by Ahmed Osman
Part of the attraction of the area for the predators lay in persistent rumours that it contained yet another tomb, so far undiscovered. This resulted in the mounting of another expedition – by an Egypt Exploration Society team led by Pendlebury and his wife – to prove or disprove the rumour. The result of six weeks’ work was a blank, and Pendlebury wrote in his subsequent report: ‘All we can say for certain is that the cutting of the tomb began later than Year 6 of Akhenaten’s reign, since the ostracon … found in one of the dumps of chips bore that date, a conclusion to which we should have been forced in any case since the city itself was not founded until that year. Since many of the fragments, both of the canopic chest and of the sarcophagi were found in the shaft inside the tomb, it is probable that they were broken up in situ.’ In addition to searching unsuccessfully for a second tomb, the Pendlebury team made a plan of the Royal Tomb, photographed the walls and copied all the wall-scenes and inscriptions. Once this work was completed the tomb was sealed off from the attentions of further predators by closing the entrance with a wall containing a steel door.
More recently, in 1974, the Egypt Exploration Society published the first part of an account by Geoffrey T. Martin, Professor of Egyptology at University College, London, with details of the small items that were found during the different stages of excavation at Akhenaten’s tomb.2
Out of the many small sarcophagi fragments, which are no more than a few centimetres each, it was possible to reconstruct one sarcophagus of pink, grey and white granite. It is too large to have been Meketaten’s. On the other hand, as Nefertiti is shown at each corner of the sarcophagus in place of the four protecting goddesses – Isis, Nephthys, Neith and Silket – it could not have belonged to the queen herself. It is safe in this case to attribute the reconstructed sarcophagus to Akhenaten.
The remaining sarcophagi fragments proved to have come from:
a) the reconstructed sarcophagus of Akhenaten;
b) the lid of Akhenaten’s sarcophagus;
c) the sarcophagus of Meketaten;
d) the lid of Meketaten’s sarcophagus.3
The great size of Akhenaten’s sarcophagus indicates that this was the outermost of a series of coffins that would protect the royal mummy (the mummies of both Yuya and Tutankhamun were enclosed in three coffins). Nevertheless, no remains of other coffins were found, nor any remains of the usual shrine or canopy that were part of the normal burial furniture, thus raising the possibility that Akhenaten was never buried in this tomb. What reinforces this idea is the fact that, although the evidence indicates that Akhenaten’s enemies smashed everything in the tomb, no matter how large or solid, into small pieces after the end of the Amarna regime, the fragmented funerary remains found in the tomb could not be considered sufficient in quantity to indicate the burial of Akhenaten and his daughter Meketaten – or for that matter burial of the king alone. Apart from the absence of the additional coffins there was no trace of other items – chariots, chairs, boxes, magic bricks and amulets – that were normally buried in royal tombs only after the king’s death. The sole remains that can be said with certainty to have belonged to Akhenaten are the sarcophagus lid, the ushabti and the canopic chest, all objects that were normally placed in the tomb earlier than the time of actual death.
Martin, one of the few scholars who believes that Akhenaten was actually buried in his tomb, tries to justify this view by arguing: ‘Possibly the mummy of Meketaten, together with the funerary trappings – which probably would not have been extensive – were transferred to Thebes after the abandonment of el-Amarna.’4 Although evidence from the tomb confirms that Meketaten was originally buried there during her father’s reign, there is nothing to indicate that these funerary objects were removed to any other place, and Martin, who took no part in any of the excavations at Akhenaten’s tomb, gives us no reason for suggesting the possibility that they were.
It is possible, of course, to suggest, even if supporting evidence is lacking, that it was considered unsafe to leave Meketaten unguarded in the Royal Tomb once Amarna was abandoned about Year 4 of Tutankhamun. But if, as Martin suggests, Akhenaten was buried there as well, why would they move the princess and leave the king? Then there is the difficulty of the absence of funerary objects that would in the normal course of events have been placed in the tomb after the king’s death. Martin attempts to deal with this point, again without putting forward any evidence, by suggesting that there was a second exodus of objects from the tomb: ‘Most of the valuable items were doubtless carried off by the despoilers … This is unlikely to have taken place in the reigns of Tutankhamun or Aye, who were closely linked to Akhenaten’s family by marriage. The spoliation was probably ordered under Horemheb or conceivably later, in the Ramesside period.’5 However, the archaeological evidence not only does not support Martin’s theory: it contradicts it.
