 I`d like to speak briefly today on the work of the Amarna Royal Tombs Project in the Valley of the Kings, but before I describe what we`re doing it will perhaps be helpful to outline just why we`re doing it. The story goes back to the summer of 1997, and two lectures on KV 55 and Tutankhamun I was invited to give with Kent Weeks at the Bloomsbury Theatre in London.
The conclusions I reached in 1997 were as follows:
1. that Tutankhamun`s reuse of earlier funerary furniture was far greater in extent than previously suspected, with perhaps as much as 80% of the king` s core burial equipment being second-hand - including, rather dramatically, the famous gold mask, which appears to have had a new face soldered in position;
2. that this reuse had been necessitated by the king`s early death, before he had been able to make any serious burial preparations of his own - leaving his successor, Ay, with a serious problem, since it was the new pharaoh`s prime responsibility to see his predecessor properly into the beyond;
3. that Tutankhamun`s death by a happy chance coincided with the transfer from Amarna of the burials of Akhenaten and other members of the family, making available to Ay a mass of burial equipment to meet Tutankhamun`s immediate needs;
4. and that, once Tutankhamun had been equipped from this windfall, what was left over was re-divided again among the Amarna dead who were then themselves reburied in the vicinity of Tutankhamun`s tomb - with Tomb 55 being the principal of these reburials.
What more general conclusions may we draw?
Within Tutankhamun` s tomb we have funerary materials originally prepared for the burials of Akhenaten, and for his co-regent Nefemefruaten-Nefertiti. While within KV 55 we have a body contained in one ofKiya`s coffins adapted for the use of Akhenaten, as well as evidence for the former presence within,the tomb of Akhenaten`s mother, Tiye. Of the reburials of Nefertiti and Kiya themselves, however, we have no trace at all - which is curious. For if both of these women gave up elements of their original tomb furniture for Tutankhamun`s burial and for Akhenaten`s re-use, the likelihood must be that their bodies had once been present at Thebes also. The conclusion would seem to be that one or more tombs of Amarna date are either waiting to be discovered in the Valley of the Kings, or at the very least waiting to be identified.
This, then, is the background to the project: the belief, which Geoffrey Martin and I share, that somewhere in the Valley is evidence which might shed further and potentially crucial new light on the complicated history of the late Amarna period - in pursuit of which, in 1998, we began to dig.
Our concession in the Valley now encompasses the entire central area, from beyond the tomb of Ramesses III (KV11) in the west to Tomb 55 in the east, and from Tutankhamun (KV62) in the north to Ramesses I (KV16) in the south. We also have the concession for a small workmen`s settlement to the south of Siptah (KV47). For our first season, however, we chose a quite restricted area of ground between `The Gold Tomb`, KV 56 (which we are also in the course of re-clearing), and the tomb of Ramesses VI (KV9).
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We selected our principal site for the following reasons:
1. it was an area Carter had begun to dig during the 1922/23 season, but he had been prevented from investigating thoroughly by his discovery of Tutankhamun`s tomb at the start of that season; it was, in other words, a loose end which needed to be tied;
2. any tombs prepared for the `missing` Amama dead, we reasoned, would most probably have been located in the near vicinity of Tutankhamun`s own tomb;
3. a sonar test ofthis area undertaken by Lambert Dolphin and his SRI colleagues in the 1970s had indicated certain `anomalies`, which they suspected might indicate the existence here of undiscovered tomb chambers - an intriguing possibility rather than a betting certainty, given the highly fractured and notoriously misleading geology of the area;
4. the odd ground-plans of KV56 and Tutankhamun, which each appeared to avoid the central area of our site - a feature which might, therefore, support the sonar indications of another tomb or tombs at that point.
