More Mysteries
Other mysteries of the ancient Nile kingdom might soon be revealed, Hawass said. He estimated that only 30 percent of Egyptian monuments have been found so far.

"Here in Egypt you never can know what the sand might hide. Just look at tomb KV63. Since 83 years and three months and six days nothing had been found in the Valley of the Kings. You would have never imagined that this tomb was just six meters away from King Tut's tomb," he said.

Hawass told Discovery that since the announcement of the finding, two more coffins — "one of a child and the remains of another one" — have been found.

The wood is damaged by termites, so it will to take a lot of conservation work on the coffins before they can be taken out.

Egyptologists have not discounted the possibility of a royal cachet of mummies, but Hawass doesn't believe a lost pharaoh will come to light.

"In the Valley of the Kings you can bury the king as well as the cook of the king. Those could be people that the king wanted to be buried beside him," Hawass said.

KV63 is the fourth-ever-discovered cachet in Luxor. The first one, found in 1881, revealed 40 intact royal mummies. The second, discovered in 1898 by Egyptologist Victor Loret, showed 12 royal mummies inside king Amenhotep II's tomb.

The third, found by Edward Ayrton and Theodore Davis in 1907, is known as KV55 and is perhaps the most controversial find ever made in the Valley of the Kings. Scholars now believe that the most likely occupant of the coffin is the short-lived pharaoh Smenkhkare.

Some of the mightiest pharaohs emerged from these cachets, including Ramses II, Ramses III, Thutmose III, Amhenpotep II, and Amenhotep III.

But some other important rulers, such as Queen Hatshepsut, are still missing.

"If they open the coffins and find royal mummies, we might be able to discover mummies of kings we know little about. We might even find the long-sought mummy of Akhenaten. However, if they open the coffins and they don't find any royal mummy, it will be also nice: we will be able to identify the six mummies in the Valley of the Kings that we know nothing about," Hawass told Discovery News.