Members of an 18th Dynasty pharaoh's court are likely buried in the first new tomb uncovered in Egypt's Valley of the Kings in more than 80 years, one of the archaeologists involved in the find said yesterday.
So far, archaeologists have not entered the tomb, having only opened part of its 1.5m-high entrance door last week. But they have peered inside and have seen that that the single-chamber tomb contains five wooden sarcophagi, believed to contain mummies, surrounded by some 20 pharaonic jars.
US archaeologists discovered the entrance to the tomb by accident while working on a neighboring tomb, Edwin Brock, co-director of the University of Memphis team, told reporters.
PHOTO: AP
"It was a wonderful thing. It was just so amazing to find an intact tomb here after all the work that's been done before. This was totally unexpected," Brock said.
The new tomb did not appear to be that of a pharaoh, he said.
"I don't think it's a royal tomb, maybe members of the court," he said.
"Contemporaries of Tutankhamen are possible -- or of Amunhotep III or even Horemheb," he said. Based on their style, the jars appear to date to the late 18th Dynasty.
Yesterday, Egyptian antiquities authorities allowed journalists a first look into the tomb through the opening in the door, located at the bottom of a 10m shaft. It is located near the tomb of Tutankhamen -- the last new burial site to be discovered in the valley, in 1922 by British archaeologist Howard Carter.
The discovery has broken the long-held belief that there's nothing left to dig up in the Valley of the Kings, the desert valley near the southern city of Luxor used as a burial ground for pharaohs, queens and nobles in the 1500BC-1000BC New Kingdom.
The 18th Dynasty lasted from around 1500BC-1300BC and included the famed King Tut.
Photos released by the Supreme Council of Antiquities showed the interior of the tomb -- the bare stone walls undecorated -- with at least five sarcophagi of blackened wood amid white jars, some apparently broken.
The coffins appear to have some damage from termites, Brock said.
"Its going to take a lot of conservation work to consolidate these things before we can take them out," he said of the sarcophagi.
The team, led by Otto Schaden, will continue its excavations of the site for the remaining five months of the dig season, he said, though he did not say when they would completely open the door so archaeologists can go inside. "We're going to be very meticulous in our excavations," he said.
The archeologists were working last year on the neighboring tomb of Amenmeses, a late 19th Dynasty pharaoh, when they found the remains of ancient workmen's huts.
They then discovered a depression in the bedrock that they suspected was a shaft.
When they returned to work during this excavation season, they opened the shaft and found the door, which was opened last week, Brock said.
Since the discovery of Tut's tomb, experts believed that the Valley of the Kings contained only the 62 previously-known tombs -- labelled KV1-62 by archeologists.
"I wouldn't be surprised if we discover more tombs in the next 10 years," US archaeologist Kent Weeks told reporters.
Weeks made the last major discovery in the valley. In 1995, he opened a previously known tomb -- KV5 -- and found it was far larger than expected: more than 120 chambers, which he determined were meant for sons of the pharaoh Ramses II.
"It's ironic. A century ago, people said the Valley of the Kings is exhausted, there's nothing left," he said. "Suddenly Carter found Tutankhamen. So then they said, Now there's nothing to find. Then we found KV5. Now we have KV63."
‘ABSURD MISTAKE’: The election commission said that there had been a failure to anticipate turnout after 14 polling stations ran short of ballot papers South Korean riot police yesterday cleared protesters from a Seoul polling station after a 35-hour blockade sparked by a shortage of ballot papers during local elections earlier this week. Wednesday’s election was the first nationwide vote since South Korean President Lee Jae-myung took office following the ouster of Yoon Suk-yeol over his short-lived martial law declaration. Lee’s ruling Democratic Party swept most races, but failed to flip the crucial Seoul mayoral seat. The South Korean National Election Commission apologized, blaming a failure to anticipate turnout after 14 polling stations in Seoul ran short of ballot papers. Some polling stations stayed open until 10pm to
France experienced its hottest spring on record, the French weather service said on Tuesday, after an exceptional early heat wave that also broke highs for the season in England and Wales. Meteo-France said the average nationwide temperature over March to May was 13.8°C — about 1.7°C above the norm, and surpassing records set in 2011 and 2020. “The warmest spring since records began in 1900,” it said in a bulletin. All three months were warmer than average, but the onset of an “unprecedented heatwave” late last month pushed the mercury to highs typically seen at the height of the summer. “Our country had never
A Sherpa guide was found crawling to base camp on Mount Everest a week after he went missing and was reunited with his family, who had given up hope he would return. Dawa Sherpa was last seen on Friday last week descending the mountain, but he did not reach base camp even though his client did. The pair were among the last climbers on the mountain as the climbing season came to an end and the route was dismantled. Dawa was located by a cleaning crew on Thursday morning as he was crawling down the snowy slopes around the Khumbu Icefall, just above
Chinese authorities are snuffing out any remembrance of the deadly 1989 military crackdown on student-led pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square, which happened 37 years ago yesterday, in a further tightening of a years-long campaign to erase what happened from public memory. Police told relatives of the victims they would not be allowed to visit a cemetery in Beijing on the anniversary of the crackdown, a person with knowledge of the matter said. Relatives of the victims visited the cemetery on the anniversary for more than 30 years to read memorial statements with police keeping watch, Amnesty International said. Hundreds of people,
RSS