After his first season of excavation at the tomb in 1931, Pendlebury made the important observation: ‘In view … of the demonstration that the so-called body of Akhenaten found in the cache of Tiye at Thebes’ – he was referring to Tomb No. 55, discussed below – ‘is in reality not his at all, it was imperative to try and collect all the evidence as to whether Akhenaten was ever buried at el-Amarna, and, if so, whether in the Royal Tomb or elsewhere.’6
After giving a short account of what was found in the tomb, he went on to say: ‘From both dump and shaft came many more fragments from the sarcophagi, similar to those already in Cairo Museum, as well as broken shawabti-figures (ushabti). In addition there were found parts of Akhenaten’s magnificent alabaster canopic chest, with protecting vultures at the corners, together with pieces of the lids capped with the king’s head. The chest gives evidence of never having been used, for it is quite unstained by the black resinous substance seen in those of Amenhotep II and Tutankhamun, and is additionally interesting in that it is inscribed with the early form of the Aten name, while the sarcophagi all have the later.’
Pendlebury is here remarking that as the burial rituals required some parts of the funerary furniture, including the canopic chest, to be anointed by a black liquid, and he was unable to see any traces of such staining on the fragments he found, he concluded that the tomb had never been used. This would mean that Akhenaten was never buried in his Amarna tomb. This view was supported by the fact that no trace was found of any fragments of the canopic jars themselves, usually placed in position at the time of burial. This idea is further reinforced by the use of the early Aten name, which suggests that the canopic chest was made and placed in position very early in the king’s reign, before Year 9 when Aten received his new name.
Pendlebury’s conclusions were later confirmed by the Egyptian archaeologist Muhammad Hamza, who in 1939 was able to restore Akhenaten’s canopic chest from the fragments found by Pendlebury: ‘As the box is quite unstained by the black resinous unguents to which those of Amenhotep II, Tutankhamun and Horemheb were subjected, it seems probable that it has never been used for the king’s viscera.’7
As a result of the archaeological evidence presented by Pendlebury and Hamza, most Egyptologists accepted the conclusion that Akhenaten could not have been buried in his Amarna tomb, but still believed that he died in his Year 17, the year he fell from power. Some, like Gardiner, took the view that he had never been buried at all and his ‘body had been torn to pieces and thrown to the dogs’: others, like Weigall and Aldred, thought that he must have been buried at Thebes, in Tomb No. 55, or somewhere else. Only Martin was not convinced: ‘Akhenaten was buried in the Royal Tomb in or shortly after Year 17.’8
Where did he obtain this information? The only actual date found in the tomb, as remarked by Pendlebury, was Year 6. Then, as the late name of the Aten was found on the reconstructed sarcophagus and other objects, we can draw the deduction that some work in the tomb was carried out after Year 9. Furthermore, as Meketaten died some time after Year 12, probably in Year 14, her burial could have taken place then. But which evidence found in the Royal Tomb provi
ded Martin with his Year 17 and persuaded him, against the evidence, that Akhenaten had been buried there?
He makes the point: ‘The suggestion that the canopic chest was never used is open to serious question.’9 What are his grounds for taking this view? ‘The absence of bitumin or resin in the canopic chest from the Royal Tomb has been alluded to by several writers, and the assumption made that the chest was never used, and that Akhenaten was therefore never buried in the tomb prepared for him.’10 He then goes on to put forward three arguments in support of his view.
1 ‘The actual canopic coffins or jars which would have contained the viscera have not been found. These were presumably of a precious material, and were placed inside the cylindrical compartments of the canopic chest, as in the Tutankhamun examples.’
