Egypt's Culture Minister Farouk Hosni announced Thursday the discovery of a collection of pillars, reliefs and lintels in the town of Luxor, south of Cairo. The discovery was an accident, as the Egyptian restoration workers were investigating a fire in a mosque and found the antiquities present dated back to the new kingdom and the nineteenth Dynasty (1,304 B.C. to 1,237 B.C).

"This all came by accident as our restorers went to work on the mosque Abou Al Hagag Al Luxory that suffered from a fire recently, and we discovered that the mosque is partially built on the Luxor temple," Zahi Hawass, secretary general of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities told reporters.

"We found a large number of pillars and reliefs that were part of the interior walls of the mosque and they belong to the new kingdom. They show very important scenes which will help us understand better the history of the temple." Hawass, who was excited about the new discovery, called it "a rediscovery of the Luxor temple as a whole."

Mansour Boriak, supervisor of Luxor antiquities told reporters that among the reliefs found is one featuring Ramses II while offering the god Amun two obelisks. The others consist of three statues of King Ramses II wearing his royal suit and his white crown.

Important New Ancient Egyptian Discovery Comes By Chance, Manar Ammar, All News headlines, USA, September 21, 2007.

Egyptian archaeologists working in the tomb of the boy pharaoh Tutankhamun have found baskets and intact clay pots apparently overlooked when the tomb was cleared out in the 1920s, the government said on Monday.

The 20 clay pots, sealed with Tutankhamun's name, probably contain seeds and the remains of drinks, a government statement said, quoting chief government archaeologist Zahi Hawass.

One of the baskets contains dried fruit and eight others hold almost 60 small limestone plaques also inscribed with Tutankhamun's name in the traditional cartouche format.

They were found in the treasure room next to the burial chamber where British archaeologist Howard Carter found Tutankhamun's mummy wrapped in its golden covers in 1922.

"Carter didn't mention these things in his report but it looks as though his people put them aside and left them in the treasury room," an official at the Supreme Council for Antiquities said, asking not to be named...

Baskets, pots found abandoned in Tutankhamun tomb, Reuters, Africa, September 24, 2007.

Previously:

Tut's tomb yields more surprises, September 03, 2007.