Thursday, May 04, 2006

Zahi Hawass - Dig Days

Zahi Hawass is using his Al Ahram column this week to talk about KV63 in the context of other Valley of the Kings tombs and caches. This is the first part of an ongoing story, which will be updated in future issues of Al Ahram: "When I arrived in the Valley of the Kings to see the newly- discovered tomb KV 63, I found there hundreds of people from the media from all over the world. Otto Schaden and I gave interviews about the discovery, but we could not say anything definite. Was it a royal tomb? Or was it a cache of mummies? Many questions were raised on the day of the opening because, in the royal valley, the king or his cook could be buried. It was immediately clear to all of us that the tomb was probably not royal. We could see no sign of a uraeus (royal cobra), no cartouches, nothing that would suggest the presence of a king or queen. When I got back to my hotel I began to reflect that if this were a mummy cache, which is what it most looked like, it could be the fourth such cache to be discovered in the valley (not including the royal cache found at Deir Al-Bahari in the late 1800s)."
See the above page for the entire first installment.

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