Thus the first of Martin’s ‘serious questions’, being used to confirm Akhenaten’s burial in the Royal Tomb, turns out to be a serious point of evidence that he was not buried there at all. The four jars in which the viscera of the dead were placed have separate names: Imset, for the liver, Hapi (lungs), Duamutif (stomach) and Qebehs (intestines). These organs were removed in the first stages of mummification and brought to the tomb with the funerary procession at the time of burial. The absence of these jars from Akhenaten’s tomb, far from proving that he was buried there, as Martin would have us believe, is strong evidence that he was not.
Furthermore, as those responsible for the tomb’s mutilation in ancient times were not thieves, but political enemies who wanted to ensure the complete destruction of Akhenaten by removing his name, image and memory – and thus ensuring his spiritual death – they would not have removed the canopic jars from the tomb because they were precious in terms of value: rather would they have destroyed the jars and their contents for vengeance in situ, as they did with all the other tomb objects they found. They would not have risked the possibility of any part of him surviving for the sake of the value of the containers. The four vases were usually covered with tops that were decorated with the head of the dead king and the vases themselves were usually inscribed with his name and other personal details. To preserve his image or his name, according to ancient Egyptian beliefs, was to allow the spiritual part of him to live. Therefore, by removing his image, his name or any objects belonging to him, his enemies believed they were condemning him to eternal death.
2 ‘It cannot automatically be assumed that the ritual feature of pouring bitumin or resin over or in the canopic jars was a regular feature of the funerary rites of the Amarna royal family.’
This second ‘serious question’ is an assumption, not supported by any evidence. Martin is saying: what if Akhenaten didn’t follow the usual ritual? Yet we know that his successor, Tutankhamun, did, and, if Akhenaten had died in his Year 17, Tutankhamun would have been responsible for his burial. Martin is here putting forward a possibility, then using what is only a possibility to support his view. This line of argument is invalid. To suggest a possibility either requires supporting evidence or a situation where the possibility makes sense of other evidence. Neither of these conditions exists in this, the second of Martin’s ‘serious questions’. Yet he asks us to accept it as a reason for rejecting what the majority of scholars have regarded as solid archaeological testimony.
In addition, the evidence from the Royal Tomb and from Amarna as a whole confirms that Akhenaten rejected the old customs and rituals only when they had polytheistic implications that contradicted his monotheism: ‘In the Aten period, great as was the spiritual reform which Akhenaten imposed upon his subjects, the outer forms prevailing in earlier ages could not be discarded; the king’s own sepulchre at el-Amarna still contained ushabti-figures though no longer bearing the time-honoured summons to field-labourers to till the fields as substitutes for their lord, and there exist large scarabs of the period which no longer appeal for mercy in the weighing of the heart before Osiris.’11
Why should Akhenaten have rejected the ritual of anointing the canopic chest and other funerary objects with bitumin or resin when this normal practice did not contradict his religious beliefs in any way? This is what Martin did not attempt to explain.
3 ‘The canopic chest, as it now exists, is largely a skilful reconstruction in plaster.’
In his third ‘serious objection’, as he regarded it, Martin complains that too few of the original fragments were used in the reconstructed chest for the stains to be seen and even some of those are covered with plaster. This leads him to argue: ‘It follows that any conclusion drawn from the absence of resin or bitumin in these compartments or on the canopic chest must be tentative in the extreme. There is no certain evidence to prove that the chest was never used.’
