Tomb Of Egyptian King Unearthed | Why The Internet Was Captivated By A Hideous Fish

Science Friday

Science Friday and WNYC Studios

Life Sciences, Wnyc, Science, Earth Sciences, Natural Sciences, Friday

4.5 • 5.5K Ratings

🗓️ 21 February 2025

⏱️ 21 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Finding the original tomb of the royal is one of the most significant developments in Egyptian archeology in recent history. Also, a video of a gloriously creepy anglerfish inspired tears and poetry online. But why was this deep-sea dweller near the surface at all?

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Listener supported WNYC Studios.
0:12.2	This is Science Friday. I'm Flora Lickman.
0:15.3	This week, archaeologists report one of the biggest Egyptian archaeological finds in modern history, the tomb of a pharaoh, King Tutmos II.
0:25.2	This is the first pharaoh tomb find in over a hundred years. The last one was King Tuts in 1922.
0:32.1	Joining me to sift through the details of this story and other news from the week is Maggie Kerth,
0:36.5	science writer, and editorial lead of Carbon Plan based in Minneapolis. Welcome back, Maggie. Thanks for having me.
0:43.8	All right. Let's talk about this very cool discovery. Who was buried in this tomb?
0:49.2	So this is the tomb of Tutmos II. He's actually a dynastic predecessor of King Tutankhammon. So he died around
0:57.2	1479 BC, which is about 150 years before King Tut took the throne. So this tomb was found in
1:06.8	2022. And at the time, archaeologists actually thought it might be a queen's burial because it was really close to some other queenly tombs, including the wife of King Tutmos II, Hatshepsut.
1:21.3	But there was a ton of ancient flood damage in this tomb, And it had destroyed a lot of the interior,
1:29.5	and it had also cemented dirt and debris in front of the door. So it actually took a really long
1:36.2	time to get in there and start figuring out whose tomb it really was. What's really interesting
1:42.1	about this, though, is that his body was not there. So what
1:45.9	they found was this kind of empty tomb. There are relics that have his name on them, that they kind
1:51.9	of tie this to King Tetmos. But his body was actually discovered back in the 19th century
1:58.1	in an entirely different location far away. Why? Well, so the floods.
2:04.6	So the archaeologists say that this tomb's shown signs that it was severely flooded out shortly
2:09.7	after it was completed. And there's also evidence that most of his burial goods and his body
2:15.6	were moved shortly after that. So this was the tomb
2:20.1	that was dug for him, that was made for him, that he was originally buried in. And then it just
2:25.8	got flooded out and he got moved elsewhere. Why did it take so long to find this tomb?
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Science Friday and WNYC Studios, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Science Friday and WNYC Studios and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.