Team Behind the Discovery of Egyptian Royal Tomb May Have Found Another

Remember last week when we reported that the first Egyptian Royal Tomb in a century had been discovered? Well, the team who found the tomb of Thutmose II may just have done it again.

Last week Piers Litherland, leader of a team of archaeologists exploring the mountains near the famous Valley of the Kings close to modern Luxor, announced the discovery of the first tomb since that of Tutankhamun himself in 1922. Now, they think they are on the verge of finding a second royal tomb nearby.

According to a report in the Guardian, Litherland has focused on a suspiciously large pile of rocks and debris near to the first discovery. Some 23 meters of rubble, ash and mud plaster has been piled on top of something, a monumental effort by all accounts.

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“There are 23 metres of a pile of man-made layers sitting above a point in the landscape where we believe – and we have other confirmatory evidence – there is a monument concealed beneath,” he said. “The best candidate for what is hidden underneath this enormously expensive, in terms of effort, pile is the second tomb of Thutmose II.”

Yes, you heard it right, this tomb could also be that of Thutmose II. We know that the first tomb, built near a waterfall and flooded within a decade of its completion, was emptied of the pharaoh’s mummy and most of the grave goods. The pharaoh was taken elsewhere.

But why here? Well, during the initial excavation Litherland’s team found a sacrificial pit containing a dead cow alongside an inscription. The inscription suggests that the king’s wife and half-sister Hatshepsut (one of the greatest pharaohs of ancient Egypt herself, by the way) may have moved the contents of the first tomb to a second tomb nearby.

According to the Guardian, Litherland even hopes to find the boy king himself in the second tomb, surrounded by his grave goods. We at ATH will admit we are a little thrown by this, as we already know where the mummy of Thutmose II is, having discovered it in a cache of dead pharaohs in 1881. Maybe we’ve been wrong, all this time.

Still, there is definitely something intriguing about this enormous pile of rubble. The main problem now lies in how to get into whatever is hiding underneath it.

At the surface of the mound, flakes of limestone the size of dining room tables rub shoulders with car-sized boulders from when the ancient stoneworkers collapsed a cliff on top of the site. The result is a highly dangerous, potentially unstable deathtrap. And Litherland wants to tunnel underneath.

Or at least, he did. The new plan is to remove the pile in its entirety, which should allow the team to get at what in underneath safely. Work has already begun, and is expected to take roughly another month to complete.

Watch this space.

Header Image: The Valley of the Kings, near where the suspicious pile of rubble is located. Could there be an Egyptian royal tomb underneath? Source: © Vyacheslav Argenberg / http://www.vascoplanet.com/ / CC BY 4.0.