KV54

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KV54
tomb of Tutankhamun's embalming depot

place Valley of the Kings
Discovery date December 21, 1907
excavation Edward R. Ayrton
for Theodore M. Davis
Previous
KV53 		The following
KV55
Valley of the Kings
Valley of the Kings
(Eastern Valley)

KV54 ( Kings' Valley no. 54 ) is an ancient Egyptian tomb with the number 54 in the Valley of the Kings , which, based on the finds , could be dated to the time after Tutankhamun's death. It is also known as the "embalming depot" because it was used to find embalming materials , various funeral utensils and other objects.

discovery

Edward R. Ayrton , who was digging for the US lawyer Theodore M. Davis from 1905 to 1908 , discovered KV54 in December 1907. The excavations continued until 1908.

architecture

Although Davis thought KV54 was a grave, this is not a grave in the usual sense, but a small, shallow pit, which is generally referred to in literature as "Tutankhamun's embalming depot" ( Embalming Cachette ). Herbert E. Winlock described the contents of the pit in 1941 in Materials used at the embalming of King Tūt-ʼAnkh-Amūn . It is undecorated and its total size is only about two square meters.

The depot and the finds

After Tutankhamun's death, the depot was used as a depository for his embalming material and funeral utensils. Since there was also something else in KV54 that had no connection with a funeral, the Egyptologists came to the conclusion that objects that had originally been in the passage of his grave had also been brought here. After Tutankhamun's tomb ( KV62 ) had been robbed twice, these items were deposited in KV54 before the corridor of the royal tomb itself was filled with rubble, closed and sealed. The remains of the funeral ceremony suggested that eight people must have been present at the king's funeral.

According to Nicholas Reeves , Ayrton found the following items: 50 bags of baking soda , 180 mummy bandages , 72 sacrificial bowls, storage jugs with the throne name Tutankhamun ( Neb-cheperu-Re ) on small clay seals, fragments of linen with hieratic inscription from the 6th and 8th centuries. Tutankhamun's reign as well as numerous animal bones that were probably left over from the funeral feast, some withered flower wreaths, scarabs and finally a small gilded death mask made of cardboard , which probably came from one of the two fetuses in Tutankhamun's grave. Howard Carter also mentions that clay seals with the imprint of the city of the dead were also found.

Almost all of the finds are now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York . These were evaluated by Herbert E. Winlock in 1923 and the result was published in New York in 1941 under the title Materials Used at the Embalming of Tut-ankh-amun . The small gilded death mask made of cardboard, however, is in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo and bears the inventory number. JE 39711 .

Finds in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York)

  • Flower collar

  • Linen cloth

  • Pottery

  • Long neck bottle

See also

literature

  • Lyla Pinch-Brock: Collisions, Abandonments, Alterations, Tomb Commencements / Pits, And Other Features in the Valley of the Kings. In: Richard H. Wilkinson, Kent R. Weeks (Eds.): The Oxford Handbook of the Valley of the Kings. Oxford University Press, New York 2016, ISBN 978-0-19-993163-7 , p. 128.
  • Alfred Grimm and Sylvia Schoske (eds.): The secret of the golden coffin: Akhenaten and the end of the Amarna period. Staatliches Museum Ägyptischer Kunst, Munich 2001, ISBN 3-87490-722-8 , pp. 53–54.
  • Nicholas Reeves , Richard H. Wilkinson : The Valley of the Kings. Mysterious realm of the dead of the pharaohs. Bechtermünz, Augsburg 2000, ISBN 3-8289-0739-3 , p. 126.
  • Nicholas Reeves: The Complete Tutankhamen: The King. The tomb. The Royal Treasure. Thames & Hudson, London 2000, ISBN 0-500-27810-5 , pp. 38-39.

Web links

Commons : KV54  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ KV54 Theban Mapping Project: Measurements ( Memento of the original from June 24, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (English) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.thebanmappingproject.com
  2. ↑ Nicholas Reeves, Richard. H. Wilkinson: The Valley of the Kings. Mysterious realm of the dead of the pharaohs . Augsburg 2000, p. 126.
  3. ↑ Howard Carter: The Tomb of Tut-ench-Amun. 6th edition, Brockhaus, Wiesbaden 1981, ISBN 3-7653-0262-7 , p. 28.
  4. ^ The Metropolitan Museum of Art: Tutankhamun's Funeral . Yale University Press, New York 2010, ISBN 978-0-300-16735-1 , p. 67

Coordinates: 25 ° 44 ′ 23 "  N , 32 ° 36 ′ 9"  E