Digging up Egypt's Treasures

The ten most significant discoveries in the past 20 years

  • By Robin T. Reid
  • Smithsonian.com, November 05, 2007, Subscribe
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Queen Hatshepsut In June 2007, the remains of the enigmatic Queen Hatshepsut were finally identified, thanks to a tooth and a CT scan.

Click image for more photos / Mike Nelson / epa / Corbis

 

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    This statue of Queen Tiy, dating back to 1360 B.C., was discovered in 2006 in South Karnak. The depiction of Tiy standing solo implies that she had some authority in the cult of Mut and suggests that other queens might have been more active members of this cult than previously thought.

    Digging up Egypt's Treasures

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    While the Rosetta stone and some of the most famous discoveries in Egyptology were made long ago, some more recent discoveries have been equally spectacular in both appearance and historical heft. To identify ten significant finds from the last 20 years, Smithsonian.com consulted with two eminent scholars: Josef Wegner at the University of Pennsylvania Museum in Philadelphia and Betsy M. Bryan at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland.

    1. KV 5
    Discovered: 1987
    Dates to: 1290-1224 B.C.
    Place: Valley of the Kings

    This massive complex of more than 100 chambers was called the largest royal tomb in Egypt when it was found in the Valley of the Kings 20 years ago. Initially, U.S. archaeologist Kent R. Weeks believed he'd located the mausoleum of Ramses II's principal sons (the powerful ruler had 52 of them).

    Weeks didn't actually discover the tomb; an English Egyptologist, James Burton, explored KV 5 in 1825 and mapped a few of the rooms. Afterward, however, the entrance was lost until Weeks and his crew relocated it.

    To date, they've identified 121 corridors and rooms inside the ruins. Weeks speculates that when the painstaking excavation and conservation work is completed, KV 5 could have more than 150 rooms.

    2. Worker Cemetery
    Discovered: 1990
    Dates to: 2575-2134 B.C.
    Place: Giza

    While many imaginative souls believe aliens built the pyramids at Giza, the people responsible were actually earthly beings, skilled and unskilled. And thousands of them were buried in mud-brick structures located south of the Great Sphinx.

    Egypt's renowned dean of antiquities, Zahi Hawass, had theorized that this was the case. But only after a tourist's horse stumbled over a sandy ruin did he have proof. The laborers and their overseers were buried in modest replicas of the grand edifices they erected for kings and queens. Inscriptions and bones tell stories of the workers and how physically demanding it was to construct a pyramid.

    3. Alexandria Ruins and Artifacts
    Discovered: 1994
    Dates to: 332-330 B.C.
    Place: Alexandria's harbor

    Two teams of French underwater archaeologists plunged beneath the waves off the coastline to explore this busy port's Ptolemaic past. The first group, led by Jean-Yves Empereur, found several 36-foot-long granite blocks that he believed came from the lighthouse at Pharos, one of the Seven Wonders of the World. The second group, led by Frank Goddio, found remains of a palace. These discoveries and others give a sense of how grand the area around the fabled lighthouse must have been. And since the new city has been built right atop the old, going underwater is one of the easier ways to dig up the past.

    4. Valley of the Golden Mummies
    Discovered: 1996
    Dates to: 330 B.C.-A.D. 300
    Place: Bahariya Oasis

    A donkey's stumble led to the discovery of an amazing necropolis of thousands of mummies, some which were adorned in gold. The cemetery in the Western Desert was the last resting place for residents of an oasis that thrived on wine production. Most of the mummies found so far are from the years when Greece and then Rome ruled Egypt. Ongoing excavations have helped historians learn much about this period.

    5. Tomb of Maia, Wet Nurse of King Tutankhamun
    Discovered: 1997
    Dates to: circa 1335 B.C.
    Place: Saqqara

    Cobbling together the biography of the boy-king Tutankhamun got a little easier when the French archaeologist Alain-Pierre Zivie found the tomb of Tut's wet nurse, Maia, "the one who has fed the god's body." A carving of her dandling the baby on her knee adorns one of the walls.

    Excavations here and throughout Saqqara are key to learning about what went on during the Amarna Period when Tut's father, Akhenaten, held the throne. Often called the heretic king, Akhenaten abolished polytheism and moved the capital from Thebes to a new city named Akhenaten. After his death, polytheism returned, and the capital moved back to Thebes.


    While the Rosetta stone and some of the most famous discoveries in Egyptology were made long ago, some more recent discoveries have been equally spectacular in both appearance and historical heft. To identify ten significant finds from the last 20 years, Smithsonian.com consulted with two eminent scholars: Josef Wegner at the University of Pennsylvania Museum in Philadelphia and Betsy M. Bryan at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland.

    1. KV 5
    Discovered: 1987
    Dates to: 1290-1224 B.C.
    Place: Valley of the Kings

    This massive complex of more than 100 chambers was called the largest royal tomb in Egypt when it was found in the Valley of the Kings 20 years ago. Initially, U.S. archaeologist Kent R. Weeks believed he'd located the mausoleum of Ramses II's principal sons (the powerful ruler had 52 of them).

