Word: tombes
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Then, in the late 1980s, came the proposed parking area and Weeks' concern. His 1988 foray made it clear that the tomb wasn't as dull as Burton had thought. Elaborate carvings covered the walls and referred to Ramesses II, whose own tomb was just 100 ft. away. The wall inscriptions on the companion crypt mentioned two of Ramesses' 52 known sons, implying some of the royal offspring might have been buried within. And then came last week's astonishing announcement...
...treasure, the tomb probably won't come close to Tut's, since robbers apparently plundered the chambers long ago. No gold or fine jewelry has been uncovered so far, and Weeks does not expect to find any riches to speak of. Archaeologically, though, the tomb is as good as a gold mine. The carvings and inscriptions Weeks and his colleagues have seen, along with thousands of artifacts littering the floors -- including beads, fragments of jars that were used to store the organs of the deceased, and mummified body parts -- promise to tell historians an enormous amount about ancient Egypt during...
Because of his marathon reign, historians already know a great deal about Ramesses and the customs of his day. But the newly explored tomb suddenly presents scholars with all sorts of puzzles to ponder. For one thing, many of the tombs in the Valley of the Kings are syringe-like, plunging straight as a needle into the steep hillsides. For reasons nobody yet knows, says Weeks, this one "is more like an octopus, with a body surrounded by tentacles...
...this claustrophobic journey lies the door Weeks found, and the relatively spacious corridors beyond. It is here, as well as in two outermost rooms, that the artifacts were discovered-most of them broken. "Clearly," says Weeks, "the tomb was pretty well gone over in ancient times." The archaeologists have tracked down a record of one of those robberies, which occurred in about 1150 B.C. A 3,000-year-old papyrus fragment housed in a museum in Turin, Italy, recounts the trial of a thief who was caught in the Valley of the Kings. He confessed under torture that...
Additional artifacts could lie buried if, as Weeks believes, the tomb had an unusual split-level design. The ceilings of the corridors to the left and right of the statue of Osiris slope downward and then drop abruptly about 4 ft.-strong evidence of stairways. Says Weeks: "I think there are more rooms on the lower level." Moreover, while the doors that line the corridors all lead to identical 10-ft. by 10-ft. chambers, the openings themselves are only about 2 1/2 ft. wide, too narrow to accommodate a prince's sarcophagus. That suggests to Weeks that the rooms...