An ancient Egyptian tomb newly discovered is shedding light on the dynasty that ruled the region for over 3,600 years.
Archaeologists discovered the huge funeral chamber of limestone, which has several rooms and a decorated entry in January in Abidos, Egypt .
But the intended occupant of the luxurious tomb remains a mystery. Tombs looters damaged the hieroglyphic text painted in bricks at the entrance, making the name unreadable, according to a announced On March 27 by the Penn Museum of the University of Pennsylvania.
The impressive tomb did not contain skeletal remains that could help identify its owner. However, the researchers who have made the discovery believe that it is probably the resting place of a king who ruled the high Egypt during the second intermediate period, between 1640 and 1540 BC, as part of the Dynasty of Abidos one of the least understood dynasties of ancient Egypt. The mysterious king can be one of several that are notoriously absent from the traditional records of monarchs who have already ruled the region.
“It is a very mysterious and enigmatic dynasty that seems to have been basically forgotten from the ancient records of Egypt, because it was in this period of political decay and fragmentation,” said Josef Wegner, Egyptologist and Professor of Egyptian Archeology at the University of Pennsylvania, who led the excavation. “This mysterious tomb… opens a new type of research path (about the Abidos dynasty)”.

The funeral chamber is the greatest discovery of any known ruler of the same dynasty, illuminating a previously misunderstood period of history that can only be revealed through material traces, experts say.
“City of the Dead”
The archaeologists found the tomb almost 7 meters deep at the site of an old necropolis, or “city of the dead.” The necropolis is located in the mountain of Anubis of Abidos, a natural pyramid formation that was considered sacred by the ancient Egyptians and served to hide the tombs built under it.
In the historical records, Abidos was referred to as a sacred city that was the final rest of Osiris – the God of the underworld – and the favorite resting place of the first pharaohs. The necropolis developed over the centuries as more dynasties built tombs and buried their kings within the royal cemetery.
More than a decade ago, Wegner and his team found the first tomb within this necropolis that confirmed the existence of the Dynasty of Abidos, a ruling line that had been first hypothetized in 1997 by Egyptologist Kim Ryholt. Ryholt believed that the minor dynasty would have ruled the Abidos region during a period when ancient Egypt was divided into rival kingdoms.
The owner of that first tomb, King Seneb-Kay, was a totally unknown pharaoh who was 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 funeral chamber.
The newly discovered tomb is similar in architecture and decoration, but is much larger than Seneb-Kay’s-the main three-chamber crypt compartment is about 1.9 meters wide by 6 meters long.
Since the tomb was built in a section of the necropolis that researchers believe they were previously established, they think that the rich king buried there was probably a predecessor of Seneb-Kay. Scientists suspect that the tomb may have belonged to King Senaiib or King Paentjeni, two monarchs represented in the scarce archaeological record of the dynasty that exists as part of a monument dedicated to Abidos.
“It is equally possible that there may be a totally unknown king,” said Wegner, who is also curator of the Egyptian section of the Penn Museum. “We don’t think we have all the names (of the kings of Abidos) – the evidence has not survived consistently to them.”
Although any markings that could help identify the former occupant of the newly discovered funeral chamber did not survive, the tomb still has two painted images of the goddesses Isis and Nephys, which were commonly portrayed in funeral rites as if they were mourning by the deceased. The researchers plan to investigate about 10,000 additional square meters of the area’s desert ground in an effort to discover more tombs, Wegner said. “There could easily be 12 or 15 kings that make up this group of kings,” he said.
In addition to new excavations, researchers will examine the area using ground penetration radar, technology that uses sound waves to map structures below the earth’s surface, as well as magnetometry, which creates maps of underground structures that have magnetic signatures.
“The discovery of another Runer of the Dynasty of Abydos is very exciting,” said Salima Ikram, a distinct university professor of Egyptology at the American University of Cairo by email. “This establishes that there was a significant royal cemetery here at that time, provides us with more details about the architecture of the real graves, and gives us clues about the members of this dynasty and the order in which they ruled.”
Ikram was not involved in the discovery of the funeral chamber, but said he was hopeful that future excavations will reveal more tombs that will help “deepen our understanding of this previously obscure period of Egyptian history.”
Rewriting the history of ancient Egypt
Kings of the Dynasty of Abidos, such as Seneb-Kay, are unique because they do not appear in the lists of kings that were kept by the ancient Egyptians. “The Egyptian kings liked to present their history directly and linearly and recorded the names of kings in order. These kings are not there. So if we look at this kind of strict historical record, we have no place for these kings,” said Laurel Bestock, Egyptologist and Associated Professor of Archeology at Brown University in Rhode Island. Bestock was not involved in the new discovery of the tomb.
“When we find these monuments, it shows us how that strict and linear historical record is inappropriate – it was really written, not to be accurate, but to support a particular point of view of later kings that gathered Egypt,” added Bestock. “They described themselves as great victorious and having overcome ethnic wars, and simply ignored all the small participants.”
Discoveries like this last tomb of Abidos are “incredibly exciting” because they provide context for a richer story, regardless of whether this king’s identity is revealed or not, he observed Bestock.
So far, the king to whom he belonged to the funeral chamber remains a mystery, but Wegner’s goal is one day to identify the ruler to help anchor him within the historical timeline. “With archeology, you wait for evidence,” said Wegner. “The archaeological record, you know, it gives you surprises and twists along the way, so you never know what you can find.”
This content was originally published in ancient Egyptian tomb reveals Mysteries of Dynasty forgotten on the CNN Brazil website.
Source: CNN Brasil

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