Niche travel

ARCHAEOLOGISTS IN Egypt’s Valley of the Kings have found a previously undiscovered tomb, with an intact sarcophagus inside. One of the team is Roundwood-based Tanja Alsheimer (pictured below).

Working with Egyptologists from the University of Basel, the 32-year-old was in Luxor in January when the tomb of Nehmes Bastet, a temple singer during Egypt’s 22nd Dynasty (7th-9th century BC), was unearthed.

“It was first spotted on January 25th last year, the same date the Egyptian revolution started, so it was left untouched,” she explains.

Once things quietened down politically the team went back this year, not expecting to score what is in fact only the second tomb find since the discovery of Tutankhamun in 1922.

“It was very dramatic because our expectations were so low. It could have been one of a number of things but no one really expected to find an untouched tomb, not to mind an untouched burial, with all its items intact,” says Alsheimer.

As well as its mummified occupant, the shaft tomb, which is a few metres underground, contained the original burial stela, or inscribed tombstone.

So how come it lay undiscovered for so long? “People have been digging in the valley for a long time, shifting soil from place to place, so it is understandable how it can happen,” says Alsheimer.

With excavation work still under way, it is as yet only possible for tourists to see the new discovery, which is close to the royal tomb of Thutmoses III, from the outside.

However, who knows what more might turn up? “What happened there this spring proves everyone who says the Valley of the Kings is exhausted to be wrong,” she says.