Archaeologists Find a Pharoah’s Tomb, the First Since King Tut, Egypt Says

Archaeologists have found a pharaoh’s tomb in an Egyptian valley west of Luxor, Egypt’s ministry of antiquities announced this week, in what officials called the first excavation of a royal tomb since Tutankhamen’s burial chamber was unearthed over a century ago.

The newly identified tomb belonged to Thutmose II, who is believed to have reigned around 1480 B.C. It was “the last missing royal tomb of the 18th Dynasty,” the Egyptian ministry said in a statement.

The excavation was a joint project by Egyptian and British researchers that began in 2022, when the entrance and main corridor of the tomb were found.

The archaeologists at first thought the tomb belonged to a royal consort, because of its location near the burial places of royal wives and that of Hatshepsut, a queen who took the throne for herself after Thutmose II’s death.

The tomb was also in an unlikely place for a king’s burial: beneath two waterfalls and at the bottom of a slope, during the much wetter conditions of the 15th century B.C.

But evidence from within the tomb showed that it had in fact been built for a king, including fragments of alabaster jars naming Thutmose II as the “deceased king,” and inscriptions naming Hatshepsut. Part of the ceiling was still intact, too, showing blue paint with yellow stars on it, which the archaeologists said were only found in king’s tombs.