alt.hn

7/15/2026 at 8:35:46 AM

Sealed tomb filled with paintings and inscriptions discovered in Egypt

 https://www.labrujulaverde.com/en/2026/07/sealed-tomb-of-a-high-official-or-priest-filled-with-paintings-and-inscriptions-discovered-on-luxors-west-bank/

by isaacfrond

7/20/2026 at 1:03:20 PM

I was in Egypt in 2011, a couple months after the big riots. I was advised not to go and went anyway. It was well worth it. I went to the Great Pyramid at ten or eleven one morning and there were maybe a dozen people in the entire area. I went inside it completely alone, and the guard let me lie down inside the sarcophagus in the King's Chamber. I don't have a word for what the energy was like in there. Palpable to say the least. If I could do it over I'd have stayed in longer. I hired a driver and did the Red Pyramid and Saqqara the same way, alone. People can debate the ethics of opening tombs all day, but going inside one is something else. A new one still turning up in 2026 is just cool.

by glasffordd

7/20/2026 at 1:13:43 PM

There’s some debate as to whether the Red pyramid itself is even a tomb at all, given the same Pharaoh (Sneferu) also constructed the Bent and Meidum pyramids and there’s no evidence of a sarcophagus or other burial equipment in any of them. Which we wouldn’t know if we had never explored them.

by derektank

7/20/2026 at 4:26:52 PM

What made you want to lie down in a sarcophagus? Weren’t you afraid of any ancient bacteria from the mummy?

by adithyassekhar

7/20/2026 at 4:44:43 PM

Any bacteria that survived that many thousands of years would just give you superpowers anyway, I've seen the documentaries.

by bombcar

7/20/2026 at 6:49:01 PM

> Weren’t you afraid of any ancient bacteria from the mummy?

I don't think we're certain that the sarcophagus ever contained a mummy.

by mcphage

7/21/2026 at 5:33:21 PM

Yea, could've been a daddy, maybe just some person who didn't have kids. Who's to say.

by KyleTheDev

7/21/2026 at 5:48:35 PM

Families come in all shapes and sizes, even for the ancient Egyptians!

by mcphage

7/20/2026 at 9:36:28 AM

The value of exploring tombs for the purpose of illuminating ancient cultures is inestimable. It seems humans have always been happy desecrating burial sites if not for treasure then to prove dominance over another tribe or nation.

Of course some exploitation is beyond permissible. Back in the 18th and 19th centuries there was an artist's pigment called Mummy Brown. It was sold for many decades, a rich, transparent brown unlike other brown pigments. It was made from actual mummies scrounged from unknown sources in Egypt. These were not the remains of royalty, rather these mummies were those of common people. Apparently until the early 20th century there was an ample supply of these remains to satisfy demand. Eventually the availability of mummies diminished and by 1915 the pigment quality became erratic and subsequently disappeared from the marketplace.

Comparatively, respectful exploration of ancient tombs is a whole different program than things our species has demonstrated a willingness to do.

by jrapdx3

7/20/2026 at 9:40:33 AM

The other reason there are few mummies left is that we ate them.

by inigyou

7/20/2026 at 9:52:35 AM

If you doubt that it's true, do a bit of research and find out if it's so.

Here's one source[0], there are others.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mummy_brown

by jrapdx3

7/20/2026 at 11:22:37 AM

There's a difference between eating and using them as paint, though.

by fragmede

7/21/2026 at 5:00:03 AM

Everything on earth is made of the dead severaal times over.

by warumdarum

7/20/2026 at 11:31:16 AM

The article links to a source describing medicinal use.

by vidarh

7/20/2026 at 10:58:45 AM

... or used as firewood

by kakacik

7/20/2026 at 11:11:35 AM

Made me think of Ozymandias, king of kings.

by octocop

7/20/2026 at 12:25:09 PM

It’s not actually a rule that every HN thread has to start out with negative bullshit. You can just think it’s cool they found a new tomb!

by acheron

7/20/2026 at 3:00:43 PM

HN is really good at contrary takes, regardless of the topic. I'm sure I've done some. I guess there's value in seeing the other side of most issues, but sometimes it does feel pretty knee-jerky.

by Loughla

7/21/2026 at 5:08:09 AM

Colonial horror stories with subtile racist undertones. Only white people could do such evils and become acteurs in history. Exceptionally evil, superior you could even say and the only ones locked into a story of repentantce in topdown anti colonial revolution.

