The fantasy Archaeology find a dead monarch game.

Due, in no small part to the emergence of King Richard. My mind has moved onto those figures, mainly leaders, whose discovery of their burial sites would make Richard look like a small fish in comparison. In no particular order.

King Alfred

King of Wessex and arguably, one of the most important Kings that was involved in the forging of an English realm. Known to be buried in Winchester, the Wessex capital. Originally in the old minster and then transferred to the new minster, Hyde Abbey. With the dissolution of the monasteries and the associated chaos the monastery was destroyed and the graves remained and then became lost and it seems only rediscovered with the building of a prison over the site which involved moving or damaging burial plots. This now means we do not know where Alfred's last resting place is. Also, more importantly how would we be able to identify the remains if we do discover skeletons, etc. Although there does appear to be some kind of project in this area. The chances of success seem very slim and whatever they discover may well be fairly open to conjecture with so little definitive evidence from which to hang any discovery on.

Alexander the Great

Dead in his early 30's. This would truly be an amazing find as theoretically, unlike Alfred, we may have a very important difference in that Alexander may well have been embalmed and if this was the case then he may well be in as good a condition as some of the Egyptian mummies discovered. We also seem to have fairly strong literary evidence that his body was purloined by Ptolemy and moved into Alexandria, where it remained for over 500 years as we also have reports that, due to the nature and importance of the memory and impact of Alexander in the ancient world as an exemplar, elite Romans made the pilgrimage to the body. From Pompey through Caesar and finally Caracalla in the 200's it can be argued that the body may have been accessible and that Caracalla closed this access and then from that point the literature is silent and Alexander's body/resting place disappears from our knowledge Alexander is probably now beyond our discovery unless some serious, unexpected evidence comes to light. At present the evidence points to his body being somewhere in or below Alexandria.

Genghis Khan

The legendary leader, who united a disparate and warring set of horse backed nomadic tribesmen, who fought internal wars. Then forged one of, if not the greatest cavalry army in world history. In his prime he led his army out of the steppes and into world history as a great conqueror, worshipped by friends and demonised by his enemies. His last resting place is now lost and much like Alexander's will remain so. If anything Genghis Khan's is more out of reach to us due to the manner of his entourage to the grave set. Whereas Alexander was buried in a metropolis, Genghis Khan went back to the vastness of the Mongolian Steppe, a piece of land so alien and barren to westerners, yet to Mongolians, it was home, from where their strength came from.

As Great Khan his burial site was always meant to be secret, this is reflected in the evidence that his escort, killed all that sadly, stumbled across the funeral cortège sent to the gods with the great khan.This doesn't help in trying to discover where his body rests unless at the time you could follow the trail of dead nomads in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I have no doubt that his tomb would be rich, on the Mongolian scale of wealth, very little gold and jewels, but personally I would expect to see great animal pelts, maybe some horses. These were items of wealth to the Mongolian's (They still are in the traditional culture). It would be more skewed towards being like the terracotta army than a tomb stuffed full of treasure like the great Pharaohs.

To be the first Archaeologist to break through and then identify the Great Khan's tomb would be an immensely proud achievement. One of the greatest finds of all time, however, 1000 years of silence and nature may have transformed any noticeable trace into an unrecognisable spot now, 1000 years of wild grasses and tree growth making any man made object impossible to discover. That's if they did this, they may just have hollowed out and built a simple tumulus for all we know, my heart seems to think that the culture and known technological/engineering abilities of the Mongolians would make the prospect of a tumulus far more likely than that of a mausoleum, like the western Europe would have done.