WHERE IS THE MUMMY OF KING HOREMHEB?
By Marianne Luban
Peter Clayton, in his "Chronicle of the Pharaohs", writes of the tomb of Horemheb: "It is possible that a graffito found in the tomb refers to Horemheb's body being moved to the tomb of Twosret and Setnakht for restoration, but other than that there is no trace of it--it does not appear to be one of the unidentified bodies from the two mummy caches." Indeed, there was at least one artifact bearing the
name of Horemheb found within KV14.
My reconstruction of the face of the mummy, "Seti II", proved to look astonishingly like Akhenaten
but, if this is not actually the mummy of Akhenaten, then one would have to beg the question
"Why are the features so reminiscent of the Thutmosid dynasty and who is an alternative candidate for a Thutmosid king?"
Even though one isn't accustomed to thinking of Horemheb as being a member of this family, there is a chance, of course, that he was. He claimed a kinship with Thutmose III, referring to him as "the father of my fathers". If it is true that the mummy of Horemheb was taken to KV14, the tomb of Tawosret (completed by Setnakht of the 20th Dynasty), then there could have been some potential for error on the part of the reburial commission. The prenomen of Horemheb is "Djeserkheperure Setepenre", that of Setnakht "Userkaure Setepenre", and that of Seti II, the husband of Tawosret, "Userkheperure Setepenre".
It is believed that Seti II began KV15 for his interment but work was stopped on this tomb when the throne was apparently usurped by Amenmesse. Nicholas Reeves conjectures that Seti II wound up in KV14 but was afterwards transferred to KV15, which was hastily finished for him by Setnakht, when the latter decided to take over the tomb of Tawosret. A graffito in the first corridor of KV14 proclaims: "Year 1, IV prt 11" as "day of the burial of "Userkheper(u)re". Hartwig Altenmuller construes this as Tawosret moving her late husband in her own tomb but Aidan Dodson is doubtful that the body would have been placed in a tomb under construction. (see "The Tomb of Sethos II", JEA, Vol. 85, 1999.) Therefore, the graffito could mean that Seti II was buried in the adjacent KV15 in the first year of Setnakht, after having been taken from the tomb of Tawosret. An odd factor in all of this is that KV15 was begun with masterfully carved reliefs but was finished with crude paintings of Userkheperure in attitudes that had not been used in kingly funerals since that of Tutankhamun.
By the time of the restoration of the KV35 royal mummies, it would have been difficult to know just who was found in KV14, intended occupants or intrusive burials. However, one can comprehend why the ancient priests would have concluded, from the graffito, that the mummy of Seti II was to be found in KV14. So perhaps they sought him there among poorly labeled or unidentified remains. Evidently there was a wooden coffin belonging to Setnakht in KV14, quite poor but perhaps a part of that ruler's original funerary equipment, the lid of which was ultimately used to hold the mummy of a woman in KV35, very probably Tawosret, herself. The trough of this coffin, it would seem, is the one in which Victor Loret thought he saw someone bearing the name of "Khou-n-aten". But where was Setnakht, himself? Was he ever interred in KV14 as he had planned?
Oddly enough, a disarticulated mummy was discovered in KV35, identified only by the name of Ramesses VI scratched onto its coffin lid. Among its own broken limbs was found the right forearm and hand of the "Seti II" mummy and the right hand of a female.
In this present scenario, we are assuming that Loret read "the name of Seti II" on the chest of the mummy in the yellow trough, just as he said he did, even though Elliot Smith, the anatomist, tells us the inscription was very faint. However, the mummy may still not really be Seti II but Horemheb, possibly related to the Thutmosids and brought to KV14-- or it may be Setnakht of the 20th Dynasty,
of whose background we know nothing positively.
The more one studies the information on KV35, the more questions occur. Why, for example, was the individual docketed as Amenhotep III mummified in a manner (and an unsuccesful one, at that) not otherwise seen in the 18th or 19th Dynasties? If this same pharaoh's name was written in hieratic on the lid of the coffin marked with the cartouche of Seti II, why was Amenhotep not also given the matching trough instead of one bearing the name of Ramesses III? I will keep this site updated as I continue to sift through the available pertinent data. Bookmark this page and stay tuned!