New Archaeological Discoveries 2025: Ancient Egyptian Tombs - Archaeology Ep 13

2025 has so far been the year of announcements related to discoveries of new ancient Egyptian tombs. Every month a new tomb discovery is making headlines and each is giving us a rare glimpse into Egypt's ancient past. I'm Madam Archaeologist, your go-to informant on everything archaeology, and in this episode I'll share these new discoveries with you, show you why they're significant, and discuss what information the authorities got wrong. The year kicked off with an announcement of the discovery of a new tomb at Saqqara, a necropolis just south of the Giza Plateau, belonging to a pharaoh's physician. And the biggest surprise? It's over 4,000 years old, dating to Egypt's old kingdom. The owner of the tomb was named Tetinebethu. The specific pharaoh, or pharaohs he served, isn't known for sure, but one could have been King Pepi II, whom, we are told, reigned for about 94 years. According to inscriptions, Tetinebethu held the titles of Chief Physician of the Palace, Chief Dentist, and Conjurer of the Goddess Serket. What does this last title mean? Serket was a goddess associated with protection from scorpion stings, which was a big fear for the ancient Egyptians. It's thought that Tetinebethu specialized in treating poisonous bites, since his tomb also labels him Director of Medicinal Plants. Unfortunately, no body was found within the tomb, which fell victim to heavy looting, but its wall paintings are treasures in their own right. It is also not every day that archaeologists in Egypt find a tomb belonging to a royal physician. You probably saw the discovery of the pharaoh Thutmose II's tomb making headlines back in February. It was called the first royal tomb to have been discovered since King Tut's in 1922, and this claim swept its way through headlines and articles written by both the mainstream press and scientific and archaeology-specific news websites. It was even stated by the University of Cambridge. It's not the first royal Egyptian tomb to have been discovered since King Tut's. To give you just some examples of royals whose tombs were discovered after 1922, in 1939 and 1940, royal tombs were found at Tannis in the Nile Delta, including the tomb of the 21st dynasty pharaoh Sucenus I. The silver coffins from these tombs are quite spectacular, and the riches coming from the Tannis royal tombs arguably rival those from King Tut's and Camoon's. And as recently as 2014, archaeologists announced that they had found the tomb of the second intermediate period pharaoh Senebke at Abydos. Senebke is thought to have belonged to the independent Abydos dynasty, who ruled at a time when Egypt was fragmented into smaller kingdoms. I'll mention him again later. Clearly, King Thutmose II's tomb is by no means the first royal tomb to have been discovered since King Tut's. This was fortunately corrected, and the updated claim is that Thutmose II's tomb is the first of a pharaoh to have been discovered in the Luxor area since the finding of King Tut's. I've double-checked this claim too with information provided by the Theban Mapping Project, and yes, this does appear to be the first tomb of a pharaoh to have been discovered in this area since King Tut's, but these exaggerated headlines certainly helped draw a lot of public and scholarly attention towards the discovery. Anyways, what do we know about the tomb itself? It was actually discovered in 2022, in poor condition due to flooding, and it was later identified as having belonged to King Thutmose II. Two lines of evidence helped the archaeologists excavating the tomb reach this conclusion. First, alabaster jars were found bearing telling inscriptions. One began with this inscription, and another part says this. We're clearly dealing with a Thutmose, but the second part, not being complete, could be either Thutmose I or II, since both of their throne names can complete the missing section. Thankfully, the discovery of further fragments within the tomb provided archaeologists with their bingo moment, since they names the wife of the pharaoh as Hatshepsut. This would make the pharaoh Thutmose II, who was also Hatshepsut's half-brother. Mind you though, I'm not sure exactly when other fragments were found, but this fragment bears the cartouche of Thutmose II, enclosing his throne name. It looks different from the cartouches of Thutmose I's throne name. This fragment too is another variation of Thutmose II's cartouche. Second, fragments of painted decor related to the amduat were uncovered. The amduat was an important ancient Egyptian funerary text that, for most of ancient Egypt's history, was almost exclusively reserved for pharaohs, so when archaeologists find paintings from it in tombs, they know there's a very high chance they found the tomb of a king. However, the association between this tomb and King Thutmose II isn't brand new news. An article written by the excavation team's lead archaeologist Dr. Piers Litherland in the magazine Egyptian Archaeology actually discussed the possibility of the tomb having belonged to Thutmose II back in 2023, so even though the major announcement was made this year, this idea has actually been under serious investigation for some time now. No mummy was found in there. Archaeologists had actually found Thutmose's mummy within the Deir el-Bahari Kesh, also known as the Royal Kesh, back in 1881. The Royal Kesh refers to over 50 mummies reburied There is some controversy over whether this is truly the mummy of Thutmose II, because the mummy appears to have been about 30 years old at the time of death, and it's thought that Thutmose II didn't reach that age. Since there was no mummy in this tomb, we have to either accept that the mummy from the Royal Kesh is truly Thutmose II, or his mummy has yet to be found somewhere else, which Dr. Piers Litherland believes to be likely. That there's a second tomb of King Thutmose II is, in theory, possible, since the tomb flooded in antiquity, and so the mummy was probably moved to another location before making its way into the Royal Kesh, in tomb TT320. But whether there's a mummy in there, and the one thought to belong to the king was a mix-up, well, we'll only know for sure if Dr. Litherland does succeed in finding a second tomb. I'll keep you posted. There's another claim from the original announcement, unfortunately, that's also false, that King Thutmose II's tomb was the last missing tomb of the 18th dynasty pharaohs. I fact-checked this, and we're still missing the tombs of Ahmos, Amenhotep I, and Smenkhkara. Amenhotep I's tomb may be KV39 in the Valley of the Kings, but this is very speculative, and it's not the only candidate to have been put forward by Egyptologists. It's also possible that a couple