Piers Litherland
Appearances
Global News Podcast
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We were working in an area called the Western Wadis, which is about two and a half kilometres west of the Valley of the Kings at the opposite end of the mountain. And it's an area that's associated with royal women. So when we found this tomb, we expected it would be the tomb of a royal woman. And It was unexpectedly large. It had a large staircase and a very large descending corridor.
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But it took us a very long time to get through all that because, A, it was blocked from flood debris, and B, the ceilings had all collapsed. And it was only after crawling through a 10-metre passageway that had a small sort of 40-centimetre gap at the top that we got into the burial chamber. and realised that the burial chamber had the remains of decoration on it.
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No woman's tomb of the 18th Dynasty is decorated. And not only that, a part of the ceiling was still intact, a blue-painted ceiling with yellow stars on it. And blue-painted ceilings with yellow stars are only found in kings' tombs.
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But, I mean, the emotion of getting into these things is just one of extraordinary sort of bewilderment, because when you come across something that you're not expecting to find, it's emotionally extremely... sort of turbulent, really. I can't really describe it in any other terms. And when I came out, my wife was waiting outside and the only thing I could do was burst into tears.
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We then started to clear all the flood debris, expecting to find underneath it the crushed remains of a burial. And in fact, the tomb turned out to be completely empty, not because it had been robbed, but because it had been deliberately emptied. We then worked out that the tomb had been flooded. It had been built underneath a waterfall, and it had been filled with water.
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At some stage, within about six years of the burial, we now know that the burial was taken out through a subsidiary corridor and moved somewhere else. And it was only gradually, as we sifted through all the material, tons and tons and tons of broken limestone. that we discovered these small fragments of alabaster, which named Tutmose II.
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And these are fragments of alabaster vessels, which were probably broken when the tomb was being moved. And thank goodness they did actually break one or two things, because that's how we found out whose tomb it was.
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One has to bear in mind that Tutmose II is considerably earlier than Tutankhamen. But this would be only the second king's tomb to be found with all its major grave goods in place. They won't be as wonderful as Tutankhamen's, I don't think. But all the same, the contribution to the knowledge of what kings were buried with would be absolutely enormous.
Global News Podcast
The Happy Pod: The 'terrible' artist in high demand
Coming up in The Happy Pod... It's emotionally extremely sort of turbulent, really. I can't really describe it in any other terms. When I came out, my wife was waiting outside and the only thing I could do was burst into tears.