Though a relatively small area, we`ve been digging here for three years now, and the work is still not quite completed. Working slowly and systematically, recording all the way, we now know more about these few square metres than probably any other site in the Valley of the Kings. We have been able to establish that the workmen`s houses found by Carter overlying the tomb of Tutankhamun continued across our site also. And the fact that we found substantial traces of these houses still in place indicated that, for the most part, the levels below
had not been disturbed. We know from pottery and inscriptions the date of these structures - the period Ramesses Ill-Ramesses VI. We know what the structures looked like, and we can guess what they were employed for - as shelters from the sun, part of an extended settlement which in Ramessid times extended right across the centre of the Valley; a crowded settlement bustling with people and humming with activity.
Registered fmds to date number more than 1000 items, including this gold jewellery element recovered during the sieving of KV56 by Paul Sussman, but many inscriptions too. Adjacent to this tomb, above the workers` settlement site, we have recorded a whole series of graffiti inscribed on the cliff face some time after the houses had fallen out of use and the ground above had been levelled over. Two of these texts make mention of a late 20th Dynasty official by the name of Wennefer, a man whose name occurs elsewhere in the wadi leading up to the tomb of Amenophis II: above the tomb entrance of this king, above the tomb of Horemheb, above KV58 and above KV56. The inscriptions were carved when these tomb entrances were still covered over; the impression we gain is that Wennefer was a member of the necropolis administration detailed to locate on the ground, probably with papyrus list in hand, whatever tombs existed in this area - in preparation for their emptying and the caching of the royal dead around 1000 BC. If this is the case, then Wennefer clearly believed that two of these buried tombs were located on our site. Time will tell ...
What we do know - a result of our work - is that the Valley of the Kings is stepped in form at this point, and that the second of the steps, beneath the Ramessid shelters, now runs under the modern tourist path. On this same second step, to the east, Carter discovered further workmen`s shelters, constructed from larger blocks and presumably somewhat earlier in date. It appears that we might now have uncovered traces of the destroyed continuation of these huts, below chippings dumped over the area before and during the quarrying ofthe 19th Dynasty tomb of Amenmesse across the path. Were these, perhaps, the huts beneath which Carter discovered Tutankhamun, rather than, as generally assumed, the Ramesses III¬Ramesses VI structures higher up? Were they associated with the Amarna reburials?
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It may well be. For, just above this level, a little further east in undisturbed ground close to where Carter broke off his work, at a depth of 4-5 metres below the present ground surface, we have now begun to find material of Amarna-period date. The first pieces to come to light were fragments from an enormous blue-painted funerary jar of the late 18th Dynasty; not much to look at, but crucially important for dating these relatively object-free levels. The second fmd, made the day before we closed down for the season, was far more dramatic.
It was a large slab of limestone, one among many; but this particular rock, when we turned it over, aroused a gasp from everyone present. We simply couldn`t believe it. Here before us, sketched in charcoal, was the figure of an official with shaven head, scrawny neck and pot belly, wearing foppish Amarna dress, and with his arms raised in adoration. A sketch far more at home among the private tombs
at el-Amarna than in the Valley of the Kings at Thebes.
What does the presence of this material signify? Since Amama-period objects are exceptionally rare in the Valley, such finds, in undisturbed layers not far distant from the burial of Tutankhamun and Tomb 55, represent an interesting and important development - the first clear evidence yet encountered of significant late 18th Dynasty activity on ARTP`s primary site. I say `clear evidence` because it is not, in fact, the only hint we have encountered of possible Amarna activity in the area. In 1999, in the disturbed fill of KV56, without any real context, we found a fragment from the body of a canopic jar fashioned from the same type of alabaster as the canopic jars from Tomb 55. So what? you might well ask. Canopic jars are hardly unusual in a cemetery context. What makes this piece interesting is that the side of of jar has been ground away, as if - in common with the Tomb 55 jars, an inappropriate text had been removed to enable the jar to be reused.
Intriguing stuff, to be sure; but whether our blue-painted pottery, our ostracon or our canopic jar fragment are to be associated with the establishment of one or other of the `missing` Amarna reburials - either in a sepulchre still unknown to archaeology, or in an anonymous tomb of the period such as KV 56 itself - we shall all have to wait and see.
Thank you.
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