Lost, and Found

Recently, archeologists working near Luxor, Egypt found an ancient Egyptian royal tomb in an area usually reserved for aristocratic women.

But when they entered the burial chamber and saw a ceiling painted in blue with yellow stars and scenes from the ancient religious text, the Amduat – the kind of decoration normally exclusive to pharaohs’ tombs – they were confused.

Then they were stunned to realize what they found: One of the last missing royal tombs of the ancient Egyptian 18th dynasty – the burial place of King Thutmose II.

It was the first tomb of a royal pharaoh found in a century.

“The emotion … is just one of extraordinary bewilderment,” field director of the mission, Piers Litherland, told the BBC. “And when I came out, my wife was waiting outside and the only thing I could do was burst into tears.”

The discovery came about after a British-Egyptian team of archeologists headed by Litherland had been exploring the western wadis near Egypt’s Valley of the Kings for more than a decade when he discovered a staircase that led to the tomb.

It took months to clear flood debris from the corridor and gain access to the burial chamber, the archeologists having to crawl through a 32-foot-long passageway that had a small, 16-inch gap at the top while clearing away parts of the collapsed ceilings.

The team expected to find the crushed remains of a burial chamber but the tomb was empty. Litherland believes the tomb was deliberately evacuated of its contents because it was built beneath a waterfall, which flooded a few years after the burial, whereupon the contents are thought to have been moved to another tomb.

After sifting through the limestone at the burial site, they found fragments of alabaster jars inscribed with the names of Thutmose II and his more famous wife, Queen Hatshepsut – one of Egypt’s greatest pharaohs, and one of the few women to rule outright.

Thutmose II is believed to have reigned from 1493 to 1479 BC and was an ancestor of the famous pharaoh Tutankhamun, whose tomb was found in 1922. These are the first artifacts found to be associated with Thutmose II’s burial.

Now, Litherland believes he has a rough idea of where the second tomb is, which could still be intact with the treasures from this tomb.

Archeologists believe this second tomb has been hiding in plain sight for 3,500 years, secretly buried beneath 100 feet (23 meters) of limestone flakes, rubble, ash, and mud plaster and made to look like part of the mountain.

“There are 23 meters of a pile of man-made layers sitting above a point in the landscape where we believe … there is a monument concealed beneath,” he told the Guardian. “The best candidate for what is hidden underneath this enormously expensive, in terms of effort, pile is the second tomb of Thutmose II.”

“You dream about such things,” he added, referring to the discovery of the Thutmose II tombs. “But like winning the lottery, you never believe it will happen to you.”