First pharaohs tomb found in Egypt since Tutankhamuns

Egyptologists have discovered the first tomb of a pharaoh since Tutankhamuns was uncovered over a century ago.

Until recently, King Thutmose IIs tomb was the last undiscovered royal tomb of the 18th Egyptian dynasty.

But a British-Egyptian team located it in the Western Valleys of the Theban Necropolis near the city of Luxor. Researchers had thought the burial chambers of the 18th century pharaohs were on the other end of the mountain, near the Valley of the Kings.

The crew found it an area known for the resting places of royal women, but when they got into the burial chamber they found it decorated - the sign of a pharaoh.

"And part of the ceiling was still intact - a blue-painted ceiling with yellow stars on it. And blue-painted ceilings with yellow stars are only found in kings tombs," said the field director of the mission Dr Piers Litherland.

He told the BBCs Newshour programme he felt overwhelmed in the moment.

"When I came out, my wife was waiting outside and the only thing I could do was burst into tears," he said.

"When you come across something that youre not expecting to find, its emotionally extremely turbulent really."

He said the discovery solved the mystery of where the tombs of early 18th dynasty kings are located.

Researchers found Thutmose IIs mummified remains two centuries ago but its original burial site had never been located.

Thutmose II was an ancestor of Tutankhamun, whose reign is believed to have been from about 1493 to 1479 BCE.

He is best known for being the husband of Queen Hatshepsut, regarded as one of Egypts greatest pharaohs and one of the few female pharaohs who ruled in her own right.

Dr Litherland said the "large staircase and a very large descending corridor" of the tomb suggested grandeur.

They had to crawl through a 10m passageway, through a roughly 40sq cm opening, before making it into the chamber.

There they discovered the blue ceiling and the chamber decorated with scenes from the Amduat, a religious text which was reserved for kings. That was the key sign they had found a kings tomb, Dr Litherland said.

Artefacts, including fragments of alabaster jars which bore the inscriptions of the names of Thutmose II and Hatshepsut, provided definitive evidence. These are the first objects to be found associated with Thutmose IIs burial.

Dr Litherlands team has theorised that this tomb was flooded about six years after the burial and so the contents could have been moved to another location during ancient times. He said his team had a rough idea of where that second tomb was and that it could still be intact with treasures.

The discovery of the pharaohs tomb caps off more than 12 years of work by the joint team from Dr Litherlands New Kingdom Research Foundation and Egypts Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities.

The team has previously excavated 54 tombs in the western part of the Theban mountain in Luxor, and had also established identities of more than 30 royal wives and court women.

"This is the first royal tomb to be discovered since the ground-breaking find of King Tutankhamuns burial chamber in 1922," said Egypts minister of tourism and antiquities Sherif Fathy.

"It is an extraordinary moment for Egyptology and the broader understanding of our shared human story."