Feature: The Riddle of KV63

After King Tut’s tomb was discovered, everyone thought there were no more tombs to be found in the Valley of the Kings. But in 2006, we made an amazing discovery, the shaft of an unknown tomb. When I first saw the shaft, I thought that the tomb underneath would be robbed, that there was no way there could be anything inside.

But when we began to excavate, we found many coffins and pottery jars and other materials. Now I believe it is a storage area for mummification materials for the Valley of the Kings.

Clearing the tomb presented many difficulties. The coffins were very badly deteriorated and were too fragile to move. I brought in an Egyptian conservation team, led by Nadia Lukma, to preserve the wood and save the coffins. They did very good work, and once the wood was strong enough to be moved, we began to take them out. Moving the coffins was very difficult, because of the small space of the tomb and how they were stacked on top of each other. The top coffin was very heavy, and one wrong step while moving it would bring it crashing down on those below.

After we were finally able to remove all of the coffins from the tomb, we opened them and found that there were no mummies inside. Instead, we found something even more valuable, because it is a unique find. The coffins were full of embalming materials, used in mummification.