Tomb of Thutmose II discovered

[Kenemet]

Husband of Hatshepsut, and a man whose mummy we have (discovered in a cache), his tomb has been found.  The actual construction had some problems; the site was flooded after his burial and the tomb has a lot of damage from that.

Looking forward to more photos:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/egypt-discovery-king-thutmose-ii-ancient-royal-tomb/

[Wistman]

First Royal tomb find in the Valley since Tut, so a big deal.   Apparently it was a poor location choice, so flooded early on:

Quote

Piers Litherland, head of the British side of the mission and field director, noted that the tomb has a simple plan compatible with an early form of the left-hand-turn design that successive kings of the 18th Dynasty developed. The only anomaly is the second corridor.

It was first thought that this was a robbers' tunnel.

However, he continued that it had been enlarged twice and plastered with white gypsum plaster. It also slopes upwards rather than downwards. It goes through the burial chamber, 1.4 metres above the chamber floor.

 

 It is estimated that floodwater reached this level when the tomb was flooded. This corridor seems to have been created to enable removing the king’s body from his flooded tomb.

 

[Kittens Are Jerks]

Egyptian officials announced on Tuesday the discovery of King Thutmose II's tomb in Luxor, a find described as "one of the most important archaeological discoveries in recent years." This marks the first royal tomb discovery in Egypt since Tutankhamun's burial site was uncovered over 100 years ago.

The tomb, designated as Tomb No. C4, was found in the C Valley area of the Theban Hills, approximately 2.4 kilometers west of the Valley of the Kings. A joint archaeological mission comprising British and Egyptian teams spent two years excavating the site. The entrance and main corridor of the tomb were initially discovered in 2022 near the tombs of King Thutmose III's wives and Queen Hatshepsut's burial site.

https://www.jpost.com/archaeology/archaeology-around-the-world/article-842778

[Oniomancer]

Truly, a discovery of Thutmose importance.

[Antigonos]

It will be interesting to see what if any new information can be gotten from the tomb itself given his mummy was already found elsewhere.

[Wepwawet]

It would be interesting to see if any images exist of Hatshepsut on the walls of tomb, probably zero chance from the report, but if anything could be discerned, would it show her having a role in burying Thutmose II, perhaps a scene similar to Ay in KV62 trying to legitimise himself.

Edited February 19 by Wepwawet

[Kittens Are Jerks]

The following article contains a few additional photos:

First pharaoh's tomb found in Egypt since Tutankhamun's
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5ym30v356po

[Trelane]

[Aldebaran]

I would be more convinced if even a remnant of a sarcophagus was found there.  After all, the king was not going to be buried without one and they were not removed when the royal mummies were collected.  Also a foundation deposit?  But...if they claim the entire burial was moved out, then the sarcophagus must be somewhere else.

Edited February 20 by Aldebaran

[Kenemet]

1 hour ago, Aldebaran said:

I would be more convinced if even a remnant of a sarcophagus was found there.  After all, the king was not going to be buried without one and they were not removed when the royal mummies were collected.  Also a foundation deposit?  But...if they claim the entire burial was moved out, then the sarcophagus must be somewhere else.

The article indicates a second tomb was prepared, so the sarcophagus is likely there.

[MissJatti]

At long last, such a great discovery!

[Aldebaran]

More information required.  And, if you bury a king and have to move the entire burial for some reason--water is surmised--then where do you have another tomb ready?  Excavating a new tomb takes time.  The one who mentions a tomb for Aakheperenre is Hapuseneb.  "The good god, Aakheperenre...appointed me to conduct work upon his cliff tomb [Hrt]..."   This last word was also used by Ineni when mentioning his secretive management in the digging of a tomb for Thutmose I.

[Wepwawet]

Report on the BBC, taken from a paywall Guardian article, states that it is believed that the second tomb of Thutmose II may be found "below a 23-metre (75 ft) man-made pile of limestone, ash, rubble and mud plaster, that was designed by ancient Egyptians to look like part of a mountain in the Western Valleys of the Theban Necropolis near the city of Luxor." It is stated that it may take a month to get to the tomb, and that they may find the mummy of Thutmose II. On that count I would like to inform them that his mummy is in the museum in Cairo, where it has been for over a century. I presume this is the result of bad journalism, and we are living in an age of truely appalling journalism.

If they find that it is a second tomb for Thutmose II it will be very bare, maybe some shabti and broken bits and bobs. The fact that his mummy was found in the Deir el-Bahari cach means that his tomb has been emptied of all valuables, and then, as the others, left open, not re-sealed. On that point, if this purported second tomb is still covered in it's "camoflage", then it's not likely to have been used by Thutmose II, on the other hand, it may be the undisturbed tomb of somebody else, which would be quite a thing.

Second Tomb article

[Aldebaran]

Of course it's interesting to find a tomb with the cartouches of Thutmose II on objects remaining within--but the excitement is dampened by the hypothesis that this C4 did not work out and there must have been yet another tomb--also minus the mummy of the pharaoh as that was cached in antiquity.  There was certainly not going to be a tomb for Thutmose II without a sarcophagus--and none is mentioned from C4, not even fragments.

