Wv23

It is impossible to establish whether Eye prepared this tomb for himself or appropriated the incomplete ^[2] . The alleged primary owners of the tombs are Akhenaten , Smenhkara and Tutankhamun . Perhaps the latter first rested here and only later was transferred to the current tomb of KV62 . No evidence of these assumptions was found. It also remains unclear whether Eye was buried here, despite the discovery of some funeral objects belonging to the pharaoh in the tomb ^[3] .

Giovanni Belzoni discovered the tomb in 1816, and completely cleared it in 1972 by Otto Schaden ^[2] from the University of Minnesota . From the date of discovery, the tomb at different times was visited by researchers and Egyptologists ^[3] :

• 1824 - Karl Lepsius ( epigraica ) and John Wilkinson ,
• 1825 - James Burton ,
• 1908 - Howard Carter excavated and delivered the sarcophagus to the Cairo Museum for Gaston Maspero ,
• 1958 - Alexander Nikolaevich Pyankov studied inscriptions.

The tomb is located in the western part of the necropolis of the Valley of the Kings behind the tombs KV24 and KV25 . It consists of an entrance (A), two corridors (B and D), separated by a staircase (C), a hall (E) and a burial chamber (J) with a side room (Ja) ^[3] . Halls A, E are similar to the tomb of Amenhotep III ( WV22 ), and C, D are similar to the tomb of Horemheb ( KV57 ). Hall E does not have a shaft and leads directly to Hall F, which, however, is adapted for the burial hall J. There are one niches in each wall, the passage leads to additional room Ja. The tomb differs from the others by the characteristic post- Amaris shift of the axis to the right: the passage from E to J is located on the right, and not on the left, as usual ^[2] .

The decoration is presented only in the burial chamber ^[3] and resembles the decoration of the walls in the tomb of Tutankhamun ( KV62 ) with the inclusion of hunting scenes characteristic of the tombs of large officials ^[2] , rather than royal tombs. The image of Queen Tei watching the hippo hunt is the only case of the image of the Queen in the tomb of the pharaoh ^[4] . The walls are decorated with scenes from the Book of the Dead , Amduat , images of the pharaoh and some deities. Some time after the burial of Eye, his name was erased among the paintings, and the sarcophagus was broken (the name is not touched on the sarcophagus) ^[3] .

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  Road to the Tomb of the Valley of the Kings

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  Tomb plan

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  Tomb painting

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  Figure of the stone sarcophagus Eye

Conservation

The Supreme Council of Antiquities of Egypt returned the restored sarcophagus to the burial chamber from the Cairo Museum, laid wooden paths, and installed handrails in the tomb. Cracks in the walls are closed, the bare walls of the corridors are whitewashed. Some of the decorative drawings in the burial chamber have been lost due to deterioration over the past centuries and cannot be restored ^[3] .

• List of Tombs in the Valley of the Kings

• KV 23 (Ay) (unopened) (inaccessible link) . Theban Mapping Project . Date of treatment March 2, 2018. Archived on January 29, 2017.