Tea at Trianon: The Lost Tomb of Thutmose II

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Wednesday, January 28, 2026

The Lost Tomb of Thutmose II

From Earth:

Archaeologists from Egypt and Britain are credited with identifying the tomb of King Thutmose II, the last Eighteenth Dynasty ruler whose burial place had never been located. Crews traced an entrance marked Tomb C4 into a valley 1.5 miles (2.4 kilometers) west of the Valley of the Kings. Survey maps from the University of Cambridge helped guide the mission across Luxor’s west bank. Fieldwork was led by Piers Litherland, an honorary research associate whose excavations track early royal burials outside the main valleys. Careful digging mattered because the first cleared corridor ended in collapse, giving no quick name for the owner. Location near tombs of royal women made the burial look like another consort’s chamber, not a king’s. Archaeologists treat the landscape as evidence, since builders often grouped wives, children, and officials in separate parts of the cliffs.Nearby openings include burials linked to wives of Thutmose III and an intended resting place for Queen Hatshepsut. That context shaped early expectations and delayed a royal claim until later fragments provided a clearer signature. (Read more.)