Back to the Know! home page.A road widening project near Cairo, Egypt, in 1987 led to the discovery of an ancient burial vault in the Valley of the Kings at Luxor. Dr. Kent Weeks, an Egyptologist, immediately began an emergency dig. Eight years later he caused a furor when he announced that he had found 67 different burial chambers within one complex, all believed to be the sons of the Pharaoh Ramses II.. After years of work, Weeks has now found 108 rooms and expects the number to top 150. The question Egyptologists are asking is why would so many sons of Ramses II be buried here in what is basically one tomb? There has been nothing like this tomb, dubbed KV5, found in Egypt before.
Some people* feel that Ramses II was the Pharaoh of the Oppression who Moses dealt with in the book of Exodus. Exodus 11 tells of the final plague which God brought on the Egyptians. It was the death of the frist born. It included the first born of any man, woman or beast. Pharaoh had many wives and many sons, most of whom would have been the first born to their mothers. Perhaps this tomb is the results of this plague described in Exodus. It is the first thing I thought of when reading about this discovery, yet I have never heard the idea postulated anywhere else. To the Egyptologists it is still a mystery.
Click here to visit the KV5 web page. Please come back, there's more!
* Please see Isaac Asimov's Guide to the Bible, published by Wings Books 1981, page 125
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