Discovered the room of the treasure
of the pharaoh Sethi I
A
remarkable discovery, destined to enrich our knowledge on the
ancient egyptians’ funeral architecture has been announced almost on
the sly by Zahi Hawass, Director of the Supreme Council of the
Antiques in Cairo. During the systematic exploration of the pharaoh
Sethi’s I tomb in the Valley of the Kings before Luxor (Tomb King
Valley 17) Hawass has found the existence of a hole, that begins
from the corridor of the burial labyrinth. After clearing the debris
from the entrance, the Egyptologist penetrated in a tunnel for 70
meters before he was discouraged in his search by small but frequent
landslips from the ceiling: anyway he was able to see that the
corridor continued for other 25 meters, getting wider in the ending
part and going into a bigger place, probably a room of a great size.
Hawass seems to have no doubts: he has found and will soon enter
Sethi’s I real burial: “If I have interpreted well-as I believe-
what I have seen, it’s the biggest discovery in Egypt since 1922,
when Tut Ank Amon’s intact tomb was found. And, if the funeral
chamber hasn’t been violated, it could still have the sovereign’s
mummy and mainly the best part of his funeral trousseau, a great
number of gold objects”, the Egyptian expert says, who will soon
announce his finding on Travelvideo Tv, an important American
network. The research for the tunnel inside the famous tomb wasn’t
casual, but has been suggested to Hawass by the encounter with a
young beduin, Abdul Rasul, who regularly goes in the sepulchral of
the great ones in Egypt and had noticed more than once this tunnel.
It’s the confirmation that often the fortuitousness, with a good
nose and the curiosity in each impassioned archaeologist, function
as the propeller engine for the most extraordinary discoveries.
Sethi’s I tomb (pharaoh from 1290 to 1279 BC) was discovered in 1817
by the italian Giovanni Battista Belzoni, a picturesque pioneer of
archaeology: after performing for a long time in circus shows in
London, Belzoni left for the Valley of the Kings, and explored all
its ravines; possessing an Herculean strength (he was over 2 meters
tall), this “ante letteram” Indiana Jones moved on his own the rocks,
that obstructed the tombs and entered them, he, the first European
after centuries of oblivion. He was also a skillful draftsman and
with the reproductions of the hieroglyphics from Sethi’s I tomb
(“the most beautiful one among all”, he wrote more than once in his
diary of the excavation ) he organized the first Egyptology
exhibition in Europe. Nevertheless the sarcophagus in the funeral
chamber, at the end of the course, which went through smaller rooms,
pits, deposits and corridors, didn’t have the mummy; this could have
been stolen during the unavoidable sacks, already in ancient times
by the clandestine researchers, or it could have been moved with
other mummies to safer hiding-places, without the treasure, which
was the only attraction for the thieves. The new discovery could
also put us before a “unicum”: the building architects of Sethi’s I
tomb, probably on the ministers’ and priests’ suggestion, could have
been built a secondary tunnel, a kind of secret passage, to confuse
the thieves who were after the treasure and to protect the pharaoh
of the XIX dynasty in his eternal rest.Beside the real sarcophagus
there would have been arranged the funeral trousseau- refined
objects of common use, almost all in gold and of valuable
manufacture- to uarantee a pleasant existence in afterlife to Sethi
I, a sovereign who was able to re-create well-being and stability
among the banks of the Nile and precursor of his son Ramses’s II
pomp.
A
remarkable discovery, destined to enrich our knowledge on the
ancient egyptians’ funeral architecture has been announced almost on
the sly by Zahi Hawass, Director of the Supreme Council of the
Antiques in Cairo. During the systematic exploration of the pharaoh
Sethi’s I tomb in the Valley of the Kings before Luxor (Tomb King
Valley 17) Hawass has found the existence of a hole, that begins
from the corridor of the burial labyrinth. After clearing the debris
from the entrance, the Egyptologist penetrated in a tunnel for 70
meters before he was discouraged in his search by small but frequent
landslips from the ceiling: anyway he was able to see that the
corridor continued for other 25 meters, getting wider in the ending
part and going into a bigger place, probably a room of a great size.
Hawass seems to have no doubts: he has found and will soon enter
Sethi’s I real burial: “If I have interpreted well-as I believe-
what I have seen, it’s the biggest discovery in Egypt since 1922,
when Tut Ank Amon’s intact tomb was found. And, if the funeral
chamber hasn’t been violated, it could still have the sovereign’s
mummy and mainly the best part of his funeral trousseau, a great
number of gold objects”, the Egyptian expert says, who will soon
announce his finding on Travelvideo Tv, an important American
network. The research for the tunnel inside the famous tomb wasn’t
casual, but has been suggested to Hawass by the encounter with a
young beduin, Abdul Rasul, who regularly goes in the sepulchral of
the great ones in Egypt and had noticed more than once this tunnel.
It’s the confirmation that often the fortuitousness, with a good
nose and the curiosity in each impassioned archaeologist, function
as the propeller engine for the most extraordinary discoveries.
Sethi’s I tomb (pharaoh from 1290 to 1279 BC) was discovered in 1817
by the italian Giovanni Battista Belzoni, a picturesque pioneer of
archaeology: after performing for a long time in circus shows in
London, Belzoni left for the Valley of the Kings, and explored all
its ravines; possessing an Herculean strength (he was over 2 meters
tall), this “ante letteram” Indiana Jones moved on his own the rocks,
that obstructed the tombs and entered them, he, the first European
after centuries of oblivion. He was also a skillful draftsman and
with the reproductions of the hieroglyphics from Sethi’s I tomb
(“the most beautiful one among all”, he wrote more than once in his
diary of the excavation ) he organized the first Egyptology
exhibition in Europe. Nevertheless the sarcophagus in the funeral
chamber, at the end of the course, which went through smaller rooms,
pits, deposits and corridors, didn’t have the mummy; this could have
been stolen during the unavoidable sacks, already in ancient times
by the clandestine researchers, or it could have been moved with
other mummies to safer hiding-places, without the treasure, which
was the only attraction for the thieves. The new discovery could
also put us before a “unicum”: the building architects of Sethi’s I
tomb, probably on the ministers’ and priests’ suggestion, could have
been built a secondary tunnel, a kind of secret passage, to confuse
the thieves who were after the treasure and to protect the pharaoh
of the XIX dynasty in his eternal rest.Beside the real sarcophagus
there would have been arranged the funeral trousseau- refined
objects of common use, almost all in gold and of valuable
manufacture- to uarantee a pleasant existence in afterlife to Sethi
I, a sovereign who was able to re-create well-being and stability
among the banks of the Nile and precursor of his son Ramses’s II
pomp.