Well, if you must have a purely practical reason to justify this research: Tourism is one of Egypt's biggest industries. The more cool things they have to show the tourists, the more money they generate. So in that sense alone it's well worth the effort.
However, some of us love the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake and require no such justifications.
“However, some of us love the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake and require no such justifications.”
The pursuit of knowledge is one thing. Obsessing over the ancient world’s greatest US Weekly sort of celebrity couple is another.
I understand why King Tut was important. It was important to find an untouched tomb, so that we could learn about how Egyptian kings lived, not simply where they were buried. Finding Cleopatra, on the other hand, would be more about her in particular than anything so general as what Tut taught us.
Plus, there’s much more of a morbid fascination at the heart of this. We’re far too interested in the way they died, as opposed to how they lived.