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

Archaeologists have found a pharaoh’s tomb near Egypt’s Valley of the Kings, the country’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 Thutmose II’s wife, Hatshepsut, who took the throne herself after his death.

Despite the ministry’s assertion that this was the first such discovery since 1922, archaeologists have reported finding pharaohs’ tombs in other parts of Egypt in the decades since, including in 1940 in Tanis and 2014 in Abydos. A member of the research team did not immediately respond to questions seeking clarification.

“I think what they mean is the first royal tomb in the area of the Valley of the Kings or of the 18th dynasty,” said Josef Wegner, a professor of Egyptian archaeology at the University of Pennsylvania, and a leader of the 2014 excavation. “There are other cases of royal tombs that have been found.”

But he said the newly identified tomb was a “major, interesting discovery,” especially for the evidence it provides that Hatshepsut was “a really pivotal ruler” of her time.

The excavation suggests that Hatshepsut built burial places for her father, and for Thutmose II, who was her husband and half brother — and that she later moved them to a new tomb she had constructed.

“She buries the two most important men in her life all together in this kind of foundational tomb,” said Mr. Wegner, who is also a curator at the Penn Museum in Philadelphia. “It really cements the importance of Hatshepsut in anchoring the Valley of the Kings going forward.”

The newly excavated 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, the archaeologists said.

Most important, Mr. Wegner said, were fragments that the team found containing elements of the Amduat, “the royal netherworld book that is beginning to appear at this time.”

“Sometimes discoveries are made, but only later does their true significance become clear with additional exploration,” said Peter Der Manuelian, a professor of Egyptology at Harvard who was not involved in the excavation.

He noted a similar case when, a few decades ago, a tomb in the Valley of the Kings turned out to be “larger and more unusual than anyone had previously realized.” It turned out to have been built for the many sons of Ramses II, one of the most powerful pharaohs of ancient Egypt.

Thutmose II, Mr. Manuelian said, “lived during a fascinating period of Egyptian history: the imperialistic and cosmopolitan 18th Dynasty.” His reign was perhaps overshadowed by those of his father, his son and his queen, who ruled for nearly 20 years and built a major temple and tomb for herself.

“We’re still trying to understand the ins and outs of this era,” Mr. Manuelian said, “and a ‘new’ tomb will doubtless provide us with additional clues.”

The secretary general for Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, Mohamed Ismail Khaled, described the find as one of the most significant in decades. “This is the first time funerary furniture belonging to Thutmose II has been discovered,” he said in a statement.

But unlike Tutankhamen’s tomb, whose chambers were found packed with artifacts during a 1922 excavation, the tomb of Thutmose II had been all but emptied out.

The archaeologists believe that it flooded shortly after the king’s death, and that its contents were moved to another location.

“Water damage caused severe deterioration, leading to the loss of many original contents, which are believed to have been relocated during ancient times,” according to Mohamed Abdel Badie, the head of the Egyptian side of the archaeological mission.