Discovery

Well-Preserved Mummies Discovered in the Valley of the Kings

Monday, April 28, 2014

(Courtesy of Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities)

LUXOR, EGYPT—Ahram Online reports that a rock-hewn tomb in the Valley of the Kings has been found to contain a cache of royal mummies dating to the 18^th Dynasty. Egypt’s Antiquities Minister Mohamed Ibrahim announced that the tomb was discovered by a joint team of Egyptian archaeologists and scholars from Switzerland’s Basel University. They also found remains of wooden sarcophagi and cartonnage mummy masks in the tomb. The names of 30 of the deceased had been engraved on pottery in hieratic texts, including two previously unknown princesses—Ta-Im-Wag-Is and Neferonebo. Swiss Egyptologist Helena Ballin explained that the tomb had been reused by priests as a cemetery, and had been looted several times in antiquity.