ARCE- NT: Rediscovering Pharaoh’s Crew: Recent archaeological survey and documentation within the tomb of Thutmose IV (KV43)

Lecture Information

This presentation provides an overview of the author’s survey fieldwork in the Valley of the Kings from 2022 to 2023, including documentation of the local landscape as well as renewed research in the tomb of Thutmose IV.

In 1903, Howard Carter discovered the tomb of Thutmose IV (KV43) while working on behalf of Theodore Davis in the Valley of the Kings. As Carter and his team explored and cleared the monument, what they found was an unfinished tomb for the king that was heavily looted in antiquity. Though all the chambers were fully carved out and their walls leveled off, only two rooms in the tomb are partially decorated with painted scenes. Yet, in this unfinished state, the tomb and the burial of Thutmose IV provides Egyptologists with the opportunity to better understand the funerary preparations for a king during the 18th Dynasty and the creation of his eternal resting place.

Throughout the tomb, evidence remains of the Deir el-Medina crew’s work to create the monument. The author will present recent survey data from the tomb and how the remaining evidence informs us on the ways in which this tomb was quarried, stocked, used, and eventually restored in the late 18th Dynasty for the burial of Thutmose IV. Some of the findings presented include: a proposal for the sequence of events to carve the burial chamber, the crew’s methods for bringing in the king’s sarcophagus, a discussion of the unique techniques employed to carve KV43, a proposal for the stocking and storage of funerary items within the tomb ahead of the king’s burial, and a discussion of the newly documented graffito from side chamber Jd.

Speaker Bio

Dr. Nicholas (Nick) Brown is an American Egyptologist who has worked as an archaeologist in Egypt since 2011. He received his MA degree in Egyptology from the American University in Cairo in 2016 and his PhD in Egyptology at the UCLA in 2024. Currently he lives between New Haven, CT and Cairo, Egypt. His excavation experience includes working with archaeological sites in Aswan (at Elephantine Island and Wadi el-Hudi) and Deir el-Ballas, as well as funerary sites in Luxor, Amarna and the Sudan. In 2016, Nicholas spent the summer working at the MFA, Boston as the Terrace Curatorial Research Associate in Egyptology. He returned to the MFA over the summer of 2019 to conduct archival research for the Egyptian Art Department’s exhibit “Ancient Nubia Now.” Nicholas’s research interests include royal funerary material culture from the New Kingdom, as well as the use and perception of ancient Egypt within modern contexts.

About ARCE-NT:

North Texas ARCE is a chapter of the American Research Center in Egypt. The chapter a product of the strong interest engendered by the 1988-89 Ramses the Great exhibit at Fair Park; NT-ARCE was formally founded and received its ARCE accreditation as a chapter in 1993.

For more information, follow the chapter on Facebook, or visit https://nt-arce.org