Tomb KV15, located in the Valley of the Kings in Egypt, was used to bury Pharaoh Seti II of the Nineteenth Dynasty. The tomb was dug into the base of a near-vertical cliff face at the head of a wadi running southwest from the central part of the Valley of the Kings. It runs along a northwest-to-southeast axis, comprising a short entry corridor followed by three corridor segments, which terminate in a well-room that lacks a well which was never dug. This connects with a four-pillared hall and another corridor that became a burial chamber.
Interiors of Tomb KV15
The walls and ceiling of the chamber were covered with plaster and painted with Anubis jackals and two rows of deities, representing the followers of Ra and Osiris, which are placed over a lower row of mummy-like figures. The winged goddess Nut appears along the length of the ceiling. And what may be a representation of the Ba of Ra is painted above her head. The paintings are conventional depictions drawn from the Egyptian Litany of Re, Amduat and the Book of Gates. Wall paintings in the well-room are more unusual; they show the king in shrines in several different manifestations, for instance, on the back of a panther or a papyrus skiff. The objects shown in the paintings are reflected in the finds made in the tomb of Tutankhamun.
Relatively little is known about the history of the tomb. Seti II was buried there, but he may have originally been buried with his wife Twosret in her burial in KV14. He subsequently moved to the hastily finished KV15 tomb, perhaps by the later pharaoh Setnakhte, who took over KV14 for his tomb. Seti’s name appears to have been carved, erased and then re-carved. Amenmesse or possibly Siptah may have been responsible for the erasure, while Twosret may have had Seti’s name restored. Seti’s mummy was later moved to the mummy cache in tomb KV35; only the lid of his sarcophagus remains in KV15.
Discovery
KV15 is known to have been opened in antiquity, as 59 examples of Greek and Latin graffiti are on the walls. Richard Pococke investigated it as early as 1738, but it was not until the arrival of Howard Carter in 1903–04 that the tomb was cleared correctly. After Howard Carter began excavating the nearby Tutankhamun tomb (KV62) in 1922, KV15 was used by his assistants Alfred Lucas and Arthur Mace as a makeshift laboratory for cleaning and restoration of KV62’s artefacts before their transport to the Cairo Museum.
The tomb has been opened to tourists with improved flooring, handrails and lighting.
