Beyond Montet: New discoveries in the royal necropolis of Tanis

For centuries, the ruins of Tanis in the eastern Nile Delta concealed the long-lost burial place of the pharaohs of the Third Intermediate Period. Although the site itself had been known since the 18th century, the royal necropolis remained hidden within the precinct of the Great Temple of Amun. It was not until the late 1930s that excavations led by the French Egyptologist Pierre Montet revealed a remarkable series of royal tombs, reshaping scholarly understanding of this period of Egyptian history. Montet’s excavations Montet began systematic excavations at Tanis (San al-Hagar) in 1929, and spent the next decade clearing parts of the temple precinct before making his breakthrough