Both Pendlebury and Hamza, who saw all the found parts of the canopic chest before it was plastered and reconstructed, confirmed that it was not stained with resin or bitumen. Yet Martin, without himself having any first-hand knowledge of the chest fragments, and without putting forward reasons why the two earlier archaeologists were either misled by the evidence or themselves gave a misleading account of it, wants us to reject their conclusion. Then, if he were able – which he was not – to make us suspect the accuracy of the earlier conclusion, the best he could have hoped for is to be able to say: ‘There is no certain evidence to prove that the chest was never used.’ However, he goes further than that and states confidently: ‘There can no longer be any room for doubt that Akhenaten was buried there [in the Royal Tomb].’12
From the following details of the fragments that were used in the reconstruction of the canopic chest given by Martin himself,13 we can see that they were more than enough to show whether it was stained or not: ‘Canopic chest of Akhenaten, with separate cover … Reconstructed in 1939 by M. Hamza from various fragments, with the missing portions supplied in plaster … Height of chest 76.5cm. Height of lid (front) max. 22cm. Height of lid (back) 18cm. Width (front) 60cm. Depth 60cm. Height of supporting falcons at the corners (including disk) 47.3 cm. Height of base and frieze of tyet and djed amulets [sacred ritual objects related to the dead] 23cm. Height of large cartouches 14.2cm. Height of inscription around lid 5.5cm., measured from the bottom of the lid to the border immediately above the cartouches.
‘In the reconstructed canopic chest, the front and both sides of the cover each have 26 cartouches, the back 29. The surviving inscriptions, which are all incised, consist of the early “didactic” names of the Aten. None survives on the front or on the left side of the cover …
‘The canopic chest conforms in most particulars to the other extant royal canopic chests of the Eighteenth Dynasty, which appear to have been used only for Pharaohs and not for their consorts or families. In the reconstruction the following original material is incorporated:
Front:
1 On the left side, a fragment of the feathering of the upper part of the falcon’s wing;
2 A fragment from the point where the wings of the two falcons meet;
3 Lower part of the tail of the right falcon and the tips of the wings of the left falcon;
4 Part of the base with frieze of tyet and djed.
Back:
5 Fragments of the feathering of the wings of the left falcon, and part of the tips of the wing of the right falcon;
6 Fragments of the base, including the upper border and tyet and djed elements.
Left side:
7 Fragments of the rim and much of the base, including the upper border and tyet and djed elements.
Right side:
8 Part of the base of the cartouche on the right side;
9 Tail and part of the feathering of the left falcon;
10 Part of the claw and shen amulet (for protection of the dead) of the right falcon;
11 Fragments of the base, including the upper border and tyet and djed elements.
Cover:
Largely reconstructed in plaster, presumably over wood.’
As we can see from Martin’s own account, enough original fragments were found of the canopic ches
t, and have been used in the reconstructed chest in Cairo Museum, to be able to judge whether it was anointed with resin or bitumen or not. And as both Pendlebury and Hamza have confirmed the complete absence of such stains, I do not take Martin’s unsupported ‘serious questions’ seriously.
WHOSE BODY IN THE VALLEY OF THE KINGS?
In January 1907 a small tomb – now known as Tomb No. 55 – with only one burial chamber was found in the Valley of the Kings. The tomb is one of only three discovered closed in the Valley, with both mummy and funerary furniture inside, the other two being that of Yuya and his wife Tuya, which first came to light in 1905, followed by Tutankhamun’s in 1922. The excavation was sponsored by the rich, retired American lawyer and amateur archaeologist Theodore M. Davis, who employed the British archaeologist Edward R. Ayrton to conduct the digging under the supervision of Arthur Weigall, another Briton, appointed two years earlier to the post of Inspector-General of the Antiquities of Upper Egypt.
Although numerous fragments of small clay seals were found with the cartouche of Neb-kheprw-re (Tutankhamun) used only during the Pharoah’s lifetime, it seems that the tomb had been re-entered at a later date as the outer door had been sealed with the same style of seal (a jackal above nine foreign prisoners) used to close the tomb of Tutankhamun.
The tomb is near the entry of the inner Valley, close to the site where the tomb of Tutankhamun was subsequently found. It consists of a small, rock-cut chamber approached by a sloping passage, and does not seem to have been intended originally for a royal burial. The burial also appeared to have been carried out in haste, with a minimum of equipment. What made the situation worse in trying to establish ownership of the tomb was the fact that it had deteriorated as a result of a great deal of rainwater dripping into it through a fissure in the rock.