The burial chamber likely belonged to a ruler from a line of kings once lost to history, the researchers said. “This is a new chapter in the study of this dynasty,” one of them said.
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Archaeologists have discovered a huge tomb of an unknown pharaoh in an Egyptian necropolis, a team of researchers said Thursday. It is the second discovery of a pharaoh's tomb this year.
A team of Egyptian and American archaeologists have discovered a tomb that researchers estimate to be 3,600 years old nearly 23 feet underground in Abydos, one of ancient Egypt's oldest cities. The city, about 300 miles south of Cairo, was the burial place of early pharaohs, and a necropolis developed near Mount Anubis south of the city.
The researchers found the tomb on a mountainside, at the base of a high desert cliff where strong winds blow sand. In some places around the necropolis, the sand buried the structure to a depth of more than 16 or 19 feet.
The burial chamber includes a decorated entrance, several rooms and soaring 16-foot-high clay brick vaults. It dwarfs a tomb excavated at Abydos more than a decade ago, which was hailed at the time as the first physical evidence of a “lost” dynasty of kings there.
“This is a new chapter in the study of this dynasty,” Joseph Wegner, a curator at the Penn Museum in Philadelphia and head of the American side of the excavation, said in an interview Wednesday. “It's quite exciting.”
