Archeology has a triumvirate of classic finds by which all others are measured: Troy, Machu Picchu and the undisturbed tomb of King Tutankhamun. That list may have grown to four last month after American archeologist Otto Schaden and his team uncovered the first cache of intact mummies in the Valley of the Kings in over 80 years — not 15 feet away from the mouth of King Tut’s tomb.

Schaden is the director of the Amenmesse project and is employed by the University of Memphis’ Institute of Egyptian Art and Archeology. Schaden conducts his work in the Valley of the Kings under the auspices of the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities.

In an exclusive interview with Egypt Today at the site, he spoke on what is likely to be a memorable high point of his career. Excerpts:

Otto Schaden: First off, we didn’t stumble — we were not even searching for it! [laughs] What we were doing is excavating these workmen’s huts. In doing so, we had decided that we would not just do the tops of the huts, we would check underneath. What I didn’t want was for someone to come by 10 or 20 years later and say, “Boy, were they stupid for missing this!”

So we were looking to examine the huts and thought that while we had the opportunity, we would look below. On the last day of last year’s season, we were in the final corner and we were going to finish that and be done with the huts and go back to work on other things, and that’s when we hit the top of this shaft.

David Lee Wilson The entrance to the mummy cache

It was too late in the season to start it, so we planned to come back this year and we got the approvals to continue. Last week, we finally reached the bottom of the shaft and hit the doorway. We made a hole and with some difficulty started to look in.

We had the people that were out with us last year, and they of course knew, but we could only deal with what you might call our ‘inner circle.’ We had to maintain ‘radio silence,’ as the old military term goes, so we could do our preparations in quiet. We filled in this whole area last year and prepared it in such a way that it could be emptied easily this year. We got the approvals to continue, and this year we came out and mapped it all and cleared it back out until we hit the tomb.

I sent Dr. Zahi Hawass e-mails and as developments occur we keep him apprised of our activities. I just sent him some new pictures yesterday, in fact.

I don’t think that there is anything beyond. It is a shaft chamber and it looks like only one chamber. As was reported, there are a number of coffins in there with some of them in pretty bad shape, but some look to be in good shape as well. We are still just excavating in the door and we have done some mapping and photography inside, but we are not yet to the stage where we can get close enough to study the coffins or to see what is inside or to even see if there are any names, and we are most anxious to find some names.

Not really. We don’t like to speculate. I like to work it like this: We will see when we are there. We work toward it, and if the conditions are right and the inscriptions are there, we will be able to tell you who it is.

It may be someone we know, or it may be someone we don’t know, and that has happened in the Valley before.

If we have the names, yes. But there was a tomb found in the Valley, number 36, and it was a single shaft with one chamber like this one and it was found intact in the 1890s. It belonged to a man named Maiherperi, and many of the objects that were in there are important pieces in the Cairo Museum. Until they found his tomb, we had no idea of his existence. So, if these coffins that we have are inscribed, they may be somebody that we know or they may be someone totally new to us.

There are many officials and members of the royal family that we know nothing about and so the possibilities are great.

We hope so!

That is hard to say until we finish since we don’t know who they are. It makes it very difficult to give a value to their importance. Of all the tombs that you have here and all the nobles’ tombs, it is only a fraction of all the people who lived here over thousands of years.

The names that we do know add up to an impressive list but compared to the people that existed here it is just a smidgen. et