    Weeks didn't actually discover the tomb; an English Egyptologist, James Burton, explored KV 5 in 1825 and mapped a few of the rooms. Afterward, however, the entrance was lost until Weeks and his crew relocated it.

    To date, they've identified 121 corridors and rooms inside the ruins. Weeks speculates that when the painstaking excavation and conservation work is completed, KV 5 could have more than 150 rooms.

    2. Worker Cemetery
    Discovered: 1990
    Dates to: 2575-2134 B.C.
    Place: Giza

    While many imaginative souls believe aliens built the pyramids at Giza, the people responsible were actually earthly beings, skilled and unskilled. And thousands of them were buried in mud-brick structures located south of the Great Sphinx.

    Egypt's renowned dean of antiquities, Zahi Hawass, had theorized that this was the case. But only after a tourist's horse stumbled over a sandy ruin did he have proof. The laborers and their overseers were buried in modest replicas of the grand edifices they erected for kings and queens. Inscriptions and bones tell stories of the workers and how physically demanding it was to construct a pyramid.

    3. Alexandria Ruins and Artifacts
    Discovered: 1994
    Dates to: 332-330 B.C.
    Place: Alexandria's harbor

    Two teams of French underwater archaeologists plunged beneath the waves off the coastline to explore this busy port's Ptolemaic past. The first group, led by Jean-Yves Empereur, found several 36-foot-long granite blocks that he believed came from the lighthouse at Pharos, one of the Seven Wonders of the World. The second group, led by Frank Goddio, found remains of a palace. These discoveries and others give a sense of how grand the area around the fabled lighthouse must have been. And since the new city has been built right atop the old, going underwater is one of the easier ways to dig up the past.

    4. Valley of the Golden Mummies
    Discovered: 1996
    Dates to: 330 B.C.-A.D. 300
    Place: Bahariya Oasis

    A donkey's stumble led to the discovery of an amazing necropolis of thousands of mummies, some which were adorned in gold. The cemetery in the Western Desert was the last resting place for residents of an oasis that thrived on wine production. Most of the mummies found so far are from the years when Greece and then Rome ruled Egypt. Ongoing excavations have helped historians learn much about this period.

    5. Tomb of Maia, Wet Nurse of King Tutankhamun
    Discovered: 1997
    Dates to: circa 1335 B.C.
    Place: Saqqara

    Cobbling together the biography of the boy-king Tutankhamun got a little easier when the French archaeologist Alain-Pierre Zivie found the tomb of Tut's wet nurse, Maia, "the one who has fed the god's body." A carving of her dandling the baby on her knee adorns one of the walls.

    Excavations here and throughout Saqqara are key to learning about what went on during the Amarna Period when Tut's father, Akhenaten, held the throne. Often called the heretic king, Akhenaten abolished polytheism and moved the capital from Thebes to a new city named Akhenaten. After his death, polytheism returned, and the capital moved back to Thebes.

    6. Origins of the Alphabet
    Discovered: 1999
    Dates to: 1900-1800 B.C.
    Place: Wadi el-Hol

    Almost 4,000 years ago, Semitic peoples living in Egypt wrote a message on stone cliffs in the desert west of the Nile. The two inscriptions are the earliest examples of alphabetic writing, pushing the use of such communication back about three centuries earlier than previously thought. The discoverers, John and Deborah Darnell of Yale University, think the inscriptions were left by a group of early Canaanites, perhaps part of a gang of skilled laborers working on tombs. These ancient people figured out how to use Egyptian hieroglyphics to convey their own language.

    7. Birth Brick
    Discovered: 2001
    Dates to: 1750-1700 B.C.
    Place: South Abydos

    While excavating in South Abydos, archaeologist Josef Wegner found a magical birth brick that women of ancient Egypt used for support while they squatted during childbirth. Wegner, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, knew the bricks existed because they were mentioned in spells. But the 20-inch-long piece of unbaked mud was the first one ever found.

    Decorated with polychrome paint, the brick's sides depict deities and demons. On the top a woman cradles a baby flanked by images of the goddess Hathor. Such iconography conveys the importance of childbirth—and divine assistance in the process—at a time of high infant mortality.

    8. Statue of Queen Tiy
    Discovered: 2006
    Dates to: circa 1360 B.C.
    Place: South Karnak

    Placing a larger-than-life-sized statue of Queen Tiy in a temple dedicated to the fierce goddess Mut conveyed a strong image: this was a woman of great importance, a ruler who wanted to associate herself with the punishing aspects of the gods and their ability to put things right again.

    It must have worked, because several hundred years later, another Egyptian queen, Henttawy, had her name inscribed on the beautiful statue, hoping no doubt to benefit from such a powerful association.

    Images of Tiy found prior to the statue's discovery had shown her with her husband, Akhenaten. The depiction of Tiy standing solo implies that she had some authority in the cult of Mut and suggests that other queens might have been more active members of this cult than previously thought. The statue now resides in the Cairo's Egyptian Museum.

    9. Red Sea Ship
    Discovered: 2004
    Dates to: 2000-1800 B.C.
    Place: Wadi Gawasis

    Cedar timbers and steering oars found in caves near the Red Sea shed light on Egypt's ancient trading activities. Limestone tablets found near the site's entrance described trips to Punt and Bia-Punt, two mysterious places in the ancient world that have yet to be positively located. Since a cartouche, an object with the seal of King Amenemhat III, was also found at the site, Egyptologists speculate that he ordered the expeditions around 1800 B.C., perhaps to get myrrh, the valuable, aromatic plant resin used in incense.

    10. Confirmation of Queen Hatshepsut's Mummy
    Discovered: June 2007
    Dates to: 1478-1458 B.C.
    Place: Cairo

    The remains of the enigmatic Egyptian Museum in Cairo scanned the tooth, held inside a box inscribed with the queen's name. They then compared the scan to a gap in the mouth of a mummy long believed to be Hatshepsut; the tooth matched the gap within a fraction of a millimeter.

    Robin T. Reid, a freelance writer and editor in Baltimore, Maryland, has written about fossils recently discovered in Kenya.


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    Comments (19)

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    I have to make a timeline for my 6th grade social studies teacher about arcologty finds and this was VERY helpful!!

    thxs :-)

    Posted by olivia on March 5,2011 | 11:51 PM

    I am currently studying the great pyramids and egypt, so this was a great resource to find. I think all this stuff is really important to know and fun to learn! Thank you Smithsonian!

    Posted by Alice1020 on October 8,2010 | 11:29 AM

    Excellent introduction to Egyptian antiquities!

    Posted by Judy Wolfe on February 15,2010 | 10:28 PM

    Elephantine stands at the border between Egypt and Nubia/Sudan. It was known to the ancient Egyptians as "Yebu" which is the linguistic equivalent of Jebu according to THE DIPLOMATISTS HANDBOOK FOR AFRICA by Count Charles Kinsky. This links Elephantine with the Jebusites who controlled the major water systems in what is today southern Nigeria.

    Posted by Alice C. Linsley on January 20,2010 | 10:30 AM

    1 word AWSOME!!! = )

    Posted by asdfghjlk; on November 10,2009 | 11:17 AM

    what about some of the mummifications found like king tut. or ramses the great that helped us along as to what we know now. to whats written in our history books.artifacts and stones are great.but think about to what we know now.......

    Posted by owen on October 12,2009 | 01:14 PM

    If Bob Ballard ever finds this again. To the best of my knowledge (I live in Cairo and am fascinated by the continuity of Afro-Asiatic and Proto-Semitic linguistic evolution) the earliest instance of recorded "Jews" in contrast to merely "Semitic Peoples" or "Proto-Caananites" occurs in the Elephantine Papyrus (I think from around 1152 BC) and involves a group of Jews from the Persian Empire being stationed by the Shah in Elephantine near Northern Nubia for assistance with Egypt's Nubian Campaigns.

    This is fairly well documented, but I have seen no evidence that earlier references to Semites reflect Judaism in particular, but rather the normal Semitic Pantheon instead (per some Berber tribes and some influence of the said Pantheon on Egyptian identification of gods - particularly of gods associated with foreigners).

    Posted by Michael Sheflin on August 15,2009 | 04:32 PM

    to Mr : Pres Kendall i am from alexandria ( Egypy ) i agree with you about Alexander the Great coffin story , pleas contact me by my email . by the way iam retired too. thank you

    Posted by oss on April 1,2009 | 06:59 AM

    I thought she was not found !

    Posted by diana mejia on February 19,2009 | 08:07 PM

    Can anyone tell me how gold was discovered in ancient Egypt, and how did they know how to ''work it''...............are there documents as to how this precious metal was found.

    Posted by chester carone on October 30,2008 | 09:50 AM

    My question--Has there ever been any burial sites found in Egypt that will confirm the presence of Jews (Hebrews) during the time of the Pharoahs? PLEASE REPLY MyTHANKS BobB

    Posted by BobBallard on June 26,2008 | 10:46 AM

    I am a retired US Army officer. I have been in 25 countries, including Egypt. I have 2 years in combat in RVN with PH, etc. I have sent several messages to different places regarding Alexander the Great, but they all discount me. He was buried in Alexandria in a display coffin. He and his coffin disappeared during the riots in Alexandria 100's of yeas ago. I believe he, and his coffin, were carried by six priests out of Alexandria and hidden in Egypt. They remain undisturbed. His coffin sits on six rectangular stone blocks, feet facing north. The coffin is flat on the bottom, slopes up and out and has a flat slab lid. It is light to medium green in color.If interested in retrieving it...................contact me!

    Posted by Pres Kendall on March 14,2008 | 06:30 PM

    Dear Sir Has there every been a tomb found for a Jew in Thebes Egypt? Reaspectfully Garry

    Posted by Garry Matheny on December 21,2007 | 12:01 PM

    It's really impressive what technology and archeologists can discover.For school i'm doing a project on new kingdom. I WANT to know how the ancient egyptians died.Also im curious about how egyptian girls were believed to have married at ages 8 or older.Its real intresting stuff!

    Posted by Christian page on December 19,2007 | 06:58 PM

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