I feel compelled to make this remark on what seems to me to be Egyptian priorities:  If it is not a great bloody hole in the ground for tourists to peer into, no matter how little will prove to be learned from it--it doesn't much matter.  Tourism seems to guide [no pun intended] Egyptology in Egypt.  Wepwawet and I, to mention only two, have been hoping for a long time for some more testing of the royal mummies with the idea that a couple of things will be straightened out--but nothing.  Once the DNA testing of Tutankhamun and his family was accomplished, one has to come away with the impression that there is not much interest on the part of the Egyptians in the other people.  Actually, studying the mummies has the potential to add more information, clear up some misconceptions, than an already robbed hole in the ground.

We already know for certain Thutmose II and Hatshepsut were husband and wife for awhile--so the cartouches of the pair in C4 adds nothing new.  But whose son is that young prince in KV35?  Who is the other prince from TT320, formerly thought to be Thutmose I?  I have been suggesting Ahmose-Sipair for a long time in print.  That young man had a tomb on Dra Abu el-Naga, now lost.  In another paper, I have suggested that a female mummy thought to be a nurse named Rai ever since TT320 was discovered in the late 19th Century is probably a 17th Dynasty queen instead for several reasons--one of them being that the reburial commissions were not in the business of caching royal servants.  And what about those royals from the end of Dynasty 19, all discovered in KV35?  We don't have a clue how they were related to one another and, until we get a clue, the history of that period remains very sketchy.

[Wepwawet]

1 hour ago, Aldebaran said:

Once the DNA testing of Tutankhamun and his family was accomplished, one has to come away with the impression that there is not much interest on the part of the Egyptians in the other people

They have no excuse for not testing all of them, money cannot be a reason as in 2007 anybody could get a test without breaking the bank, and it's better and cheaper now. At least various non NK mummies are being tested, OK ones for instance, and showing their Levantine and wider, north, east and western origins. There was some chitter chatter a while back suggesting the Egyptians feared what DNA tests would show, but groundless and probably malicious in origin.

[Wepwawet]

And this business about whether the second, and undisturbed tomb, of Thutmose II has been found highlights the need to DNA test all the royal mummies.

The video I link to is a clear exposition of the situation as it stands right now, and I think it's clear that an undisturbed tomb is on the verge of being uncovered. The debate, while waiting for the news, perhaps before May, is if this is the tomb of Thutmose II. It comes down to if the mummy labelled as him when discovered in the Deir-el Bahari royal cache is actually him. If all the mummies had been DNA tested we would have known this for 19 years, but we need to engage in speculation because a basic, and cheap, proceedure will not be done.

And as for speculation, if it is the tomb of Thutmose II, and, as seems evident, is undisturbed, then expect "wonderfull things", but not I suggest, a wonderful tomb. Having already buried him in a decent enough decorated tomb, I suspect that the secondry tomb, an "emergency tomb", will be small and undecorated, it may in fact be similar to Tutankhamun's tomb, a full-ish burial, but everything crammed in.

 

Edited February 26 by Wepwawet

[Aldebaran]

This video is making some farfetched claims.  First of all, the mummy in question does look like Thutmose II and I don't know how he can be "too old" when he has never been judged to have died past the age of 30.  Otherwise, he wouldn't have been old enough to be the husband of Hatshepsut.  If the mummy the Egyptians claim is hers, then she died at the age of about 50 after taking over the kingship in one form or another after the death of Thutmose II for the next 20-odd years.  So Hatshepsut, too, must have been around the age of 30 when her husband passed from life.  In fact, as half siblings, it was perfectly possible for them to have been the same age.

I'm not sure not so much as a shabti exists anywhere from a burial of Aakheperenre--but that video claiming there is so much from other kingly burials in museums is just BS.   What has Hatshepsut got from hers?  There were items in the foundation deposit of KV20 and some other ceramics from the tomb but there is no guarantee that the box that was supposed to have contained an organ and part of a tooth was ever hers because it had the cartouche "Maatkare" on it.  A royal cartouche could be on funerary equipment of any person who was buried during the reign of any king.  There is almost nothing from any tomb, royal or otherwise, unless that tomb managed to remain intact or nearly so.  Everything either disappeared or was found smashed to bits within the tombs.

Regardless, there is no reason to cast doubt on the identity of the mummy of Thutmose II.  He was identified same as the others in TT320.  The unidentified ones is a different story.

Edited February 28 by Aldebaran

[Aldebaran]

A few more things: Although, I believe, it has been claimed by the uncoverers of C4 that only a kingly tomb would have the remnant of a starry ceiling, KV42 has that--but no scenes from the Amduat visible. Although items that were inscribed mainly belonged to Sennefer, Mayor of Thebes during the reign of Amenhotep II and Senetnay [probably short for Senetnefert] his wife--a foundation deposit of KV42 indicates it was supposed to have been the final resting place of Meryetre-Hatshepsut, mother of the same pharaoh.

There was an unfinished sarcophagus in KV42, lid propped up with a piece of wood--and for some reason Der Manuelian and Loeben ascribe this to Thutmose II in "New Light on the Recarved Sarcophagus of Hatshepsut and Thutmose I In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston" upon making a list of sarcophagi of the period. Just why that is I have not had time to research.

Later: The arguments pro and con for KV42 and its sarcophagus being associated with Thutmose II begin on page 124 of "The Fate of Sennefer and Senetnay at Karnak Temple and in the Valley of the Kings" by M. Eaton-Krauss.

Why Thutmose II should have an unfinished sarcophagus anywhere is still unclear to me. After all, he did have a son with a very long reign who had time to make better arrangements.