A Tomb Full of Mystery : Archeologist Kent Weeks’ find may well prove to be one of the most important burial chambers unearthed in Egypt. : SCIENCE FILE / An exploration of issues and trends affecting science, medicine and the environment

As a monument, its appearance is completely misleading: a narrow flight of stairs leading below ground to a still narrower door.

To expose the stairs, archeologist Kent Weeks had to nibble away at the roadway covering it, and the pavement remains behind like a giant asphalt cookie with a bite taken out of it. Dotting the area are shabby huts where vendors hawk sodas and keepsakes to the tourists whose buses once unknowingly parked on top of the tomb.

This unprepossessing monument, whose existence has been known for decades but whose significance became apparent only this spring, may well prove to be one of the most important tombs ever uncovered in Egypt. Although it lacks the imposing magnificence of the pyramids and the Sphinx or the golden treasure of the nearby tomb of Tutankhamen, it seems likely to dwarf them in terms of knowledge revealed.

The doorway is the entrance to the burial chambers of the sons of Ramses II, one of Egypt’s greatest organizers and planners and perhaps the Pharaoh of the Exodus. Although it may be at least a decade before the debris-filled, 3,200-year-old tomb is excavated, archeologists have discovered enough to suggest that it contains the bodies--or body parts--of as many as 50 of his offspring.

“This is the only example we have found in Egypt--ever--of what amounts to a family mausoleum,” Weeks said. “It’s unique.” And its uniqueness may well provide researchers with the opportunity to produce the first accurate genealogy of an Egyptian ruler.

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From other tombs, researchers already have the mummies of Ramses II and one of his sons, Myrneptah. Weeks is confident that he will find enough body parts in the new tomb to allow DNA fingerprinting of the Ramses family, perhaps identifying who each boy’s mother was and settling, once and for all, the question of whether Ramses II actually married some of his own daughters.

“I think it is going to tell us a whole lot about Ramses II’s family and the time they lived in,” Weeks said in a recent interview. “I think there are wonderful opportunities here.”

That knowledge may prove especially useful to scholars seeking information about the Exodus, when, according to the Old Testament, God forced Egypt to allow the captive Israelites to return to their homeland. Hieroglyphics inside the front of the tomb indicate that it contains the remains of Amon-Her-Khepeshef, Ramses II’s first-born son. Evidence that he died prematurely would at least partially confirm the tale told in Exodus 12:29 that the Israelites were released when a plague killed all the first-born sons of Egyptians.

The discovery--the first incidence of a royal tomb designed for more than one occupant--may have other ramifications for future findings as well. Where there is one such tomb, there is likely to be more, Weeks said.

“Egyptian religious practices are very conservative,” he said. “A lot of theological thought must have gone into a design like this, and I would not be at all surprised if there were precedents for it that we have not found. Neither would I be surprised if the successors of Ramses II may have had family mausoleums. . . . I wouldn’t be surprised if this is a new type of tomb that we’re going to find other examples of before long.”

Based on several observations from a hot-air balloon, Weeks, a University of Washington archeologist who heads the Theban Mapping Project to explore and map the Valley of the Kings, estimates there are several thousand tombs in the valley, only 400 of which have been catalogued.

But for now his attention is focused on the hole in the ground previously known by the obscure designation King’s Valley 5, or KV5. Discovered and rediscovered by several archeologists, including the legendary Howard Carter and Weeks himself, KV5 had been dismissed as inconsequential because explorers could see only three small chambers. Last year, however, Weeks decided to make one more attempt to dig through the rubble before Egyptian authorities paved it over to make a parking lot for tourist buses.

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Breaking through the debris left behind by hundred-year floods, Weeks was astonished to enter an unprecedented underground warren that so far has revealed 67 separate chambers, with the tantalizing prospect of many more to be found on an as-yet-unexplored lower level. Access to that presumed lower level is blocked by debris on the two staircases that have been discovered so far--debris that researchers hope to begin moving by the end of the year.

There are no riches in the tomb--early grave robbers cleaned it out half a century after it was constructed, and were executed for their trouble. But the limited excavations accomplished to date have revealed a wealth of everyday objects: pottery, beer jugs, wine jugs, faience (fired silica) jewelry, fragments of sarcophagi (limestone coffins), statuettes and canopic jars (stone vessels with stoppers in the shape of animal heads, used to hold the organs of the deceased).

Most important, they have found fragments of mummies, several arm and leg bones. Weeks believes the mummies were probably “hacked up by vandals looking for treasure,” but he hopes that many more remains have been left behind. With luck, he said, more fragments will remain in individual chambers that identify their occupants.

“My guess is we’ll find a lot of additional human remains, and that, I think, makes possible the kind of collection that makes DNA [fingerprinting] entirely possible,” he said. Comparing DNA from each of the mummies with that from existing mummies of Ramses II and his wives could allow him to begin puzzling out the convoluted genealogy of the Ramses family.

“We have the names of about a dozen women who called themselves or who were called wives in inscriptions, and these were presumably just the principal wives,” he said. Contemporary historians also noted that Ramses II married one or more of his daughters as well and that they bore him sons. That incest has never been documented, however, and DNA testing of the new discoveries could provide the first confirmation of whether the “marriages” were symbolic or literal.

Weeks’ own marriage to his wife, Susan, has survived more than 20 years of work in the arid Middle Eastern sands. An Egypt buff since the age of 9, he says his greatest influences included his third-grade teacher in Everett, Wash., and the film “Abbott & Costello Meet the Mummy.” He met Susan, an archeological illustrator, next to a mummy at the University of Washington.

The pair spent their honeymoon documenting a collection of mummies at the University of Michigan, and Susan has since become a valuable part of the team, providing highly detailed drawings of his discoveries. They took 12 years off from field work to raise a son and daughter in Everett, but the rest of their time has been spent in Egypt, where Weeks has directed several excavations, consulted for the World Bank, and most recently run the Mapping Project for the Egyptian government.

And now he seems to have mapped out the rest of his life as well in the meticulous excavation of the tomb. If the lower level is filled with as much debris as the upper, he said, “We have a project that could go on well beyond my lifetime.”