The Lost Tomb of Thutmose II FOUND

With Dr. Chris Naunton.

The discovery came in late 2022. As the team were probing sites near other, previously discovered tombs, an excavator named Ashraf Omar located the entrance to the monument. A staircase, descending into the rock, emerged from the rubble and debris. At the bottom, a doorway, leading to a corridor, and chambers beyond. Architecturally, the monument seemed to follow the dimensions and layout of an 18th Dynasty tomb. That made sense, given the nearby tombs of queens and princesses from that very period. At first, the team assumed they had found another of these “royal family” tombs. An exciting find, but nothing too dramatic.

Unfortunately, the monument was in poor condition. Flooded repeatedly, its ceiling had collapsed and most of the passages and chambers were full of debris. Again, we’ll cover the full story in future. But as the team worked through the rubble, they started finding small fragments that matched an 18th Dynasty date. 

So far, so good. But who was the owner? That part was trickier.

Among the debris, the team found two names. One was the cartouche of King Thutmose II; the other, his wife, Queen Hatshepsut. That gave the excavators a starting date: the tomb probably belonged to the mid-18th Dynasty, around 1500 BCE. Again, so far so good. 

In late 2023, project lead Piers Litherland published a short article in the magazine Egyptian Archaeology.  That article went through the initial phase of discovery and excavation, and Dr. Litherland tentatively suggested that the owner might be King Thutmose II himself. There were good reasons for suspecting this, which I’ll explain shortly. But in the first phase of excavation, the tomb required a great deal of work. The team needed more information.

Now, they have it.

In 2025, the excavators are confident that the tomb does, in fact, belong to Thutmose II. That it was made in his reign, for his burial, and that (once upon a time) it held his mummy and funerary goods. What changed, between 2022 and 2025, to give them certainty? Well, the team presents two pieces of evidence.

Exhibit A is a section of the tomb’s decoration. In the main burial chamber (room A), bits of plaster on the north wall bore hieroglyphs and imagery. These were from a funerary text, known as the Amduat (or That Which is in the Underworld). It describes the nighttime journey of the sun god, through the Duat, and his emergence in the next dawn. Now, that may not sound like much, but it’s quite significant. In the 18th Dynasty, the Amduat is a royal text; restricted to the tombs of Kings. For a monument of this period to have the Amduat in its burial chamber suggested, quite strongly, that the owner was a pharaoh.

Okay, fair enough, but that’s a bit abstract, right? This could be an exception to the “Amduat only for kings” rule. So, what else do we have?

Well, Exhibit B is a piece of stone, originally the rim of a vase. It bears a line of hieroglyphs along its edge. If you’ve seen any of the news articles advertising the discovery, this stone rim is the centrepiece photo. The hieroglyphs are formulaic, but significant. They say (quote) “The God’s Wife, the King’s Great Wife, Hatshepsut, she has made it (the tomb) as her monument, for her brother, the good god, lord of the Two Lands, Aakheperenra (Thutmose II), who lives forever, the Osiris.” End-quote.  

This one is the smoking gun; or smoking jar? The piece seems to be a (broken) vase; probably a jar for ointment or oils, but it’s hard to tell from the photo alone. Fortunately, the text is clear. The tomb was used as the burial place for King Thutmose II; and that funeral was overseen by his half-sister, and wife, Queen Hatshepsut, who claims credit as the maker of this monument. 

As far as burial records go, it doesn’t get much clearer than that. Combine the stone jar with the wall decoration (showing the Amduat), and the team is confident in their conclusion. This monument is the original tomb of King Thutmose II. The place where, following his death, Queen Hatshepsut buried him. The King’s mummy, lying in a coffin and surrounded by goods, rested in this tomb. The walls bore scenes and texts of his journey, into the Duat; and the inscribed material “signed” Hatshepsut’s work, in burying her predecessor. The monument was sealed; the king vanished into history.

Of course, that’s not the whole story. From the very start of the excavation, it was clear that the tomb had suffered catastrophic flooding. Torrential rains had broken the tomb’s door, and washed mud and debris into the passages. That flooding had inundated the burial chambers themselves, probably shattering many of the fragile items (wood, terractotta, organic material). The King’s sarcophagus may have been okay; that would have been stone, and tightly sealed. So, the body of Thutmose, lying it is coffin, may have been secure. But outside his casket, the chamber filled with water, mud, and stone. A true immersion in the waters of chaos.

The date of this flooding is unclear, though the team suggests it may have been just a few years after the burial. Whenever it was, exactly, the next phase is easy enough to work out. Thutmose’s successors, possibly Hatshepsut herself, sent a party of workers to remove the King from his tomb. The ancient team sifted through the debris, perhaps after the water had subsided or drained into the limestone bedrock. Accessing the burial chamber, they systematically removed Thutmose’s burial goods. Furniture, vases, coffins, and even the stone sarcophagus. The archaeological team say that, on the tomb’s staircase and entrance, there are traces of the sarcophagus being dragged out of the monument. That’s a project beyond your average tomb robber: the stone sarcophagi are so heavy that, most of the time, robbers left them alone and empty. The fact that someone went to the trouble of removing it suggests, strongly, that this clearance was official.

So, where did they take it?

Well, that’s the next frontier, a chapter still to come. You see, Dr. Litherland suspects that this King might have another tomb, nearby.

We’ve had one, yes, what about second royal tomb?

The valley in which this tomb was located remains a work in progress. Although archaeologists (past and present) have surveyed the region extensively, and excavated some tombs, it is a big area. And you don’t know what you’ve missed until you dig, down to bedrock, in as many places as possible. Dr. Litherland and the team are now embarking on that phase of the work. And they are cautiously optimistic that there may be some important finds to come.

The team is looking at an area near to Thutmose’s tomb, in a different section of the Valley. According to early reports, there is evidence for ancient building work in this region. There is the limestone debris (flakes and rubble) that you’d expect from digging and quarrying. There are artefacts like pottery, and broken chisels, left by the workers. And, on top of that detritus, there is a layer of plaster and ash. Clearly, someone had been doing work in the vicinity and then covered it up. Finally, the ancients also appear to have intentionally broken part of the cliff, dropping huge “slabs” of limestone (about the size of a dining table) over the top of the rubble. The slabs have a plaster mortar, holding them in place. According to the excavators, it seems quite likely the ancients were trying to bury something and protect it thoroughly. That’s a lot of work, for a “normal” tomb. Which leads Dr. Litherland to suggest (quote) “The best candidate for what is hidden underneath this enormously expensive… pile is the second tomb of Thutmose II.”

These are just preliminary statements, from news articles. The team has weeks, or months, of work ahead of them before they can identify what (if anything) is underneath this pile. But they seem confident about their prospects; confident enough to suggest that the tomb they have found is just the first step in a much larger discovery.

Here, we move into the realm of educated speculation. And I thought it best to get someone familiar with these sorts of questions in, to explain the situation as it stands. Please welcome Dr. Chris Naunton, former Director of the Egypt Exploration Society in the UK, and author of such books as Searching for the Lost Tombs of Egypt (2018). Dr. Naunton is well-versed in the “missing” monuments, especially of the New Kingdom, and I thought it’d be good to hear his thoughts on the discovery, its archaeological significance, and the possibility of more finds to come…

Dr. Chris Naunton: Website.
Music and interludes by Keith Zizza www.keithzizza.net.
Music and interludes by Luke Chaos www.chaosmusick.com.