EGYPTIAN
ARCHAEOLOGY
in the tomb much longer, perhaps even when it had been first robbed, Amenhotep II himself having been similarly treated. For some (including Dodson), this long seemed a reason for arguing that the mummy – and two others found alongside it – was of a member of Amenhotep II’s own family, rather than that of Tiye, as had been proposed on the evidence of comparing its hair with a lock labelled as Tiye’s, found in KV 62 – but the DNA evidence seems unequivocal. On that basis, it would seem likely that Tiye’s mummy was moved directly from KV 55 to the tomb of Amenhotep II – rather than first to that of Amenhotep III, and moved to KV 35 with his body, as has often been surmised. This could be supported by the apparent presence in KV 55 of a piece of a glass vase that matched a fragment unequivocally found in KV 35. As to why KV 35 might have been chosen, it may simply have been that it was the closest major tomb to KV 55, and thus an option that involved the least labour – certainly far less than the two-kilometre journey needed to reach Amenhotep III’s tomb in the remote West Valley. This putative reopening of the tomb of Amenhotep II to receive the body of Tiye directly after it had been removed from KV 55 has wider ramifications. Tiye’s mummy was found lying with two other, similarly denuded corpses – a male youth, who had originally been buried in another room of the tomb, to judge from the finding of one of his toes there (perhaps the Prince Webensenu who is known to have been buried in the tomb alongside his father, Amenhotep II), and a so-called ‘Younger Lady’. The latter has been identified as the mother of Tutankhamun on the basis of DNA analysis, with the 2010 publication also assessing her as a full-blooded sister-wife of Akhenaten, even though no such person appears anywhere in the inscriptional records of the time. However, Marc Gabolde subsequently pointed out that the same DNA profile would be found if Akhenaten and the Younger Lady were first cousins, whose parents and grandparents had also all been first cousins. Just such a descent has frequently been theorised for Nefertiti, Akhenaten’s principal wife, and thus a leading candidate for Tutankhamun’s mother (although she is only shown with daughters in surviving reliefs, the same is also true for Akhenaten’s only other known wife, Kiya; princes are in any case never shown in ‘family’ contexts before the Nineteenth Dynasty). Could the ‘Younger Lady’ accordingly be none other than the long-sought Nefertiti herself? Notwithstanding her specific identity, the presence of the mother of Tutankhamun beside his grandmother Tiye in the tomb of Amenhotep II is intriguing, strongly suggesting that they arrived there together. That further suggests that they may have been extracted from the same area at the same time – which would be the flood-sealed area in the centre of the Valley of the Kings, where KV 55, 62 and 63 lie. One option could be that the Younger
Lady could have been yet another original occupant of KV 55; another is that she was the original occupant of KV 62, removed when the tomb was appropriated for enlargement for Tutankhamun – or even of KV 63. But as the flash flood at the end of the Eighteenth Dynasty successfully covered and concealed three tombs for over 3,000 years, did it also cover a fourth tomb, from which Nefertiti could have been removed in the same way, and at the same time, that Tiye had been taken out of KV 55? In support of this are some preliminary results from remote sensing work undertaken by the Supreme Council of Antiquities in the area during excavations in 2009, which suggested that a corridor might exist under the rock directly opposite Tutankhamun’s tomb. Of course, further work is needed to verify whether there is anything there at all, let alone another tomb, but one might speculate whether it could have been intended to hold the balance of the mummies removed from the Royal Tomb at Amarna when it was evacuated – at the very least Princesses Meketaten, Neferneferure and Setepenre (Meketaten was certainly buried there, plus two girls whose names are now lost, but seem most likely to have been the youngest pair of the daughters of Akhenaten and Nefertiti). If the ‘Younger Lady’ was indeed an otherwise unknown sister-wife of Akhenaten, she could simply have been a further former denizen of the Royal Tomb. It is unlikely that she is Nefertiti, as a graffito found in a quarry at Deir el-Bersha, just north of Amarna, in 2010 shows her still alive (as chief queen) a few months before Akhenaten’s death, while it now seems all but certain that she transitioned to being Akhenaten’s coregent, the female pharaoh Neferneferuaten, before her husband’s death. If suggestions that her death three years into Tutankhamun’s reign triggered the abandonment of Amarna and its Royal Tomb, this could make the putative ‘new’ tomb the place of Neferneferuaten’s primary burial – but without her kingly accoutrements, many of which were then recycled as parts of the burial outfit already being made for Tutankhamun. These have long been known to have included his canopic coffinettes, some pectorals, gilded statuettes and various other items, but in late 2015, it was also shown that much of Tutankhamun’s gold mask had been made for her, although the face had been replaced during the reworking process. So, what particular events may have lain behind the archaeological data that is now available for understanding the history of the central area of the Valley of the Kings? Activity seems to have been restricted to the reign of Tutankhamun or not more that a few months after it: nothing in the flood-sealed area seems to predate Tutankhamun’s time. It seems likely that the first act followed the abandonment of Amarna as a royal cemetery around Year 3/4 of Tutankhamun, when all those who had been buried there were transferred to 7