Archaeologists working in southern Egypt have discovered the tomb of a previously unknown pharaoh. The tomb of Woseribre Senebkay represents the fist material proof of a forgotten Abydos Dynasty, ca. 1650–1600 BC.

A team from the University of Pennsylvania, led by Dr. Josef Wegner in cooperation with Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, discovered the tomb close to a larger royal tomb belonging to king Sobekhotep of the 13th Dynasty.

In the summer of 2013, the team unearthed a 60-ton royal sarcophagus chamber at South Abydos. The chamber was constructed of red quartzite from Gebel Ahmar (near modern Cairo) and was dated to the late Middle Kingdom. In the last few weeks of excavations, a series of tombs representing a lost dynasty emerged.

The tomb and the mummified remains were, at some point, damaged by grave robbers, but the team from the University of Pennsylvania were able to piece the skeleton back together and decipher the name from a set of hieroglyphics. According to their analysis, Senebkay was approximately 5 feet, 8 inches tall and died in his late 40s.

“We were pretty puzzled for two days,” Wegner told the Daily Pennsylvanian. “It was a king’s name that didn’t appear anywhere else in history, so we didn’t know who he was at first.”

Senebkay’s remains represent the fist physical evidence of a dynasty theorized by Danish archaeologist Kim Ryholt in 1997.

“It’s exciting to find not just the tomb of one previously unknown pharaoh, but the necropolis of an entire forgotten dynasty,” noted Dr. Wegner. “Continued work in the royal tombs of the Abydos Dynasty promises to shed new light on the political history and society of an important but poorly understood era of Ancient Egypt.”

Source: Penn Museum