News from the Valley of the Kings

Wikipedia is reporting that one of the clay seals found in KV63 reads "paaten" and goes on to theorise that KV63 was intended as the tomb for Ankhesenpaaten (ie Ankhesenamun as she became).

 Due to its proximity to the tomb of Tutankhamun and the resemblances between the portraits in the sarcophagi, as well as the style contemporary to the 18th Dynasty, it was speculated that the coffins were once used for the bodies of Kiya and/or even Ankhesenamen, which is supported by the finding of two small golden sarcophagi made to contain small statues that might correspond to her two stillborn children already buried in her husband's tomb, in order to make a connection between them and their mother in the afterlife.

Quite why the bodies of Ankhesenamun and Kiya were then removed from the coffins during Dynasty XVIII is not explained. It's an interesting theory but I'm aware of no evidence to support it. If a "paaten" inscription has been recovered from the KV63 that would be very interesting, but I'd still not regard it as a proven link with Ankhesenamun, nor an indication that KV63 was dug for her. However, this is the latest from Otto Schaden on the coffin inscriptions:

As mentioned in the last update, Coffin A’s fragments proved to be quite interesting. Though very fragmentary and fragile because of termite damage, some key texts could be recovered from under the resin coating….the title “Royal Nurse” ( mn’t nsw ) and the name ‘Iny’. The longest translatable connected text was on the top cross band, left side: ‘Revered, (may) I see Re in the sky and drink water from the pool [ … ].’ Conspicuous by its absence, the deceased is never identified as ‘Osiris’ and the usual deities are not cited. The one example (quoted above) where we have the usual “revered” there is no qualification such as ‘revered by Anubis’ etc. This lack of the traditional deities strongly suggests that this coffin was probably fashioned during the reign of Akhenaton when many of the traditional deities were abandoned.

There are alternative theories swirling round the web that both KV62 and KV63 were intended as tombs dug for royal mummies transferred from Amarna to the Valley of the Kings, and that KV62 was always intended as a phraaoh's tomb, just not for Tutankhamun as nobody expected him to die so young.  However, Dr Schaden also reports that the digging of KV63 was probably started during the reign of Amenhotep III, which would elminate the theory that it was always intended for Tutankhamun.  So although it's clear that KV63 (and probably KV55) was used as a cache burial when mummies were transferred from Amarna, this was probably not the tomb's original planned purpose.  If there was a co-regency between Amenhotep III and Akhenaten (Amenhotep IV), then perhaps KV63 (and/or KV55?) was orginally dug as the tomb for Nefertiti or Kiya before the Amaran era, then abandoned.  Pure speculation of course but wouldn't it be wry if the tomb of Nefertiti has already been discovered - but in the end she was buried elsewehere?

Interestingly, the use of caches suggests that burials were transferred back from Amarna before permanent tombs could be prepared.  Security must have been a recognised issue so if tombs' contents were transferred back with reasonable haste, maybe there are still substantial Amarna era remains to be found somewhere in the Valley of the Kings?