| Loret caused the doorway of the side-chamber to be walled-up again "after having taken notes and made notations." However, right after that he wrote: "The nine coffins were quickly packed up and put into crates." Loret gives assurances of careful documentation but, as was mentioned, never published his notes or best photographs. The photos we have all seen of the three mummies, lying side by side upon packing boxes, candles at their heads, were found years later in a souvenir shop in Cairo. Although Loret's piece in the Bulletin De L'Institut Egyptien is extremely well-written and amply descriptive, I get the impression that the notes on the nine mummies in the side-chamber, included in his article, may just be the only on site jottings that Loret actually made concerning the royal corpses. They read as follows: (quote) 1. Coffin and matching lid. Written is the name of Thutmose IV. The mummy resting at the bottom of the trough on a board. The mummy is well-preserved and bears in ink on the shroud, the prenomen of King Men-Kheperu-Re. Length 1m 69 Breadth at shoulders 0m 40. 2. Trough and lid mismatching. On the trough is the name of Ramesses III, which is one of the mummies found at Deir el Bahari and is in the Museum at Gizeh. The lid, marked for another coffin and washed yellow, bears the names of Seti II, but an hieratic addition gives us the pre-nomen of Amenhotep III. The mummy, well-preserved and covered with flowers, bears the same pre-nomen as Amenhotep III, as well as an indication of the name of Pinudjem, of which I have given previously the first letters. [5] Length 1m 58 Breadth at shoulders 0m 41. 3. Trough of wood without lid. This coffin is covered with a wash of yellow, in order to hide the original decorations. The mummy is well-preserved, bearing on the chest the name of Seti II. Length 1m 62 Breadth at shoulders 0m 36. 4. Trough of wood without lid, belonging to Setnakhte. The mummy, having on the neck some stalks of an umbelliferous plant, bears the name of "Khou-n-Aten". L 1m75 Breadth at shoulders 0m42. 5. Trough with lid. The whole thing was adzed in order to efface the name of the original owner. On the cover, the name of Siptah. The mummy, restored and rewrapped, bears on the legs the pre-nomen of the same king. Length 1m 63 Breadth at shoulders 0m 34. 6. The mummy lying on the bottom of the rectangular coffin. It had been stripped and thrown in, in an incomplete state. On the breast, a prenomen nearly effaced of which the forms and the disposition of the legible signs permit me to recognize the prenomen of Ramesses V. Length 1m77 Breadth at shoulders 0m36. 7. Lid lying on its face and taking the place of a coffin. Everywhere is the name and pre-nomen of Setnakht. The mummy was stripped and the shroud which bore the name was removed. This mummy very much resembles that of Setnakhte.[6] 1m57 0m35. 8. Trough and lid of wood painted black. On it the name of the First Prophet of Amun, first prophet of Thutmose III, Ra. On the lid, scratched and scraped, a cartouche with the prenomen of Ramesses VI. The mummy, of whom the head has been broken to pieces, doesn't bear a name. Impossible to measure. 9. Trough and lid of wood painted white. Name and pre-nomen of Ramesses IV. The mummy, very deteriorated, bears on a fragment of linen a name entirely effaced and impossible to read. 1m60 0m41. (unquote) Because of the positioning of the coffins in antiquity, the exploration of KV35 by Victor Loret held the potential for an archaeological disaster. To begin with, Loret admits that, when he first examined the nine mummies, they were covered in the thick dust of the ages. "The mummies were a uniform grey color. I leaned over the nearest coffin and blew on it to read the name. The grey tint was a layer of dust which flew away and let me read the name and prenomen of Ramesses IV..." Surely Loret meant that he was able to read the cartouches on the coffin nearest to him in the beginning, but not the hieratic inscriptions on the shrouds, which later proved difficult to make out even under much more favorable and better-illuminated conditions. At that first moment in the side chamber, "nine coffins layed on the ground, six at the back, occupying all the space, three in the front, leaving to the right a small free space. There was only room in the length of the room for two coffins, in the width for six, so that the mummies touched at their head, shoulders and feet. Five coffins had lids, the other four were without. It was not for a moment possible to think of entering the room and looking at the coffins at closer quarters." GO TO NEXT PAGE |