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Another New Tomb in the Valley of the Kings?
Praxiteles writes "A radar survey in 2000 found KV63, the tomb excavated near King Tutankhamen's tomb earlier this year. (KV stands for Valley of the Kings). Just announced is that this same radar survey shows an image of what appears to be a shaft to another tomb just 15 meters north of KV63. Will radar stratigraphy change the multi-millennial tradition of destructive excavation and open new opportunities in the search for buried treasure?"
Gee, considering all the radar stratigraphy experts running around on this site, you should get the answer to your question in no time.
Meanwhile, I will wait for all the radar stratigraphy and egyptology experts to arrive.
Sheesh.
"Will radar stratigraphy change the multi-millennial tradition of destructive excavation and open new opportunities in the search for buried treasure?"
Let's hope it will open up new opportunities to learn about history, which contributes to the wealth of everyone.
If you post it, they will read.
Ever since I read Larry Niven's Ringworld I've been waiting for some geek who also read it to invent deep radar.
Every time I see that someone has got a neutrino detector up, I think we've finally got a deep "radar" that can see through practically everything (AFAWCT) in the Universe, offering us a neutrino detector detector.
I won't be surprised when we fire it up and the Valley of the Kings lights up, along with various museums (and attics) in France, UK, US, Germany and Japan.
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make install -not war
It's probably a Goa'uld trap. Wait, it might have a Zero-Point Module--open it but have a lot of guards and SG-1 standing by.
My aunt works in Egyptology, and she doesn't have a lot of good things to say about this Reeves guy, so take this all with a grain of salt. The scan has found *something*, but not necessarily a tomb - limestone is naturally porous, and this could very well just be an air bubble. Basically, he's announcing a tomb that hasn't been discovered, which might not be a tomb at all, on the off-chance that, should it actually *be* a tomb, he'll get the credit for it.
He also isn't even allowed in the Valley of the Kings. He got the boot because he's been known to work with smugglers. Generally not a reputable character.
"Will radar stratigraphy change the multi-millennial tradition of destructive excavation and open new opportunities in the search for buried treasure?"
I have a better question. Why does every submission have to have the posters agenda? You could have said "Will radar stratigraphy open new opportunities in the search for buried treasure?".
(KV stands for Valley of the Kings)
That's funny, I would've bet money that it really stands for King Valley.
... the Valley of Kings in Loch Modan.
I should play WoW less.
Really? My aunt's best friends brother who works at the Lakewood, WA, Burger King has a completely different theory. But I with a grain of salt. Seriously, who cares what your aunt says about someone she probably can only dream about working with...
All we need is a deep radar satellite, to spin around the world, and then we can have "google unearth". People searching the globe with their PCs looking for buried treasure from their armchair. Mind you, it will probably throw up more unearthed Mafia corpses than treasure ;-)
The knack of flying is learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss. - HGTTG
(off-topic) I wish Slashdot had qualitative scoring for posts, instead of a simple 0-5 points scale of bad->good. I read at +5 because I remembered one day that I had other things to do with my life than read every comment. Unfortunately a lot of pretty lame gags, and equally glib dinner-party received opinions get modded up. Most of the humour is just crap; I usually know the dinner-party type arguments and counterarguments on the typical /. controversies. What I like are authoratative comments (the type that begin "Why, yes, I am a rocket scientst" (/PhD in molecular biologist / have an MBA from INSEAD / was head of infrastructure at ISP FooCom, or whatever...), plus pointers to other interesting and relevant stuff (other papers in the field, summaries of current consensu, etc) ... and some personal anecdotes (thought I dowish people would remember that "data" is not the plural of "anecdote". And I wish people would sometimes stop and think "hey, I wonder if these incredibly intelligent over-educated specialists in the field of [FOO] have perhaps thought of my [idea / objection / suggestion / problem with their approach / reason why it won't work] already? After all, it took me 15 seconds to read the writeup and think of it, and they've been working in the field for 30 years...
