Thutmose II

Yuuge news from Egyptology: the tomb of Thutmose II. "Tuthmosis", for Ptolemy of Mendes.

Most pharaonic tombs were looted in antiquity. The most-famous exception, Tutankhamen, was left alone as a result of cascading events: the king took the throne as an Aten worshipper so had his name erased as a heretic, his tomb was set up as temporary-housing until the new dynasty could figure out what to do with him, and the shoddy conditions led to a local landslide. Tuthmose II, by contrast, was buried "properly" and protected by his widow (and sister) Hatshepsut. His problem was that the tomb was too close to the Nile. Which, deerrrr... floods.

His looter, then, was his widow the king or (more likely) their successor the greater Tuthmosis III. The royal corpse was removed to a place where it could be found... by us. Most of the grave goods were removed thither too. What has been found this week, then, were nonvaluable rubbish and wall-paintings. The inscriptions so far just look like quotes from the 18th-dynasty book-of-the-dead. Nobody since bothered looting any of this, unto this week.

Unfortunately the floods appear to have damaged the content. But perhaps not beyond ability to research. I don't think much happened during his decade-or-so of autocracy, toward the end of a boring 15th century BC. What we hope to get out of this, is wiggle-matching on the wood of the royal funereal furniture; and an index of foreign imports of pottery-style. We would hope to improve our LBA chronology.