. The contents of the tomb are by far the most complete example of a royal set of burial goods in the Valley of the Kings, numbered at 5,398 objects. Some classes of object number in the hundreds: there are 413
shabtis (figurines intended to do work for the king in the afterlife) and more than 200 pieces of jewellery. Objects were present in all four chambers in the tomb as well as the corridor. The efforts of the robbers, followed by the hasty restoration effort, left much of the tomb in disarray when it was last sealed. By the time of the discovery, many of the objects had been damaged by alternating periods of humidity and dryness. Nearly all leather in the tomb had dissolved into a pitch-like mass, and while the state of preservation of textiles was highly inconsistent, the worst-preserved had turned into a black powder. Wooden objects were warped and their glues dissolved, leaving them in a very fragile state. Every exposed surface was covered with an unidentified pink film; Lucas suggested it was some kind of dissolved iron compound that came from the rock or the plaster. In the process of cleaning, restoring and removing the damaged artefacts, the excavators labeled each object or group of objects with a number, from 1 to 620, appending letters to distinguish individual objects within a group.
Outer chambers and annexe The corridor may have contained miscellaneous materials, such as bags of natron, jars and flower garlands, that were moved to KV54 when the corridor was filled with limestone chips after the first robbery. Other objects and fragments were incorporated into the corridor fill, including some dropped by the thieves and others that were swept in from the outside along with the stone chips. One well-known artefact, a
wooden bust of Tutankhamun, was apparently found in the corridor when it was excavated, but it was not recorded in Carter's initial excavation notes. from the antechamber, with the god
Heh depicted atop the handles. The antechamber contained 600 to 700 objects. Its west side was taken up by a tangled pile of furniture among which miscellaneous small objects, such as baskets of fruit and boxes of meat, were placed.
Several dismantled chariots took up the southeast corner, while the northeast contained a collection of funerary bouquets and the north end of the chamber was dominated by two life-size
'guardian statues' of Tutankhamun that flanked the entrance to the burial chamber. These statues are thought to have either served as guardians of the burial chamber or as figures representing the king's
ka, an aspect of his soul. Among the significant objects in the antechamber were several funerary beds with animal heads, which dominated the cluster of furniture against the west wall; an alabaster
lotus chalice; and a painted box depicting Tutankhamun in battle, which Carter regarded as one of the finest works of art in the tomb. Carter thought even more highly of a gilded and inlaid throne depicting Tutankhamun and Ankhesenamun in the art style of the Amarna Period; he called it "the most beautiful thing that has yet been found in Egypt". Boxes in the antechamber contained most of the clothing in the tomb, including tunics, shirts, kilts, gloves and sandals, as well as cosmetics such as unguents and
kohl. Scattered in various places in the antechamber were pieces of gold and semiprecious stones from a
corselet, a ceremonial version of the armor that Egyptian kings wore into battle. Reconstructing the corselet was one of the most complex tasks the excavators faced. This room also contained a wooden dummy of Tutankhamun's head and torso. Its purpose is uncertain, although it bears marks that may indicate it once wore a corselet, and Carter suggested it was a
mannequin for the king's clothes. The annexe contained more than 2,000 individual artefacts. Its original contents were jumbled together with objects that had been haphazardly replaced during the restoration after the robberies, including beds, stools, and stone and pottery vessels containing wine and oils. The room housed most of the tomb's foodstuffs, most of the shabtis and many of its
wooden funerary models, such as models of boats. Much of the weaponry in the tomb, such as
bows,
throwing sticks and
