KV64

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KV64
Burial site of Unknown, Nehmes Bastet
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KV64
Coordinates 25°44′24.6″N32°36′04.7″E / 25.740167°N 32.601306°E / 25.740167; 32.601306 Coordinates: 25°44′24.6″N32°36′04.7″E / 25.740167°N 32.601306°E / 25.740167; 32.601306
Location East Valley of the Kings
Discovered25 January 2011
Excavated by University of Basel
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KV65

KV64 is the tomb of an unknown Eighteenth Dynasty individual in the Valley of the Kings, near Luxor, Egypt that was re-used in the Twenty-second Dynasty for the burial of the priestess Nehmes Bastet, who held the office of "chantress" at the temple of Karnak. The tomb is located on the pathway to KV34 (tomb of Thutmose III) in the main Valley of the Kings. KV64 was discovered in 2011 and excavated in 2012 by Dr. Susanne Bickel and Dr. Elina Paulin-Grothe of the University of Basel. [1] [2]

Contents

Discovery and layout

On 25 January 2011, during the University of Basel Kings' Valley Project's 2011 excavation season, work to install a protective iron cover over the shaft of KV40 uncovered the edges of a shaft cut into the rock 1.8 metres (5.9 ft) north of KV40. [3] [4] Given the small size of the cutting, approximately 1 by 2 metres (3.3 ft × 6.6 ft), and its proximity to the neighbouring tomb, it was initially suggested to be a possible embalming cache or an unfinished shaft. The feature was given the initial designation of 'KV40b.' Due to its discovery coinciding with the beginning of the 2011 Egyptian revolution, it was fitted with a metal cover to await clearance the following season. [3] Excavation resumed in early January 2012 and it soon became apparent that the feature was a tomb; the find was officially announced on 15 January 2012 and given the designation KV64. [4]

The tomb consists of a short, rather narrow shaft 3.5 metres (11 ft) deep which opens onto a single room measuring 4.1 by 2.35 metres (13.5 by 7.7 ft) long and wide; the chamber has a height of approximately 2 metres (6.6 ft). The doorway was blocked with stacked stone but was not sealed. This blocking was evidently not original, as it sat on top of an earlier plastered blocking; a bowl of Eighteenth Dynasty-date containing Nile mud used for plastering the original blocking was encountered at the base of the door. [4]

Contents

Coffin and stela of Nehmes Bastet displayed in Luxor Museum Nehemes-Bastet coffin.jpg
Coffin and stela of Nehmes Bastet displayed in Luxor Museum

The chamber was filled with debris approximately 1 metre (3.3 ft) deep. The room contained the intact burial of the Twenty-second Dynasty chantress Nehmes Bastet, sitting on top of the fill at the far end of the chamber; her painted wooden funerary stele sat propped against the wall at the foot of the coffin. Within the debris was the remnants of the robbed Eighteenth Dynasty interment, represented by fragmentary canopic jars and two stoppers, fragments of coffins and cartonnage, glass, faience, leather, furniture parts, and the broken, unwrapped mummy who was likely the original owner. [4] [5] Also found was a partial wooden label bearing the name of Princess Satiah. It is not known whether the label belongs to the original woman for whom the tomb was created. [6] Of dubious relevance to the tomb are finds of a Ramesside ostracon and fragments of furniture naming Amenhotep III as similar contents have been found elsewhere and are suggested to be the product of ancient robbery. The tomb had evidently stood open for some time prior to the burial of Nehmes-Bastet as indicated by the presence of several wasp nests and water-washed debris that partially filled the tomb. [4] [5] [1]

Occupants

Eighteenth Dynasty mummy

Little is known of the dismembered Eighteenth Dynasty mummy found in the tomb, although x-ray analysis revealed the body belonged to a middle aged woman. [7] If the fragmentary furniture naming Amenhotep III and the tag naming a princess are original to this burial and not washed in during later flood action, then the original owner can be identified as a princess of the reign of Amenhotep III. The style of the two canopic jar heads also conform to this dating. [1]

Nehmes Bastet

Upon entering the tomb in 2011, the excavators discovered a wooden coffin and a stela placed near the wall that was facing the head of the coffin. The mummy in the coffin belongs to a priestess, the "Chantress of Amun", Nehmes-Bastet. She was the daughter of Nakhtef-Mut, a priest of Amun who held the office of the "Opener of the Doors of Heaven" at Karnak, an important Ancient Egyptian temple during that dynasty. The wooden stela shows Nehmes Bastet worshiping before a composite deity with attributes of both a sun-god and the god Osiris. [6]

