Mummy of Amenhotep II
The French excavator Victor Loret found the mummy of Amenhotep II in 1898, still resting in his own sarcophagus in his tomb (KV35) in the Valley of the Kings. At that time, before the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun, he was the only king whose mummy had survived the vicissitudes of continued robbery and defilement and remained in his own sarcophagus in his own tomb.
Amenhotep II had long brown hair, including some white ones and a patch of baldness over the upper occipital and parietal regions. The well‐worn teeth indicated that Amenhotep II was much older than Thutmose IV, somewhere between 40 and 50 years of age.
Historical sources described Amenhotep II as a strong, powerful and sportive man, with a sinister tendency to brutality in warfare, which would generally concur with the physical appearance of his mummified body.
His mummy was discovered still inside its original sarcophagus in March 1898 when it was excavated by the French archaeologist Victor Loret. The tomb also contained a cache of the mummies of eight other kings and queens, moved there during the Third Intermediate Period to protect them from the ravages of grave robbers.
View of the mummy of King Amenhotep II (r. ca. 1427-1401 BC) in the king’s original sarcophagus. Tomb of Amenhptep II (KV35), Valley of the Kings, West Thebes. Now in the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization, Cairo. CG 61069
