Tomb KV40 is located in the

Valley of the Kings The Valley of the Kings ( ar, وادي الملوك ; Late Coptic: ), also known as the Valley of the Gates of the Kings ( ar, وادي أبوا الملوك ), is a valley in Egypt where, for a period of nearly 500 years from the 16th to 11th ...

, in

Egypt Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia via a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Medit ...

. Artifacts from the tomb attribute it to 18th Dynasty royal family members, though human remains from the later

22nd Dynasty The Twenty-second Dynasty of Egypt is also known as the Bubastite Dynasty, since the pharaohs originally ruled from the city of Bubastis. It was founded by Shoshenq I. The Twenty-first, Twenty-second, Twenty-third, Twenty-fourth, and Twenty-f ...

were interred. Although the tomb was excavated by

Victor Loret Victor Clement Georges Philippe Loret (1 September 1859 – 3 February 1946) was a French Egyptologist. Biography His father, Clément Loret, was a professional organist and composer, of Belgian origin, who had been living in Paris since ...

in 1899, no report was published. Excavations in 2014 revealed the remains of at least 50 minor royalty in several chambers. While the tomb was looted several times in antiquity and at the end of the nineteenth century, it still contains many fragments of funerary equipment, such as wooden and

cartonnage Cartonnage (word of French origin) is a type of material used in ancient Egyptian funerary masks from the First Intermediate Period to the Roman era. It was made of layers of linen or papyrus covered with plaster. Some of the Fayum mummy portrait ...

coffins or textiles.

Excavations of 2014

On 28 April 2014, the Egyptian Minister of State for Antiquities announced the discovery by an Egyptian–Swiss archaeological team of at least 50

mummies A mummy is a dead human or an animal whose soft tissues and organs have been preserved by either intentional or accidental exposure to chemicals, extreme cold, very low humidity, or lack of air, so that the recovered body does not decay furt ...

in the center chamber and in three side chambers of KV40. Based on inscriptions on storage jars, Egyptologists identified more than thirty people. The mummies in KV40 come from both the 18th and the 22nd Dynasty. The royal titles found on many jars indicated that the buried were members of the families of

Thutmosis IV Thutmose IV (sometimes read as Thutmosis or Tuthmosis IV, Thothmes in older history works in Latinized Greek; egy, ḏḥwti.msi(.w) "Thoth is born") was the 8th Pharaoh of the 18th Dynasty of Egypt, who ruled in approximately the 14th century ...

and Amenhotep III, both of whom also are interred in the

. The analysis of the hieratic inscriptions point to hitherto unknown royal princesses, four princes, and several foreign women, mostly adults. Mummified children have also been found. The royal princes and princesses are said to be from the house of the royal children in the inscriptions. In a lecture at the Museo Egizio (2015) Dr. Bickel indicated that so far twelve royal daughters were identified. Names include the King's Daughter Neferunebu and the King's daughter Nefertari, as well as the King's Son Meri-taui. One of the women was identified as the King's Daughter Taemwadjes, the one of the royal son, which indicates she was a granddaughter of the King. There are also women who are not obviously royal. Some women have clear foreign names from the Near East and Nubia. KV40

The finds in the 2014 excavations include a linen sock which was made to be worn in sandals and fragments of funerary equipment.Susanne Bickel, Princesses, Robbers and Priests - The unknown side of the Kings' Valley, Presentation at a conference at the Museo Egizio in Turin, Italy, October 14 2017
Online; KV 64 discussed at 40:00 onwards
/ref>

References

External links

Theban Mapping Project: KV40
– Includes detailed maps of most of the tombs. {{DEFAULTSORT:Kv40 Valley of the Kings 1899 archaeological discoveries