KV55

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KV55
Burial site of Tiy and Smenkhkare/Akhenaten cache
Location	East Valley of the Kings
Discovery Date	January 6, 1907
Excavated by	Edward R. Ayrton (1907-1908) Lyla Pinch Brock (1992-1993)
Previous : KV54	Next : KV56

Edward R. Ayrton discovered Tomb KV55 in Egypt's Valley of the Kings on January 6, 1907; Ayrton's sponsor, Theodore M. Davis, published an account of the dig (The Tomb of Queen Tîyi) in 1910. KV55 is a problematic archaeological site of the 18th Dynasty. It may have been used for several burials, but it is most often attributed as first being a burial site for Queen Tiye, based on the broken wooden shrine dedicated to her. (Tiye was possibly relocated here after the abandonment of Amarna, and then perhaps moved finally to KV35.) The mummy found here may be her son, the Pharaoh Smenkhkare (or, some argue, it may instead be his predessesor, Akhenaten, although this is considered very unlikely by many).

The site itself was heavily disturbed in antiquity, thus making it difficult to interpret. Though it may have been desecrated in antiquity to defame the memory of Akhenaten, it was also certainly disturbed during the building of nearby KV6 during the 20th Dynasty.

The evidence of the tomb complicates its attribution even further. Its door carries Tutankhamun's name. The sarcophagus names Kiya; the broken shrine, Tiye. Amenhotep III, Akhenaten, and Sitamun are also named: the conclusion is that the site contained several temporary burials, possibly at different times.

However, when the tomb was opened in 1907, the only mummy interred within was a male. This mummy is now believed to be Akhenaten due to the presence of some funerary items (chiefly Akhenaten's magical bricks) as well as the vandalism of the sarcophagus – Akhenaten was later reviled as a heretic. The cartouches bearing the mummy's name are erased, and the uraeus removed.

But this attribution is not fully accepted; recent examinations^[1] estimate that this person died near the age of twenty – too young to be Akhenaten. Thus some suggest that the mummy may instead be Smenkhkare.

In 1923, Harry Burton used KV55 as a darkroom to develop his photographs documenting Howard Carter's excavation of Tutankhamun's tomb.

[edit] Further reading

Theodore M. Davis, Nicholas Reeves, The Tomb of Queen Tiyi (reprinted KMT Communications, 1990)
John Romer, Valley of the Kings (Henry Holt, 1981) pp. 211-219
Cyril Aldred, Akhenaten, King of Egypt (Thames and Hudson, 1988) pp. 195-218
C. N. Reeves, Valley of the Kings: The Decline of a Royal Necropolis (Keegan Paul, 1990) pp. 42-49
Nicholas Reeves and Richard H. Wilkinson, The Complete Valley of the Kings (Thames & Hudson, 1996) pp. 116-121