An astonishing excavation last week uncovered a burial place that may hold 50 sons of Ramesses II, ancient Egypt's most powerful pharaoh, and the man, many believe, who let Moses' people go. With video footage provided exclusively to TIME, Egyptologist Kent Weeks of the American University in Cairo here offers the first Western glimpse of what may be the biggest and most complex tomb ever found in Egypt.
Professor Weeks narrates: A figure wearing a necklace provides an example of the substantial
amount of original paint -- full reds, greens, blues and yellows -- preserved on
the tomb walls. Only hand-size fragments remain of some of the scenes painted by
ancient artists. Others, however, are nearly whole. "Some of the paint," says
Weeks, "is as bright and fresh as the day it was applied." (1.3MB)
Professor Weeks narrates: Thousands of fragments of jewelry, furniture and granite and
alabaster sarcophagi are strewn on the tomb's floor. Weeks' work suggests that
fragments of young adult male mummies may be the remains of the Egyptian princes.
(1.3MB)
An exterior pan of the Valley of the Kings, site of the ancient
Egyptian capital of Thebes, 300 miles south of Cairo. The valley, in which Tomb 5
is located, is just across the Nile River from Luxor, Egypt. (434K)
An ancient drawing inside the tomb, Weeks believes, depicts Pharaoh
Ramesses II. "Egyptians do not call him Ramesses II," Sabry Abd El Aziz, director
of antiquities for the Qurna region, told TIME's Marlowe last week. "We call him
Ramesses al-Akbar--Ramesses the Greatest." (349K)
After prying open a door blocked for thousands of years, "We found
ourselves in a corridor," Weeks says. "On each side were 10 doors, and at the end
there was a statue of Osiris, the god of the afterlife." (578K)
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