King Tutankhamon is famous for many things, but what most know about the discovery of his unlooted tomb is that it was the last time archaeologists found the tomb of a pharaoh.

Now, 103 years since Howard Carter cracked open King Tut’s final resting place, the tomb of Thutmose II has been identified near the Valley of the Kings and becomes the first opportunity in two generations to study a pharaoh’s burial chamber.

The rock-cut tomb of Thutmose III – credit Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities
This however proves to be a much more modest discovery, as the tomb was completely empty and has likely been so for 3,500 years, after retainers noticed their deceased lord was going to be swimming to the afterlife.

“In fact, the tomb turned out to be completely empty, not because it had been robbed, but because it had been deliberately emptied,” said archaeologist Piers Litherland, who had been excavating the area for a decade, but who assumed when he first found the tomb shaft that it belonged to a royal wife.

“We then worked out that the tomb had been flooded. It had been built underneath a waterfall, and it had filled with water at some stage within about six years of the burial.”

Thutmose II, who reigned from 1493 to 1479 BCE, was identified as the occupant via his name carved on shards of alabaster, while a decoration on the tomb’s ceiling indicated royalty.

Litherland reckoned the pieces had been broken during the move, “and thank goodness they did actually break one or two things, because that’s how we found out whose tomb it was.”

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To editorialize, that was Litherland’s academic side speaking, for it was when he saw the ceiling covered in a dark sky motif studded with golden stars and featuring visual depictions of the Amduat, a religious text reserved for kings, that he knew he had found what he had so long sought.

Thutmose II was the husband of Hatshepsut, a female pharaoh of renown who ruled without any stipulation regarding her gender. He was also her half-brother, and father of Thutmose III, a brilliant military commander who created the ancient world’s first professional navy and who raised the New Kingdom to its absolute zenith of territorial power.

Mohsen Kamel, assistant field director on the exacavation stated that “the possible existence of a second, and most likely intact, tomb of Thutmose II is an astonishing possibility.”

https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org.archologists-discover-first-pharaohs-tomb-in-egypt-in-more-than-a-century/

by:  Andy Corbley

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