khopesh-swords, as well as ceremonial shields, were found here. Other objects in the annexe were personal possessions that Tutankhamun seemingly used as a child, such as toys, a box of paints and a fire-lighting kit. File:Tutankhamun emerging from lotus flower.jpg|A
bust of Tutankhamun found in the corridor File:Egyptian Museum (342).jpg|A chariot, reassembled from the pieces in the antechamber File:Ägyptisches Museum Kairo 2019-11-09 Tutanchamun Grabschatz 26.jpg|A painted chest from the antechamber File:King Tutankhamun's tomb goods curved box DSC 0878 (43891950930).jpg|A round-fronted chest from the antechamber. The knob on the chest that contains Tutankhamun’s cartouche had been written over the name of Neferneferuaten. File:King Tutankhamun's tomb goods gloves DSC 0880 (1) (44795620015).jpg|Two of the embroidered gloves found in the antechamber and annexe File:King Tutankhamun's tomb goods shield with image of the King threatening lions DSC 0944 (30769015407).jpg|Ceremonial shield from the annexe File:Tutankhamun tomb photographs 4 326.jpg|Painted, wooden figure of Tutankhamun File:Ägyptisches Museum Kairo 2016-03-29 Tutanchamun Grabschatz 12.jpg|A calcite model boat from the annexe File:Egyptian Museum 000 (6).jpg|A
senet game-board from the annexe File:Ägyptisches Museum Kairo 2016-03-29 Tutanchamun Grabschatz 13.jpg|
Shabtis, many of which were found in the annexe File:Menkaret.jpg|Gilded wooden statue of Tutankhamun being carried by the goddess Menkeret. It was looted during the
25 January 2011 Revolution and is still missing since. File:Egyptian Sistrum Tutankhamun 2019.jpg|
Sistrum of Tutankhamun File:Egyptian Hunting Boomerangs Tutankhamun 2019.jpg|Hunting Boomerangs of Tutankhamun File:Gilded Wooden Sceptre of Tutankhamun.jpg|Tutankhamun's royal sceptre found in the annexe
Burial chamber Most of the space in the burial chamber was taken up by the gilded wooden outer shrine. This shrine enclosed a wooden frame covered with a blue linen pall spangled with bronze rosettes, followed by three nested inner shrines and then a stone sarcophagus containing three nested coffins. Burial goods were placed in the narrow gaps between shrines and between the outer shrine and the chamber walls: lamps, jars, oars, fans, walking sticks and religious objects such as
imiut fetishes. Each wall of the chamber bore a niche containing a brick, of a type that Egyptologists call "magic bricks", because they are inscribed with passages from Spell 151 from the funerary text known as the
Book of the Dead, and are intended to ward off threats to the deceased. The decoration of the shrines, executed in relief, includes portions of several funerary texts. All four shrines bear extracts from the Book of the Dead, and further extracts from the Amduat are on the third shrine. The outermost shrine is inscribed with the earliest known copy of the
Book of the Heavenly Cow, which describes how Ra reshaped the world into its current form. The second shrine bears a funerary text that is found nowhere else, although texts with similar themes are known from the tombs of Ramesses VI (KV9) and
Ramesses IX (
KV6). Like them, it describes the sun god and the netherworld using a cryptic form of hieroglyphic writing that uses non-standard meanings for each hieroglyphic sign. These three texts are sometimes labeled "enigmatic books" or "books of the solar-Osirian unity". The sarcophagus is made of
quartzite but with a red
granite lid, painted yellow to match the quartzite. It is carved with the images of four protective goddesses (
Isis,
Nephthys,
Neith and
Serqet), and contained a golden lion-headed bier on which rested three nested coffins in human shape. The outer two coffins were made of gilded wood inlaid with glass and semiprecious stones, while the innermost coffin, though similarly inlaid, was primarily composed of of solid gold. Within it lay Tutankhamun's mummified body. On the body, and contained within the layers of mummy wrappings, were 143 items, including articles of clothing such as sandals, a plethora of amulets and other jewellery and two daggers. Tutankhamun's head bore a beaded skullcap and a gold diadem, all of which was encased in the golden
mask of Tutankhamun, which has become one of the most iconic ancient Egyptian artefacts in the world. File:Egyptian Museum 000 (5).jpg |
