A tomb thought to be holding Thutmose II, who ruled 3,500 years ago, has been discovered in Egypt.

The tomb was first found via its entrance in 2022, though new evidence connecting it to Thutmose II was found only recently, the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities said in a release on social media Tuesday.

When the tomb was found, researchers thought it might have belonged to a royal wife. Yet when crews found jar fragments mentioning Thutmose II as the recently deceased ruler and inscriptions of his wife, half-sister and successor, they knew the tomb belonged to him.

The decor also tipped off the Egyptian and British archaeologists that the tomb they found belonged to royalty.

“Part of the ceiling was still intact: a blue-painted ceiling with yellow stars on it. And blue-painted ceilings with yellow stars are only found in kings’ tombs,” researcher Piers Litherland told the BBC.

Other artifacts found included funerary furnishings belonging to Thutmose II. His tomb is the last to be found of Egypt’s 18th Dynasty, to which Tutankhamun also belonged, Egyptian antiquities officials said.

Egyptian officials said on social media that the tomb of Thutmose II was the first to be found since that of Tutankhamun in 1922, though other archaeologists found pharaonic tombs in Egypt in 1940 and 2014, according to The New York Times.

“I think what they mean is the first royal tomb in the area of the Valley of the Kings or of the 18th Dynasty. There are other cases of royal tombs that have been found,” said University of Pennsylvania professor Josef Wegener, who was part of the team that found a tomb in 2014.

• Brad Matthews can be reached at bmatthews@washingtontimes.com.