Thutmose I’s original burial location remains a subject of debate. His name occurs on sarcophagi from two tombs in the Valley of the Kings (KV 20 and KV 38), but there is no agreement on which of the locations is earlier or whether either was originally excavated for Thutmose. The body of the king may be among those from the royal cache, but this too is uncertain. Two coffins ofThutmose I, usurped for Pinudjem I (one of the chief-priests of Anum at Thebes in the 21st Dynasty), contained an unidentified mummy, which may possibly be the body of the king himself. One of his high officials, Ineni, describes his overseeing of the work on Thutmose’s tomb: ‘I oversaw the excavation of the cliff tomb of his Majesty, in privacy; none saw, none heard.’ His vague description of the tomb as a heret, usually taken to mean ‘cliff’ tomb, may indicate a location in the Valley of the Kings, but the question remains unsettled.
There is no known funerary temple for Thutmose I; bricks bearing his name—and some bearing both his and Hatshepsut’s—are attested from several locations near Deir el-Bahri’s ‘valley temple’. A chapel honouring Thutmose I was included by Hatshepsut in her temple, but this does not necessarily mean that he had no funerary cult before her reign. Rather, she venerated her ancestral line within her ftmerary temple, because such temples were both ‘family’ shrines and temples honouring the union between the god Amun and the king. This ‘ancestor worship’ was already evident in the monuments of Ahmose and Amenhotep I at Abydos, while non-royal tomb chapels of contemporary and mid-i8th-Dynasty date frequently included niches or scenes venerating living and deceased family members.
World History
