Valley of the Kings
- KV21
'Tomb of Two Queens' - XVIIIth
Dynasty
The
tomb opened by
Belzoni on 9 October 1817. Re-excavation and study of the
surviving contents were undertaken by Donald Ryan beginning in 1989.
It is a small, undecorated tomb, well cut
with smoothed walls. The walls and ceiling bear red and black mason's
marks. It lies on an east-west axis and consists of an entryway and two
sloping corridors (B, D) with a stairwell (C) between them. The second
corridor leads to a burial chamber (J) with a central pillar and a side
chamber (Ja). There is a recess along the right (north) side of the
burial chamber.
Two
female mummies were found, with their left arm crossed on their chest, a
pose only used for queens. Vandals entered the tomb after its discovery
in 1817, broke up the mummies, hauled them up to the first corridor B,
and shattered some large white pots.
Announcing the DNA results in 2010, Carsten Pusch stated, "The data
obtained from KV21A points to this mummy as the mother of the fetuses
from Tutankhamun tomb - KV62. Unfortunately we are not yet able to
identify her as Ankhesenamun, Nefertiti's daughter.