Akhenaten Tomb (KV55)

Of all the royal mummies always discovered none has ever stimulated more controversy then the one found in Akhenaten Tomb (KV55) in the Valley of the Kings.

At the starting of the 20th Century, Theodore Davis, a wealthy American digging in Egypt, discovered a tomb in which a burial from the Amarna time period had been reinterred. This tomb was distinctly incomplete, and the burial a quick one. Gilded wooden inlay panels on the floor and against the wall. They endured the damaged image of Akhenaten idolizing the sun disc and the name of Queen Tiy.

In a niche were four pretty alabaster jars that taken the internal organs of the mummies. Dwelling on the floor was a badly weakened but beautiful coffin made with thousands of spread in-lays and semi-precious rocks in the shape of particular wings. The cartouches containing the residents name had been chopped out.

When they opened the coffin they discovered a mummy covered in gold-leaf. But as they referred the mummy it collapsed to dust leaving the shovels with a pile of disjointed bones at the bottom of the coffin. But below the skeleton, the last plane of gold, appeared to have the riddled named of Akhenaten written on it. The hip was wide alike a female's. The head was extended.

What actually became of Akhenaten's mummy still stays a mystery. Fragments of sculpture and cutting from the royal tomb at Akhetaten presents that his body was primitively put there, but no mark of the mummy remains. It is potential that followers of the Aten dreaded for it's destruction, which would refuse him extended life, and moved the body to a place of refuge.

Akhenaten is maybe unfairly not accredited with being a particularly prosperous Pharaoh. Records seem to show that he allowed Egyptian determine wane but this may not be right. These ideas are placed on the famous Amarna Tabletsfound in Akhetaten in some of which Egyptian liege cities plead for assistance, but no replies|responses are preserved.

As there is no living record of Egyptian territory being lost at this period it is possible that Akhenaten was merely skilfully playing one city against the other to accomplish through diplomacy what would otherwise demand military force.
 
Related Pages:
 

Labels