| KV55 | |
|---|---|
| Burial site of Amarna cache | |
 Gilded and inlaid wooden coffin from KV55, now in the Egyptian Museum of Antiquities in Cairo. The face and the cartouche containing the name of the coffin's occupant were defaced in ancient times, suggesting that the body inside was that of Akhenaten. | |
  KV55 | |
| Coordinates | 25°44′25.3″N 32°36′06.0″E / 25.740361°N 32.601667°E |
| Location | East Valley of the Kings |
| Discovered | 6 January 1907 |
| Excavated by |
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KV55 is a tomb in the Valley of the Kings in Egypt. It was discovered by Edward R. Ayrton in 1907 while he was working in the Valley for Theodore M. Davis. It has long been speculated, as well as much disputed, that the body found in this tomb was that of the famous king, Akhenaten, who moved the capital to Akhetaten (modern-day Amarna). The results of genetic and other scientific tests published in February 2010 have confirmed that the person buried there was both the son of Amenhotep III and the father of Tutankhamun. Furthermore, the study established that the age of this person at the time of his death was consistent with that of Akhenaten, thereby making it almost certain that it is Akhenaten's body.[1] However, a growing body of work soon began to appear to dispute the assessment of the age of the mummy and the identification of KV55 as Akhenaten.[2][3][4][5]
Both the tomb's history and the identification of its single occupant have been problematic. It is presumed to be a royal cache and reburial dating from the late eighteenth dynasty, prepared after the abandonment of Amarna and the dismantling of the royal necropolis there. On the basis of the recovered artifacts, it is also suggested that the burial once contained more than a single occupant, either interred on one occasion or over a period of time. Queen Tiye is most often named in this context.
It is also clear that the tomb was re-opened at a later time, almost certainly during the twentieth dynasty. At that time, any additional, hypothetical occupants of the tomb would have been removed and (possibly) relocated to KV35, while the remaining mummy and some of the other artefacts were desecrated and abandoned.
The tomb is often referred to as the "Amarna cache", given the mixed nature of its contents.
- ^ Hawass, Zahi et al. "Ancestry and Pathology in King Tutankhamun's Family" The Journal of the American Medical Association (2010) p. 644
- ^ Strouhal, E. "Biological age of skeletonized mummy from Tomb KV 55 at Thebes" in Anthropologie: International Journal of the Science of Man Vol 48 Issue 2 (2010), pp. 97–112. Dr. Strouhal examined KV55 in 1998, but the results were apparently delayed and perhaps eclipsed by Filer's examination in 2000. Strouhal's findings were published in 2010 to dispute the Hawass et al conclusions.
- ^ "News from the Valley of the Kings: DNA Shows that KV55 Mummy Probably Not Akhenaten". Kv64.info. 2 March 2010. Archived from the original on 7 March 2010. Retrieved 25 August 2012.
- ^ Nature 472, 404–406 (2011); Published online 27 April 2011; Original link
- ^ NewScientist.com; January 2011; Royal Rumpus over King Tutankhamun's Ancestry