Found in the Annex amidst a group of domestic
furniture, this elaborately inlaid wooden chair was
considered by
Carter to have been most likely a
"chair of state" or an "ecclesiastical throne". In
form, the chair is a composite, uniting the curved
seats of ordinary stools, the legs of folding
stools, and the back, with its three vertical
supports, of chairs commonly found in the New
Kingdom and before. The crossed legs ending in the
heads of fowl are parallel to the legs of an
imitation folding stool found in the Antechamber.
The borders of the seat, made of ebony, inlaid with
ivory, imitate the hide of an animal, while the seat
itself is composed of inlays of stained ivory
arranged in panels imitating insets of a variety of
skins. The underside of the seat is covered in real
leather. The floral motif between the legs, damaged
in one of the ancient intrusions into the tomb, is a
frequently used heraldic element in chairs and
stools.
The rectangular panels of the seat reflect
the architectonic design on the back of the chair.
Inlaid with ivory and ebony, they contain
hieroglyphic inscriptions with designations of the
king. The decoration on the upper portion and the
borders includes sheet gold and inlays of colored
glass, faience and semiprecious stones. The chair
itself, a hybrid of designs, contains references to
the traditional religion of ancient Egypt: the
goddess
Nekhbet and the sacred eye of
Horus are
represented in gold on the reverse side of the back.
Nekhbet can be seen also on the upper part of the
seat, and above her is a frieze of serpents with the
solar disk upon their heads. The majority of the
inscriptions (all of the vertical ones) have the
early name of the king, Tutankhaton; his later name,
Tutankhamun, occurs as well (in the horizontal
inscriptions). It appears that the chair must have
been produced at the time when the traditional
religion and that of the Aton coexisted. There are
references to several gods of the Egyptian pantheon
as well as to the Aton; the word "gods", which had
been eliminated in strict Atonist religion, appears
once again.