KV-63 Update

The long awaited update featuring descriptions and images of some of our most recent ‘finds’ is finally here. Many thanks for your patience, as we have been quite busy.

In January, as the conservation work began in earnest on the coffins, the KV-63 team also began opening some of the remaining storage jars. Jar number 13 was the first to be examined and proved to contain some of the most interesting items…. including a wooden bed. The bed had been broken into many pieces to fit inside the jar, but is now completely restored. The bed features the customary lion head decorations at the head end and the raised footboard on the other; its length is 170 cm. There are no “feet” to speak of, so it may have been used simply to hold a coffin or mummy “off” the ground during the embalming process. Some strange boards covered with linen and adorned with possible “feet” were also in Jar 13. When these items are conserved, we will see if they have any possible connection with the bed as supports.

To add to the bedtime theme of the preceding paragraph, we also found an intact pillow (the 10th from KV-63). Though pushed in at one end from the confined space of the storage jar, it appears to be quite intact and in excellent condition.

Among other finds are more miniature vessels, bowls with hieratic texts, linen, jar lids and reed tubes (containing a powdery substance). One of the jars emptied this season had what must be a whole storage jar within it --- in many fragments, of course. A rough estimate is that the tomb and coffins may have contained nearly forty of these large storage jars, all virtually identical to those found by Theodore Davis in KV-54.