Clockwise from top: the secret tunnel inside Seti I's tomb; an inscribed ostraca and an ushabti figurine unearthed in the tunnel
When the famous explorer Giovanni Battista Belzoni discovered the tomb of Pharaoh Seti I in 1817, he knew that it represented a very developed example of a New Kingdom royal tomb. Not only was it the longest, deepest and most completed tomb ever found in the Valley of the Kings, but its walls were painted with fine scenes in full colour featuring the great pharaoh in various positions before the gods and with his family. Inside the burial chamber Belzoni found a calcite anthropoid sarcophagus and a fragment of a canopic chest that used to hold the internal organs, and is now on display at Sir John Soane's Museum in London.
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# Posted by Michelle Moran @ |
Monday, November 02, 2009