Interlude: Remarkable Discoveries in a Royal Tomb.
Around 1440 BCE, Egyptians were carving the burial monument of Amunhotep II in the Valley of the Kings. In 1898 CE, a group of excavators were uncovering the edifice once more. In a dual narrative, we explore the design, construction and discovery of a most remarkable tomb…
Listen on 
Bibliography
Erik Hornung, The Valley of the Kings, 1990.
Erik Hornung, The Ancient Egyptian Books of the Afterlife, 1999.
C.N. Reeves, Richard Wilkinson, The Complete Valley of the Kings, 1996.
Peter der Manuelian, Studies in the Reign of Amenophis II, 1989.
Elliot Smith, The Royal Mummies, 1912.
Online Resources:
- Theban Mapping Project – Tomb of Amunhotep II
- Narmer.pl – The Royal Cache
- Egypt, Land of Eternity – The Royal Cache
- Theban Royal Mummy Project – The Mummies of Dynasty 18
- Egyptian Monuments – Tomb of Amunhotep II
- Saint Louis University – The KV35 Cache
This is easily your most slick and sophisticatedly constructed episode so far in your narrative (excluding your rewrites of the first 6) its a truly wonderful piece of audio entertainment!
I am left with several questions though:
1) How was it that 19th Century Egyptologists were able to assert (prior to this tombs discovery) that Amenhotep II was not in the famous cache, even today we have not identified all the mummies in that cache no?
2) Why was Amenhotep’s tomb selected as the cache for the 9 kings, was it the only (non-lost) tomb in the valley that was unrobbed at the time they were caching the mummies, or was its location particularly hard to reach?
Reading a little bit about Loret, I see he endorsed the crediting of the famed site of ‘Great Zimbabwe’ to “the Phoenicians”
Truly laughable colonial racism, alas not too surprising given the era and his position