Summary: The missing tomb of Pharaoh Thutmose II has finally been uncovered in the first royal burial discovery since King Tut over a century ago.
When Jacob went into Egypt, and the Egyptians oppressed them, then your fathers cried out to the LORD and the LORD sent Moses and Aaron, who brought your fathers out of Egypt and made them dwell in this place. – 1 Samuel 12:8 (ESV)
Flooded Luxor Tomb
“The most significant archaeological breakthrough in recent years” was revealed in a press release last month. The last missing tomb from ancient Egypt’s 18th Dynasty was finally found. King Thutmose II’s grave is the first royal burial to be unearthed since the groundbreaking find of King Tutankhamun’s tomb in 1922.
However, unlike King Tut, the newfound tomb was mostly empty. Because of flooding shortly after burial, the contents of the tomb were moved to another secret location, according to the press release. The finding of the missing tomb is exciting but leaves many unanswered questions. Most prominently, where were the grave items and the body moved to?
The latest news on the excavation came out just a couple of weeks ago. A second site was found nearby and lead archaeologist Piers Litherland believes it will contain the relocated mummy and grave treasures. “This second tomb is likely to be complete and undisturbed,” he said. Litherland estimated that it will take researchers about a month to dig through and open the undisturbed tomb. What will be revealed when they get inside?
These finds promise to contribute to our knowledge of Egypt as well as how its history may line up with Biblical events.
Inscriptions of Pharaoh Thutmose II
“New evidence definitively identified the tomb as belonging to Pharaoh Thutmose II,” according to the press release from the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities.
The tomb was found a mile and a half west of the Valley of the Kings in Luxor’s western mountain region during excavation work in 2022. When the entrance and main corridor of “Tomb C4” were originally uncovered, archaeologists speculated it belonged to a royal wife, based on the tomb’s proximity to the burial places of Queen Hatshepsut and Thutmose III’s wives.
However, as excavations continued and various artifacts were found, the true owner was confirmed to be the missing Pharaoh Thutmose II. Among the significant findings were fragments of alabaster jars inscribed with his name, identifying him as the “deceased king,” alongside inscriptions bearing the name of his wife and half sister, Queen Hatshepsut.
An inscription on a large ointment jar stated that it was Hatshepsut who buried Thutmose II in that location. Dr. Piers Litherland, an Egyptologist at the University of Cambridge and co-leader of the team translated the inscription: “The god’s wife the great chief wife Hatshepsut made this monument for her brother the perfect god the lord of the Two Lands [Thutmose II] given life enduringly the beloved Osiris.”
Other fantastic findings from the tomb included furniture, fragments of decorated plaster with blue inscriptions, yellow star motifs, and portions of the Book of Amduat meant to guide the deceased through the underworld.
“The discovery that the burial chamber had been decorated with scenes from the Amduat, a religious text reserved for kings, was immensely exciting and was the first indication that this was a king’s tomb,” said Litherland. “Part of the ceiling was still intact, a blue-painted ceiling with yellow stars on it … also only found in kings’ tombs.”
“This discovery is one of the most significant archaeological finds in recent years,” said Dr. Mohamed Ismail Khaled, Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities. These artifacts offer important insights into the funerary practices of King Thutmose II and demonstrate how his burial influenced later royal tombs in the area.
Second Secret Tomb
The tomb was in a poor state of preservation due to flooding shortly after the king’s burial, according to Mohamed Abdel Badi, Head of the Egyptian Antiquities Sector and co-leader of the mission. Flood water damaged the tomb’s interior, necessitating extensive restoration work by the archaeological team to recover fallen plaster fragments.
The tomb was filled with flood debris including the collapsed ceilings. “It took us a very long time to get through all that,” explained Litherland. He noted that the tomb’s simple architectural design, featuring a plastered corridor leading to the burial chamber, served as a prototype for later royal tombs of the 18th Dynasty. The “large staircase and a very large descending corridor” of the tomb suggested grandeur.
A unique feature found in the tomb was the elevation of the corridor’s floor, almost five feet above the floor of the burial chamber. Researchers suggest this was done when the items of the tomb, including the mummy of Thutmose II, were relocated after flooding.
Archaeologists believe that the flooding happened just six years after the king was buried. Contents of the tomb were then moved, most likely, to a second tomb nearby that archaeologists have just discovered, having been hiding in plain sight for 3,500 years. The burial place had been purposefully camouflaged to look like part of the mountain, being secretly buried beneath 75 feet of rubble, ash, limestone flakes, and mud plaster.
“There are 23 meters of a pile of man-made layers sitting above a point in the landscape where we believe, and we have other confirmatory evidence, there is a monument concealed beneath,” said Litherland. “The best candidate for what is hidden underneath this enormously expensive, in terms of effort, pile is the second tomb of Thutmose II.”
Litherland estimated it would take his team about a month to access the second tomb.
“We’ve tried to tunnel into it. We’ve tried to shave away the sides, but there are overhanging rocks, so it’s too dangerous. We should be able to take the whole thing down in about another month.”
18th Dynasty Egyptian Architect, Ineni
Litherland speculates the 18th Dynasty architect Ineni constructed the tombs. Ineni wrote in his biography that he had “excavated the high tomb of His Majesty, no one seeing, no one hearing,” and that he was facing “a very serious problem” after the first tomb flooded.
