Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, May 16, 1995 TAG: 9505160101
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Boston Globe
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Archeologists Monday announced the discovery of a vast underground complex of burial chambers believed to have contained the remains of 50 of the sons of Ramses II, perhaps the greatest of the Egyptian pharaohs.
Kent Weeks, the archeologist who made the find in Egypt's Valley of the Kings, said that three different Egyptologists who visited the site described it as probably the greatest archeological find in Egypt in this century.
Among those positively identified as having been buried in this complex was Ramses II's firstborn son, who, according to the account in the biblical book of Exodus, was felled in the last of the 10 great plagues that struck Egypt. A mural in the newly discovered tomb portrays him standing next to his father, who is pointing his way to the afterlife.
The complex of underground rooms is filled with rubble from past flooding, in some cases filling the chambers to within a few inches of the ceilings, which has rendered exploration slow and difficult. Weeks and his students have been working on the site since 1988, but only last February discovered a passageway that led beyond the previously known rooms. They have located 67 separate chambers, but Weeks believes another level of chambers below the first may contain as many as 40 additional rooms.
``It could be the largest tomb in all of Egypt,'' Weeks said.
The tomb's complex design is unique in Egyptian antiquity, Weeks said in a telephone press conference Monday. Most tombs, he said, contain no more than a few chambers.
Archeological records in an Egyptian museum show that this tomb was looted in 1150 B.C., and the perpetrator was found, tortured and executed. But Weeks said the evidence indicates that the inner chambers, at least, have not been visited since then.
``We're the first people to enter in 3,000 years,'' he said.
Ironically, the entrance to the tomb was in plain view until the 1920s, but explorers could get no further than the first two chambers, and they declared it an uninteresting site, not worthy of further research. Howard Carter, a famous Egyptologist in the early part of this century, was so sure the site was unimportant that he allowed the entrance to be covered over by debris from his digs.
Its location had remained unknown since the 1920s, Weeks said, until his team found it again through traditional archeological detective work. Modern high-tech tools proved useless in rediscovering the entrance, he said.
While the chambers are filled with rubble and broken pieces of artifacts, Weeks said, parts of the walls are well preserved, and all are covered with elaborate paintings and inscriptions. ``Some of the walls are in almost perfect condition,'' Weeks said.
These inscriptions should reveal much about the culture and social organization of Egypt in that era, Weeks said. Such details are not well known, he said, even though this is one of the most important periods of the ancient Egyptian dynasties.
While most tombs of the period are arranged in a linear layout - a corridor followed by a chamber followed by another corridor - this tomb is far more complex.
``This tomb is unique in terms of its size, content and function,'' Weeks said.
After its two initial room-size chambers, the tomb opens into a huge chamber about 50 feet square, with a high ceiling supported by two rows of 16 columns. There are at least five, and possibly 10, doorways opening out from this chamber, he said.
So far, the archeologists have only explored beyond one of these doorways, located on the left side of the rear wall. It leads to a 60-foot-long corridor from which other corridors radiate, creating a layout Weeks described as ``like the tentacles of an octopus.''
Those corridors lead to 20 additional rooms, he said.
At the end of that corridor, two other corridors go off at right angles, creating a T-shaped formation. Both of these corridors appear to slope steeply downward, providing the first of several clues, Weeks said, to the existence of an additional level of chambers below. Each of these corridors also opens to 20 rooms.
The idea that there are more rooms below is supported by hollow sounds the archeologists hear when they tap the floors with hammers, as well as characteristic cracking patterns in walls and columns that indicate settling.
Because of the looting early in its history, Weeks said he does not expect to find the kind of intact jewels or fine furniture discovered in some pristine tombs. But even the fragments of artifacts found so far all seem to contain inscriptions that could be very useful in reconstructing Egyptian society of that time.
To describe the vast extent of this complex, Weeks said that if the famous tomb of King Tutankhamun were the size of a matchbook, this newly discovered complex would be the size of a coffee table.
Weeks said that inscriptions found in the tomb specifically mention four of Ramses II's sons, and he expects that all of the 50 whose tombs have previously been unknown are located here. The pharaohs's 13th son, Merneptah, who succeeded him on the throne of Egypt, has a known tomb of his own, and one other son also is believed to have a tomb elsewhere.
by CNB