A private tomb repurposed for the royal Amarna cache

KV55 is a relatively small, undecorated, single-chamber tomb in the Valley of the Kings, measuring 27.61 meters in total length. It appears to be unfinished; in the south wall of the burial chamber is a small niche marking the commencement of an unfinished antechamber, while red masonry marks within the chamber indicate plans for another room. Such plans suggest that KV55 was initially intended as a private burial site and only later taken over for a royal interment. When finished, these rooms would have made the layout roughly similar to the tomb of Tutankhamun.

The tomb is presumed to be a royal cache and reburial dating from the late eighteenth dynasty, prepared after the abandonment of Amarna and the dismantling of the royal necropolis there. Due to the mixed nature of its contents, it is often referred to as the "Amarna cache." Based on recovered artifacts, it is suggested that the burial once contained more than a single occupant, though Queen Tiye is most often named in this context. The tomb was also re-opened during the twentieth dynasty, at which time additional occupants may have been removed and the remaining mummy and artifacts desecrated.

The identification of the single mummy remains a subject of dispute. While it was long speculated that the body belonged to King Akhenaten, genetic and scientific tests published in February 2010 suggested the person was the son of Amenhotep III and the father of Tutankhamun. These tests established that the age of the mummy was consistent with that of Akhenaten, though a growing body of work has since begun to dispute these assessments and the identification of the tomb as Akhenaten's.

Sources: Wikipedia, OpenStreetMap, Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons