A British archaeologist believes his staff might have discovered a second tomb in Egypt belonging to King Thutmose II.
The potential discover comes simply days after Dr Piers Litherland introduced the invention of the primary tomb of a pharaoh since Tutankhamun’s was revealed over a century in the past.
Dr Litherland informed the Observer he suspects this second web site will maintain the pharaoh’s mummified physique.
Archaeologists imagine the primary tomb was emptied six years after burial, attributable to a flood, and relocated to a second.
Dr Litherland thinks the second tomb lies beneath a 23-metre (75 ft) man-made pile of limestone, ash, rubble and dirt plaster, that was designed by historic Egyptians to appear like a part of a mountain within the Western Valleys of the Theban Necropolis close to the town of Luxor.
The primary was positioned behind a waterfall, and it’s thought to have flooded consequently.
When Egyptologists had been looking for the preliminary tomb, they discovered a posthumous inscription that indicated the content material might have been moved to a second location close by, by Thutmose II’s spouse and half-sister Hatsheput.
The British-Egyptian staff are actually working to uncover the tomb by hand, after makes an attempt to tunnel into it had been deemed as being “too harmful”.
“We must always be capable to take the entire thing down in about one other month,” Dr Litherland stated.
The crew discovered the primary tomb in an space related to the resting locations of royal ladies, however after they obtained into the burial chamber they discovered it adorned – the signal of a pharaoh.
“A part of the ceiling was nonetheless intact: a blue-painted ceiling with yellow stars on it. And blue-painted ceilings with yellow stars are solely present in kings’ tombs,” stated Dr Litherland.
He informed the REPORTAHOLICS’s Newshour programme earlier this week that he felt overwhelmed by the discover.
“The emotion of stepping into this stuff is only one of extraordinary bewilderment as a result of whenever you come throughout one thing you are not anticipating to seek out, it is emotionally extraordinarily turbulent actually,” he stated.
Thutmose II is finest identified for being the husband of Queen Hatshepsut, considered one among Egypt’s best pharaohs and one of many few feminine pharaohs who dominated in her personal proper.
Thutmose II was an ancestor of Tutankhamun, whose reign is believed to have been from about 1493 to 1479 BC. Tutankhamun’s tomb was discovered by British archaeologists in 1922.
