KV8

Located in the Valley of the kings, in the Necropolis thebaine on western bank of the the Nile vis-a-vis Louxor, Kv 8 is the tomb of the Pharaon Mérenptah of. It is a tomb located in the be on the right arriving on the central place starting from the north of the valley. Kv 8 is one of the many tombs of the Valley to be damaged by the floods. Many scenes were destroyed except for the top of the walls and the ceiling of the funerary room.

Description

This tomb first of all comprises three descending shafts followed by a small room then of a room to colonnades, a new descending shaft, another room, it even followed by a last descending shaft preceding the funerary room.

This arched room, rather vast, was supported by two series of initially decorated pillars and followed the plan of the funerary rooms of its predecessors Séthi {{Ier}} (KV17) or Ramsès {{II}} (KV7). Its decorative program comprised a complete specimen of the Livre of the Doors whose final chapter appears still partially on the northern wall. The tomb of Taousert and Sethnakht (KV14) comprises intact which makes it possible to restore the unit.

The funerary furniture of the king disappeared for a long time and its mummy found in the royal hiding-place arranged in the tomb of Amenhotep {{II}} (KV35) was to be sheltered in a sumptuous funerary money protected by at least three external carved stone sarcophagi.

The third sarcophagus was discovered by Pierre Montet, employed again in the funerary furniture of Psousennès {{Ier}} with Tanis. It appears the king in Osiris, protected at its head and its feet by Isis and Nephtys, while with its reverse a remarkable figure in round bump of the goddess Nout is who extending her protective arms was to eternally embrace the first internal sarcophagus of the king.

The lid of the external second sarcophagus, out of granite, was given to its initial site in the tomb. It appears to him also the king in Gisant, this time capped of the Némès and in position osirienne. Chapters of the book of the doors are carved on its sides. He also comprises with its reverse a representation of the goddess Nout.

Finally the lid of the external first sarcophagus, also out of granite, was found and left in one of the anterooms of the tomb, where it had been moved by the plunderers who at the end of the time ramesside had already visited fall to it or probably by the priests of whom moved the mummy of the king last once, these same which offered in gift the third sarcophagus of Mérenptah to the sovereign tanite.

The rectilinear whole of the tomb makes nearly 165 meters.

Excavations

This tomb was visited since 1737 by Richard Pockope, then by several Egyptologists until Howard Carter in 1903.

1737-1738: Richard Pockope;
1799: Napoleonean Forwarding;
1825: James Burton;
1825-1835: Robert Hay;
1826-1827: Edward William Lane;
1844-1845: Karl Richard Lepsius;
1903-1904: Howard Casing;
1985-1988: Edwin C. Brock “ Ted ”, for the American University in Cairo, took again a series of excavations.

External bonds

Description of Kv 8 on Theban Mapping Project.

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