Archaeologists working on Luxor's West Bank have opened a private tomb whose painted walls still show its owner worshipping the gods and sitting down to a meal with his wife. Inscriptions give his name: Paser. The rock-cut chapel dates to the Ramesside period, roughly three millennia ago.
The find was announced by Egypt's tourism and antiquities ministry and made by a Dutch mission from Leiden University in the Sheikh Abd el-Qurna necropolis, part of the vast Theban burial ground across the river from modern Luxor. Hisham El-Leithy, Secretary-General of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, said the inscriptions identify Paser as the tomb's owner.
The dating rests on the artistic style of the decoration rather than on any inscribed year: specialists place the tomb in the Ramesside period, spanning Egypt's 19th and 20th dynasties – the era that included Ramesses II. The layout supports that reading. An open courtyard leads into a chapel cut into the rock in the shape of an inverted "T", with burial chambers hollowed out below ground level, the standard plan for private Theban tombs of the New Kingdom, conventionally dated 1570 to 1069 BC. The tomb lies east of a previously known burial site.
What survived, and what didn't
Some of the architecture came through the centuries intact. In the courtyard the team found a mudbrick bench built to support a stone funerary stela – though the stela itself is missing, if one ever sat on it – along with a staircase flanked by sloping ramps leading to the entrance. Inside, the frescoes show Paser before deities in their shrines, and, on a second panel, seated beside his wife at an offering table.
Who is actually buried there remains unknown. The chambers below may hold a number of people beyond Paser himself, and the team says documentation and study will continue in order to identify them and to establish the tomb's historical context.
The tomb is not an isolated prize. It surfaced during a survey directed since 2018 by Carina van den Hoven, an effort that pairs excavation with proactive conservation and aims to produce the first comprehensive archaeological survey of Lower Sheikh Abd el-Qurna, one of the most important burial areas of the Theban Necropolis. A study now in preparation is expected to shed new light on the area and on how its tombs relate to their neighbours.
There is a practical dimension too. Egypt has been promoting new archaeological finds to support tourism, a key source of foreign currency – and Luxor, home to some of the world's most significant ancient monuments, is central to that effort.