Everything I needed to know about life, I learnt from Blake's Seven
" open new opportunities in the search for buried treasure?"
Arr, matey! Any of ye swabs got a pirate ship that can sail in the desert?
Where were you when the voynix came?
The first thing that professors will tell their Ph.D. condidates is that sources from the internet are not valid.
The trouble is that if we find and excavate all the ancient sites, we are in peril of losing them forever. Maybe we should dig them up, photograph them and then put them back. The media that we use to store information are quite volitile. With one good war we could erase all information about our society as well as all the artifacts we have excavated from previous civilizations. The only historical information left would be the stuff we haven't dug up yet.
The Renaissance was jump-started by ancient Roman and Greek texts. I am worried that, if we slide into a dark age, there won't be anything left upon which to rebuild civilization.
There are a lot of guys like this who take complicated imaging technology, whether it be ground penetrating radar, or INSAR or hyperspectral and manipulate the applicability of the data to fit their agendas. Case in point, the Bosnian pyramid scheme of the last year or so. Those guys are obviously completely nuts, don't listenn to reason, and most dangerously, try to use technological jargon to confuse less technical researchers. I saw an associated paper by Smailbegovic which drew complete wrong conclusions with the given satellite data. It gives guys like me (in the geospatial community) a bad name. Smailbegovic in particular is known as a bull-shit peddler, but you wouldn't know that unless you were part of that scientific community. And in this particular case these Bosnian nuts are tearing up real archeological opportunities while they search for UFOs and pyramids. // rant over. //
...called "dry holes" in the KV and surrounding areas, where tomb builders would build the antechamber, but then change their minds and go to another spot. So a supposed shaft, while exciting, even if what rader is picking up really was a product of ancient tomb builders, may still be a dead end.
They might find another ZPM to power Earth's Antartic base.
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Good for the tomb robbers...That treasure was collected off the backs of thousands of
slaves and from the pockets of honest egyptians for thousands of years. The "tomb robbers"
are not thieves, that stuff was abandoned the same as a sunken treasure ship. The egyptian government didnt even care until they realized they could make money off it.
At least the tomb robbers did something with the gold and treasure instead of just taking
from innocent people and burying it. What good does it do history yet another
Golden mask sitting in some museum somewhere. At least the tomb robbers enjoyed the
treasure and put the gold into the economy.
You want to talk about a treasure...the palimpset of archimedes is a treasure, the Rosetta stone is a treasure, the ruins of pompeii and karnak are treasures, Gold should be used for the living not the dead.
Is it Al'kesh , Puddle jumper, or Stargate.
©God
Col O'Neill: "Don't matter what kind of radation suit we have. If you'd been listening you'd know that Nintendos pass through everything."
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not entirely sure about the universe - Einstein
Not only the accusation but the continued ban can be due to reasons ranging from Reeves being guilty but the authorities lacking evidence to professional jealousy that succeeded moving an "interloper" out of the way. It could be as simple as a rival hearing about the discovery of voids revealed by Reeves's radar data and taking a cynical step to remove Reeves from the field. In the Valley of the Kings, "voids" evoke the possibility of tombs.
Reeve's discovery of intact stratigraphy outside of the tombs (it's visible in TFA) is really more important than any tomb. The "voids" imply that another whole generation of Carnarvons could possibly get lucky. However, the stratigraphy points to the potential for some real archaeology of the seriously dusty, unglamorous sort that tells about the people who did the real work in the VOK: quarriers, architects, cooks, and masons and all the others who WEREN'T interred in the tombs. The call he makes for thinking first would get up the nose of any would-be Carnarvon out for a name, fame, and gold.
------ The only greater hazard to your liberty than n politicians is n+1 politicians.
It's a good thing I don't filter out as much, otherwise I'd never have been able to read this offtopic response.
Come on, this stuff is Ancient History!!
