In the early spring of 1925, Mohamadien Ibrahim (part of a team led by George Reisner) scraped the desert sand away from what he thought was the limestone bedrock of the Giza plateau. He quickly realised the surface was not rock, but plaster. Further clearing outlined the edge of a sealed entrance – the unmistakable sign of an intact tomb.
With the world still digesting the news coming almost daily from excavations at the tomb of Tutankhamun, this new discovery caused a sensation. Its location was in a privileged position in the royal cemetery, close to the eastern side of Khufu’s Great Pyramid. Could this new tomb contain the same wealth as that of the boy-king? To whom did it belong?
However, any surface remains of a burial were scanty. There was no visible pyramid monument befitting a member of the royal family. In addition, a vertical shaft cut into the rock, some 27 metres deep, was a significant hurdle to overcome before those questions could be answered.