Everyone is heartily sick of this, no explanation power and thus not helping anyone to overcome anything. The Rosamunde Pilcher, of looking at history.

by warumdarum

7/20/2026 at 7:40:41 AM

[flagged]

by happa

7/20/2026 at 8:50:03 AM

Nothing remains here - only walls.

Most of these tombs have already, since ancient times, been looted and desecrated and most things inside including any human remains have long since been removed. It looks like this tomb is also in this category as all that remains of note are on the walls which cannot be easily removed.

I seem to recall a story that even at the time when they were building pyramids in ancient Egypt that they had a problem with looters of the older tombs.

Additionally: The use of the word "Sealed" in the title is not present in the text and I propose is click bait for attention and an emotional reaction. Looks like that strategy still works.

by thinkingemote

7/20/2026 at 1:29:30 PM

> they had a problem with looters of the older tombs

In the Valley of the Kings, I think they had a problem with the builders looting the same tombs they had just built.

Cursory searching found overseer Paneb: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paneb ... if I pieced it together right, he was in trouble for looting a tomb within 20 years of its construction.

by card_zero

7/20/2026 at 1:23:05 PM

If the tomb has been looted and desecrated, then in what sense is it sealed?

Edit: I'm asking about the title of this article.

by criddell

7/20/2026 at 2:59:59 PM

That's the point GP was making.

by IAmBroom

7/20/2026 at 9:58:10 AM

Yeah, and "Filled"... with paintings and inscriptions: isn't exactly full of anything, then, is it.

by ButlerianJihad

7/20/2026 at 8:12:28 AM

When referring to really ancient tombs you're fortunately in a diminishingly small minority or we wouldn't know a fraction about some culture's history compared to what we know now. Whether it is Egyptian tombs like this one, Viking burial mounds, stone age Dolmen or any of the other ancient burial sites, those are where much of the knowledge of these cultures come from.

by Leonard_of_Q

7/20/2026 at 2:29:06 PM

ive been to a few dolmen and places like those, a lot of them were already desecrated thousands of years ago and then desecrated again 2000 years ago etc. id much rather have those bones and artifacts dug up and placed somewhere they wont be destroyed and the symbolism of the structure can still remain to be appreciated.

by exhumet

7/20/2026 at 7:48:36 AM

What's the moral guidance and purpose of a tomb of someone who's mourning has passed for over 3 millennia and who has been forgotten due to time?

by consp

7/20/2026 at 7:58:24 AM

This. Forgetting is the biggest crime. Anything in the other direction is atoning.

by dsign

7/20/2026 at 3:02:00 PM

Recite for me the names of even 100 people you have known who have died.

Otherwise, you are a terrible "criminal" by your own standard.

by IAmBroom

7/20/2026 at 4:53:37 PM

Anyone who's passed high school history should be able to name a hundred dead people. Kings, Popes, Hitlers, Caesars.

by ceejayoz

7/20/2026 at 2:21:00 PM

well, it's clear from the objects still being in the tombs when the raiders came to plunder that they dead did not take the items into the afterlife with them. This clearly shows they are not being used by the original owners.

by dylan604

7/20/2026 at 8:53:00 AM

If I were in a tomb for 2000 year I wouldn't even mind if they can learn about the history of my era 2000 years later

by Aardwolf

7/20/2026 at 11:13:42 AM

Kind of; gravesites are cleared out every once in a while when the families have moved on, iirc over here you buy the rights to a gravesite for like 50-70 years. The coffins / remains are then reburied in a mass gravesite, buried deeper, or (if chosen) cremated.

by Cthulhu_

7/20/2026 at 7:42:53 AM

I was just thinking this, do we regularly breaking into tombs in the rest of the world? I guess some of the cathedrals themselves are tombs and are big tourist attractions.

by killingtime74

7/20/2026 at 8:04:23 AM

Most cemeteries in Europe have been destroyed to make space for urbanisation. The underground of Paris is full of bones from those cemetaries (catacombs of Paris). It's fairly common as outside of a few aristocratic families, people keep a very short memory of their ancestry. I have a very vague knowledge of who my ancestors were back to the mid XIX century and nothing prior. Hard to have any emotional attachment to people you never heard about. So if no one cares, better to build a parking lot!

by cm2187

7/20/2026 at 8:27:34 AM

Some cemeteries in London reuse graves after just 75 years

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_London_Cemetery_and_Cr...

