Tomb KV63 is a recently opened chamber in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings pharaonic necropolis. It was founded in 2005 by a team of archaeologists led by Dr Otto Schaden. Initially believed to be a royal tomb, it is now considered a storage chamber for mummification.
The chamber contained seven wooden coffins and many large storage jars. All coffins have now been opened and were found to contain only mummification materials, with the jars also containing mummification supplies, including salts, linens, and deliberately broken pottery.
Some clay seal impressions contain text, such as the partial word ‘pa-aten,’ part of the name used by Tutankhamun‘s wife, Ankhesenamun. This inscription, the architectural style of the chamber, and the form of the coffins and jars all point to an Eighteenth Dynasty date, roughly contemporary with Tutankhamun, whose tomb is nearby.
KV63 was revisited by Schaden’s team again in 2010, along with a TV team. The team concluded that Tutankhamun‘s family of embalmers probably used the chamber sometime between 1337 and 1334 BC. Another 16 storage jars were explored, and a wooden bed with lions’ heads and pieces of wine jars were discovered.
Discovery of Tomb KV63
The vertical shaft of KV63 was re-discovered on 10 March, 2005. The discovery that the shaft led to a chamber was announced on 8 February 2006 by the Supreme Council of Antiquities, which credited the find to a team of U.S. archaeologists from the University of Memphis under the leadership of Dr Otto Schaden. The chamber — given the name “KV63” by the sequential numbering convention used in the Valley — was initially thought to be a tomb, the first new one to be revealed there since the discovery of KV62, the tomb of Tutankhamun by Howard Carter in 1922.
KV63 is located between KV10 (Amenmesse) and KV62 (Tutankhamun), in the centre of the Valley’s eastern branch and near the main crossroads of the network of paths traversed by thousands of tourists daily.
The discovery was made as the archaeological team was excavating the remains of 19th dynasty workers’ huts at the entrance to KV10, looking for evidence to clarify the succession of Amenmesse. The area around the huts had accumulated rubble from the occasional flooding. Theodore M. Davis and Howard Carter dug in the area in the early twentieth century but did not remove these huts. While exploring a layer of dark rock, the dig suddenly came across chips of white stone (these being the last level excavated by Carter).
Further exploration revealed a straight edge of cut stone, which turned out to be on the upper lip of a vertical shaft. At that point, the team knew they had discovered something much more elaborate and significant than the remains of the tomb diggers’ resthouses. Unfortunately, the discovery came at the end of the 2004–05 digging season and further excavations had to be postponed until the team recommenced its work the following autumn.
Description of chamber
The overhang on the shaft of KV63 has been compared with and found to be similar to other Eighteenth Dynasty tombs (KV55 and that of Yuya and Thuya), thereby dating the construction to the latter portion of the Eighteenth Dynasty (ca. 14th century BC) of the New Kingdom (16th century to 11th century BC). It is also broadly speculated that all three tombs are the work of the same architect or at least the same school of architects.
The newly revealed shaft descends some five metres. At the bottom of this pit stands a 1.5-metre-tall door made of stone blocks. Behind this door, where the team initially opened a small window for the 10 February 2006 event, stands the single chamber.
No seals were found on the door, and it was initially believed that KV63 was a reburial and had experienced some intrusion in antiquity. The blocking stones in the doorway were not original, suggesting that the door had been opened and closed a few times. The blocking stones were found inside the tomb, evidence that someone had re-entered and sealed the tomb in antiquity.
The chamber measures some four metres by five and has plain white walls. It contained seven wooden coffins, including one scaled for a child and one for a tiny infant. Two adult coffins and the child’s coffin feature yellow funerary masks; the others have black funerary masks. It has been suggested that those with yellow faces may have been designed for female occupants. There is extensive termite damage on some coffins, and the excavating team likened the result to “black paste”; however, at least two coffins were virtually untouched by termites. These termites seem to have come from the workers’ huts above the shaft and probably date from the pharaonic era. There was no evidence of water damage. However, now that the chamber has been opened, the site is at risk of injury from flash floods.
The identity of the owners of the coffins is unknown; in any case, none contained human remains, all having been used to hold material relating to the embalming process. There is no evidence that the chamber has been sealed more than once, and it thus seems that the deposit represents embalming debris from one person’s mummification.
The chamber also held 28 large storage jars, approximately 75 cm tall, made from pottery and alabaster. The jars weighed around 40 or 43 kg (90–95 pounds), varying slightly in size and weight. Three appear to have been broken at the rim or lower neck in antiquity. Most jars were discovered with intact lids but did not bear pharaonic seal impressions. Shortly after their manufacture, the jars were whitewashed while standing in the sand, and the bottoms show the original clay. A large ostracon, not identified to have come from one of the storage jars at this time, was discovered and broken during the current opening of the tomb.
According to Dr Schaden, sealing the storage jars had been very deliberate. The people doing it had thought it of prime importance that it should be done in this exact manner. A mud plug was inserted, then a seal, and then a large plaster seal. This supports the idea that there was a solid reason behind placing the artefacts and that the chamber was not merely a dumping ground.
There was over 175 kg of natron in the chamber, some inside the coffins and some inside sacks. The jars and contents are similar to those from KV54, the Tutankhamun embalming cache.
Work has been going on to carefully remove the coffins and the storage jars to KV10, which has adequate space for a conservation team to conduct a thorough examination and analysis of the coffins and jars properly and scientifically. A pulley system was devised to remove the coffins and jars from the shaft safely. Grass buckets and bubble wrap were used to lift the jars from where they had been packed for 3000 years. The removal of jars began on 2 March 2006, and most jars have been relocated safely, along with one large sealed alabaster jar containing small pots packed in mud. Twelve of the storage jars have thus far been examined. Contents include natron, wood, seeds, shells, carbon, assorted pottery, small animal bones, papyrus fragments, mud trays, mud seals, and pieces of twine or rope. Egyptologist Salima Ikram is supervising the removal and examination of the contents.
On the first examination, some stuffing was extruding between the lid and the bottom of the youth coffin labelled ‘G’. When the coffin was opened, this stuffing was revealed to be five pillows. As textile remnants from ancient Egypt are relatively rare, and pillows exceptionally so, these materials will be of great interest. On 26 May 2006, a 42 cm. pink gold leaf anthropoid coffinette was discovered inside the youth coffin under the pillows.
The last and only completely sealed coffin was opened on 28 June 2006. As cameras were rolling, it was revealed that the coffin contained no mummy, only artefacts used for mummification or to decorate a body. It looked like it had once been used, as there was an impression of a human body at the bottom of the coffin. It is theorized that this body was moved or destroyed in antiquity.
Due to its proximity to the tomb of Tutankhamun and the resemblances between the portraits in the sarcophagi, as well as the style contemporary to the latter part of the 18th Dynasty, there was groundless speculation at the time of the first discovery that the coffins were once used for the bodies of Kiya and even Ankhesenamen. However, there is no reason to believe that the coffins were other than the basic types used for private persons, probably derived from undertakers’ stock to contain embalming debris.
Given the tomb’s location and the fact that its entrance was sealed by the same flood layer that sealed that of Tutankhamun, it seems most likely that KV63 was the main embalmers’ cache for Tutankhamun’s burial. In this case, the long-known group of material from his funeral found in KV54 probably represents an ‘overflow’ of material requiring disposal after KV63 had been sealed.
