KV42

The tomb was uncovered by two local Copts, Chinouda Macarios and Boutros Andraos, in late 1900. Howard Carter doubted that the secret was their own, as the site had been discovered by and known to Monsieur Loret some eighteen months previously. Excavation began on 27 November 1900, and the blocking in the doorway was officially taken down on 9 December. It was immediately apparent that the tomb had suffered ancient robbing and had been inundated with water. The funerary furniture, vases and canopic jars lay mashed on the ground of the passages and chambers.

The cartouche-shaped burial chamber contained an unfinished stone sarcophagus. The tomb held a set of well-preserved canopic jars belonging to Sentnay, the wife of Sennefer, and fragmentary jars and an alabaster offering table inscribed for a woman named Baketra, who bore the title royal ornament. Four canopic jar lids in the form of bearded heads were found, which Carter suggested belonged to Sennefer. Analysis of embalming balm from two of the jars identified a complex blend of plant oils, beeswax, fat, bitumen, and resins, many of them imported into Egypt. Only the burial chamber was decorated; part of the ceiling is covered with yellow stars on a blue background.

Carter suggested that the tomb was robbed for its metal during the Twenty-second Dynasty. A graffito at the entrance records that work was begun on the tomb by the necropolis team, which may record the uncovering and emptying of the tomb on the orders of Piankh, the High Priest of Amun.

There is no agreement on the original owner of the tomb. The unfinished quartzite sarcophagus is seen as an indication that it may at some point have been intended for Thutmose II, but no trace of royal funerary equipment was found, making it doubtful that the tomb was ever used for a royal burial. Foundation deposits discovered by Carter in 1921 point to Queen Merytre-Hatshepsut as the intended owner.

Carter ascribed the tomb to Sennefer on the evidence of the canopic jars and model vessels inscribed for him and Sentnay. Catherine Roehrig proposed that Sentnay, royal nurse of Amenhotep II, was re-interred in KV42 as part of a cache, possibly as late as the 21st Dynasty, while Nicholas Reeves sees the surviving blocking and storage jars as proof of a primary burial. Marianne Eaton-Krauss considers it highly unlikely that Sennefer and Sentnay were granted the tomb by Amenhotep II.