They followed me from Caledonia.
Posted on 02/08/2006 10:48:04 AM PST by SunkenCiv
http://www.kv-63.com/pages/1/index.htm
"4 March 2006 -- Salima Ikram is supervising the removal and examination of the contents. Thus afar, we have examined only two of the 28 jars, as one additional jar was found under the collapsed footboard of the first coffin."
Salima Ikram photos (because we all know the rules...)
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2001/537/ani3.jpg
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/mummy/images/ikra-05-ikram.jpg
http://www.kv5.de/images/new_salima.jpg
Zahi "Zowie" Hawass stated that KV-63 was really just a prep room for mummies to be buried elsewhere. His view is, uh, difficult to reconcile with every bit of publicly available information. IOW, he's talking out his kazoo.
Keep an eye on the KV 63 website for real information.
http://www.kv-63.com/pages/1/index.htm
KV63 lecture by Otto SchadenAt 2 metres down they were still finding rock chips and the occasional stone. They found rocks that were almost like those used to block a robber’s tunnel and fragments encased in plaster and these were a good sign that they were dealing with something. But sadly they also found evidence of termites however termites would not be going down there unless there was something there, so that was both a good and bad sign. The termites were actually dated to the 19th dynasty as they start at the huts. Further down the shaft they found ostraca, one piece was a man with long straggly hair and bald top of the head with a carrying pole over his shoulder with bags hanging from it...
by Jane Akshar
9th March 2006
(Friday, March 10th, 2006)
The blocking stones in the doorway were not original suggesting that the doorway had been opened and closed a few times. The original blocking stones were inside the tomb. So someone had re-entered and sealed the tomb in antiquity...
The reason for the confusion over the number of coffins was because 5 were all they could see from the doorway but once they got inside they saw 2 more. So there are 7 coffins, 4 are in a really bad state of repair. Most are covered in black resin and there are no inscriptions visible. There is significant termite damage. The first 2 coffins are open and there are no signs of mummies, they appear to be filled with odds and ends, natron and bandages, however some of the other coffins are closed and their contents are unknown at present...
The conservators are at work trying to stabilise the first 2 coffins and as yet the team can not look at the others until these are out of the way...
There is a child coffin with a lovely yellow face...
One coffin has glass inlaid eyes. There is one with crossed arms and a black face. The ones that have the resin on them might have to have this cleaned off to identify them, It is possible that this obscures the identify[ing] marks...
A cache can mean many things, this does not look like a royal cache because there are no names or insignia...
It would help the team tremendously if there were mummies. They can’t get to the closed coffins yet so do not know if there is anything inside them or not. The open ones are full of rubbish...
The storage jars are almost identical to those in KV54. If this is a burial it is a very incomplete one as there are no canopics or ushabits, unusual not to have basic funeral provisions...
The termite damage is huge but they hope to save at least the faces and collars.
LOL! well, Tut was just a small, unassuming boy you know.
Great find. Lots of reading. Will have to wait until I have time.
Any bets on how fast Hawass ("faster than a speeding Geraldo") is gonna get a TV crew in there? I'll stick to reading about it - won't have to see or hear him and the pictures will be better quality than video.
He did his photo op already (not sure the links are in this topic, possibly in one of the duplicates), and a week or so ago pronounced the tomb not a tomb at all, but some kind of work room for mummification, an idea that is from Kooky Town. ;')
They followed me from Caledonia.
"Buried with a donkey..."
Sounds like the Dhimmicrats.
Whoops. That diagram isn't from 2003.
KV-63 blogA Discovery TV crew has been onsite since March 12th filming and interviewing for an upcoming special or specials to be aired starting in June. Please continue to access our website for further details.
by Dr. Otto Schaden
31 March 2006
This coming April, I will be taking a short break from KV-63 to lecture at the Fifty-Seventh Annual American Research Center in Egypt (ARCE) meeting in New Jersey on Saturday, April 29th on Recent Work in KV-63 and co-lecturing with Professor Earl Ertman on Sunday, April 30th on Notes on the Decorative Wall Program in the Tomb of King Ay, WV-23, Plus Analysis of a Chryselephantine Fragment Found outside WV-24.
most recent update:
http://www.kv-63.com/pages/1/index.htm
Otto's Dig Diary
Dr. Otto Schaden
13 APRIL 2006
"...be on the lookout for the May issue of 'KMT, A Modern Journal of Ancient Egypt' magazine for an‘exclusive’ on KV-63, the new tomb discovery in the Valley of the Kings."
