The first moment you look inside a newly discovered ancient tomb is at once exciting and terrifying. I was fortunate to experience this recently as director of an international research team carrying out fieldwork in the Theban necropolis, a Unesco world heritage site near the modern Egyptian city of Luxor. Our project’s primary aim is to implement a conservation and risk management program for the necropolis (burial ground) of Lower Sheikh ʿAbd el-Qurna.
Due to its location at the foothills of the Theban mountain, monuments in this area are extremely vulnerable to flash flooding from intense bursts of rain. To direct this floodwater away from the tombs, we are systematically removing debris and excavating the area, using archaeological techniques that ensure all historical information is preserved. This is how we came across this previously unknown, roughly 3,000-year-old tomb.
As we prepared to enter it, we had no idea if the ceiling had collapsed, if the tomb had been looted or destroyed, or if it was still well preserved. Its layout is typical of Theban elite tombs dating to the New Kingdom period (ca. 1550-1069 BC). At this time, Thebes (now Luxor) was Egypt’s capital and main religious and political center.
The tomb features an outer courtyard, rock-cut chapel and subterranean burial chambers. The well-preserved courtyard area includes a mudbrick platform with a niche for a stela (upright stone grave marker) and staircase with ramps on either side, giving access to the tomb. Once inside the rock-cut chapel, we noticed its walls are decorated with vivid paintings of the main tomb owner adoring various deities in shrines, and also sitting with his wife in front of an offering table laden with bread, beer, fruits, meat and flowers.
Based on the iconography and painting style, we determined that the tomb dates to the Ramesside period (ca. 1292-1069 BC), named after the many pharaohs called Ramesses in that era. This was a particularly exciting moment. These wall paintings offer invaluable historical details about ancient Egyptian daily life and society.
They also shed light on the tomb owner’s position in the Ramesside hierarchy, and on the other family members buried here – plus, potentially, later reusers of the tomb. The vast Theban necropolis, comprising an area of around 10km², was Egypt’s main royal and elite cemetery for half a millennium, from ca. 1550 BC onwards. Situated opposite the city of Thebes on the west bank of the River Nile, it features many world-famous historical sites including the Valley of the Kings (a burial ground for pharaohs including Tutankhamun and Ramesses II) and Valley of the Queens, plus hundreds of private elite tombs, royal memorial temples and remains of royal palaces.
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