Egyptian authorities have identified tomb C4 in Wadi C on the Theban mountain, west of Luxor, as the burial site of Thutmose II, filling the last gap in the known tombs of the Eighteenth Dynasty’s kings. The entrance and corridor were first uncovered in October 2022, but the site was initially misattributed before alabaster vessel fragments inscribed with the pharaoh’s name confirmed the identification. The discovery, however, sharpens an older puzzle: the mummy long assigned to Thutmose II, cataloged as Cairo CG 61066 and now housed at the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization, has faced scholarly challenges to its identification, leaving the actual remains of the king in question even as his tomb resurfaces.
Why the last missing Eighteenth Dynasty tomb changes the record
Tomb C4 sits roughly 2.4 kilometers west of the Valley of the Kings, according to the ministry announcement. That distance is significant. Most Eighteenth Dynasty pharaohs were buried inside the Valley itself or in its immediate environs. The placement of Thutmose II’s tomb outside that perimeter raises a direct architectural question: was the king originally interred at this remote site, or was his burial prepared elsewhere and later moved?
The ministry’s characterization of C4 as the last lost tomb of the Eighteenth Dynasty kings means every ruler in that dynasty now has a known burial location. Before this find, Thutmose II was the sole holdout, an absence that complicated efforts to map how royal tomb design evolved from Ahmose I through Horemheb. With C4 on the record, Egyptologists can now compare its layout, depth, and decorative program against tombs like KV42 and KV35 in the Valley of the Kings. If C4’s architecture matches early Valley prototypes, it would suggest the king’s burial was planned for one location and executed in another, a pattern seen with other rulers whose tombs were disturbed by ancient looters or political rivals.
The hypothesis is testable. Non-destructive 3-D scanning of C4’s chambers and corridors, paired with residue analysis of any remaining foundation deposits, could reveal whether the tomb was completed and used or abandoned partway through construction. No full excavation report, stratigraphic data, or complete artifact catalog from C4 has been released beyond the initial announcement, so these comparisons remain prospective rather than settled.
Alabaster fragments and a 19th-century cache tie the evidence together
The identification of C4 rests on physical artifacts recovered from the site. Alabaster vessel fragments bearing the name of Thutmose II were found inside the tomb, according to Egypt’s Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities. The ministry noted that the tomb’s entrance and corridor were first located in October 2022 but were initially attributed to a different owner. The inscribed fragments overturned that earlier reading, though the primary records explaining the exact sequence of evidence that corrected the misattribution have not been published in detail. For now, the alabaster pieces provide the strongest direct link between the tomb and the historical king.
The mummy side of the story traces back to 1881, when a body identified as Thutmose II was recovered from the Deir el-Bahari cache, known as TT 320. That cache held dozens of royal mummies that ancient priests had gathered and reburied to protect them from tomb robbers. The National Museum of Egyptian Civilization states that the mummy was moved to the cache after disturbance of the original tomb and that its wrappings bore inscriptions naming the king. On 3 April 2021, it was transferred from the Egyptian Museum in Tahrir to the NMEC facility in Fustat as part of the Pharaohs’ Golden Parade, a televised procession of 22 royal mummies meant to highlight Egypt’s conservation efforts.
Yet the identification of that mummy has not gone unchallenged. A peer-reviewed reassessment published in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology by Habicht and colleagues examined how Eighteenth Dynasty royal mummy identifications were originally made. The study found that many attributions, including the one for Cairo CG 61066, rely heavily on descriptions recorded by Gaston Maspero and Emile Brugsch during the late 19th century. Those initial identifications were often based on coffin labels and wrapping inscriptions rather than on anatomical or genetic evidence. The study did not declare the mummy definitively misidentified, but it exposed the fragility of the evidentiary chain linking the physical remains to the historical king.
No DNA confirmation and no full tomb report leave two open questions
Two gaps in the evidence stand out. First, no recent peer-reviewed CT scan, DNA analysis, or isotopic study of the Cairo CG 61066 mummy has been published by NMEC or the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities to address the doubts raised in the literature. The museum’s own description emphasizes the mummy’s physical condition and historical context but does not cite genetic work that would anchor the identification within a broader royal family tree. In the absence of such testing, the link between the body in Fustat and the name on its wrappings remains essentially documentary rather than biological.
Second, the archaeological dossier for tomb C4 is still thin. The ministry’s announcement confirms the discovery of the entrance, corridor, and some interior spaces, along with the alabaster fragments and other funerary materials. It does not, however, provide a full plan of the tomb, a detailed list of objects, or a discussion of stratigraphy that would clarify whether the structure was ever used for a royal interment. Without that level of documentation, it is difficult to say whether C4 functioned as Thutmose II’s primary burial, a secondary hiding place, or an unfinished project later repurposed.
These two uncertainties intersect. If future work showed that C4 contained only token offerings or secondary deposits, that might support the idea that Thutmose II was buried elsewhere and that the mummy in TT 320 could indeed be his, moved from a now-lost or destroyed tomb. Conversely, if C4 eventually yields a royal burial chamber with clear evidence of a king’s interment but no matching mummy, the case for reevaluating the identity of Cairo CG 61066 would grow stronger. At present, both the tomb and the body sit in a kind of evidentiary limbo.
How officials present Thutmose II to the public
Official narratives lean toward continuity rather than doubt. The Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities describes the newly identified tomb as the resting place of Thutmose II and highlights its location in Wadi C as an extension of the royal landscape around Luxor. In parallel, the ministry’s dedicated page on the king’s mummy presents Cairo CG 61066 as the pharaoh himself, emphasizing its rescue from ancient looters and its role in modern exhibitions.
NMEC follows the same line. Its gallery text for Thutmose II positions the mummy within a sequence of Eighteenth Dynasty rulers and underscores its inclusion in the 2021 parade as part of a national effort to showcase royal remains under improved conservation conditions. Neither institution foregrounds the scholarly doubts raised in specialist journals, a gap that reflects the tension between public heritage storytelling and the slower, more tentative pace of academic revision.
For visitors, the result is a neatly closed loop: a king with a named mummy in Fustat and a named tomb in the Theban mountain. For researchers, the picture is more complicated. The alignment of tomb C4, the Deir el-Bahari cache, and the modern museum display offers a promising framework, but critical pieces of evidence-especially genetic data and a comprehensive excavation report-are still missing.
What comes next for Thutmose II’s story
The rediscovery of tomb C4 ensures that Thutmose II will remain at the center of debates about royal burial practices in the Eighteenth Dynasty. As fieldwork continues in Wadi C, archaeologists will be watching for any inscriptions, architectural features, or undisturbed deposits that might clarify how, and even whether, the tomb was used. At the same time, advances in ancient DNA and imaging could eventually provide the kind of high-resolution profile of Cairo CG 61066 that scholars need to test its long-standing label.
Until those studies are carried out and published, the story of Thutmose II will straddle two registers: an official narrative that confidently pairs king, tomb, and mummy, and a scholarly one that treats each link in that chain as provisional. The new tomb does not resolve that tension; it makes it visible. In doing so, it turns what might have been a tidy closing chapter in Eighteenth Dynasty research into an open invitation for further investigation.
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*This article was researched with the help of AI, with human editors creating the final content.
