mysteries35

THE MYSTERIES OF KV35

By Marianne Luban
Copyright Aug. 2001

I have always had the feeling that KV35, the tomb of Amenhotep II, is the most mysterious of all the royal sepulchers discovered in Egypt.    Before Victor Loret entered this tomb in 1898, he already knew there were shabtis of Amenhotep II on the market in Egypt and in Europe and had been for years. So had many other pieces from 18th Dynasty royal burials. Mohammed Abd el Rassoul, head of the famous Gurneh family long suspected of trafficking in antiquities, had even boasted that he knew of the existence of an undiscovered tomb of a king--and KV35 was surely it. In other words, this tomb had already been plundered in modern times before Loret began his investigation. Much speculation has been offered regarding the anonymous, coffinless corpses lying in a side chamber, " The Elder Lady", "The Younger Lady" and the young Prince. Loret found these mummies neatly arranged but more than half naked with their bandages lying in tatters all around them, whereas the nine mummies in the side- room appeared, for the most part, to be wrapped up the way the restorers of the 21st Dynasty had left them. [1]. It is difficult to believe the three royal persons, lying on the floor, were deposited in KV35 in such a state of disarray by any reburial commission of ancient times. One would have to wonder why no cheap replacement coffins were provided for them like all the other royal mummies. I think it's entirely possibly these three mummies were brought to this nice, large tomb by the Rassouls and plundered there--from somewhere else. Some tombs are so noxious that no one can tolerate them for very long. They can, for one thing, get full of ammonia from bat droppings, making the air too foul to breathe. KV35 was a tolerable environment where work like stripping mummies could be done. Whether something of value was left upon the trio of mummies from antiquity, we shall probably never know, and that they were members of the immediate family of Amenhotep II and had been in his tomb about as long as that pharaoh, himself, is quite unlikely. Since the floor of KV35 was thick with debris, something of their burials should have remained.

As for the kingly mummies in KV35--the Rassouls evidently were never motivated to bother with
them. They appeared very poor and were covered with a heavy pall of dust. Or perhaps the truth was that the clan of tomb-robbers never had time to pay them much attention. Only Amenhotep II had been placed in his sarcophagus like a true pharaoh and even this monarch had not been disturbed in modern times, but still wore his funerary wreath. Later on, however, someone messed this mummy about and stole the great bow buried with the king--the one he had boasted only he could pull.

Victor Loret, as it turned out, was never able to do a scientific evaluation of KV35. Following three weeks of clearing the tomb and packing the mummies in crates, Loret loaded them onto a boat and brought them to the Museum at Ghiza. This proved a waste of time. According to Howard Carter's memoirs: "In consequence, an administrative question arose and he received orders to replace them in the tomb."   Loret's ire and frustration can easily be imagined, yet he had no choice but to comply. KV35 presumably remained re-sealed until Gaston Maspero, another Frenchman who had taken Loret's place as director of the Service des Antiquities, came to remove some of the mummies in 1901. In this task he had the aid of Carter, who wrote: "I replaced the mummy of Amenophis II in his sarcophagus, with the flowers and foliage upon him as they were originally discovered; the three naked mummies I put back in the side treasury where they were found; and the mutilated mummy upon the frame of a model boat, in the Antechamber. [2] With regard
to the other nine mummies, the plan was changed. It was decided to transport them on a special government steamer to the Ghiza Museum near Cairo." After this the tomb of Amenhotep II was opened to the public and in November of 1901 it was entered by tomb-robbers yet again.

Loret claimed that he had intended to do an in-extenso examination of the KV35 mummies, complete with x-rays, in Cairo, but that this opportunity had been denied him under the circumstances. Because the cadavers and their containers were lined up in such close proximity in their side-chamber, [3] the Egyptologist wrote that he decided to take down a wall of stones that had partly sealed the doorway and to have the mummies and receptacles carried into the "grande salle" of the tomb. Victor Loret indicates that it was not until after the nine mummies had been moved that photographs were taken and "each mummy measured, described, examined in all their details". Certain inscriptions were appraised by candle-light on the wrappings. In the words of Loret: "I copied them patiently, mechanically, without giving myself time to study them in depth."

Hindsight enables us to pronounce the efforts of Victor Loret wanting in methodology, but the excavator did his best to assure us that he took every precaution. At any rate, no detailed records of his work in the Valley of the Kings were ever published. The most comprehensive account we have of his discovery of KV35 is in the form of an article, "Le Tombeau D'Amenophis II", printed in the Bulletin De L'Institut Egyptien in May of 1898, some months after Loret entered this tomb.   There, he tries to convey his excitement upon first realizing the importance of what he had found in the side-chamber: "Everywhere cartouches! Here, the prenomen of Siptah; there, the names of Seti II; nearby, a long inscription including the complete titulary of Thutmose IV. We had stumbled upon a royal cache comparable to that of Deir-el-Bahri." And... "After Thutmose IV, Amenophis III. Following the son of Amenhotep II, his grandson. The genealogical series continued, which had so well commenced with Thutmose III [4] and Amenophis II, and which would finish with Akhenaten."

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