Glitter of King Tut's tomb has left Maghreb's past shrouded in darkness - until now

The "exhilarating journey" into Tutankhamun's tomb promised to guests at a new virtual-reality exhibit in London shows the allure that Ancient Egypt still holds, so long after the boy king's burial. With 1.8 million visitors in several cities, the show includes a 360-degree film taking people "into the afterlife", and a hologram view of how to process a mummy. In a "metaverse room", guests wear VR glasses, walk through a make-believe Valley of the Kings, and pretend to be Howard Carter unsealing the tomb. As recent events show, that was not the end of the hunt. Near Luxor, a tomb of archaeologists found the tomb of King Thutmose II , the first pharaoh's resting place discovered since King Tut in 1922. More dubiously, claims went viral about a "vast underground city" lurking under the pyramids of Giza . Renowned Egyptologist Dr Zahi Hawass was having none of that. But away from the glitter and glamour of King Tut, there are less feted archaeological gems lurking across North Africa, outshone for centuries by our obsession with Ancient Egypt. Some are starting to be found. Others remain a mystery. There is a Stonehenge-like stone circle in Mzoura, in the north of Morocco . A gravesite? It is little understood. Was there a link to pre-historic England? A second unique item suggests that maybe it was: a rapier found in Morocco's Loukkous River, now kept in a museum in Berlin, is of a type that hints at very ancient connections with the British Isles. "Until now, the focus was always in Egypt," said Hamza Benattia, a Moroccan archaeologist who led a recent dig that uncovered the first known Bronze Age settlement in the Maghreb. His team explored a site called Kach Kouch about 10km from Africa's present-day coastline, near the Strait of Gibraltar. Outside the Nile basin, the rest of North Africa "has been widely unexplored", Mr Benattia told The National . "I would say that if you want to understand the dynamics, the economic, social and cultural dynamics of the Mediterranean, you cannot leave North Africa aside." At Kach Kouch there were signs of farmers growing barley, wheat and beans in North Africa about 3,000 years ago, leading a "settled life" before the more celebrated Phoenicians arrived. They had "wattle and daub" houses, made from twigs, clay and mud, and herded sheep, goats and cattle – so the archaeology suggests. In later centuries, it appears that new ideas travelled from the Eastern Mediterranean. They included iron tools, wheel-thrown pottery, and the ability to combine the local wattle and daub style with Phoenician stonework. Mr Benattia, who is from Tangier, said the recent findings at Kach Kouch, and another site called Oued Beht, were starting to "change the understanding" of early North Africa. If it was studied at all, it was often by colonial rulers more than 70 years ago. But they lacked modern techniques and often saw the world through the lens of Romans, Phoenicians and other occupiers. "We are actually at a historic moment for the research of North Africa’s later pre-history," Mr Benattia said. "We are in a very early step of this change, but we are starting to see some things that were assumed to be originally from Europe but maybe they are not. There is some stuff that maybe was originally made in Africa." At Oued Beht there were deep storage pits similar to those found in Spain, hinting at contacts across the Strait of Gibraltar. Archaeologists found pottery and plant and animal remains that revealed a farming society lived there about 5,000 years ago, making it the earliest known agricultural site in Africa beyond the Nile. But there are many more gaps to be filled in. How did nomadic people in North Africa become farmers? There are projects in Morocco and Tunisia investigating just that. What was going on between Oued Beht and the Phoenician arrival in Africa about 800 BC? We do not know much. One clue is that in Morocco and parts of Algeria we see evidence of what is known as the Bell Beaker culture, named after the upside-down bell-shaped pottery it left behind. We know it flourished around 2,500 BC, turning up all over Western Europe and the British Isles, which suggests the people of North Africa at that time were part of a much wider world than they are given credit for. Maybe not quite a pharaoh's golden mask, with the legends of curses and grave robbers surrounding it. But "archaeology is not, any more, about objects. It’s about context", Mr Benattia explains. "There is always a little bit of luck in this. But also you need to do proper, professional and modern kind of work. "You need to also understand beyond the objects, you need to understand stuff like agriculture. You need to do the proper sampling of soil and extract macrobotanic remains like seeds; small structures, not built walls, but post holes, which are sometimes not easy to see. "With that and a little bit of luck, I am sure anyone can find good stuff in Morocco and the wider North Africa."

Glitter of King Tut's tomb has left Maghreb's past shrouded in darkness - until now

Archaeologists are looking beyond Ancient Egypt to dig into the mysteries of Morocco and the rest of North Africa