Pages in this article: the discovery | the coffin | the physical remains | further examinations | reconstructions and conclusions

The coffin

The mummy case found under the niche was the first example of the royal rishi [5] style ever found in the Valley of the Kings that originally had both the internal and external surfaces covered with gold leaf. 

The coffin displayed signs of intentional damage, namely that all references to the occupant had been excised, and the gold face had been mostly torn off, leaving only the forehead and one eye. In addition, the case had split in two along its whole length. [6] From the outset, it was apparent that the coffin had been altered from its original intended use, as the head was definitely feminine in design, wearing a Nubian style wig, as worn by queen Tiye, and all female inscriptional references had been altered to allude to a male occupant. The mummy had been laid out in the traditional 18th Dynasty feminine pose, with its right arm fully extended along the right side of the body, and the left arm bent with the hand resting over the chest. [7] Davis however, described the mummy's hands as "clasped." [8] Angela Thomas states "That by careful examination of the mummy case, it is clear from the outset that the sarcophagus was originally intended to be used by a royal lady." [9]

Davis was convinced that he had found the tomb of queen Tiye due to the number of artefacts inscribed with her name, in particular a schist pesesh-kef [10] which would certainly have been a part of her personal burial equipment. Davis took this as conformation that the burial had been sanctioned by Akhenaten for his mother Tiye. Moreover, C Aldred postulates that the coffin was indeed "made for a woman of the royal family, probably Meryt-Aten, and subsequently adapted for the person who was found buried in it." [11]

Donald B. Redford has demonstrated that the terminology of the hieroglyphs inscribed on the coffin confirm "that the inscriptions had been carefully changed to the masculine." [12] It was Weigall, working on behalf of the Egyptian government, who first proposed that the coffin was actually the mummy case of the "heretic" king Akhenaten, who had been sharing the tomb with his mother queen Tiye. If Weigall was correct in his assumption, what had happened to queen Tiye's mummy?

Nicholas Reeves ventures that whilst workers were excavating Ramesses IX tomb, they accidentally broke into tomb 55. Upon finding the two coffins, they removed Tiye away from the desecrating influences of her son; in an effort to banish, what they believed to be Akhenaten, into obscurity for all eternity, systematically erasing all traces of his name from the coffin, the gold wrist bands and the gilded shrine. In addition, they deliberately removed the Uraei from the canopic jars and even mutilated the magical protective bricks. Reeves goes on to speculate, "For good measure, a stone was hurled at the coffin’s head just before the party left." [13]

Perepelkin's study of Amarna texts demonstrated that the remaining inscriptions on the coffin and the minimal traces of inscriptions left on the canopic jars contain elements from the titulary of Kiya, one of Akhenaten's lesser wives. [14] The coffin and canopic jars are now generally accepted as hers.

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