The Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities has announced the new discovery of a royal tomb at a temple in the ancient city of Luxor, the official Mena news agency reported.

MENA quoted Mahmoud Afifi, head of the Ancient Egyptian Antiquities Department of the ministry, as saying that the tomb of King Thutmose III was found near the southern wall of the Millions of Years Temple by a group of Spanish archaeologists.

Afifi added that the Spani

sh mission, who began to dig at the site in 2008, found a coffin containing a mummy in very good condition inside the tomb and that the initial studies indicated the remains were of a royal house servant named Amenrenef.

This would date the tomb back to the Pharaonic Third Intermediate Period around 1,000 years B.C.

Significant discovery

"The mission will do in-depth studies of the tomb and its contents to find out more about its owner," Afifi told Mena.

Myriam Seco Alvarez, an Egyptologist and head of the Spanish mission, said that the significance of the discovery lies in the mummy found inside the coffin, "as it contains many colored ornaments and carries a group of religious symbols from ancient Egypt."

She said the inscriptions included the goddesses Isis and Nephthys with their wings spread and the four sons of god Horus.

Luxor, often called the "world's greatest open-air museum" because of the number of tombs, temples and monuments in the area, was named by the United Nations World Tourism Organization as the World Tourism Capital for 2016.