Free Republic

AN American archaeological mission discovered a tomb in Luxor's Valley of the Kings next to the burial place of King Tut, Egyptian antiquities authorities have announced. An excavation team from the University of Memphis made the find five metres from Tutankhamun's tomb, while the mission was doing routine excavation work, said Zahi Hawass, secretary-general of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities. Some three metres beneath the ground, the tomb contained five human mummies with coloured funerary masks enclosed in sarcophagi and several large storage jars. The mummies date to the 18th dynasty (circa 1539-1292 BC).

Over the summer I have given much thought to the current state of play in the Valley, to the threat of further uncontrolled excavation and to a peculiar dilemma I find myself in: for the prospect of yet more tombs is based upon rather more than mere academic hypothesis. Just as ARTP's radar survey of the central Valley first highlighted KV63 in 2000, so our project discovered clear evidence also for the existence and location of what appears to be a second new burial, 'KV64' - the tomb to which KV63 quite likely relates... Because of the intensity of interest...

The Amarna Royal Tombs Project's GPR (ground-penetrating radar) survey of the Valley of the Kings, undertaken in August 2000 by Hirokatsu Watanabe, was an experimental exercise carried out with the intention that it would be tested in due course by supplementary survey and actual excavation. Since ARTP was denied the opportunity of seeing through that vital second stage, the initial results, though promising, remained unproven. We could responsibly do little beyond keep the data on file, with a view to their eventual publication as an intriguing though sadly speculative annexe to ARTP's final report. In 2005, however, this impasse was...