![]() In addition to the piles of bones, three mummies, their skulls exposed, are laid out side by side. But the discomfort of the cramped, low tomb is quickly forgotten. ![]() It’s hot and stuffy down here, and within about a minute my shirt is soaked with sweat. I meet al-Gaftawi after climbing down into a six- or seven-meter-deep pit on two rickety aluminum ladders tied together with rope. “They were searching for gold and jewelry, and when they didn’t find it they just threw everything over here,” says Ali Farouq al-Gaftawi, the veteran foreman at the excavation at Draa Abu Al-Naga, a barren desert hillside overlooking the lush, green Nile Valley.Īl-Gaftawi never studied archaeology – he never went to university – but over the past four decades, working on dozens of digs with some of the world’s top Egyptologists, he has learned a thing or two about those he calls his “grandfathers and grandmothers,” the inhabitants of ancient Egypt.Ī tall man with a big black mustache, a big stick and an air of authority, al-Gaftawi has been overseeing the work here since April, when this tomb was discovered. Descend 7 meters under the sandy hills of southern Egypt to become one of the first modern humans to explore a newly-discovered ancient Egyptian tomb.Ī man in a gray robe and white headscarf brushes the dust, undisturbed for thousands of years, off a human skull, one of many messily discarded by grave robbers.
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