HICCUPS OF HISTORY : EGYPT'S GLOBAL ESSAY

LOST TO HISTORY - but he had a huge tomb. Newly discovered chamber may rewrite Egypt's past to fit in a mysterious dynasty.

Archaeologists have unearthed the huge tomb of an unknown pharaoh at an Egyptian necropolis, a team of researchers said last Thursday, in the second discovery of a king's tomb this year.

The team of Egyptian and American archaeologists found the tomb, which the researchers estimate is  3,600  years old, nearly 23 feet [ seven meters ] underground at Abydos, one of the oldest cities of ancient Egypt.

The city about 300 miles [ 480 kilometers ] south of Cairo, was burial place for early pharaohs, and a necropolis developed at Anubis Mountains in the city's south.

Researchers uncovered the tomb at the mountain, at the base of a high desert cliff where strong winds carry gusts of sand. In some places around the necropolis, sand has buried structures more than 16 or  19 feet deep.

The burial chamber features a decorated entryway, several rooms and soaring 16-foot vaults made of mud bricks. It dwarfs a romb unearthed at Abydos over a decade ago, which was hailed at the time as the first material proof of a ''lost'' dynasty of kings there.

'' It's a new chapter in investigating this dynasty,'' Josef Wegner, a curator at the Penn Museum in Philadelphia and the leader of the American side of the expedition, said in an interview on Wednesday. '' It's pretty exciting.''

Egypt's Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities briefly described the findings at Abydos earlier this month, but researchers at the Penn Museum announced more about the discovery on Thursday.

Similarities between the unearthed tomb and the one discovered in 2014, which belonged to a king named Seneb-Kay, have led the archaeologists to conclude that as-yet-unknown pharaoh may have been an earlier member of the so-called Abydos dynasty.

In the newly discovered tomb, painted screens on plastered brickwork decorate the entrance to the limestone burial chamber, showing the goddess Isis and her sister Nephthys, who were often paired in funerary rites.

'' This tomb and Seneb-Kay's tomb are the earliest surviving royal tombs that actually have painted decorations inside,'' Mr. Wegner said.

But there were no identifiable skeletal remains at the newly unearthed site and, like a tomb found near the Valley of the Kings this year, the one at Abydos has suffered major damage over the centuries.

The World Students Society thanks Alan Yuhas.