Ramsses Canopic Jars

Ken Weeks stated in London 17th May that four skeletons had been found, they are to be DNA tested. One possibly AMON-HER-Khopeshef the eldest son of Ramsses II (evidence of his identity on the walls, and on Canopic Jars )

At a Bloomsbury summer school on Egyptology Prof Weeks revealed that by April he had discovered 118 rooms. KV5 unlike other tombs ("straight" with burial chamber at the end) is a labyrinth of corridors off a 16-pillared hall, and exists on five different levels.Because fragments from the past are mixed in the rubble from flash floods, and because all chambers have been choked, progress has been painstaking, and each new section of the complex and enormous tomb has been a surprise. Only five rooms have been cleared. Researchers - often crawling over huge piles of rock and sand - havew found a corridor which appears to be heading under the roadway directly towards the tomb of Ramsses II, and off that corridor, another heads towards the tomb of Tutankhamin.

"Since there are corridors here and not just rooms, ans since there is evidence of other corridors, the likelihood of there being still more chambers in this tomb is great. We have 118 at the moment, and can guarantee you that wheb we return to work in September we will reach at least 150.

"We found nicely decorated walls and canopic jars, again with scenes showing Ramsees and one or other of his chidren, being presented in the afterlife. We hvae found close to two dozen representations of Pharaoh and his sons. It is possible that each one of tyhese representations on the wall is a different son, but because ofth3 vagaries of preservation of these we still have only four sons names .

As they cleared a chamber near the enterance they cleared a pit four metres long and one wide. TYhe pit ., like the entire tomb , was choked with rubble washed there by flash floos over three millenium. In it hey found fragments of canopic jars, some of which bore names. They also found human remains, the bones of four young adult malesin their late 20's. One had been struck on the head with a sword or an axe.

The way they were found suggested their mimmified bodies had been dragged more thean 3000 years ago by tomb robbers to the enterance - where the light was better - to be stripped of gold, jewellery and amilets. Becaue conditions were dry, there was a good chance of reccovering some DNA. If genetic evidence shos tlinks between all four of them and stronger links between any two of them, then it would be reasonable to guess they were sons of Ramsses. tTwo were powerfully built, two much more slender.

"If these were, for example, the sons of Ramsses II, two of them came from one mother, the other two came from another", said Prof Weeks

From the Guardian Newspaper.

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