Imiut fetishes from the west corners of the burial chamber File:Shrinesandsarcophagos.png |Diagram of shrines and coffins in the tomb File:Paris - Toutânkhamon, le Trésor du Pharaon - Eventail dit de la chasse à l'autruche en bois doré - 002.jpg|An embossed fan found between the shrines File:Tutanchamun Sarkophag Replika.jpg|Replica of the outer coffin, from an exposition in
Dresden File:Egyptian Museum (340).jpg |The middle coffin File:Egyptian Museum (341).jpg |The inner coffin File:Kairo Museum Eisendolch Tutanchamun 01.jpg |The
iron dagger, found on Tutankhamun's body File:Gold_Diadem_or_Crown_of_Tutankhamun.jpg|Tutankhamun's gold crown or
diadem with
turquoise,
lapis lazuli and
malachite File:King Tutankhamun's tomb goods flail and crook DSC 0971 (45709470971).jpg|Tutankhamun's flail and crook Eye of Ra pendant.jpg|Tutankhamun's
Eye of Horus amulet
Treasury In the doorway of the treasury stood a
shrine on carrying poles topped by a statue of the jackal god Anubis, in front of which lay a fifth magic brick. Against the east wall of the treasury was a tall gilded shrine containing the
canopic chest, in which Tutankhamun's internal organs were placed after mummification. Whereas most canopic chests contain separate
jars, Tutankhamun's consists of a single block of alabaster carved into four compartments, each covered by a human-headed stopper and containing an inlaid gold coffinette that housed one of the king's organs. Between the Anubis shrine and the canopic shrine stood a wooden sculpture of a cow's head, representing the goddess Hathor. The treasury was the location of most of the tomb's wooden models, including more boats and a model granary, as well as many of the shabtis. Boxes in the treasury contained miscellaneous items, including much of the tomb's jewellery. A nested set of small coffins in the treasury contained a lock of hair belonging to
Tiye, the wife of
Amenhotep III and mother of
Akhenaten, who is thought to have been Tutankhamun's grandmother. One box contained two miniature coffins in which mummies of
Tutankhamun's stillborn daughters were interred. File:Tutankhamun jackal.jpg|The
Anubis shrine, from the entrance to the treasury File:Pectoral_of_Tutankhamun_by_M._Strasser.jpg|Scarab pectoral from inside the Anubis shrine File:Solar Barque Beetle Pectoral of Tutankhamun 2019.jpg|Pectoral of a scarab in a solar barque flanked by baboons File:Tutankhamun pendant with Wadjet.jpg|Pectoral in the shape of a winged
scarab carrying the
Eye of Horus File:Golden Nut Pectoral Carter no. 261p1.jpg|Pectoral of the goddess
Nut. It originally belonged to
Neferneferuaten, but her
cartouches were written over and replaced with those of
Tutankhamun. File:Figurine prosternée, Amenhotep III, GEM 189.jpg|A golden figurine of
Amenhotep III, Tutankhamun's grandfather File:By ovedc - Egyptian Museum (Cairo) - 214.jpg|Nested set of small coffins containing a lock of hair belonging to
Tiye, Tutankhamun's grandmother File:Tutankhamun bracelet 2014.jpg|A golden bracelet with the Eye of Horus on it. File:Tapa de un cofre encontrado en la tumba de Tutankhamón.jpg|Box from the treasury shaped like the
cartouche of Tutankhamun's name File:Figurine osirienne en bois de Toutânkhamon.jpg|Wooden sculpture depicting Tutankhamun as a mummy lying on a bier with a
ba-bird on his left side and a
Horus bird on his right File:By ovedc - Egyptian Museum (Cairo) - 268.jpg|Figurines of deities, found in the treasury File:GD-EG-Caire-Musée137.JPG|The canopic shrine from the treasury File:Egyptian Museum Cairo collections (2) 2019.jpg|The
canopic chest from the treasury, with three of the four stoppers present File:Tutankhamun Treasure in Paris couvercle et cercueils canopes 01.jpg|The fourth stopper with one of the canopic coffins placed underneath
Significance The volume of goods in Tutankhamun's tomb is often taken as a sign that longer-lived kings who had full-size tombs were buried with an even larger array of objects. Yet Tutankhamun's burial goods barely fit into his tomb, so the Egyptologist
Joyce Tyldesley argues that larger tombs in the valley may have contained assemblages of similar size that were arranged in a more orderly and spacious manner. . The fragmentary remains of burial goods in other tombs in the Valley of the Kings include many of the same objects found in Tutankhamun's, implying that there was a somewhat standard set of object types for royal burials in this era. The life-size statues of Tutankhamun and the statuettes of deities have parallels in several other tombs in the valley, while the statuettes of Tutankhamun himself are closely paralleled by wall paintings in
