The unfinished royal tomb of Akhenaten

Situated 100 metres east of Ay's tomb, WV25 is an unfinished and undecorated tomb in the West Valley of the Kings. It is thought to be the start of Akhenaten's Theban tomb. Discovered by Giovanni Belzoni in 1817, the entrance was found buried at a shallow depth and blocked with large rocks. Belzoni used a battering-ram made from a large pole and a palm tree trunk to breach the blocking, which revealed a well-built wall of stones of various sizes.

Upon entry, Belzoni found a staircase eight feet wide and ten feet high. At the bottom were eight mummies from the Third Intermediate Period. One mummy was wrapped in finer-quality linen and garlands of leaves and flowers, but investigation revealed only yellow-coloured bones inside. Two large metal plates, one with wedjat-eyes and one in the shape of a winged disc, were found within the wrappings. The entrance descent consists of seven stairs built of mud and rock on top of hard gravel, while the lower eighteen stairs were cut from solid rock.

In 1972, the University of Minnesota's Egyptian Expedition led by Otto Schaden excavated the interior. They found parts of the mummies and artefacts from a late Eighteenth Dynasty royal burial, including parts of faience uraei and a wooden flail. Although a foundation deposit was not found during the 1972 excavations, a single foundation pit was discovered on the eastern side of the entrance in 2001 by Richard H. Wilkinson. The pit was relatively intact but empty, leading some to suggest Belzoni may have emptied it.

Schaden suggested the tomb might have been abandoned due to a precarious overhang of boulders above the entrance or the poor quality of the upper rock layer. Other theories suggest it was abandoned because of Akhenaten's move of the capital to Amarna. The tomb continues to be a point of study for its royal scale and its possible connection to the tomb of Ay, with the lowest stair being noted as similar to Ay's burial site.

Sources: Wikipedia, OpenStreetMap, Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons