A newly uncovered ancient Egyptian tomb sheds light on a royal family that once ruled the area 3,600 years ago.
In January, archaeologists uncovered a massive limestone burial chamber featuring multiple rooms and an intricately decorated entrance at Abydos, Egypt. However, the intended occupant of this lavish tomb remains a mystery. The tomb's hieroglyphic inscriptions, painted on bricks at the entrance, had been deliberately destroyed by tomb robbers, rendering the name illegible, according to a press release issued on March 27 by the Penn Museum at the University of Pennsylvania.
The impressive tomb contained no skeletal remains that could assist in identifying its owner. However, the researchers who made the discovery believe that it likely belongs to a king who ruled Upper Egypt during the Second Intermediate Period, between 1640 and 1540 BC, as part of the Abydos Dynasty—one of the least understood dynasties in ancient Egyptian history. The enigmatic king might be one of many whose names are missing from the traditional records of monarchs who once governed the region.
"This is a very mysterious, enigmatic dynasty that seems to have been essentially forgotten by ancient Egyptian records, as it existed during a time of political decline and fragmentation," said Josef Wegner, Egyptologist and professor of Egyptian archaeology at the University of Pennsylvania, who led the excavation. "This mysterious tomb... opens up a new avenue of research (for the Abydos dynasty)."
The tomb is the largest known from any ruler of the same dynasty, shedding light on a previously misunderstood period of history that may only be uncovered through material remains, experts say.
The Lost Pharaoh
Archaeologists found the tomb nearly 7 meters (23 feet) below the ground, located at an ancient necropolis or "City of the Dead." This necropolis lies at the foot of the Anubis Mountain at Abydos, a pyramid-shaped natural formation revered by ancient Egyptians and used to conceal the tombs built beneath it.
Historically, Abydos is known as a sacred city and the final resting place of Osiris, the god of the underworld, and the preferred burial site for early pharaohs. The necropolis developed over the centuries, as successive dynasties built tombs and buried their kings in this royal cemetery.
Over a decade ago, Wegner and his team discovered the first tomb within this necropolis that confirmed the existence of the Abydos dynasty, a ruling line first proposed in 1997 by Egyptologist Kim Ryholt. Ryholt believed the smaller dynasty ruled the Abydos region during a time when ancient Egypt had split into rival kingdoms.
The owner of that first tomb, King Seneb-Kay, was an entirely unknown pharaoh never mentioned in historical records. Of the eight tombs of the dynasty discovered so far, Seneb-Kay's is the only one found with a name preserved in the burial chamber.
The recently discovered tomb is architecturally and decoratively similar but much larger than Seneb-Kay’s. The main chamber of the crypt, with three rooms, measures about 1.9 meters in width and 6 meters in length. Since the tomb was built in an earlier section of the necropolis, researchers believe the wealthy king buried there was likely a predecessor to Seneb-Kay.
Scientists suspect that the tomb may belong to King Senayib or King Paenjeni, two monarchs represented in the scant archaeological record of the dynasty, part of a dedicated monument at Abydos.
"It’s equally possible that this could belong to a completely unknown king," Wegner, who is also the curator of the Egyptian section of the Penn Museum, said. "We don’t think we have all the names (of the Abydos kings)—the evidence has not been consistently preserved for them."
While no clues were found that could help identify the previous occupant of the freshly unearthed burial chamber, the tomb still features two painted images of the goddesses Isis and Nephthys, who were commonly depicted in funerary rituals as mourning the deceased.
Expanding the Search
The researchers plan to explore approximately 10,000 square meters (over 100,000 square feet) of desert land in the area in an effort to uncover more tombs, Wegner stated. "There could easily be 12 or 15 kings that make up this group of rulers," he said.
In addition to further excavation, the team will survey the area using ground-penetrating radar, a technology that uses sound waves to map structures beneath the Earth's surface, as well as magnetometry, which creates maps of subsurface structures that have magnetic signatures.
"The discovery of another ruler from the Abydos dynasty is incredibly exciting," said Salima Ikram, a distinguished professor of Egyptology at the American University in Cairo, in an email. "It proves that there was an important royal... cemetery here from that time, provides us with more details on the royal architecture of tombs, (and) gives us a clue about the members of this dynasty and the order in which they ruled."
Although Ikram was not involved in the discovery of the burial chamber, she expressed hope that future excavations would yield more tombs to help further our understanding of this once obscure period in Egyptian history.
Rewriting Ancient Egyptian History
The kings of the Abydos dynasty, like Seneb-Kay, are unique because they do not appear in the royal lists once maintained by the ancient Egyptians.
"The Egyptian kings liked to present their history as simple and linear, and they recorded the names (of the kings) in sequence. These kings aren’t there. So, if we look at this kind of rigid historical record, there’s no place for these kings," said Laurel Bestock, an Egyptologist and associate professor of archaeology at Brown University in Rhode Island. Bestock was not involved in the discovery of the new tomb.
"When we find these monuments, it shows us how inadequate this rigid, linear historical record is—it was really written not to be accurate but to support a particular view of later kings who came and reunited Egypt," she added. "They wrote about themselves as great conquerors who won national wars, and they just somehow ignored all the smaller players."
Discoveries like this latest Abydos tomb are "incredibly exciting" because they provide the context for a richer history, regardless of whether the identity of this king is revealed, noted Bestock.
So far, the king to whom the burial chamber belonged remains a mystery, but Wegner aims to one day identify the ruler to help anchor him in the historical timeline. "With archaeology, you hope for evidence," Wegner said. "The archaeological record, you know, gives you surprises and twists along the way, so you never know what you might find."