In my experience,17 years in North American archaeology, GPR is worthless. ,recent and long rotted tree stumps. GPR "misses" structural remains, pit features, burials and other cultural features. You could achieve the same results with a dowsing rod. A skilled and perceptive archaeologist could easily do much better than GPR with a dowsing rod (by inferring high probability areas from topographic cues).
The only way to test it is with good old fashioned back hoe and shovel excavation -an opportunity I have often had.
GPR "finds"(and misses) gravel lenses, boulders,bedrock outcrops
Supposedly GPR "works" in detecting anomalies in perfectly homogenous sandy soils-say a buried rail road car or something.
Persoinally,I have never seen it work at all.
Each time I hear about Valley of the Kings, I start thinking of the end area of Act 2 in Diablo 2. :-p
Sure, it's Valley of the Magi, but still. I think I played that game too much...
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
I click on the article and enlarge the map at archaeology.org. The map shows coordinates of approximately 99.560N and 94.070E. Isn't Cairo about 30N and 30E? Is the map lat/lon degrees or some other coordinate system?
We may even find the stargate in our lifetime.
Wont that be cool.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
How long does a body have to be in the ground before digging it up the corpse and taking its valuables stops being grave robbing and becomes archeology? Is it archeology if you just take enough pictures and measurements? Shall we do some "archeology" on Westminster Abbey? The Vatican? I'm sure there are valuables buried with those bodies. How about digging up Lincoln's tomb - it could tell us more about how he lived and died. If you find these examples offensive consider this:
Time after time, from the Incas, the Mayas, the Egyptians, American Indians, etc. entire cities or societies worked for a generation to ensure that their royalty, leaders, or god-kings could rest forever undisturbed. What gives us the right to violate that sanctity? "Knowledge" is the canonical answer, but is it curiosity for curiosity's sake? And is that sufficient justification violate an entire society's clear wishes?
"One good war" could wipe out the valley too. . A couple of well placed H-bombs would obliterate it.
But you are right in principle. Perhaps we should send out backups to the moon.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Buried close at hand,the tomb will belong to tuts dog,contain golden doggy bones,mummified bitches and a scribe or two to pee on in the afterlife.
Or... It could be a tomb filled with ads as in ad supported afterlife.Heaven with commercials.
Probably for doggy biscuits.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
Point shaving.
My father is a blogger.
"My aunt's brother's sister's cousin's an Egyptologist who says..." You are repeating what someone else is repeating from what someone else told them about the character of someone you have never personally met or observed. Okay!
I've always wondered what it is about being an archaeologist that makes it OK to be a grave robber. I mean, the practice is frowned upon in pretty much every other circumstance.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
I just came back from visiting Mayan ruins in Central America and I wondered why they don't use similar technicques to locate some of the ruins? Many ruins are deep within thick jungles, and I have heard of archaeologists walking by structures without recognizing them because the jungle is so thick. There are so many sites that are unknown to historians that locals usually suggest new sites every few weeks. Is there anything about thick jungles that would prevent this technique from working in central america?
I happened to be at The Valley of Kings in May to see an excavation take place of a newly discovered tomb and 3(? 4) mummies were removed. Discovery channel were there but apart from that they were the only cameras and there wasnt even a crowd at all- most people chosing to stroll past disinterestingly. We got heaps of cool photos of the removals of the bodies which were covered with a simple plastic sheet which Im sure would have been flapping if there was wind in the valley of kings but the most remarkable of all was the lax attitude of all concerned. The egyptians smoking while trying to remove the mummies at the same time and getting distracted by us standing there (you have money?? we put on good show? one pound one pound, one pound for my sons and daughters lady). I guess I was just surprised that something that should be so important wasnt even of any concern. I kept an eye out for any info on what/ who the mummies were but I still havent been able to find anything. does anyone else know?
Just hang a jolly roger off its tail and nail a plank to its back and you're all set.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Give it up. You know you suck at trolling when you get modded offtopic.
* * Nelson in the background: Ha ha!! * *