KV15, the tomb of
Seti II. Funerary models, such as Tutankhamun's model boats, were mainly a feature of burials in the
Old and
Middle Kingdoms and fell out of favour in non-royal burials in the New, but several royal tombs in the Valley of the Kings contained them. Conversely, Tutankhamun's tomb contained no funerary texts on papyri, unlike private tombs from its era, but the existence of an excerpt of the Book of the Dead on a papyrus from
KV35, the tomb of
Amenhotep II, suggests that their absence in Tutankhamun's tomb may have been unusual. No papyrus texts at all were among the burial goods—a disappointment to Egyptologists, who hoped to find documents that would clarify the history of the Amarna Period. Instead much of the value of the discovery was in the insight it provided into the
material culture of ancient Egypt. Among the furniture was a foldable bed, the only intact example known from ancient Egypt. Some of the boxes could be latched with the turn of a knob, and Carter called them the oldest known examples of such a mechanism. Other everyday items include musical instruments, such as a
pair of trumpets; a variety of weapons, including a
dagger made of iron, a rare commodity in Tutankhamun's time; and about 130 staffs, including one bearing the label "a reed staff which His Majesty cut with his own hand." {{Multiple image|total_width = 400 Tutankhamun's clothes—loose tunics, robes and sashes, often elaborately decorated with dye, embroidery or beadwork—exhibit more variety than the clothes depicted in art from his time, which consist largely of plain white kilts and tight sheaths. No
crowns were found in the tomb, although
crooks and flails, which also served as emblems of kingship, were stored there. Tyldesley suggests that crowns may have not been considered personal property of the king and were instead passed down from reign to reign. Some of the objects in the tomb shed limited light on the end of the Amarna Period. A piece of a box found in the corridor bears the names of Akhenaten, Neferneferuaten and Akhenaten's daughter
Meryetaten, while a calcite jar from the tomb bore two erased royal names that have been reconstructed as those of Akhenaten and Smenkhkare. These are key pieces of evidence in attempts to reconstruct the relationships between members of the royal family and the sequence in which they reigned, although scholars' interpretations have varied greatly. The faces of Tutankhamun's second coffin and his canopic coffinettes differ from the faces of most portrayals of him, so these items may originally have been made for another ruler, such as Smenkhkare or Neferneferuaten, and reused for Tutankhamun's burial. Some objects bear evidence of the shift in religious policy in Tutankhamun's reign. The golden throne portrays Tutankhamun and Ankhesenamun beneath the rays of the Aten, in the Amarna art style. The king and queen are labeled with the later forms of their names, referring to Amun rather than the Aten, but there are signs that these labels were altered after the throne was made, and the open-work arms and back of the throne bear the king's original name, Tutankhaten. A sceptre from the annexe bears an inscription mentioning both the Aten and Amun, implying an attempt to integrate the two religious systems. anointing Tutankhamun beneath the rays of the Aten. Other information about the reign is provided by wine jars, which are labeled by the year in which they were produced. Jars that are explicitly labeled as coming from Tutankhamun's reign range from Year 5 to Year 9, while one jar from an unidentified reign is labeled Year 10 and another Year 31. The Year 31 wine probably comes from the reign of Amenhotep III, so the remaining jars suggest that Tutankhamun reigned for nine or ten years. The flowers and fruits in the funerary garlands would have been available from mid-March to mid-April, indicating that Tutankhamun's funeral took place then. The royal annals of the
Hittite Empire record a letter from an unnamed Egyptian queen, referred to as "
