Tomb WV25 is an unfinished and undecorated tomb in the West Valley of the Valley of the Kings, Egypt. It is the beginning of a royal tomb, and is thought to be the start of Akhenaten's Theban tomb. It was discovered by Giovanni Belzoni in 1817; he found eight Third Intermediate Period mummies inside. The tomb was excavated in 1972 by the University of Minnesota's Egyptian Expedition (UMEE) led by Otto Schaden. The project uncovered pieces of the eight mummies, along with artefacts from a late Eighteenth Dynasty royal burial.
Discovery
The tomb was discovered in 1817 by the Italian explorer Giovanni Belzoni during his excavations in the Valley of the Kings. His investigation commenced close to the tomb of Ay (WV23), which he had discovered the previous year. The entrance was buried at a shallow depth and found to be blocked with large rocks. Returning the following day, further digging revealed a "well-built wall of stones of various sizes." the lower eighteen stairs were cut from solid rock. The lowest stair and its meeting of the door posts was noted as being similar to the tomb of Ay. Schaden suggests that the tomb was abandoned due to a precarious overhang of boulders above entrance, or due to the poor quality of the upper rock layer.
Excavation in the interior of the tomb found the stairway contained rock and fill; portions of the upper stairs, mummy wrappings and fragments were also encountered. The most significant find in this section was an ostracon depicting a seated man sketched in red ink and dating to the late Eighteenth Dynasty. No trace remained of the blocking at the bottom of the stairs encountered by Belzoni. The chamber at the base of the stairs contained the remains of the mummies encountered by Belzoni; they likely date to the Twenty-first to Twenty-second Dynasties based on the presence of cartonnage and a faience ushabti. Parts of the "yellow skeleton" were also found. Other artefacts from the tomb indicated a royal burial – parts of faience uraei, portions of a wooden flail, and the ears and feet of two wooden life-size guardian statues like the pair found in the tomb of Tutankhamun (KV62). On the basis of these finds, Schaden suggested that the tomb, if used at all in the late Eighteenth Dynasty, may have initially contained a royal burial, or that a royal burial, possibly Ay's (represented by the "yellow skeleton"), was relocated to the tomb.
Intended ownership
The tomb is generally thought to be one of two candidates for Akhenaten's Theban tomb, the other being WV23.