The carvings and inscriptions Weeks and his colleagues have seen, along with thousands of artifacts littering the floors–including beads, fragments of jars that were used to store the organs of the deceased, and mummified body parts–promise to tell historians an enormous amount about ancient Egypt during the reign of its most important king. Archaeologically, though, the tomb is as good as a gold mine. No gold or fine jewelry has been uncovered so far, and Weeks does not expect to find any riches to speak of. And then came last week’s astonishing announcement.įor treasure, the tomb probably won’t come close to Tut’s, since robbers apparently plundered the chambers long ago. The wall inscriptions on the companion crypt mentioned two of Ramesses’ 52 known sons, implying some of the royal offspring might have been buried within. Elaborate carvings covered the walls and referred to Ramesses II, whose own tomb was just 100 ft. His 1988 foray made it clear that the tomb wasn’t as dull as Burton had thought. Then, in the late 1980s, came the proposed parking area and Weeks’ concern. A dismissive Carter used its entryway as a place to dump the debris he was hauling out of Tut’s tomb. Britain’s James Burton had burrowed into the site of Tomb 5 back in 1820, and decided that there was nothing inside. Given such long and unrelenting scrutiny, most archaeologists had pretty much decided there were no major discoveries left to make in this part of Egypt. A total of 61 burial spots had been found by the time the British explorer Howard Carter opened the treasure-laden tomb of King Tutankhamun in 1922. Napoleon brought his own team of excavators when he invaded in 1798, and a series of expeditions in the 19th and early 20th centuries uncovered one tomb after another. Archaeologists have been coming as well, for centuries at least. Tourism has been brisk in the valley for millenniums: graffiti scrawled on tomb walls proves that Greek and Roman travelers stopped here to gaze at the wall paintings and hieroglyphics that were already old long before the birth of Christ. It’s never exactly been off the beaten track. The Valley of the Kings, in which Tomb 5 is located, is just across the Nile River from Luxor, Egypt. Says Emily Teeter, an Egyptologist with Chicago’s Oriental Institute Museum: “To find large tombs is one thing, but to find something like this, that’s been used for dozens of royal burials, is absolutely amazing.” The cheeky London Daily Mail carried this headline: pharaoh’s 50 sons in mummy of all tombs. That would make Tomb 5 the biggest and most complex tomb ever found in Egypt–and quite conceivably the resting place of up to 50 sons of Ramesses II, perhaps the best known of all the pharaohs, the ruler believed to have been Moses’ nemesis in the book of Exodus. This will make more sense a few paragraphs further down.Īlthough the tomb is mostly unexcavated and the chambers are choked with debris, Weeks is convinced that there are more rooms on a lower level, bringing the total number to more than 100. Here’s some more text that concerns the discovery of the tomb, and I found it in Time magazine edition of 29 May, 1995.Ī more recent update: it appears that the Pharoahs’ name inscriptions don’t necessarily mean they built a certain monument (statue, pyramid, what have you) but can imply also maybe they restored it, touched it up, that sort of thing. If anyone would know how great I am and where I lie, The poem was inspired by an inscription on one of the statues that read: He had many statues and of course, he had a pyramid too. Ramesses II thought quite a lot of himself. Greek historians labeled him Ozymandias (derived from one of his many names, User-maat-re.) Greek historians weren’t really all that picky about the facts a lot of the time. That may make him more familiar, even if only the sound of the name. Well, for starters: That wasn’t even his name! Yep, our friend was actually Ramesses II.
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