The Burial Chamber of Tutankhamun

Because Tutankhamun died unexpectedly, his tomb was incomplete. The vizier Ay offered his smaller tomb so that a burial site could be quickly prepared to receive the mummy of Tutankhamun and its rich burial furnishings.

Therefore, the burial chamber was painted with few funerary and religious texts and scenes. To make the site suitable for the burial of a king, four huge wooden shrines, or rooms, were made. The shrines were placed one inside the other.

The four shrines were substitutes for the long galleries and chambers cut in the other huge royal tombs at the Valley of the Kings. The walls of the shrines were decorated both inside and out with texts and vignettes, or scenes, from the Book of What is in the Underworld, "The Amduat," and from the Book of the Sacred Cow, "The Legend of the Destruction of Mankind." These texts protect the king in his journey in the underworld.

The smallest shrine of the burial chamber contained a rectangular quartzite sarcophagus with a granite lid. Inside this sarcophagus, three mummy-shaped coffins were inserted one inside the other. The smallest one, made of solid gold, contained the mummy, the gold mask, and the mummy trappings of the king.