| So here Loret admits that the containers and mummies had already been shifted into the next room before he even had a chance to blow the dust off all of them. Yet, in his notes, there does appear to be a kind of genealogical order to them, although it is not clear how the Frenchman now exactly recalled the order in which they had lain in the side-chamber, since he had not been able to walk among them in order to decipher their texts. From his own description of the mummies' proximity to one another, it becomes clear that the workmen, in these cramped quarters, had ample opportunity to create some sort of mix-up because they had first to remove the bodies closest to the free-space in the room. It is possible, therefore, that they were not able to duplicate an exact "line-up" in the adjacent "grande salle". Without a doubt, the most striking feature of Loret's description of the nine mummies is that he thought he distinguished the name of "Khou-n-aten", his reading of the signs in the name of the heretic pharaoh of the 18th Dynasty, Akhenaten. Since he mentions this nomen in the same breath with a garland about the neck of this particular mummy, presumably he read this inscription on the mummy's outer wrapping, although Loret is maddeningly vague about this. On the other hand, while he complains of other royal names as being barely legible, he does not make this comment about the name of Akhenaten. Once out of KV35, the mummies eventually underwent unwrapping and examination by one G. Elliot Smith, professor of anatomy at the Cairo School of Medicine and author of that venerable and invaluable tome "The Royal Mummies" (1912). The mummy which Victor Loret had "apparently" judged to be Akhenaten was divested of its bandages on July 8, 1907, six years after it had been taken from the tomb! Smith says that Gaston Maspero, in his "Guide du Visiteur au Musee du Caire", made the notation: "Mummy of the Pharaoh Meneptah, son and successor of Ramses II, found in the coffin of Setnakht. Monsieur Loret thought he recognized the mummy of ...Khouniatonou. M. Groff was the first to affirm that this was Menephtah, and the reading of the cartouche, traced in hieratic writing on the breast of the mummy, demonstrates the correctness of his opinion." Certainly, if the deceased found in the lid of the coffin of Setnakht was the one Loret assumed to be Akhenaten, Loret would have been very wrong, indeed. The mummy now known as Merneptah is not someone who would have been very likely, judging by everything about him, to have been a member of the Thutmosid Dynasty. Dr. Smith, who had already unwrapped Seti I and Ramesses II, found "Merneptah" to resemble these kings most remarkably. Curiously, however, while describing the various aspects of the bandages of this corpse, Smith commented "Not a fragment of writing, nor ornaments of any kind, were found on the mummy." Had Smith already forgotten about the inscription on the shroud, which he had quoted Maspero as mentioning? Throughout his book, "The Royal Mummies", one can't help but notice that, in certain things, Smith always defers to Maspero. So it is noteworthy that, with regard to this hieratic writing, Smith has Maspero saying it existed, but never affirms that he saw it, himself. In fact, Smith appears to give evidence to the contrary. Dr. Smith did say that "the body is thickly encrusted with salt". Was this the information that reinforced the identification of Merneptah who was, as Maspero puts it "...after a tradition of the Alexandrian epoch, the Pharaoh of the Exodus, the one who, it is said, perished in the Red Sea", allaying doubts about the inscription on the shroud? My assertion is, that with Gaston Maspero, who was given to the romantic musings of a fin-de-siecle French novelist, one can never be sure William Groff, indeed, set forth his credible arguments for the reading "BA n ra", a short rendering of the prenomen of Merneptah, but there is still the enigma of why the other mummy, the putative Seti II, appears to be a most unlikely scion of the early Ramessids. I am of the opinion that, if Loret thought he saw Akhenaten among the royals in KV35, he may not have been mistaken, after all--by sheer coincidence . If the mummy of Groff's identification is truly that of Merneptah, then Userkheperure Seti II, his putative son and heir, bears so little physical resemblance to him that this probably has implications for our understanding of the transitional period between the 19th and 20th Dynasties. For some time now I have been working on artistic reconstructions of the faces of the royal mummies. I have twice tried to draw a portrait of the king known (with reservations) as Seti II, but have never been anything like satisfied with the results. My attempts at Seti II appeared "neither fish nor fowl", neither a Ramessid nor a Thutmosid, this pharaoh having been suspected of belonging to the latter group rather than the former. GO TO NEXT PAGE |