I have very vivid memories as a child of walking through Brookwood Cemetary in south east England seeing a big machine crunching up headstones. Vast swathes of the place was flattened. The cheat code here seems to be "topple testing" for health and safety reasons.

It's the UKs largest cemetery and in a shocking state:

https://lostlcp.com/brookwood-cemetery-reburials/

by nly

7/20/2026 at 8:51:59 AM

There is a park in Brussels where you literally walk on alleys paved with tombstones from the Jewish cemetery. You can still see some of the inscriptions there.

by sam_lowry_

7/20/2026 at 1:34:04 PM

Which park?

by pocksuppet

7/20/2026 at 3:49:16 PM

Georges-Henri

by sam_lowry_

7/20/2026 at 9:26:43 AM

On the continent, afaik most countries work on a lease system, you rent a plot for a few decades (which may or may not be renewable). Some countries have a “perpetual” lease with an ongoing fee, a few years after the payment stops the plot gets cycled.

‘Course space requirements are also a factor, if you have a family plot in a depopulated village in the countryside odds are good plots will be cheap and renewable forever.

by masklinn

7/20/2026 at 9:38:03 AM

Old church with over hundred years old tombstones around it is literally an English landmark. Even in central London. Tombstones you mention belong to people from wrong social class.

by lifestyleguru

7/20/2026 at 12:28:33 PM

I am not even sure about social class. In any case these old cemeteries are preserved probably more as historical artefacts, like an old Roman wall would be in London, rather than out of respect for the dead.

by cm2187

7/20/2026 at 3:24:20 PM

I've spent some time on genealogy, and really beyond grandparents and maybe great grandparents it's mostly curiosity and for the interesting stories, and I only care about the graves to the extent that it makes solving the puzzles easier. It's not like there is anyone alive in my family who knew older ancestors of mine than my great grandparents.

For my part I've only ever seen even my dads grave once, and feel no need to go back there, though I understand why some might feel it matters to have the grave of someone they knew in person because of the emotional attachment.

by vidarh

7/20/2026 at 6:17:55 PM

It's a bit of a paradox: burial rites are among the earliest and most fundamental elements of any society we know of; but long-term maintenance of burial sites has always been a challenge. That's probably because, after all the fanfare to honour the dead (which is mostly a way to minimize immediate social disruption), everyone eventually moves on.

by toyg

7/20/2026 at 7:42:31 PM

When my dad died, the funeral mattered to me. But the grave does not. Of course to some it does, but it doesn't take long before everyone it mattered to are dead too. I think it's fine to keep graves for those who cares, but that shouldn't really obligate society to keep them around very long.

by vidarh

7/20/2026 at 7:56:12 AM

Yes, we regularly (for some definition of "regularly") uncover human burial sites (both as part of planned archaeological excavations and accidentally during construction) all around the world, including Europe, Asia, and the Americas. If you're asking specifically about tombs then the answer is also yes.

by viciousvoxel

7/20/2026 at 9:04:20 AM

US and UK phrenologists encouraged a lot of grave descration, often not even waiting for a corpse to be interned before shipping the remains out.

  Yagan’s murder by colonial settlers was, even by the day’s standards, an act of hideous violence. That his head was subsequently removed and dispatched to England as a biological curio, a specimen to aid the discredited voodoo science of phrenology – whereby racial intelligence and personality could purportedly be determined by cranial distinctions – added indignity to death.
~ https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/postcolonial-blog...

Easy to write off as the bizzarro actions of those gosh darned old timey folks ...

  A naked life size bronze of Aboriginal warrior Yagan, resting a spear across the back of his shoulders. It is quite evident that the head of Yagan is not the original one (rather oversized, has a far too long a neck and is an altogether different shade). I must say that because the statue’s head has been stolen twice (and given the way Yagan died), the sculpture now takes on a strange and ironic overtone.
~ https://publicartaroundtheworld.com/public-art-in-australia/...

but yeah, they just keep stealing that head.

by defrost

7/20/2026 at 10:56:50 AM

Christianity has an ancient tradition of relics in which even in the absence of an actual corpse people will just pick up some random bone and be like "this was some old ladies actual hand, it has magic powers now" and then parade it around the city every year.