“If [Ineni] was being regarded as a failure for not delivering what he was supposed to deliver – a secure resting place for a king who, on his death, became a god – he may have been in a bit of a panic, trying to make sure that whatever happened this time, the tomb was not going to be flooded,” explained Litherland.
By covering the tomb with layers of plaster and limestone flakes, Ineni sought to protect it from water, while simultaneously sealing and concealing the site from grave robbers. “Ineni says in his biographies that he did a lot of clever things to hide the locations of tombs, including covering the tombs with layers of mud plaster, which he says had never been done before,” Litherland said.
Ineni’s strategy worked. Even though grave artifacts from the tombs of the 18th through the 20th Dynasty pharaohs are commonplace in museums, “there are no burial goods of any sort relating to the burial of Thutmose II in any museum or private collection,” remarked Litherland.
Finding Thutmose II’s final resting place is historic. “You dream about such things. But like winning the lottery, you never believe it will happen to you,” Litherland explained.
Luxor Valley of the Kings
“This discovery solves a great mystery of ancient Egypt: the location of the tombs of the early 18th Dynasty kings,” said Litherland. “The tomb of this ancestor of Tutankhamun had never been found because it was always thought to be at the other end of the mountain near the Valley of the Kings.”
Unlike dozens of early pharaohs who were buried in or around the monumental pyramids in Giza and later pharaohs who were interred at the Valley of the Kings, the tomb of Thutmose II is on its own about a mile and a half to the west of the Valley of the Kings.
“It is an exciting discovery” and offers insight into the history of the Valley of the Kings and nearby burial sites, said Filip Taterka, an Egyptology professor at the Institute of Mediterranean and Oriental Cultures of the Polish Academy of Sciences.
There has been a long-standing debate about who was the first pharaoh to be buried in the Valley of the Kings with some scholars pointing to Hatshepsut and others to Thutmose I, according to Taterka. However, given that Thutmose II was the son of Thutmose I and the newfound tomb is located west of the valley, it makes it likelier that Hatshepsut was the first pharaoh buried in the Valley of the Kings, he explained.
Dating the Reign of Thutmose II
Thutmose II is best known for marrying his half sister Queen Hatshepsut. After his death, Hatshepsut rose to become one of the few female pharaohs. As for Thutmose II, little is known about his reign. How long he ruled is a matter of debate. Some scholars believe it was less than five years with consensus being sometime between 1493 and 1479 BC, using standard dating.
How this period of Egyptian history relates to Biblical history is hotly debated. All the dating views related to the Israelite Exodus time frame come into play for the 18th Dynasty. For those holding to the Ramesses Exodus theory, this would be after the time of Joseph and early in Israel’s sojourn in Egypt. For the view that uses standard dating and an early Exodus date around 1450 BC (1446 BC being the most popular specific date) this would be late in Israel’s sojourn in Egypt, about a generation prior to the Exodus.
For different views holding to chronological revisionism, the early part of the New Kingdom (18th-20th Dynasties) would be about one to three centuries after the Exodus during the Biblical Judges period, depending on which flavor of revisionism you go with. This would require a redating of ancient Egyptian events (before c. 700 BC) in order to make new connections to the Biblical timeline.
Proponents of this idea believe the power and grandeur seen in Egypt throughout the New Kingdom (including the 18th Dynasty) is not a good fit for the Biblical Exodus event, which saw Egypt devastated by the plagues and its army destroyed at the miraculous sea crossing. They think a much better fit is found earlier in Egyptian history; at the end of the Middle Kingdom when Egypt entered a prolonged time of weakness, fragmented rule, and even domination by foreigners called the Second Intermediate Period. They argue this matches Moses’ description of Egypt’s condition made 40 years after the Exodus:
And consider today (since I am not speaking to your children who have not known or seen it), consider the discipline of the LORD your God, his greatness, his mighty hand and his outstretched arm, his signs and his deeds that he did in Egypt to Pharaoh the king of Egypt and to all his land, and what he did to the army of Egypt, to their horses and to their chariots, how he made the water of the Red Sea flow over them as they pursued after you, and how the LORD has destroyed them to this day, – Deuteronomy 11:2-4 (ESV)
Historical records indicate that during his reign, Thutmose II squashed an uprising in Nubia, an area controlled by Egypt at the time, located in what is now southern Egypt and northern Sudan. Records also say he campaigned in the eastern Mediterranean with his armies, venturing as far as modern-day Syria.
Conclusion
H.E. Sherif Fathi, the Minister of Tourism & Antiquities, praised the excavation efforts in the area, emphasizing the significance of this discovery in revealing further secrets and treasures of Egypt’s ancient civilization, especially since this is the first royal tomb to be unearthed since the famous discovery of King Tut.
Excavations were made by a joint Egyptian-British archaeological mission, led by the Supreme Council of Antiquities and the New Kingdom Research Foundation. The mission has been conducting archaeological surveys at the site for two years and will continue its work to uncover more secrets of the area and locate the final resting place Thutmose II.
We will keep you updated with the latest news on the excavation, but for now – Keep Thinking!
TOP PHOTO: Relief of Thutmose II at Karnak Temple. (credit: Stone_block_with_relief_at_Karnak_Temple.jpg: Wmpearlderivative work: JMCC1, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons)
