You already know what they are saying about ancient Egyptian tombs – they’re similar to buses. You don’t find any for 100 years, after which suddenly you discover two inside days of one another.
That’s what’s happened just outside of Luxor, within the Theban Necropolis, as archaeologists now imagine they’ve found two tombs dedicated to Thutmose II.
The primary tomb was found behind a waterfall, about 3km west of the Valley of the Kings, and Egyptologists imagine it flooded and Thutmose’s mummy needed to be relocated.
His tomb was the primary to be found since boy king Tutankhamun’s tomb was discovered by British archeologists in 1922.
They found an inscription near the primary tomb, suggesting his body was moved to a brand new location by his wife and half-sister Hatshepsut.
It was stuffed with debris and had barely anything inside, supporting their theory that it flooded and was emptied inside six years of the pharaoh’s death in 1479BC.
Now archeologists think they’ll find Thutmose II’s mummy within the second tomb – and a team is working to excavate it by hand.
Archaeologist Piers Litherland believes the tomb was buried beneath 23metres of limestone, rubble, ash and dust plaster and made to appear to be it was a part of the mountain, keeping it hidden for hundreds of years.
He told the Observer: ‘There are 23m of a pile of artificial layers sitting above some extent within the landscape where we imagine – and we have now other confirmatory evidence – there’s a monument concealed beneath.
‘Amongst that ash, we found the stays of beer jars and chisel ends utilized by workmen who made tombs. So there’s little question these layers are man-made.
‘We’ve tried to tunnel into it, we’ve tried to shave away the edges, but there are overhanging rocks, so it’s too dangerous.
‘The most effective candidate for what’s hidden underneath this enormously expensive, by way of effort, pile is the second tomb of Thutmose II.’
The mother of a 30-year-old man present in 1881 in Deir el-Bahari had previously been identified as Thutmose II.
But Piers now thinks that person was too old when he died, with some Egyptologists believing he only reigned for 3 or 4 years, and died shortly after fathering his only son.
‘You dream about such things. But like winning the lottery, you never imagine it’ll occur to you,’ he added, describing his feelings about potentially finding Thutmose II’s true mummy once they finish excavating the second tomb.
Thutmose II is best known for being Queen Hatshepsut’s husband. She is taken into account to be one in all Egypt’s best pharaohs, and one in all the one women who ruled in her own right.
She became pharaoh after her husband died and his son, her stepson, Thutmose III, was too young to take to the throne.
Thutmose III became generally known as ‘the Napoleon of Egypt’ for his violent conquests and expansion across north east Africa, and he also tried to erase his stepmother’s reign from the history books, even literally having her name chiseled from temple partitions.
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