Burial Site of Thutmose II Hailed as the Most Significant Find Since Tutankhamun
British archaeologist Piers Litherland had spent over a decade exploring the remote western wadis near Egypt’s Valley of the Kings when he made a breathtaking discovery—an ancient staircase leading to a long-lost royal tomb. What he and his team uncovered has been hailed as the most important find since Tutankhamun’s tomb in 1922: the rock-cut burial chamber of Pharaoh Thutmose II, who ruled Egypt between 1493 and 1479 BC.
An Astonishing Realization
Initially, as Litherland and his team worked to clear the flood debris from the tomb’s descending corridor, they assumed the burial site belonged to a royal wife. However, everything changed when he stepped into the burial chamber.
The ceiling, painted deep blue and adorned with golden stars, caught his eye. The chamber’s walls were decorated with passages from the Amduat, a sacred funerary text reserved exclusively for Egyptian kings. In that moment, he knew they had stumbled upon something extraordinary.
Speaking to the BBC World Service, Litherland recalled his overwhelming emotion:
“I felt an extraordinary sort of bewilderment. When I came out, my wife was waiting outside, and the only thing I could do was burst into tears.”
A Pharaoh’s Tomb—But No Mummy
As the excavation continued, the team expected to find the remains of Thutmose II, but instead, the tomb was completely empty. Unlike typical tombs that had been looted, this one had been deliberately cleared out.
Litherland and his team soon uncovered the reason: the tomb had been built beneath a natural waterfall and flooded within just six years of the burial. To protect the pharaoh’s remains, the ancient Egyptians had removed the king’s body through a subsidiary corridor and relocated it elsewhere.
A Crucial Clue: Fragments of Alabaster
The tomb’s emptiness left researchers with a mystery—until they sifted through tons of broken limestone and discovered small alabaster fragments bearing the name of Thutmose II. These were likely broken during the relocation of the burial.
“Thank goodness they did actually break one or two things, because that’s how we found out whose tomb it was,” Litherland said.
A Missing Pharaoh and the Search for a Second Tomb
The discovery was made by a joint mission led by the New Kingdom Research Foundation, in collaboration with the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities and the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research at the University of Cambridge.
Thutmose II was the husband and half-brother of Hatshepsut, one of Egypt’s most powerful female pharaohs, and the father of Thutmose III, one of the greatest military rulers of ancient Egypt.
Litherland believes this discovery solves a long-standing mystery surrounding the burial sites of early 18th Dynasty kings. The tomb had never been found before because archaeologists had always searched on the wrong side of the mountain, closer to the Valley of the Kings.
But the most astonishing possibility remains: evidence suggests that Thutmose II’s remains were moved to a second tomb, which could still be hidden and intact.
“The possible existence of a second tomb of Thutmose II is an astonishing possibility,” said Mohsen Kamel, assistant field director.
The search for this lost burial continues, and if found, it could be one of the greatest archaeological discoveries in history.
Ancient Egypt Tutankhamun Archaeology Biblical Archaeology Egyptian Hieroglyphs Ancient Egyptian Bible and archaeology Jerusalem archaeology Archaeological Discovery Thutmose II Egyptian Archaeology Valley of the Kings Tomb Discovery Piers Litherland Egyptian Pharaohs Pharaohs Hatshepsut 18th Dynasty
