Four small rooms and a corridor
From the floor of the Valley of the Kings, a flight of steps leads down to a sloping corridor and then to four rooms: an antechamber, a small annexe beside it, the burial chamber and, beyond that, a storeroom known as the Treasury. Only the burial chamber has painted walls; the others were left plain.
Compared with the long, many-roomed tombs of other New Kingdom kings, KV62 is tiny. Howard Carter himself noted that the burial chamber seemed small for a king, and for a long time the accepted view was that the tomb had been prepared as a private tomb, probably for Ay, the courtier who succeeded Tutankhamun.
A burial prepared in a hurry
Why would a king end up in a courtier’s tomb? Tutankhamun died at about 19, probably unexpectedly. A royal tomb took years to cut and decorate, so if his own was not ready, the simplest solution was to use a smaller tomb that was close to completion and adapt it, with a quickly painted burial chamber.
The furnishings point the same way. Some objects in the tomb were originally made for Akhenaten and others for a co-regent who ruled with or after him, and were altered for Tutankhamun’s burial. It fits the picture of a funeral organised with what was at hand. The famous gold mask has a story of its own.
The painted burial chamber
The one decorated room is unusual too. On its north wall Ay, dressed in the leopard skin of a priest, performs the Opening of the Mouth on the mummy of Tutankhamun, the ritual that restored the senses of the dead for the afterlife. Showing the successor in this role, in the king’s own tomb, is not known in other royal burials, and it was probably a way for Ay to present himself as the legitimate heir.
How Carter found it
On 4 November 1922 Howard Carter, excavating for Lord Carnarvon, found the first step of a staircase cut into the valley floor. Three weeks later, on 26 November, he made a small hole in the sealed doorway at the end of the corridor and looked in by candlelight. Asked by Carnarvon whether he could see anything, he answered: “Yes, I see wonderful things.”
The team explored the four rooms over the following weeks, and on 16 February 1923, in front of a group of officials, Carter opened the sealed door of the burial chamber and saw the great shrines around the sarcophagus. Inside, nested coffins held the king’s mummy, the innermost coffin of solid gold. In all, the tomb produced 5,398 catalogued objects, and clearing it took years of careful work.
Robbed twice, then forgotten
The tomb was not untouched. Within a few years of the burial, thieves broke in. Officials repaired some of the damage and filled the outer corridor with limestone chips; a second group of robbers dug through that fill, and the tomb was sealed again. After that, the entrance vanished under debris and stayed hidden for most of the following three thousand years, which is why it survived almost intact while the great royal tombs around it were emptied.
Is there more behind the walls?
In 2015 the British Egyptologist Nicholas Reeves proposed a bolder explanation for the tomb’s small size: KV62 might be only the outer part of a larger tomb, with hidden doorways in the painted walls leading to the burial of Nefertiti. A radar survey in 2016 seemed to support the idea, but after two further surveys a new antiquities minister declared that there were no hidden rooms. A later study combining several methods argued again for a burial complex some 25-30 metres to the north, and sceptics reject it. The question is still open.
Where to see it
KV62 is in the Valley of the Kings at Luxor, and Tutankhamun’s mummy is still in his tomb. The objects found with him are now shown together in the Grand Egyptian Museum near Giza. The king’s life and fame belong to the larger story of Tutankhamun.
Sources
- Griffith Institute, University of Oxford, “Tutankhamun: Anatomy of an Excavation”, 1st season (1922-1923).
- Reeves, N., “The Burial of Nefertiti?”, Amarna Royal Tombs Project (2015), as reported by Jordan News and Ahram Online.
- UCLouvain, “The Opening of the Mouth Ceremony in KV62: Perspectives and Researches”; Madain Project, “Burial Chamber of King Tutankhamun (KV62)”.
- Egyptian Streets, “King Tutankhamun’s collection will move to Grand Egyptian Museum for display” (2024).