Dakhamunzu", recently widowed by the death of a pharaoh and offering to marry a Hittite prince. The dead king is most commonly thought to be Tutankhamun, and Ankhesenamun the sender of the letter, but the letter indicates the king in question died in August or September, meaning either that Tutankhamun was not the king in the Hittite annals or that he remained unburied far longer than the traditional 70-day period of mummification and mourning. The thefts make Tutankhamun's tomb one of the most important sources for understanding tomb robbery and restoration in the New Kingdom, particularly for the early part of that period, when robberies were more opportunistic than the large-scale plundering that took place in the late Twentieth Dynasty. Many of the boxes in the tomb bear dockets in
hieratic writing that list their original contents, making it possible to partially reconstruct what the tomb originally held and which items were lost. The dockets of the jewellery boxes in the treasury, for instance, indicate that about 60 percent of their contents is missing. Thieves would have prized what was valuable, portable and either untraceable or possible to disguise through dismantling or melting. Most of the metal vessels originally buried with Tutankhamun were stolen, as were those of glass, indicating that glass was a valuable commodity at the time. The robbers also took bedding and cosmetics; the theft of the latter shows that the robberies took place soon after burial, as the Egyptians' fat-based unguents would have turned rancid within a few years. One of the boxes in the antechamber contained a set of gold rings wrapped in a scarf, which Carter believed had been dropped by the thieves and placed in the box by the restorers. The unlikelihood that robbers would forget something so valuable led him to suggest they had been caught in the act. The broken objects found in the fill of the corridor all came from the antechamber, implying that the first group of thieves only had access to that chamber and that it was the second group who reached as far as the treasury. A man named Djehutymose, apparently the official who carried out the restoration of the tomb, wrote his name on a jar stand in the annexe. The same man left a note in
KV43, the tomb of
Thutmose IV, recording the restoration of that tomb in Year 8 of the reign of Horemheb. These two tombs were among several in the Valley of the Kings that were robbed at the end of the Eighteenth Dynasty, suggesting that political uncertainty following Tutankhamun's death caused a weakening of security there.
Disposition ''-shaped mirror case from the treasury. The mirror itself is missing, probably robbed for the metal that formed its dish. After the completion of the clearance in 1932, the tomb was emptied of nearly all its contents. The main exceptions were the sarcophagus, with its original lid replaced by a glass plate, and the outermost of the three coffins, in which Tutankhamun's mummy was placed. Carter also took a handful of small artefacts from the tomb, without permission; upon his death, his heir, Phyllis Walker, discovered them and had them returned to the Egyptian government. A few items are suspected of having illicitly made their way into other collections of Egyptian antiquities, but their provenance is uncertain. For several decades after his tomb was cleared, the overwhelming majority of Tutankhamun's burial goods were stored at either the
Egyptian Museum in Cairo or
Luxor Museum. Only the most major pieces have been on display, while the rest have been in storage at one of the two sites. Selected pieces have also gone on museum exhibition tours, raising money for the Egyptian government and serving to improve its relations with the host countries. There have been several exhibitions, visiting Europe, North America, Japan and Australia, in three major phases, one from 1961 to 1967, another from 1972 to 1981, and a third from 2004 to 2013. Many exhibitions of replicas have also taken place, beginning with a set made for the
British Empire Exhibition in 1924. Beginning in 2011, the objects from the tomb were gradually transferred to the
Grand Egyptian Museum in
Giza. Upon its opening, the museum is planned to display all the tomb's artefacts. ==Mummies==