I just got back from a triple to Naples where there's a church that had a secret skull collecting cult under it for decades, it's a tourist attraction now. Yes it is still full of peoples skulls.

So yes, it seems like there is a statute of limitations on our obedience to the dead.

by __alexs

7/20/2026 at 9:03:12 AM

It's really common to excavate Pagan burial sites in the UK, at least the ones that weren't deliberately built over by Christians.

by RobotToaster

7/20/2026 at 2:35:40 PM

IMO once anyone living has given up caring about you it's fine, and in particular once your burial site has been long forgotten and becomes an archeological discovery then that requirement has generally been satisfied (outside of a few cultures).

by HarHarVeryFunny

7/20/2026 at 10:54:08 AM

We are closer to the Cleopatra than she was to the construction of the great pyramids. Some of those tombs are unfathomably old and anyone who cares has turned to dust a dozen times over.

Unless you believe as they did, I don't see a problem with opening up a tomb.

by gherkinnn

7/20/2026 at 10:57:53 AM

Is it still a tomb if someone already stole all of the human remains centuries ago?

by __alexs

7/20/2026 at 10:05:46 AM

Long after any living person has any memory or recollection of such a place? No, it’s not really wrong anymore. I think it is good to be respectful about it though.

The fate of all things is to become dust.

by nkrisc

7/20/2026 at 8:11:29 AM

Is it desecration, though? I'm all in favor of putting remains back once we've learned what we can from them, but I also think opening graves is fine if it's for a good reason (such as archaeology).

I don't approve of putting bodies on display or storing skull collections in cabinets in universities, but before we ship them off to be buried again it's good to take DNA samples!

by vintermann

7/20/2026 at 8:56:52 AM

Yeah I don’t know if it is necessary “wrong,” but I am a little skeptical of the automatic assumption that disrupting tombs and putting them in museums is a good thing.

There is some educational value, of course, but it’s more just a relic of our “analyze everything, respect nothing” era.

If the past is another country, we certainly aren’t respecting the natives’ wishes.

by keiferski

7/20/2026 at 8:58:34 AM

In Paris they use the corpse of their heroes like Voltaire and Napoleon to flease tourists of their Euros

Using a tomb to expand our knowledge of the ancient world seems like small potatoes in comparison. Overton window is already far off

by geokon

7/20/2026 at 9:44:54 AM

That’s a bit over-selling it. The Panthéon and the Invalides are not really touristic attractions. The Louvre, Versailles, and the Eiffel Tower are much more effective for that purpose. They are used for culture building, not to make money.

Besides, only ashes remain of Napoleon and even the bodies that are there are entombed. They are necropoles, not shows. There isn’t much to see there.

by kergonath

7/20/2026 at 9:36:36 AM

Fleece. But a good play--AI wouldn't make this mistake.

by pseingatl

7/20/2026 at 10:07:17 AM

Thanks :)

by geokon

7/20/2026 at 1:49:37 PM

How is the Pantheon and the Invalides any different from a cemetery? Do you think the mere act of visiting a burial site is immoral?

by suddenlybananas

7/20/2026 at 2:33:57 PM

A cemetery that charges an entrance fee..

by geokon

7/20/2026 at 2:44:12 PM

Plenty of high-profile cemeteries do, Highgate Cemetery in London for example charges a fee despite just being a normal (if high-profile) cemetery. The French don't charge for access to Père-Lachaise however, which is the rough equivalent in Paris.

St. Paul's in London has tombs in it, and it charges a fee! It's a super normal practice.

How else could you manage the amount of people who would go?

by suddenlybananas

7/20/2026 at 1:31:31 PM

If anything is wrong it is preserving human remains to begin with. Waste of space.

by singpolyma3

7/20/2026 at 1:32:27 PM

All physical artifacts older than 5 years should be destroyed and their memories wiped from all human brains. Comrade.

by pocksuppet

7/20/2026 at 11:10:15 AM

I don’t think anyone can lay claim to a plot of land in perpetuity. Reverence should and does fade over time. Maybe when you are initially buried, that plot of earth belongs to you for a while, but after hundreds of years, it’s the other way round: you belong to the earth.

