Undisturbed Tomb found in the Valley of the Kings

akahige writes "Hot on the heels of the recent news about the death of King Tut comes a new story about the discovery of an unlooted and previously unopened 18th Dynasty tomb in the Valley of the Kings. American archaeologists found five mummies resting in sarcophagi, funerary masks, and coptic storage jars. It is the first such discovery since Howard Carter's discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb in 1922."

breaking news!

[Anonymous Coward]

A bit behind current news, aren't we? - this has been reported for two days now...

Wikipedia

[adriantam]

This is a slashdot article with almost all the links are linking to wikipedia articles!

Re:Ooh er. Coptic

[jejones]

Coptic is the surviving language closest to ancient Egyptian, if memory serves. I think the poster meant "canopic" jars, the jars where the Egyptians would put the organs that they took out of the body being mummified.

Re:Radar shortcomings

[Wyatt Earp]

Yea, GPR isn't a magic bullet for this stuff because of soil variations, rubble, etc. Kind of like how differences in the water can effect SONAR.

Here is an ugly site that seems to have some interesting stuff about GPR

http://www.g-p-r.com/ [g-p-r.com]

"Depth of investigation varies from less than one meter in mineralogical clay soils like montmorillonite to more than 5,400 meters in polar ice. Depth of investigation increases with decreasing frequency but with decreasing resolution. Typical depths of investigation in fresh-water saturated, clay-free sands are about 30 meters. Depths of investigation (and resolution) are controlled by electrical properties through conduction losses, dielectric relaxation in water, electrochemical reactions at the mineralogical clay-water interface, scattering losses, and (rarely) magnetic relaxation losses in iron bearing minerals. Scattering losses are the result of spatial scales of heterogeneity approaching the size of the wavelength in the ground (like the difference between an ice cube and a snowball in scattering visible light). Detectability of objects in the ground depends upon their size, shape, and orientation relative to the antenna, contrast with the host medium, as well as radiofrequency noise and interferences. "

Re:True.

[Slarty]

Are YOU an archaeologist? You seem to know some history, sure, but cut the people some slack. This is a very very important discovery in the land of Egyptology, and believe me, they know that. They get to publish their findings and be subjected to the gauntlet of peer review, from peers who know a whole lot more about how to handle these things than you do. I'm not saying they're doing everything perfectly, but I'd be wary of condemning the entire team as "ham-fisted and incompetent" based on a frickin' MSN article.

My sister, by the way, is ON that team - a fact which is causing me and my family no small amount of pride! She's a grad student, so definitely doing more grunt work than actual discovering right now... but she's a careful person, and she has literally been preparing for this for most of her life. We are just so far beyond excited for her. :-)

Be fair...

[aug24]

I think you're being overly harsh on the diggers.

They found the shaft last year, after they had found and dug the workmen's huts, and they haven't entered the tomb, they've opened a small space in the blocked door and looked inside.

But I only RTFA, what do I know.

Justin.

Mummie, come back!

[Ancient_Hacker]

This modern attitude about mummies is really different. Back a few centuries ago, Egypt was apparently just swarming with mummies all over the place. So many that for a while they were being used as steam locomotive fuel.

I imagine they got pretty blase about tossing mummies into the firebox.:

Aw shucks, this load is mostly skinny servants, we'll be lucky to get one MPM (mile per mummy) from these.

Coptic?

[kbahey]

Coptic is the wrong term. The correct term is "Canopic jars" [wikipedia.org].

Intact tombs are indeed rare, and I have posted the other day on why King Tut became famous in the last century despite him being a minor figure in history, and why undisturbed tombs are a rarity. You can read it at this Slashdot comment [slashdot.org].