KV60

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KV60
Burial site of Sitre In
Location	East Valley of the Kings
Discovery Date	1903
Excavated by	Howard Carter Edward R. Ayrton Donald P. Ryan
Previous : KV59	Next : KV61

Tomb KV60 in Egypt's Valley of the Kings is one of the more perplexing tombs of the Theban Necropolis, due to the uncertainty over the identity of one female mummy found there, thought by some (such as the noted Egyptologist Elizabeth Thomas) to perhaps be that of the Pharaoh Hatshepsut, whose body is otherwise mysteriously unaccounted for.

When the tomb was discovered, by Howard Carter in 1903, it was found to have been ransacked and desecrated in antiquity, but still held two mummies, along with some badly damaged grave goods; Carter apparently did little work in the tomb.

In 1906 Edward R. Ayrton re-opened it, and removed one mummy, together with the coffin it was in, to the Egyptian Museum. The coffin was inscribed with the name and title royal nurse, In. This personage has been widely identified with Sit-Ra, called In, who was the royal nurse of Hatshepsut. Since neither Carter nor Ayrton drew plans or maps indicating the location of the tomb, the whereabouts of the tomb became forgotten.

Thomas later (in 1966) speculated that the second (un-identified) mummy was that of Hatshepsut, relocated there (to the tomb of her nurse) by Thutmose III, as part of his campaign of official hostility towards her.

In 1990 the tomb was re-discovered, re-opened and properly excavated by a team led by Donald P. Ryan. This produced evidence both in favour of, and casting doubt on, Thomas' theory. On the supporting side, the mummy proved to be that of a relatively elderly lady, with her left arm flexed in the pose thought to mark a royal mummy. On the other hand, none of the pottery fragments recovered during the excavation could be dated to any time earlier than the 20th Dynasty. Most interestingly, a wooden face-piece from a coffin possibly destined for a male (it seemingly had a place to fit a false beard) was found – but the tomb contained only females, and Hapshepsut is known to have used the false beard. The mummy was placed in a new wooden coffin, and left in the tomb, which was re-sealed, and remains closed.

[edit] Further reading

Nicholas Reeves and Richard H. Wilkinson, The Complete Valley of the Kings (Thames & Hudson, 1996) pp. 186-187.
Donald P. Ryan, "Who is buried in KV60", KMT 1:1, 1990.
Siliotti, A. Guide to the Valley of the Kings and to the Theban Necropolises and Temples, 1996, A.A. Gaddis, Cairo.