A FLOODED ancient Egyptian tomb stunned archaeologists after they drained it and discovered huge intact artefacts covered in thick mud.
The discoveries were so unusual that the experts claimed to have ‘never found anything like it’ before.
A huge piece of ancient pottery was discovered
The tomb was revealed in a Channel 5 documentary presented by Tony Robinson called Egyptian Tomb Hunting.
Robinson visited Gebel el-Silsila in Egypt to meet archaeologist John Ward, who thought he had discovered the entrance to a mysterious hidden chamber.
The hole he had found was completely filled with murky water so Robinson helped him pump it out in order to get a good look at what was inside.
They then crawled through thick mud to a large burial chamber in which they found what Robinson described as “human soup”.
The muddy tomb was hiding lots of mysteries
He said: “All their bits and pieces are mixed in beneath our knees, like human soup.
“The idea that so many people might be down here is pretty eerie, and some of them at least must have been of real status.
“This chamber has been carefully chiselled out, and this doorway beautifully finished.”
The tomb had to go through a lot of draining before any artefacts were found
The pair started to excavate the tomb and made an ever more unusual discovery.
As the water continued to drain the experts spotted a giant piece of pottery in the corner of one of the chambers.
Robinson said: “In all my years of finding pottery, I’ve never found anything like this, it’s like a huge whale.”
Ward added: “It would have held some kind of food substance that was buried with the dead.
“What I love is that it’s actually intact, that it’s beautiful.”
Egyptian Tomb Hunting is available to watch on My5.
A brief history of Ancient Egypt
Here’s everything you need to know…
- The Ancient Egyptians were an advanced civilisation who at one point owned a huge portion of the globe
- The civilisation began about 5,000 years ago when ancient humans began building villages along the River Nile
- It lasted for about 3,000 years and saw the building of complex cities centuries ahead of their time – as well as the famous Great Pyramids
- The Ancient Egyptians were experts at farming and construction
- They invented a solar calendar, and one of the world’s earliest writing systems: The hieroglyph
- The Egyptians were ruled by kings and queens called pharaohs
- Religion and the afterlife were a huge part of Ancient Egyptian culture. They had over 2,000 gods
- Pharaohs built huge elaborate tombs to be buried in, some of which were pyramids – at the time among the largest buildings in the world
- The Egyptians believed in life after death, and important people’s corpses were mummified to preserve their bodies for the afterlife
- The Ancient Egytpian empire fell due to a mix of factors, including wars with other empires and a 100-year period of drought and starvation
In other archaeology news, a mystery haul of 20 perfectly preserved coffins have been found just “as the Ancient Egyptians left them”.
We revealed in September that Ancient Egyptian grave robbers looted £700,000 of gold from a Pharaoh’s tomb – and were impaled as punishment.
And, an ancient mega-city dubbed ‘Bronze Age New York’ dating back 5,000 years has been unearthed in Israel.
