Now it happened that there was a fissure in the rocks in which the sepulchre was cut, and during the rains of each season a certain amount of moisture managed to penetrate into the chamber. This gradually rotted the legs of the bier upon which Akhnaton’s body lay, and at last there came a time when the two legs at the head of the coffin gave way and precipitated the royal body on to the ground. The bandages around the mummy had already fallen almost to powder, and this jerk sent the golden vulture which was resting upon the king’s face on to his forehead, where it lay with the tail and claws resting over the left eye-socket of the skull. Presently the two remaining legs of the bier collapsed, and the whole coffin fell to the ground, the lid being partly jerked off, thus revealing the king’s head at one end and his feet at the other, from all of which the flesh had rotted away.
In January 1907 the excavations in the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings which were being conducted by Mr Theodore Davis, of Newport, Rhode Island, U.S.A., on behalf of the Egyptian Government, brought to light the doorway of the tomb, and it was not long before an entrance was effected. A rough stairway led down into the hillside, bringing the excavators[85] to the mouth of the passage, which was entirely blocked by the wall which the priests had built after they had entered the tomb to erase Akhnaton’s name. Beyond this wall the passage was found to be nearly choked with the _débris_ of the three earlier walls, the first of which had been built after Queen Tiy had been buried here, the second after Akhnaton’s agents had entered the tomb to erase the name of Amon, and the third after Akhnaton’s body had been laid beside that of his mother. On top of this heap of stones lay the side of the funeral shrine of the queen which the priests had abandoned after attempting to carry it out with her mummy. In the burial-chamber beyond, the remaining portions of this shrine were found. Upon these one saw the figures of Akhnaton and his mother worshipping beneath the rays of the Aton. The inscriptions showed the erasure of the name of Amonhotep III., and the substitution in red ink of that king’s second name, Nebmaara; and one observed that at a later date the name and figures of Akhnaton had been hammered out.