Egypt offers first look at newly discovered tomb

“It was a wonderful thing. It was just so amazing to find an intact tomb here after all the work that’s been done before. This was totally unexpected,” Brock said.

The discovery has broken the long-held belief that nothing is left to dig up in the Valley of the Kings, the desert region near the southern city of Luxor used as a burial ground for pharaohs, queens and nobles in the 1500-1000 B.C. New Kingdom.

The 18th Dynasty lasted from around 1500-1300 B.C. and included the famed King Tut.

Schaden’s team will finish clearing rubble from the bottom of the shaft, then completely open the door in the coming days to let archaeologists enter. They can then look for any hieroglyphs that identify those buried inside.

The team hopes to remove the coffins before the end of the digging season, usually around May when the weather gets too hot to work in the deserts outside Luxor, 300 miles south of Cairo, Schaden said.

The coffins appear to have some damage from termites, Brock said.

“It’s going to take a lot of conservation work to consolidate these things before we can take them out,” he said.

The archaeologists were working last year on the neighboring tomb of Amenmeses, a late 19th Dynasty pharaoh, when they found the remains of ancient workmen’s huts. They then discovered a depression in the bedrock that they suspected was a shaft.

When they returned to work during this excavation season, they opened the shaft and found the door, which was opened last week, Brock said.

Slide show   The King returns The world of King Tut has returned to the United States in a 27-month tour of the country.

Since the discovery of Tut’s tomb, experts believed that the Valley of the Kings contained only the 62 previously known tombs — labeled KV1-62 by archeologists.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if we discover more tombs in the next 10 years,” American archaeologist Kent Weeks, who was not involved in the new discovery but saw photos of the tomb’s interior, told AP.

Weeks made the last major discovery in the valley. In 1995, he opened a previously known tomb — KV5 — and found it was far larger than expected: more than 120 chambers, which he determined were meant for sons of the pharaoh Ramses II.

“It’s ironic. A century ago, people said the Valley of the Kings is exhausted, there’s nothing left,” he said. “Suddenly Carter found Tutankhamun. So then they said, Now there’s nothing to find. Then we found KV5. Now we have KV63.”

Weeks said that it was probably built for one person but multiple sarcophagi were moved in later for storage. The jars, he said, appear to be meat jars for food offerings.

Objects in the tomb “could be 200 to 400 years later than the original cutting of the tomb,” he said.

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