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- Egypt announced the discovery of an ancient treasure of more than 100 intact sarcophagi, dating back more than 2,500 years, the largest find of this year.
- The sealed wooden coffins, revealed on site amid much fanfare, belonged to high officials from the Late Period and the Ptolemaic period of ancient Egypt.
- They were found in three burial pits 12 meters deep in the vast necropolis of Saqqara, south of Cairo.
Egyptian authorities have announced the discovery of at least 100 ancient coffins, some with mummies inside, and some 40 gilded statues in a vast pharaonic necropolis south of the capital Cairo.
On Saturday, colorful sealed sarcophagi and statues that were buried more than 2,500 years ago were displayed in a makeshift display at the foot of the famous stepped pyramid of Djoser in Saqqara.
Archaeologists opened a coffin with a well-preserved mummy wrapped in cloth inside. They also made X-rays visualizing the structures of the ancient mummy, showing how the body had been preserved.
Tourism and Antiquities Minister Khaled El-Anany told a press conference that the items discovered date back to the Ptolemaic dynasty that ruled Egypt for some 300 years, from around 320 BC. Until approximately 30 a.
The Saqqara site is part of the necropolis of Egypt’s ancient capital, Memphis, which includes the famous pyramids of Giza, as well as the smaller pyramids of Abu Sir, Dahshur, and Abu Ruwaysh. The Memphis Ruins were declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in the 1970s.
“Saqqara has not yet revealed all its contents. It is a treasure, ”El-Anany said. “The excavations are still ongoing. Whenever we empty a burial pit of sarcophagi, we find an entrance to another. “
The minister said authorities would move the artifacts to at least three museums in Cairo, including the Grand Egyptian Museum that Egypt is building near the Giza pyramids.
The discovery at the famous necropolis is the latest in a series of archaeological finds in Egypt. Since September, antiquities authorities have revealed at least 140 sealed sarcophagi, with mummies inside most of them, in the same area of Saqqara.
Egyptian archaeologists found other “wells full of coffins, well gilded, well painted, well decorated,” Mostafa Waziri, secretary general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, told reporters on Saturday.
Egypt frequently touts its archaeological discoveries in hopes of stimulating a vital tourism industry that has been recovering from the political turmoil that followed the popular uprising in 2011 that toppled the ruler Hosni Mubarak. The sector also received a new blow this year from the coronavirus pandemic.