of the tombs found in the Valley of the Kings, whose owners couldn't be determined, could've belonged to the other missing kings, but without further confirmation, it's impossible to tell with the evidence we have at the moment. The tombs of these three pharaohs are, essentially, still missing. So, the 18th dynasty is by no means complete. Even though this isn't a discovery of 2025 in the strictest sense, the confirmation that the owner of this tomb was King Thutmose II is an amazing breakthrough. Any discovery that helps fill in a gap in our knowledge deserves to be celebrated. It's just really unfortunate that some false information was repeated without any critical analysis by so many people, including some reputable institutions. Now, King Thutmose II's tomb wasn't the only one belonging to an Egyptian royal whose discovery was announced this year. A tomb was uncovered at Abydos' Jabal Anubis Necropolis, located at a sacred, naturally pyramid-shaped mountain that appears to have belonged to a pharaoh, but in contrast to the tomb of Thutmose II, where the owner was identified, this one is shrouded in mystery. Tomb robbers unfortunately damaged the painted hieroglyphic texts that would have disclosed the name of the tomb's owner, but the most probable scenario is that this tomb belonged to one of the pharaohs of the lost Abydos dynasty, who ruled the region during the Second Intermediate Period, a time when Egypt was fragmented into rival kingdoms. Why is this? The mysterious tomb shares similarities with the tomb of another pharaoh who belonged to this dynasty as well. In 2014, archaeologists found the tomb of King Wosenribdah Senebkay, the same Senebkay I mentioned earlier in this video. The existence of a lost Abydos dynasty was originally just a hypothesis, complete with critics, but the discovery of Senebkay's tomb suggests that it did, in fact, once exist. The new mysterious tomb is similar in architecture and decoration to Senebkay's, but bigger, making it very plausible that it belonged to a pharaoh. There was no mummy, unfortunately, and the tomb sadly fell victim to heavy looting. Archaeologists think that the tomb might have belonged to one of two suspected Abydos dynasty kings, both of whose existence is known from stele found at Abydos. They also consider it a possibility, of course, that the tomb belonged to a pharaoh whose name has yet to be identified, since by no means do we know of all the Abydos dynasty monarchs. In fact, we're just starting to get to know them, and thankfully, this tomb will help us start filling an important gap in ancient Egypt's history. The most recent of all the royal tomb discoveries announced this year so far is that of Prince Wazirif Ra, uncovered at Saqqara, the same area where the tomb of the physician Teti Nabifu had been found. Excavations within the tomb have yet to be completed, but let's see what archaeologists have reported on so far. For context, Prince Wazirif Ra was the son of King Uzzerkaf, the founder of Egypt's fifth dynasty. King Uzzerkaf reigned for about seven years in the 25th century BC, during Egypt's old kingdom. An amazing find within this tomb was a four and a half meter tall false door made out of pink granite. Inscriptions on it tell us that Wazirif Ra held many titles, one of which was crown prince. In ancient Egyptian tomb architecture, false doors served as a means through which the soul of the deceased could enter and exit his or her tomb freely. They were not doors in a literal sense, but were rather carved or painted to look like doors and served as a symbolic gateway between this world and the next. Another interesting and related find was a red granite offering table in front of the false door inscribed with offerings made to the deceased prince. But there's more to this tomb than meets the eye. Other findings suggest that this tomb was reused at later periods. For example, archaeologists found the inscribed on one of the tomb's entrances, and they also found a black granite late period statue probably from Egypt's 26th dynasty in one of the tomb's chambers, suggesting that the tomb was even reused about 2,000 years after Wazirif Ra's death. Even more intriguing was the finding of statues of the third dynasty pharaoh Djoser and his wife and daughters. It is thought that these statues were originally placed in a chamber next to Djoser's famous step pyramid, which is located at Saqqara as well, and then were relocated to the tomb of Prince Wazirif Ra probably during the late period. Hopefully with further excavation, we'll learn more about the reuse of the tomb over time, and why the statues of Djoser and his family members were moved here. Last, but certainly not least, we have the tomb of a possible senior military commander who may have served under the pharaoh Ramses III. This was found at a lesser known site called Tell The tomb itself doesn't have much to say, but artifacts within it give us some suggestions as to who may have been buried within it. Bronze arrowheads suggest that this was a military man, and a ceremonial scepter suggests that he held a high rank in the military. Meanwhile, a gold ring naming Ramses III makes it possible that this man lived during this pharaoh's reign. An alabaster pot bearing the cartouche of the military commander-turned-pharaoh Horemheb, who ruled over a hundred years before Ramses III, was also found. This was a peculiar artifact, as in this context isn't clear, but if this tomb did indeed belong to a military commander, it may have been included as a reference to Horemheb's military career. However, there were apparently no inscriptions that explicitly tell us who the tomb belonged to, and cartonage was found on top of the body dating to a later time, indicating that the tomb was reused. This renders the interpretation of the tomb and the relationship between the artifacts within it a bit difficult. Just like the royal tomb discovered at Abydos, this tomb, too, contains elements of mystery. Were the arrowheads and alabaster pots deposited at the same time, or could they reflect two different phases of use, one dating to the reign of Horemheb and the other perhaps to the reign of Ramses III? How many times was this tomb reused when we considered the cartonage? With every new discovery, we also have new questions. That's just the nature of the field. That's it for this episode. We're not even halfway into 2025, and a handful of fascinating tomb discoveries have already been announced. I can't wait to find out what the rest of the year has in store for us. Feel free to let me know in the comments which one of the five tombs I discussed here you find the most interesting and why. Subscribe for more cool content via your go-to informant on everything archaeology, Madam Archaeologist.