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Archaeology & History

100 intact sarcophagi unearthed near Cairo

By T.K. Randall
November 15, 2020 · Comment icon 6 comments

Saqqara is home to countless ancient Egyptian burials. Image Credit: CC BY-SA 3.0 Daniel Mayer
Egyptian authorities have revealed another significant discovery at the Saqqara necropolis south of Cairo.
The remarkable archaeological find, which consists of more than 100 sealed wooden sarcophagi, comes just one month after the discovery of 59 coffins in the same area.

Saqqara itself served as the necropolis for Memphis - the capital of ancient Egypt - and contains bodies interred over an extended period of more than 3,000 years.

It is believed that the newly unearthed coffins, which were found in three burial shafts descending 12ft into the ground, contain the mummified remains of some of the region's top officials.

"Saqqara has yet to reveal all of its contents. It is a treasure," said Egypt's Antiquities and Tourism Minister Khaled al-Anani. "Excavations are still underway."
"Whenever we empty a burial shaft of sarcophagi, we find an entrance to another."

In addition to the coffins, archaeologists also discovered several dozen statues and funerary masks.

One statue, which was found in the tomb of a 6th dynasty judge, is thought to depict an individual by the name of Heteb Ka who was "venerated by the king."

"The beauty of the statue... is seen in the intricacy of its eyebrows, moustache, and eyelashes. It is absolutely beautiful and wonderful," said Mostafa Waziri, secretary-general of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities.

The newfound coffins will now be distributed between Egypt's many museums and put on display.



Source: Times of Israel | Comments (6)




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Recent comments on this story
Comment icon #1 Posted by Still Waters 4 years ago
Related:  
Comment icon #2 Posted by Wepwawet 4 years ago
I'm starting to feel uneasy about this stream of "discoveries" as it does look like just ploy to get the tourists back. That's not a bad thing of course, but to start stripping a necropolis of it's dead just for PR is too much. These are ten a penny late period coffins and mummies, they are not historically important people and there is not much information to be gleaned from these "discoveries", I mean, if you dig in a cemetery you'll find bones, no surprise there. There have been some good finds of course, but not trumpeted in the same way, for instance the discovery of an underground "air c... [More]
Comment icon #3 Posted by Myles 4 years ago
I had to look that up.  Wow, what a shame.   Here is the states, we are told the looting and vandalism is just a part of peaceful protests. As violent clashes roiled Egypt, looters made away with a prized 3,500-year-old limestone statue, ancient beaded jewelry and more than 1,000 other artifacts in the biggest theft to hit an Egyptian museum in living memory. The scale of the looting of the Malawi Museum in the southern Nile River city of Minya laid bare the security vacuum that has taken hold in cities outside Cairo, where police have all but disappeared from the streets. It also exposed h... [More]
Comment icon #4 Posted by RoofGardener 4 years ago
ROFL It seems kinda ironic that a newspaper in Seattle is reporting on unrest in Egypt   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Floyd_protests_in_Seattle#:~:text=The city of Seattle is,which also devolved into riots.
Comment icon #5 Posted by Wepwawet 4 years ago
One of the museum security guards was also killed by the mob. This lays bare a serious problem, for while the Muslim Brotherhood is now banned, those people who were members are still here, just as they remained after the organization was previously banned in the early part of the 20th Century. During the "revolution" and during the time of Morsi, many magazines were looted, as well as tombs visible above ground. So the problem is that in a time of chaos, or of a government that does not care for ancient artifacts or human remains, anything that is in a museum or is visible and accesible, is i... [More]
Comment icon #6 Posted by _Chez_ 4 years ago
Sounds like it's a dead hole !!!


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