Friday, February 17, 2006

KV63 update

Summary
The above summary appears on this week's Al Ahram Weekly: "Hawass told the Weekly that the vessels found in the cache had been arranged haphazardly, suggesting that the burials took place in haste. This was more likely, he continued, than that the cache was used as a storeroom for sarcophagi moved later from other tombs, either by priests to protect them from thieves, or by thieves to be stashed before being completely removed. This is the fourth cache to be discovered in Luxor. The first was stumbled upon sometime before 1887 by the Abdel-Rassoul family, who found 40 hidden intact royal mummies. The second was the cache found in 1891 containing 100 sarcophagi of priests of Amun, while the third discovery was made in 1898 with 12 royal mummies being uncovered inside the tomb of Amenhotep II. . . . Hawass believes that further excavation will lead to more revelations about who these people were, and says that within three weeks more details will be announced. These may also specify details about eight pits the team has located inside the tomb."
See the above page for the complete account.

Official Website
http://www.kv-63.com/pages/1/index.htm
Thanks very much to Jane Akshar for pointing me at the official website for KV63. The site is under construction, and will be updated when Otto Schaden returns to the States. Details of how to donate to the project are shown on the page.

Previously located by geophys?
I have been sent a press release, by email, and have no idea to what extent it is or is not based on fact. The magazine that the press release says is making the claim is not a conventional scientific, historical or archaeological publication, and is not one that I have come across before, but the edition shown on the site's home page has a picture of a silver alien on the front, which isn't exactly encouraging (www.mysteries-magazin.com). However, I don't speak a work of German, so I can't honestly assess it. The press release claims that respected British Egyptologist Nicholas Reeves and the Amarna Royal Tombs Project team first located the tomb during the course of a ground-penetrating radar survey of the area in 2000 and that the American team were provided with copies of the radar data in mid-2005. Unfortunately, I don't have a URL for the above claims, the source of which the email says is Luc Buergin (Editor of the above magazine). I daresay something else will be published soon, either to confirm or deny the claims.

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