Nefertari tomb QV66
Nefertari tomb QV66 one of the greatest artistic achievements in the history.discovered in 1904 by Schiaparelli, and you still admire the beauty of the tomb.
The queen Nefertari (1295-1255) was the wife of the King Ramses II, her name Nefertari Merytmut, means (Beautiful companion, beloved of Mut).
she married The great king Ramses II before became a pharaoh and she was the most important one of all wives of Ramses II.
She died sometime during the 25th regnal rear of the reign of Ramesses and the reason for her death remains uncertain.
Her Tomb in QV 66 in the Queens valley one of the most beautiful tombs ever made by the ancient Egyptian, her husband Ramses II built for her a very beautiful temple in Abu Simbel south of Aswan about 300 KM.
Titles of Nefertari :
Sweet of love, the lady of grace, the great bride of the king-his beloved, the lady of the Two Lands, wife of Fort Toro, Also Ramesses called her She who the Sun shines.
Tomb of Nefertari QV 66 :
One of the greatest artistic achievements of the ancient Egyptian history.it was discovered in 1904 by the Italian Egyptologist Ernesto Schiaparelli.
Schiaparelli found only some fragments (knees) of a female mummy, perhaps that of Nefertari, in addition to various materials from the mummification process.
Inside the tomb were found remains of the pink granite sarcophagus and a few pieces of the ushabti funeral equipment, a fragment of a gold bracelet, amulets, wooden paintings.
The decoration of Tomb QV 66 :
You can still admire the beauty of the ancient tomb. It is, in fact, different from the tombs of other queens (usually simpler and equipped only with a burial chamber) and is rather inspired by the Pharaonic burials of the nearby Valley of the Kings.
The paintings reach apexes of quality in the Egyptian funeral art above all for the richness of colors (green, Egyptian blue, red, yellow ocher, white and black) and details while the themes and contents respect the indications contained in the Book of the dead.
The images describe Nefertari’s journey to the afterlife.
Particularly the scene in which the queen plays chess, or senet and the seven celestial cows mentioned in the Book of the Dead.
When the queen’s spirit enters the underworld, she again meets many gods, including Osiris, Anubis, Selkis, and Hator.
In the end, Nefertari appears in the presence of Hathor Anubis and Isis and turns into Osiris (god of the dead), with the consequent, hoped for the achievement of immortality and eternal peace.
Restoration of tomb QV66 :
The tomb was closed in the 50s of the twentieth century because of the serious damage caused by the infiltration of water and the crystals of salt of the porous limestone insinuated between the blocks of stone and the layer of plaster, which detached the paintings.
Only in 1986, with the intervention of the Getty Conservation Institute and the Egyptian Antiquities Organization, a first emergency intervention was made, by Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Daniele da Volterra, and Jacopo Zucchi.
The restoration lasted from 1988 to 1992, and the tomb was reopened to the public in 1995 with severe restrictions, In 2003 it was decided to keep it permanently closed to the public, due to the fragility of the decorative apparatus.
It is currently reopened to the visitors’ public.
The remains of Nefertari in Turin :
In 2016, a team of international archaeologists announced that they had identified, with a high degree of probability, some mummified remains of the queen’s legs at the Egyptian Museum in Turin.
