The Tomb of Khentkaus III: A Cautionary Tale of Climate Change?

The reign and remains of a recently discovered “Queen Mother” of ancient Egypt will provide vital new information about the civilization’s distant past, and may provide cautionary information for modern times too.

Queen Khentkaus III, who had graffiti on her looted tomb calling her the Queen Mother, lived around 2450 BC—a couple of hundred years before the Egyptian civilization failed because drought caused the Nile River to stop flooding. Her skull was smashed in, experts believe by grave robbers.

Czech archaeologists found the tomb of Khentkaus III, wife of Pharaoh Neferefre or Reneferef, in November 2015 in the necropolis at Abusir (Abu-sir) southwest of Cairo. The leader of the expedition, Miroslav Barta, says the striking similarities between ancient Egypt’s climate problems and our modern ones mean people of the 21^st century could be facing similar disasters.

A view from above of the chapel of the tomb of Khentkaus III. (Martin Frouz, ČEgÚ FF UK)

Also around the time of the Nile River failure, civilizations in Western Europe and the Middle East collapsed. According to Barta, these past occurrences should provide hints to the modern world: