Feb. 11, 2006 — American archaeologists have found King Tut's neighbors in the Valley of the Kings, making the first discovery of a new tomb in the desert valley since King Tutankhamun's was uncovered in 1922, according to Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities.

Called KV 63 — it is the 63rd discovered since the valley was first mapped in the 18th century — the new, intact tomb was found just 16 feet away from the boy pharaoh's resting place by a team of archaeologists from the University of Memphis, led by Otto Schaden.

Schaden discovered the tomb, buried under 13 feet of rubble and stones, by accident, while conducting "routine digs" on the nearby tomb of King Amenmesses, a 19th Dynasty pharaoh.

"The tomb appears to date to the 18th Dynasty (ca. 1539-1292 B.C.) and it contains five human mummies and several pottery vessels," the University of Memphis said in a statement.

So far, archaeologists have not entered the burial site, as workers are still clearing rubble. However, Egyptian authorities had a first look Friday into the rectangular single chamber through an opening of its four-foot-high door.

Five wooden sarcophagi in human shapes with colored funerary masks laid surrounded by more than 20 jars, sealed with pharaonic seals, Zahi Hawass, head of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, said.

The jars were placed haphazardly, as if the burial was completed in a hurry.

"For an unknown reason they were buried rapidly in the small tomb," Hawass said.

Though the Valley of the Kings, on the West bank of the Nile outside Luxor, was the burial ground for many pharaohs, the University of Memphis archaeologists do not think the K63 mummies are royal.

Most likely, they were members of a pharaoh's court from the 18th Dynasty, when Egypt's power was at its height.

The first of the New Kingdom, the 18th Dynasty's capital was in Thebes, the present day city of Luxor. It included pharaohs such as Amenhotep I, the warrior pharaoh, Queen Hatshepsut, Egypt's only female pharaoh, Akhenaten, the "heretic" pharaoh and Tutankhamun, the boy pharaoh.

According to Patricia Podzorski, curator of Egyptian Art at the University of Memphis, the KV 63 discovery has finally broken the century-long belief that there wasn't anything left to discover in the Valley of the Kings.

"Many archaeologists said the valley was done 100 years ago… obviously, they were wrong," Podzorski said.