Mr Ibrahim Mahmoud Suleiman, Mr Ahmed Ezz el-Din and Mr Ezz el-Din Kamal. Thanks are due also to Dr Zahi Hawass, Undersecretary of State for the Giza Pyramids. The Project would like to express its gratitude to its several sponsors, whose names, together with further information on the work of the ARTP, may be found on the website of the Valley of the Kings Foundation: www.valleyofthekings.org My own thanks, as ever, to the members of the team.
References
CARTER, H. & AC. MACE. 1923. The Tomb of Tut.ankh.Amen I. London: Cassell.
DAVIS, TM. 1908. The Tomb of Siphtah; the Monkey Tomb and the Gold Tomb. London: Constable.
FILER, J. 2000. The KV 55 body: the facts, in Egyptian Archaeology 17 (autumn): 13-14.
HUSSEIN, F. & J.E. HARRIS. 1988. The skeletal remains from Tomb No. 55 in Fifth International Congress of Egyptology, October 29-November 3, Cairo, 1988. Abstracts of Papers: 140-41. Cairo: International Association of Egyptologists.
REEVES, C.N. 1990a. Valley of the Kings. The decline of a royal necropolis. London: KPI.
REEVES, N. 1990b. The complete Tutankhamun. London: Thames & Hudson.
1990c. The archaeological analysis of KV 55, 1907-1990, in TM. Davis, The tomb of Queen Tiyi (2nd edition): iv¬xiv. San Francisco: KMT Communications.
1997. Public lecture, Bloomsbury Theatre, University College London, 17 May.
2001. Akhenaten, Egypt`s false prophet. London: Thames & Hudson.
Forthcoming. On some queens` tombs of the 18th Dynasty, in N. Strudwick & J.H. Taylor (ed.), The Theban Necropolis: past, present and future. London: British Museum Publications.
REEVES, N. & R.H. WILKINSON. 1996. The complete Valley of the Kings. London: Thames & Hudson.
* Myers Museum of Egyptian and Classical Art, Eton College, Windsor SL4 6DW, England. n.reeves@etoncollege.org.uk
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