At the entrance to an unexcavated tomb, King Ramses the Great, depicted as a god, and a cow representing the goddess Hathor emerge from a rock-cut wall to welcome the deceased to eternity. Hieroglyphs suggest that the remains of a diplomat named Netjerwymes, who negotiated a peace treaty with the Hittites in about 1259 B.C., lie in a chamber beneath this sculpture. “We began to explore, but it was too dangerous to continue without adding supports,” says Alain Zivie, an archaeologist at France’s National Center for Scientific Research. “The burial is intact. Who knows what we’ll find when we go back in?”