Friday, February 10, 2006

King Tuts Gardener

It's nice to see that no matter how much a piece of history is researched there is always the chance to discover something new and unusual. Archaeologists have discovered an intact tomb in the Valley of the Kings. The last one discovered before this was King Tutankhamun's in 1922. People have been digging there for 100 years and had long since announced that everything had been discovered. Who knows what else may be still be there?

The tomb was discovered 5 meters from Tutankhamun's and dates from the same period. It appears to be alot less lavish than Tutankhamun's and it sounds like it was a somewhat hurried burial so don't expect to see rooms full of gold and jewels on the TV. Still this is interesting because no one knows who the people buried there are.

Egypt's antiquities chief, Zahi Hawass, said, "Maybe they are mummies of kings or queens or nobles, we don't know. But it's definitely someone connected to the royal family."

"It could be the gardener," Otto Schaden, the head of the U.S. team, joked to Hawass at the site. "But it's somebody who had the favor of the king because not everybody could come and make their tomb in the Valley of the Kings."

I know this is highly unlikely but wouldn't it be great if they were Tutankhamun's family, especially the man thought to be his father Akhenaten known as "The Heretic Pharaoh" and Akenatens main wife Nefertiti whose mummy was thought to have been discovered a couple of years ago but that is in doubt now. One of the great mysteries in Egyptology would be solved if they were.

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