Previous use of KV64 designation

"KV64" (with quotation marks) had been employed as a tentative designation in reference to an anomaly detected by the use of ground-penetrating radar by the Amarna Royal Tombs Project (ARTP), led by Nicholas Reeves, during the autumn of 2000. [8] This anomaly was detected 50 feet (15 m) north of KV63, near the tomb of Tutankhamun, KV62. [9] [10]

Related Research Articles

Tomb KV60 is an ancient Egyptian tomb in the Valley of the Kings, Egypt. It was discovered by Howard Carter in 1903, and re-excavated by Donald P. Ryan in 1989. It is one of the more perplexing tombs of the Theban Necropolis, due to the uncertainty over the identity of one female mummy found there (KV60A). She is identified by some, such as Egyptologist Elizabeth Thomas, to be that of the Eighteenth Dynasty pharaoh Hatshepsut; this identification is advocated for by Zahi Hawass.

Tomb WV22, also known as KV22, was the burial place of the Eighteenth Dynasty pharaoh Amenhotep III. Located in the Western arm of the Valley of the Kings, the tomb is unique in that it has two subsidiary burial chambers for the pharaoh's wives Tiye and Sitamen. It was officially discovered by Prosper Jollois and Édouard de Villiers du Terrage, engineers with Napoleon's expedition to Egypt in August 1799, but had probably been open for some time. The tomb was first excavated by Theodore M. Davis, the details of which are lost. The first documented clearance was carried out by Howard Carter in 1915. Since 1989, a Japanese team from Waseda University led by Sakuji Yoshimura and Jiro Kondo has excavated and conserved the tomb. The sarcophagus is missing from the tomb. The tomb's layout and decoration follow the tombs of the king's predecessors, Amenhotep II (KV35) and Thutmose IV (KV43); however, the decoration is much finer in quality. Several images of the pharaoh's head have been cut out and can be seen today in the Louvre.

KV35 Tomb of Pharaoh Amenhotep II, also used as a cache for royal mummies in the Third Intermediate Period

Tomb KV35 is the tomb of Pharaoh Amenhotep II located in the Valley of the Kings in Luxor, Egypt. Later, it was used as a cache for other royal mummies. It was discovered by Victor Loret in March 1898.

Tomb KV61 is an unused tomb in Egypt's Valley of the Kings. It was discovered by Harold Jones, excavating on behalf of Theodore M. Davis, in January 1910. The tomb consists of an irregularly-cut room at the bottom of a shaft. It was apparently unused and undecorated, thus its intended owner is unknown.

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Tomb KV45 is an ancient Egyptian tomb located in the Valley of the Kings in Egypt. It was originally used for the burial of the noble Userhet of the Eighteenth Dynasty and was reused by Merenkhons and an unknown woman in the Twenty-second Dynasty. The tomb was discovered and excavated by Howard Carter in 1902, in his role as Chief Inspector of Antiquities, on behalf of Theodore M. Davis. The tomb was later re-investigated by Donald P. Ryan of the Pacific Lutheran University Valley of the Kings Project in 1991 and 2005.

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KV44 is an ancient Egyptian tomb located in the Valley of the Kings, Egypt. It was discovered and excavated by Howard Carter in 1901 and was re-examined in the 1991 by Donald P. Ryan. The single chamber accessed by a shaft contained three intact Twenty-second Dynasty burials; the remains of seven mummies from the original interment were found within the fill. The original cutting of the tomb is dated to the Eighteenth Dynasty.

KV31 is a tomb located in the Valley of the Kings, near Luxor, Egypt. Only the top of the shaft was known prior to excavation by the University of Basel Kings' Valley Project in 2010, and no earlier excavations are known, although it is suggested that the stone anthropoid sarcophagus excavated by Giovanni Battista Belzoni may have originated from this tomb. The tomb was found to be filled with mixed debris of pottery sherds and linen fragments, as well as the remains of five mummified individuals dating to the Eighteenth Dynasty.

Tomb KV50 is located in the Valley of the Kings, in Egypt. It was discovered in 1906 by Edward R. Ayrton excavating on behalf of Theodore M. Davis. Together with KV51 and KV52, it forms a group known as the "Animal Tombs". It contained the burial of a dog mummy and a mummified monkey and is probably associated with the nearby tomb of Amenhotep II (KV35).