TV program to show unearthing of tombThe ancient Egyptian tomb discovered this year in the Valley of the Kings by Earl Ertman, University of Akron professor emeritus, and Otto Schaden, expedition project director, will be featured June 4 on the Discovery Channel... The program, Egypt's New Tomb Revealed, will air at 9 p.m. and will take viewers along as cameras descend a narrow shaft beneath desert sands to see the most significant find in the Valley of the Kings in more than 80 years... It's believed that KV63 was a tomb used for embalming. Inside the tomb chamber were five wooden mummy cases, 28 alabaster jars (18 of which had material used to embalm mummies) and several decorative stamps used to seal the jars. A seal with the inscription PA-ATEN is thought to have formed part of the name given to Tutankhamen's wife, Ankhesenamun. A woven garland of dried flowers was also found, indicating that a funeral had taken place nearby, Ertman said.
by Dottie Shinn
Thu, May. 25, 2006
Akron Beacon Journal
http://www.kv-63.com/index.html
[May 30 2006 update]
"Dr. Zahi Hawass officially pronounced our newly discovered tomb, KV-63 on 10 February 2006. However, the initial shaft was discovered a few days before the end of our 2005 season."
[see message 42 in this thread]
[IMHO, Hawass -- who had earlier pronounced KV-63 to be something other than a tomb, then said it was a tomb -- now states that this was to be the final resting place of Tut's mom, who died in Amarna. That would be unusual, because the downfall of the House of Akhenaten hadn't yet happened, so her burial place should have been in Amarna itself]
http://www.archaeology.org/online/reviews/kv63/kv63.html
In a June 28 press release the contents of the coffin are listed as "gilded collars ornamented with flowers, sticks, linen pieces, clay fragments, and golden 'shreds.'" The same press release, gives the following interpretations of KV63:
"I announce today my belief that KV63 is indeed the tomb of King Tutankhamun's mother, Queen Kiya," stated Dr. Hawass. "The identification of KV63 as the final resting place of Queeen Kiya helps to solve the riddle of the location of King Tutankhamun's tomb in the Valley of the Kings. KV63 faces KV62, making it clear that the tomb was for someone near and dear to king Tutankhamun."
and
"Historical evidence shows that Queen Kiya died giving birth to King Tutankhamun in Amarna. Dr. Hawass and Dr. Schaden theorize that the boy pharaoh secretly ordered his mother's tomb to be moved to the Valley of the Kings, and that prior to his death, King Tutankhamun requested to be buried near his mother."
:'D
A Mystery Fit For A PharaohAccordingly, Schaden's newly opened chamber is KV-63. Unlike Tut's, it contains neither gold statues and funerary furniture nor, as of early June, the mummified body of a long-dead Pharaoh. Despite the coffins, this probably isn't even a gravesite... [T]he artifacts appear to have been undisturbed for more than three millennia, not since one of Egypt's most fascinating periods -- just after the death of the heretic king Akhenaten, who, unlike his predecessors, worshiped a single deity, the sun god Aten... Some scholars speculate that the cache might be tied to the upheavals surrounding the heretic king Akhenaten, who not only abandoned the old gods to worship Aten alone but also built a new capital -- along with new cemeteries -- at Amarna, about 250 miles north of the Valley of the Kings, along the Nile River. Upon Akhenaten's death, his successor -- young Tut -- abandoned Amarna and monotheism and reinstituted the old ways. Perhaps there was confusion over what to do with those royal personages who had been buried in the forsaken capital... Some mummies apparently were transported to the Valley of the Kings... [H]ieroglyphs on a broken seal found amid the debris in KV-63 names the sun god Aten. But whether the chamber was actually dug during that disruptive period has yet to be determined.
by Andrew Lawler
Ramses fathered over 50 children and they named a brand of rubbers for him. Go figure.
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