 If ARTP knew about the existence of KV63 as early as 2000 it might reasonably be asked why we did not immediately dig it.
The fact is that our delay was quite deliberate: from the start we took the view that in excavating in the Valley of the Kings there is no need for haste and every necessity for caution.
With or without our political difficulties, in ARTP’s schedule of work an investigation of the feature remained some years away from realization. These were years which, in preparation terms, we deemed absolutely essential.
First, the shaft lay some distance from the point we had chosen in 2002 to commence the systematic, stratigraphic excavation of our principal concession. We preferred not to burrow vertically through - and destroy - out of sequence in another part of our site several metres of intact, overlying archaeology solely to dig out a tomb.
The point is that what the Valley of the Kings so desperately needs is not further isolated tombs and funerary objects but good, contextualising data - data which at this site in particular is crucial in recovering for long-known finds a background sacrificed at the time of their amateurish initial excavation a century and more ago.
Much of this data, ARTP now recognized, had by a miracle survived and in salvageable form; and it would be most efficiently collected not by a selective cherry-picking of the Valley’s juicier parts but as part of a thorough and detailed examination of the site as a whole. We were naturally happy at the prospect of excavating a tomb, but that excavation would have to take place at the appropriate time.
Secondly, it was obviously essential for the project to be fully prepared before any physical investigation of the feature took place.
From its location ARTP recognized that the feature revealed on our radar had the potential not only to be a tomb but to be intact. An intact tomb, whether royal or private, is an exceptionally rare phenomenon in Egypt generally and in the Valley of the Kings in particular. The prospect of excavating such a find is - or ought to be - a daunting one.
What an intact deposit of this sort has the potential to tell us about aspects of ancient Egyptian life, death and burial is considerable. Properly handled such a find has the potential to revolutionize, on many levels, our understanding of the ancient past. In order to fully achieve this potential, however, the manner of excavation is crucial.
ARTP concluded early on that to undertake a physical investigation of the tomb hurriedly and without wide-ranging consultation would be a serious error of judgement. Forethought and advice were needed to establish the sorts of information which might, with cutting-edge scientific guidance, be squeezed from such a find - the full range of questions which might feasibly be asked of such a deposit. And, these questions formulated, the practicalities of providing answers would in turn need to be addressed and resolved to ensure that the potential information yield might actually be achieved.
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For example: if, like the burial of Tutankhamun, the new tomb proved to be hermetically sealed the excavator would have before him not only a valuable collection of funerary objects but a unique day-in-the-life of ancient Egypt. Air samples, smells, pollen, insects, microbes, dust - an entire ancient environment of inestimable scientific value. The rarest of all possible data, immensely difficult to gather - and in the case of Tutankhamun gone forever when Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon clumsily broke through the sealed doorway to peer in.
What if a second sealed tomb were now in the offing? It was apparent that every effort should be made to avoid undue contamination of the scene - to attempt to salvage now what, in the case of Tutankhamun, had been lost for good.
The headache for the digger is that he or she can never know precisely what lies ahead. In circumstances such as these a responsible archaeologist cannot simply assume that the deposit has been disturbed; rather than take any risks he or she must over-prepare in readiness for all eventualities.
Anticipating the potential reality of an intact tomb ARTP therefore concluded that it would be essential to include in our team from the very start a whole array of specialists and attendant technologies capable of testing for and collecting, prior to contamination or dispersal, every possible type of sample and form of fugitive evidence.
And, equally obvious to us, the project must include and from the very beginning an entire team of conservators - specialists skilled in emergency stabilization procedures, with the highest specification equipment and supplies ready to hand. For once a tomb is opened physical deterioration begins to take place, often extremely rapidly; if one is successfully to preserve what has been uncovered quite literally every minute counts.
ARTP thought long and hard about KV63 for many months. Sadly we were given no opportunity to put our strategy into practice: in February 2005 Otto Schaden, digging in search of KV10’s foundation deposits some 10 metres (sic) from that tomb’s ancient entrance, stumbled upon the shaft and our project was presented with a fait accompli.
(28/03/2006)
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