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Valley of the Kings Necropolis in ancient Egypt

The Valley of the Kings, also known as the Valley of the Gates of the Kings, is a valley in Egypt where, for a period of nearly 500 years from the 16th to 11th century BC, rock-cut tombs were excavated for the pharaohs and powerful nobles of the New Kingdom.

KV63

KV63 is a recently opened chamber in Egypt's Valley of the Kings pharaonic necropolis. Initially believed to be a royal tomb, it is now believed to have been a storage chamber for the mummification process. It was found in 2005 by a team of archaeologists led by Dr. Otto Schaden.

The majority of the 65 numbered tombs in the Valley of the Kings can be considered minor tombs, either because at present they have yielded little information or because the results of their investigation was only poorly recorded by their explorers, while some have received very little attention or were only cursorily noted. Most of these tombs are small, often only consisting of a single burial chamber accessed by means of a shaft or a staircase with a corridor or a series of corridors leading to the chamber, but some are larger, multiple chambered tombs. These minor tombs served various purposes, some were intended for burials of lesser royalty or for private burials, some contained animal burials and others apparently never received a primary burial. In many cases these tombs also served secondary functions and later intrusive material has been found related to these secondary activities. While some of these tombs have been open since antiquity, the majority were discovered in the 19th and early 20th centuries during the height of exploration in the valley.

Susanne Bickel is a Swiss Egyptologist. She studied Egyptology in Geneva and then worked at the French Institute of Oriental Archaeology in Cairo and the Swiss Institute of Egyptian Antiquity. She has worked as an archaeologist on multiple sites in Middle and Upper Egypt. Since 2000 she has been a lecturer at the University of Freiburg and since 2006, professor of Egyptology at the University of Basel where she is an expert on Ancient Egyptian deities and demons. Susanne Bickel's research focuses on religion and Egyptian archaeology, particularly the documentation of Egyptian temples. Bickel is director of the University of Basel Kings' Valley Project and was a member of the team that excavated the KV64 tomb, containing the burial of Nehmes Bastet, in 2011.

Nehmes Bastet Egyptian priestess (c. 945–712 BCE)

Nehmes Bastet or Nehemes-Bastet was an Ancient Egyptian priestess who held the office of "chantress"; she was the daughter of the high priest of Amun. She lived during the Twenty-second Dynasty and was buried in tomb KV64 in the Valley of the Kings. It was excavated in 2012 and discovered to be a reuse of a tomb for the burial of a woman of an earlier dynasty, whose name, as yet, is unknown.

References

  1. 1 2 3 Bickel, Susanne; Paulin-Grothe, Elina (2012). "The Valley of the Kings: two burials in KV 64". Egyptian Archaeology. 41: 36–40. Retrieved 17 February 2021.
  2. "New archaeological discovery at the Valley of the Kings - Ancient Egypt - Heritage - Ahram Online". english.ahram.org.eg. Retrieved 2018-02-26.
  3. 1 2 Bickel, Suzanne; Paulin-Grothe, Elina; Alsheimer, Tanja (2011). "Preliminary Report on the Work Carried out During the Season 2011" (PDF). University of Basel Kings' Valley Project: 2. Retrieved 4 August 2021.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 Bickel, Suzanne; Paulin-Grothe, Elina (2012). "Preliminary Report on the Work Carried out During the Season 2012" (PDF). University of Basel Kings' Valley Project: 1. Retrieved 4 August 2021.
  5. 1 2 Bickel, Suzanne; Paulin-Grothe, Elina (2013). "Preliminary Report on the Work carried out during the season 2013" (PDF). University of Basel Kings' Valley Project: 1. Retrieved 4 August 2021.
  6. 1 2 Susanne Bickel, Princesses, Robbers, and Priests - The unknown side of the Kings' Valley, Presentation at a conference at the Museo Egizio in Turin, Italy, October 14 2017, Online; KV 64 is discussed at 27:30 onward
  7. Bickel, Suzanne; Paulin-Grothe, Elina (2015). "Preliminary report on work carried out during the field season 2014–2015" (PDF). University of Basel Kings' Valley Project: 2. Retrieved 5 August 2021.
  8. Reeves, Nicholas (31 July 2006). "Another New Tomb in the Valley of the Kings - "KV64": II". nicholasreeves.com. Archived from the original on 10 October 2008.
  9. "Tomb KV-64: Possible new tomb in the Valley of the Kings?". Archived from the original on 21 June 2010.
  10. "Another New Tomb in the Valley of the Kings? - Archaeology Magazine Archive". archive.archaeology.org. Retrieved 2018-02-26.