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Archaeologists discovered around 60 perfect sarcophagi in Egypt on Saturday at a necropolis in Saqqara, south of Cairo, where they had been buried more than 2,500 years ago, France Presse reports.
“Almost three weeks ago, we found 13 sealed and intact sarcophagi, and the following week we announced another 14,” said Khaled El-Enany, Egypt’s minister of tourism and antiquities.
“Today we announce that 59 sarcophagi (in total) have been removed from burial pits,” he said at the discovery site near the famous stepped pyramid of Djoser, built 4,700 years ago and the first in the Pharaonic era.
According to him, this is only the beginning, because “an unknown number of sarcophagi” remain in other pits.
“This is not the end of the discovery, I think it is the beginning of a great discovery,” he said, noting that the wooden sarcophagi probably date from the 26th dynasty of ancient Egypt, around the 6th-7th centuries BC. C.
According to the first observations, the sarcophagi contain the remains of some priests, high-ranking political leaders and other personalities.
The inauguration of one of them on Saturday before the press and the guests gathered under a large tent revealed a perfectly preserved mummy, adorned with colorful hieroglyphs, with a face with finely contoured features.
Dozens of statues have been recovered from the surrounding area, especially a bronze figure of the god of the lotus flower, Nefertum.
All the sarcophagi, covered in intricate, brightly colored drawings as well as hieroglyphics, will be transported to the Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM /), whose opening scheduled for late 2020 has been postponed to next year.
They will be placed in a room in front of which you will receive 33 sealed sarcophagi of priests of the XXII dynasty, discovered in 2019 in Luxor, southern Egypt.
The site of Saqqara, 25 km south of the pyramids of the Giza Plateau, is home to the necropolis of the ancient Egyptian capital of Memphis. It is included in the UNESCO world heritage.
This is the first major discovery since the COVID-19 pandemic hit Egypt, leading to the closure and archaeological sites for three months.
Egypt hopes that all these discoveries and its new museum will revitalize tourism affected by political instability and the attacks after the 2011 revolution, which removed Hosni Mubarak from power, and the pandemic.
