More secrets are emerging from tomb KV63, found five months ago in the Valley of the Kings on Luxor's West Bank. Nevine El-Aref digs into the new information In the aftermath of the groundbreaking discovery of tomb KV63 just five metres away from the tomb of the boy king Tutankhamun, further objects have been uncovered which have left Egyptologists more perplexed than ever about who originally owned the tomb. The finding of the first intact tomb in the Valley of the Kings in the 84 years since the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun caused a flurry of media interest. So no fewer than 30 journalists, photographers and TV crews and presenters braved the hot weather to attend last Saturday's event at the six-metre-deep tomb when Zahi Hawass, secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) and his colleague Otto Shaden from Memphis University removed the lid of the last of seven sarcophagi found inside the tomb. Since its discovery in February, KV63 has captured worldwide imagination and is especially interesting to Egyptologists who are asking who might have been the owner of such a tomb. While some believe it belonged to Tutankhamun's wife, others, among them Hawass himself, suggest it belonged to his mother, but that after being robbed in antiquity it was converted into an embalming storehouse. Back inside the tomb, workmen with chisels and hammers were hard at work removing the seals from the sarcophagus while archaeologists and media representatives waited alongside, anxious to know what the sarcophagus might reveal. If it contained a mummy, this could put an end of all doubt. Instead of a mummy, however, the coffin was found to contain linen fabric, sticks, gold shreds, clay fragments, and the remains of gilded collars ornamented with flowers. There were also embalming materials such as resin and natron. "I prayed that we would find a mummy, but when I saw this, I said it's better -- it's really beautiful," said Nadia Lokma, chief curator of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. The flowers were probably the remains of garlands, often entwined with gold strips that ancient Egyptian royals wore around their shoulders in both life and death, she said. "It's very rare -- there's nothing like it in any museum. We've seen things like it in drawings, but we've never seen this before in real life -- it's magnificent," Lokma said. While brushing the sand off the discovery, Hawass announced that he believes the tomb originally belonged to Tutankhamun's mother Kiya, who died while giving birth to him. In antiquity the tomb was robbed and used by embalmers to store their materials. Hawass's belief is based on initial findings which include seals, inscriptions, and a ceremonial bowl similar to one found in Tutankhamun's tomb. Hawass added that what gave his theory more credence was that the face depicted on top of one of the sarcophagi was very similar to the face of the boy king as we know it, especially the nose and the cheeks. "Such a tomb could never belong to Tutankhamun's wife," Hawass insisted. He explained that as the wife of Tutankhamun for 10 years, and afterwards the royal wife of his successor, Iye, for two more, she had enough time to carve a large, beautiful tomb for herself that would be fitting for a royal burial. Hawass also promised that in September, after complete cleaning, all the hieroglyphic texts engraved on the seven sarcophagi would be studied in an attempt to reveal more secrets of the tomb, or even help solve one of the mysteries of Tutankhamun. Owing to the importance of the discovery, the Discovery Channel will air a live programme on 9 July at 9pm ET/PT. The tomb KV63 was found accidentally last February during excavations being carried out by the Memphis University mission at the tomb of the 19th-Dynasty Pharaoh Amenmesse in the Valley of the Kings. The mission stumbled upon a corridor that led to the entrance of another side chamber housing five wooden sarcophagi and 20 sealed clay jars. Further excavation revealed two more well preserved coffins. In February, the tomb was only visible through a 30-centimetre wide hole through which could be seen five anthropoid sarcophagi with painted faces resting undisturbed in a plain, rectangular rock-hewn tomb. The first coffin, which had toppled over and was facing the door, showed the painted face of a beautiful woman with full make-up and thin, arched eyebrows, black kohl-lined eyes and black hair styled in a blunt cut. The gold pattern of a thick necklace was also visible, but the lower half of the sarcophagus was rotted and broken. In one corner was another coffin which seemed to have been partially opened so that the brown cloth below the lid, most probably part of the mummy's wrapping, was visible. At the back were the silhouettes of the other three coffins, their faces staring upwards and their hands folded on their chests. On opening five of these sarcophagi embalming materials such as natron, resin and linen were found, but no mummies. The sixth sarcophagus was opened later and revealed another small gilded sarcophagus of an infant along with six cushions. Hawass believes that they belonged to an infant but other Egyptologists suggest that it was used for the burial of Ushabti figures. Hawass told Al-Ahram Weekly that the team had also opened the sealed jars and found that they contained natron, miniature vessels, bits of plant material and in some cases seal impressions. These seals matched examples found in the tomb of Tutankhamun (KV62) and the embalming cache of Tutankhamun (KV54), where leftover material from his mummification and funerary banquet were placed together. The seal impressions found so far include a lion and a crocodile holding a captive, the sun-disk on top of a seated Osiris flanked by the symbols of Upper and Lower Egypt above the sign for gold, and the jackal-headed god Anubis with nine bound captives. Hawass continued that inscriptions had been found on some of the pottery shards, one of which said: "Year five, wine of Tjaru, a place in Sinai." A beautiful alabaster jar that was found inside one of the coffins bears the remnants of a faint text, but again no royal names were found. This tomb 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. "It is a dream come true," Shaden says. "It is just so amazing to find an intact tomb 84 years after [Tutankhamun]." He says that after 13 years of working on tombs which have been known for a long time and had been partly cleared, and following other excavators, his mission finally had something new to add to the Valley of the Kings. Shaden said a foretaste of what might come was found last year when his team was working on the neighbouring tomb of Amenmesse. While digging outside this tomb the team stumbled upon the remains of workmen's huts and noted a depression in the ground which they believed could be the top of a shaft leading to a tomb. When this year's archaeological season began, the team uncovered the intact tomb after removing the stone-block doorway at the bottom of a 10-metre-deep shaft.
