Dr. Zahi Hawass shows the New Discoveries in Drabu el Naga

We are in the site of Drabu el Naga - a known site of the nobles' tombs. The site of Drabu el Naga, I can see is virgin. We just started the excavation and we found a new tomb. The owner of this tomb is written in the seal, and his name is Amen-em-opet. And it seems that the name 'Amun' inside the tomb was scratched, maybe in the Amarna period. But also in the same time the tomb was reused in the late 19th Dynasty, at the beginning of the Third Intermediate period perhaps, by a man called Ray. This shawabti has his name written and it was found inside the tomb. The shawabtis were put inside the tomb to answer the questions in the spirit of the deceased in the afterlife and also to do the tasks and to serve the deceased.

This is another area where the Egyptian expedition from the west bank of Luxor is working. And the excavation seems very interesting, because they found two important tombs. One of them contains the scene of the deceased - his name is not clear - it's scratching. But that person was a high priest of the god Montu. And you see him with his wife worshiping the god Montu, and the other scenes of Isis, Osiris and Nephtys and other gods also. And this looks like it is not really a New Kingdom tomb, as Late period tomb. They have not excavated the tomb yet, they started to seal the entrance and they need to excavate the stone rubble now.

The second one is very interesting. The name of the person is written as Ankh-min, and from looking inside the tomb before the excavation it looks like this tomb is dated to the reign of Ramesses III. And it looks very interesting, it has the scenes of the deceased in front of Osiris. And I think, when this tomb will be excavated, it looks stolen, but it would be very interesting to survey all of the tomb and do conservation and restoration of the tomb and then show a very interesting site which has just been found recently.

We think that maybe some of – most of – the tombs here could be opened before or stolen, but I think and believe that this area could also contain some intact tombs. And we're hoping that the houses that were built above them saved these tombs for us.