By the way, I don’t think you deserve downvotes for expressing your opinion.

by jl6

7/20/2026 at 9:36:08 AM

Why would we think that? The people in them (for the very few tombs that haven’t been visited or looted already) don’t care; they’ve been dead for millennia.

by kergonath

7/20/2026 at 8:48:19 AM

[flagged]

by wojciii

7/20/2026 at 9:04:50 AM

Ah yes, Elon Musk's famous murderous path to wealth.

by mvdwoord

7/20/2026 at 6:12:16 PM

[flagged]

by IAmBroom

7/20/2026 at 7:13:31 AM

[dead]

by curioussam

7/20/2026 at 1:02:20 PM

Cleopatra was a Ptolemaic Greek descendant in a family so obsessed with blood purity that they married brothers to sisters to avoid mixing with 'native' Egiptians. You make the call.

by kjs3

7/20/2026 at 8:55:32 AM

Why would they?

She was of Greek origin, a descendant from Alexander’s general Ptolemy.

by janandonly

7/20/2026 at 1:08:03 PM

Her family had been in Egypt for 250 years, that's a long time for genetic admixture. Otoh, Continuing the tradition established by previous Egyptian dynasties, the Ptolemies engaged in inbreeding including sibling marriage, with many of the pharaohs being married to their siblings and often co-ruling with them.

  Ptolemy I Soter (305–282 BC)
  [... 20 people ...]
  Cleopatra VII Thea Philopator (51–30 BC)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ptolemaic_dynasty

Edit to append a topical story:

Birmingham native and civil rights activist Angela Davis, known as a part of the Black Power movement of the early 1970s, was shocked to learn that she is descended from a passenger on the Mayflower, one of the first settlers in America.

https://www.al.com/life/2023/02/civil-rights-activist-angela...

by adolph

7/20/2026 at 3:33:29 PM

It is, and it's not impossible there was some, but we have pretty decent records of her ancestry, we know the Ptolemys were shocked by the idea of intermarrying with the local population, and we have busts and paintings and coin profiles of her, so we have evidence of what she looked like as well as pretty much anyone from that era.

You can see several of these here.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleopatra

by simonh

7/20/2026 at 2:09:01 PM

>Her family had been in Egypt for 250 years, that's a long time for genetic admixture

But Egyptians themselves weren't black either. There was one black dynasty from Kush, but "indigenous" Egyptians themselves weren't black.

by suddenlybananas

7/20/2026 at 4:14:13 PM

The part about sibling marriage is just so weird to read nowadays. When did humanity first figure out that inbreeding might be a bad idea?

by sidewndr46

7/20/2026 at 6:54:56 PM

> When did humanity first figure out that inbreeding might be a bad idea?

I suspect it was prior to recorded history.

by mcphage

7/20/2026 at 9:15:22 AM

did you forget the "/s" or is it a serious question?

by blue1

7/20/2026 at 9:23:45 AM

There were black pharaos (current sudan conquered and ruled egypt)

by throw8394498383

7/20/2026 at 4:16:54 PM

Asked gpt to see if it could discern Egyptian hieroglyphs from the image of the tomb wall...

https://i.postimg.cc/Pdw7sw-0W/image.png

The "possible standing figure" on the right seems plausible. Be interested in seeing what the actual painstaking restoration eventually reveals.

by canada_dry

7/20/2026 at 4:53:11 PM

It's easier to just use your eyes, isn't it? The photo in the article is here: https://cdn.labrujulaverde.com/en/wp-content/uploads/2026/07...

There are two standing figures to the right (correctly identified by ChatGPT), and at least two kneeling figures with upraised arms stacked toward the left (ChatGPT puts the bottom figure's arms inside the "legs" of its bunny-shaped green circle).

Scroll down in the article to see a close-up on the kneeling figures.

There is no text visible in the photos from the article, although if you go on to read the text of the article you learn that text was found elsewhere in the tomb, such that we can confidently identify the owner's name (among other things).

by quuxplusone

7/20/2026 at 5:08:10 PM

Mine was simply an exercise to see what gpt's vision would come up with vs. the expert analysis.

by canada_dry