stickmaker | Valley of the Kings Still Producing Major Finds

For well over a century experts have been saying the Valley of the Kings in Egypt has been fully explored with no more significant finds left. And about once every two decades they're proven wrong.

The previous great refutation was the discovery that KV5 - a tomb long thought to be small and completely explored, even by Howard Carter - was actually the largest (yet found) tomb in the Valley. Due to it being choked with debris previous excavations had been only partial, since the digging was difficult and everyone knew it wasn't worth the effort. Until someone actually made the effort, thanks to the Theban Mapping Project.

Now, after decades of explaining that the tomb of Tutankhamen had been missed by looters due to the entrance being covered with debris from later tombs, another tomb has been discovered near there, missed for thousands of years due to being covered with debris from later tombs.

There will be a three second silence to savor the irony.

The tomb is atypical, having an entrance in the floor of the Valley instead of the side, and going straight down before the horizontal part is reached. It contains several sarcophagi and at least five mummies. These have not yet been identified. There is hope the mummies will be "missing" pharaohs. That is, there are some known to have been buried there but not found in either regular tombs or previously discovered caches of relocated mummies.

The Valley (there are actually two, adjacent valleys used for ancient burials) is a large place with complicated geology and geography. About the only way to make sure nothing has been missed is to remove all the loose debris. Something which would take decades, due to both the scale of the work and the necessity of making sure no important relics are carted away with the loose rock.

This, the 63rd tomb to be discovered in the primary Valley since the Eighteenth Century, was discovered by accident. The excavation which uncovered it was working on a 19th Dynasty tomb, that of King Amenmesses. While looking for foundation deposits - ceremonial items placed in a pit to commemorate the start of construction - they were clearing away the remains of workmen's huts (also from the 19th Dynasty) and under some of them discovered a vertical shaft. Four meters down this extended horizontally into a small chamber containing typical burial equipment, including sarcophagi and funerary urns.