One thing is clear however: it was considered important for this Theban family, led by Tutankhamun at least in name, to bring back their ancestors to the rightful place of rule, to safeguard and connect with them. The DNA results of their examination suggested that the KV55 skeleton was a son of Amenhotep III and the father to Tutankhamun, making either Akhenaten or Smenkhkare as likely candidates for the identification of the individual buried within the coffin. In 2010, Zahi Hawass and a team of experts reexamined the remains and concluded that they were of a male who died between the ages of 35-45 years old. During the 1960s, Ronald Harrison proposed a kinship relationship between the KV55 skeleton and the mummy of Tutankhamun based off of similar anthropological features. However, this identification was soon discredited when a second examination by Elliot Smith showed that the remains were those of a young male who died in his early 20s. Initially, the skeletal remains (CG 61075) found inside this coffin were identified as those of Queen Tiye, whose name could be found on several objects found within KV55, including the large gilded shrine panels (JE 57175). With all these movements, of the deceased and the funerary objects found within KV55, it is difficult to identify with certainty who was buried within this unused tomb that was not intended for anyone of the Amarna royal family. Yet, for unknown reasons Kiya disappears from official records sometime after Year 12, and her monuments were usurped by other women of the royal family and her funerary equipment was reused for the KV55 burial. Based on the spelling of the Aten’s name from this coffin, as well as Kiya’s canopic jars that were also found in KV55 (such as: Met 07.226.1), her funerary equipment was started sometime before Year 9 of Akhenaten’s reign. Today, however, most Egyptologists would agree that the coffin was created for Kiya, a secondary wife of Akhenaten. There is much debate as to whom the coffin was originally intended for: earlier scholarship suggested Queen Tiye, Meryetaten, or (erroneously) Akhenaten himself there is even the possibility that the coffin was created for Nefertiti when she was ruling as Akhenaten’s queen. This is obvious from the altered hieroglyphic inscriptions throughout the lid and trough, some that still have a feminine “t” ending or the female pronoun of a seated woman from the original inscriptions. The coffin found within KV55 was originally created for a female member of the royal family during the Amarna Period, but was subsequently altered for the burial of a royal male instead. This strongly suggests that the cache was created some time during his reign, likely on the orders of the king to transfer the remaining royal burial(s) at Amarna south to the Valley of the Kings for safekeeping.
Official seal impressions from the tomb’s entrance bore the seal of the necropolis (a crouching jackal above nine captives) in addition to seal impressions with the name of Tutankhamun. Given the style of the objects found inside, it seems that the tomb was a result of caching several different funerary items from the Amarna Period that were reused for the burial of a single individual, whose identity remains uncertain to this day. This uninscribed tomb was subsequently numbered KV55 and is one of Egyptology’s biggest enigmas, as its contents and occupant have stimulated much debate and confusion over the last century. In 1907, a tomb was discovered in the Valley of the Kings during excavations by Edward Ayrton on behalf of the wealthy American lawyer Theodore M.
Material: Wood, Gold, Semi-Precious Stones and Glass. JE 39627 (Coffin Lid) and TR 2/12/15/2 (Gold Sheets and Inlays from Coffin Trough, not pictured.)
Provenance: Valley of the kings, KV55, the "Amarna Cache"Įxcavated by E. By Nicholas Brown, Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, University of California, Los Angeles.ĭate: New Kingdom, Dynasty 18, reigns of Akhenaten and Smenkhkare, ca.