Sunday, March 05, 2006

KV63 update

According to Egypt Today, KV63 will be officially opened on March 10th: "Much of the speculation could end on March 10, when the tomb is officially opened and the contents of the seven sarcophagi inside are examined and photographed by Hawass, Schaden and their staffs.
And yes, there are seven coffins, not five, as has previously been reported. Hawass explains the discrepancy: 'Later [after initial press reports] in the excavations, they found remains of coffin number six and still another coffin of a child.' Hawass offers a further, if somewhat guarded, forecast of what he does and does not expect to find: 'One possibility [for the origin of the mummies] is that in the 21st Dynasty, the Priests of Amun wanted to save the mummies and they began to enter into tombs and take the mummies and hide them. This could be a cachet of hidden tombs. To this day, we still do not know where the mummies of Tuthmosis I, Hatshepsut, Amenhotep or the mummy of Akhenaten are. Maybe this could be a clue.' "
Also on the Egypt Today website is a short interview with Otto Schaden: "I don’t think that there is anything beyond. It is a shaft chamber and it looks like only one chamber. As was reported, there are a number of coffins in there with some of them in pretty bad shape, but some look to be in good shape as well. We are still just excavating in the door and we have done some mapping and photography inside, but we are not yet to the stage where we can get close enough to study the coffins or to see what is inside or to even see if there are any names, and we are most anxious to find some names."
See the above page for the entire interview.

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