Archaeologists uncover an ancient Egyptian tomb belonging to a mystery king

By Taylor Nicioli, CNN

(CNN) — A newly uncovered ancient Egyptian tomb is shedding light on royalty that once ruled the region over 3,600 years ago.

Archaeologists discovered the massive limestone burial chamber, which has multiple rooms and a decorated entryway, in January in Abydos, Egypt. But the lavish tomb’s intended occupant remains a mystery. Graverobbers had damaged the hieroglyphic text painted on bricks at the entryway, leaving the name unreadable, according to a news release issued March 27 by the Penn Museum at the University of Pennsylvania.

The impressive tomb didn’t contain skeletal remains that could help identify its owner. However, the researchers who made the discovery believe it is likely the resting place of a king who ruled upper Egypt during the Second Intermediate Period between 1640 and 1540 BC as part of the Abydos Dynasty, one of the least understood dynasties of ancient Egypt. The mystery king might be one of several who are notoriously missing from the traditional records of monarchs who once ruled the region.

“It’s a very sort of mysterious, enigmatic dynasty that seems to have basically been sort of forgotten from the ancient records of Egypt, because it was in this period of political decay and fragmentation,” said Josef Wegner, an Egyptologist and professor of Egyptian archaeology at the University of Pennsylvania, who led the excavation. “This mystery tomb … opens a new kind of avenue of investigation (into the Abydos Dynasty).”

The burial chamber is the largest to be discovered from any known ruler from the same dynasty, illuminating a previously misunderstood period of history that can only be revealed through material remains, experts say.

The lost pharaoh

Archaeologists found the tomb nearly 23 feet (about 7 meters) underground at the site of an ancient necropolis, or “city of the dead.” The necropolis is situated at Abydos’ Anubis Mountain, a natural pyramid-shaped formation that was considered sacred by the ancient Egyptians and served to conceal the tombs built beneath it.

In historical records, Abydos was referred to as a sacred city that was the final resting place of Osiris — the god of the underworld — and the preferred resting place for the first pharaohs. The necropolis developed over the course of centuries as more dynasties built tombs and buried their kings within the royal cemetery.

Over a decade ago, Wegner and his team came across the first tomb within this necropolis that confirmed the existence of the Abydos Dynasty, a ruling lineage that had been first hypothesized about in 1997 by Egyptologist Kim Ryholt. Ryholt believed the smaller dynasty would have ruled the region of Abydos during a time when ancient Egypt was broken into rival kingdoms.

That first tomb’s owner, King Seneb-Kay, was an entirely unknown pharaoh who was never mentioned in historical records. Of the eight tombs from the dynasty discovered thus far, Seneb-Kay’s is the only one found with a name preserved in the burial chamber.

The newly found tomb is similar in architecture and decoration but is much larger than Seneb-Kay’s — the main compartment of the three-chambered crypt is about 1.9 meters (6.2 feet) wide by 6 meters (19.7 feet) long. Because the tomb was built in a section of the necropolis that the researchers believe was established earlier in time, they think that the wealthy king buried there was likely a predecessor to Seneb-Kay.

The scientists suspect that the tomb might have belonged to King Senaiib or King Paentjeni, two monarchs represented in the sparse archaeological record of the dynasty that exists as part of a dedicated monument at Abydos.

“It is equally possible there could be some entirely unknown king,” said Wegner, who is also curator of the Penn Museum’s Egyptian section. “We don’t think we have all of (the Abydos kings) names — evidence hasn’t survived consistently for them.”

While any markings that might help pinpoint the freshly unearthed burial chamber’s former occupant didn’t survive, the tomb does still have two painted images of the goddesses Isis and Nephthys, who were commonly depicted in funerary rites as if they were mourning the deceased.

The researchers plan to investigate about 10,000 square meters (over 100,000 square feet) more of the area’s desert terrain in an effort to uncover additional tombs, Wegner said. “There could easily be 12 or 15 kings that compose this group of kings,” he said.

In addition to further excavation, the researchers will scope out the area using ground penetrating radar, technology that uses sound waves to map structures below Earth’s surface, as well as magnetometry, which creates maps of structures underground that have magnetic signatures.

“The discovery of another ruler of the Abydos dynasty is very exciting,” said Salima Ikram, a distinguished university professor of Egyptology at the American University in Cairo, in an email. “It establishes that there was a significant royal … cemetery here of that time, provides us with more details about royal tomb architecture, (and) gives us a clue as to the members of this dynasty and the order in which they ruled.”

Ikram was not involved with the burial chamber’s discovery but said she is hopeful that future excavations will yield more tombs that will help to “further our understanding of this once-obscure period of Egyptian history.”

Rewriting ancient Egyptian history

Abydos Dynasty kings such as Seneb-Kay are unique because they do not appear on the king lists that were once kept by the ancient Egyptians.

“The Egyptian kings liked to present their history as straightforward and linear and they recorded (king) names in order. These kings aren’t on there. So if we look at this sort of strict historical record, we have no place for these kings,” said Laurel Bestock, an Egyptologist and associate professor of archaeology at Brown University in Rhode Island. Bestock was not involved with the new tomb discovery.

“When we find these monuments, it shows us how inadequate that strict, linear historical record is — it was really written, not to be accurate, but to support a particular point of view of later kings who went and reunified Egypt,” Bestock added. “They wrote of themselves as great victors and as having won ethnic wars, and they just kind of ignored all the little players.”

Discoveries such as this latest Abydos tomb are “incredibly exciting” because they provide context for a richer history, regardless of whether this king’s identity is revealed or not, Bestock noted.

As of now, the king to whom the burial chamber belonged remains a mystery, but Wegner’s goal is to one day identify the ruler to help anchor him within the historical timeline. “With archaeology you hope for evidence,” Wegner said. ”The archaeological record, you know, it gives you surprises and twists and turns along the way, so you never know what you can find.”

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