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Archaeologists have discovered a huge ancient tomb in Abydos, Egypt, in January.
It’s about 3,600 years old and might have belonged to a forgotten king. The tomb has several rooms and painted walls, but grave robbers damaged the name written over the entrance, so nobody knows for sure who was buried there. No bones were found either.
Experts think the tomb was made for a ruler from the Abydos Dynasty. This was a small group of kings who ruled Upper Egypt between 1640 and 1540 BC. They ruled during a time when Egypt was divided and weak. Their names are mostly missing from official records.
The newly found tomb is large. Its main room is about 6 meters long and nearly 2 meters wide. It was built under Anubis Mountain, a sacred place believed to be connected to the god of the underworld, Osiris. Over many years, this area became a royal cemetery.
“His name was in the inscriptions but did not survive the depredations of ancient tomb robbers. Some candidates include kings named Senaiib and Paentjeni who we know from monuments at Abydos — they ruled in this era — but whose tombs have not been found,” University of Pennsylvania Egyptian archaeology professor Josef Wegner, one of the leaders of the excavation work, said on Thursday.
In addition to the decorated entryway, the burial chamber featured a series of other rooms capped by five-meter (16-foot) high vaults fashioned from mudbrick.
More than ten years ago, the same team found another tomb in this area. It belonged to King Seneb-Kay, a ruler nobody had heard of before. His name was still on the walls. This helped confirm that the Abydos Dynasty really existed. The new tomb looks like Seneb-Kay’s but is larger and likely older. It might belong to King Senaiib or King Paentjeni, or maybe someone completely unknown.
The tomb still has paintings of two goddesses, Isis and Nephthys, who were often shown in tombs mourning the dead. The team plans to keep exploring the area—over 100,000 square feet—to find more tombs. They think there could be 12 to 15 kings buried there.
To help with the search, they’ll use radar and magnetic scanning tools that can locate underground buildings. Experts say this discovery gives us more clues about this forgotten dynasty and how these rulers lived and were buried.
These kings weren’t included in the old lists of pharaohs because later rulers wanted history to seem neat and simple. They left out many smaller kings from chaotic times. But these new finds show that Egypt’s past was more complex than historians used to believe.
Even though we don’t yet know the name of the king in this new tomb, the discovery helps understanding of a mysterious chapter in Egyptian history.
Sources: BBC, CNN, Archeology Now, Times of Israel.
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