LUXOR, Egypt — Out of the blinding light of a fall morning here in the Valley of the Kings, American archaeologist Kent Weeks led the way down a narrow, stone passageway and into the entrance of a tomb.
Weeks peered his flashlight into the enveloping darkness of "the hidden tomb," as he calls it, and pressed on through the damp, winding passages toward what may be his archaeological team's most significant find after years of methodical digging, scraping, and brushing.
At the end of a long hallway a human skull rested, propped up in a wooden box, and framed in the bleak light of a bare bulb powered by a generator that rumbled through the stony silence of the tomb.
This skull — Weeks believes, and new scientific evidence suggests — may be that of the oldest son of Rameses II, the pharaoh who most historians agree was the ruler of ancient Egypt more than 3,000 years ago at the time of the biblical story of the Exodus.
If so, this is the skull of a man who the Hebrew Bible says was killed by the 10th of the horrible plagues God sent to persuade the pharaoh to free the Hebrew slaves. And if so, it contains an important new piece of forensic evidence: The skull has a depressed fracture on the left hand side that pathologists say clearly occurred at the time of death.
In other words, Weeks's discovery could have profound implications for understanding a biblical narrative that is at the core of Judaism, and part of the foundation of Christianity and Islam. It raises the question as to whether the oldest son of the pharaoh of the Exodus was struck down not by the hand of God, as the Bible says, but by the hand of man. And if that is true, perhaps the 10th plague became a metaphor for the early death that befell the pharaoh's oldest son.
Weeks this fall secured permission from Egyptian authorities to clean and examine this skull and three others that — because of their position in the tomb and writing on the walls — he believes are also sons of Rameses II. Weeks' team has used the latest scientific techniques in forensics and computer imaging to try to match the skulls to their probable father, Rameses II.
"Careful scientific analysis of the human remains we have found in KV 5 can help us to determine if they are, in fact, the crown prince's," said Weeks, who lives on a houseboat along the Nile at Luxor and who has devoted his life to fulfilling a boyhood dream of becoming an Egyptologist. "New technologies are letting Egyptologists explore areas that just a few years ago we thought impossible. They offer methodologies that might help us determine at what point this person was killed and how."
Weeks's archaeological work and the forensic study of it are part of a broad movement to understand the Bible and the historical context in which its stories took place by employing not just faith, but science.
Pitting hard questions against long-held assumptions, respected practitioners of biblical archaeology are often quick to point out that their intention is not to prove — or disprove — the Bible, but rather to shed more light on the context in which the biblical stories occurred.
The story of how Weeks found this skull and three others in a deep burial chamber begins in the 1980s. He was conducting a project mapping the area of ancient Thebes, including the Valley of the Kings, a vast ancient burial ground of the pharaohs that was first discovered in the 19th century.
As he toiled away to update the 19th century mapping system, he realized the maps indicated an entrance to a tomb known as "KV5," which had been covered over with debris by excavation work through the decades. He sought to rediscover that entry and see where it led.
He had no idea his work would lead him to stumble upon one of the great archaeological prizes of the last half century, and the fulfillment of a lifetime of work.
In 1995, he and his team uncovered a tiny portal that archaeologists and tourists had been walking past for nearly 175 years, never bothering to take notice.
Using pick axes, the team chipped away until it found a small crawl space that led to a long hallway. He and his team soon realized they had discovered a vast, underground labyrinth of burial chambers and corridors that had been hidden by the silt and sediment of centuries of flooding in the valley.
The more than 100 chambers formed a family burial plot for at least 20 sons of Rameses II, the vain and powerful pharaoh who presided over the greatest building projects of any pharaoh, who sired more than 100 children with at least 20 wives, and who eventually proclaimed himself a living god.
As he began further excavations, Weeks and his team discovered a wall inscription dedicated to Amun-her-khepeshef, the first-born son of Rameses II, as well as four intact human skulls, including the one with the fracture. That skull was positioned at the entryway, near a relief picturing Rameses II leading his oldest son to the afterlife.
The discovery of the "lost tomb," or KV5, was widely regarded as the greatest archaeological find since King Tutankhamun, and it received worldwide media attention when it was first announced.
But it was not until this fall that Weeks was permitted by the Egyptian Antiquities Ministry to begin scientific tests on the skull — a first chance to test his theory that it may be the oldest son of Rameses II.
Using a forensic technique known as craniometrics, which relies on statistical measurements of parts of a skull to establish genetic connections and matches to another skull, Dr. Caroline Wilkinson of Manchester University has reported surprising similarities between three of the four skulls — including the one that may be Amun-her-khepeshef's — and the skull of Rameses II himself, which is housed in the mummy room of Cairo Museum.
"They've all got very similar morphology — very similar features to their faces, similar noses, similar long thin faces, similar long skulls in profile. They do look like they are of a type, certainly," said Wilkinson, adding that she felt there was a high statistical probability that the skulls are from the same family.
Archaeologists, historians and ecologists who study the Nile have pieced together an explanation of the biblical plagues in the story of Exodus in a way that makes them seem historically possible, even if perhaps the time sequence in which they occurred was compressed to fit the biblical narrative.
The first nine plagues — the Nile turned red, frogs, flies, gnats, pestilence killing cattle, boils appearing on the skin, hail, locusts, and the sun being blotted out — could all be seen, according to leading British Egyptologist and Rameside expert Kenneth Kitchen, as natural phenomena that have been recorded through Egyptian history.
But the 10th plague, the death of the first-born sons, would seem to defy scientific explanation.
Exodus 11:4-6 states: "This saith the Lord, at the hour of midnight I will go out into the midst of Egypt: And all of the firstborn in the land of Egypt shall die from the first-born of pharaoh who sits upon the throne . . . "
If indeed the skull discovered by Weeks is that of the crown prince of Rameses II, historians and archaeologists are left to ponder how the deep fracture in his skull occurred.
The many depictions of Amun-her-khepeshef as a military general marching into military campaigns suggest that it was possible he was killed by an enemy in battle, or perhaps in a fall from a chariot.
Some historians had long thought that perhaps he was killed in battle against a slave revolt by the Hebrews, but there is no historical record to back up the theory.
Others suggest that perhaps the crown prince was killed in a conspiracy — a power struggle within the royal court. Historians paint a backdrop of a court that may have been suffering from a series of misfortunes along the Nile, which was then, as now, the lifeblood of Egypt.
Is it possible that Moses was in fact a rival prince struggling against a crown prince, who had set out to erase what he saw as a heretical belief in one god instead of many? The Hebrews, whose faith is based on the belief in one God, and some Egyptian priests and families within the court clung to the rebellious beliefs of an earlier and fallen pharaoh known as Akhenaten. That pharaoh, who placed the idea of one god above the other Egyptian gods, spurred a revolution, only to see monotheism pushed underground and wiped out of recorded history by subsequent rulers including Rameses II.
Weeks does not consider it his task to make such guesses, but only to keep digging, trying to uncover more pieces of the forensic puzzle to where they lead him, and what new questions they may pose. DNA testing may hold the ultimate key to establishing the paternity line, but "We're not quite ready for that," he said, citing the need for official approval of the testing, and concerns that 3,000-year-old samples may not be reliable.
Weeks sees value in the journey toward discovery, and seems to enjoy each step along the way.
"Well, we can't prove that there was an Exodus or there was not. But I think we have provided something — we fleshed out old bones — we have made them more meaningful and more significant in the lives of modern man," he said.
A two-hour Discovery Channel documentary special, involving Sennott, explores the work of Weeks's archaeological team and what it reveals about the biblical story of the Exodus. It will be aired Dec. 5.