Cultural relics expert “opens coffin and autopsy” Egypt announces the annual archaeological discovery
A press conference was held under a huge white tent opposite Egypt’s oldest pyramid, the Pyramid of Djoser. On the main stage, dozens of sealed coffins and mummy lines up in turn, and the formation was exposed to the flash of the media.
Most incredible thing is that at the press conference, there were also heritage experts who “opened coffins and examined the autopsy”, opened the coffin containing mummies, and used an X-ray machine to scan the status of the mummy in the packages in public.
This operation is almost amazing.
Archaeological Discovery of the Year
In this tent, the Egyptian Minister of Tourism and Cultural Heritage announced the largest archaeological discovery in Egypt this year: from September to November
Archaeological teams excavated more than 100 sealed mummies, gorgeous sarcophagus, gilded masks and more than 40 in the Saqqara ancient tomb complex in southern Cairo. Ptah-Soke (the main god of the ancient tombs of Sakara).
These cultural relics are more than 2,500 years old.
The archaeological team is presided over by Mostafa Waziri, the general director of the Supreme Council of Egyptian Antiquities. The whole excavation has begun for three years and is still under way.
What is valuable is that these unearthed cultural relics have not been excavated.
They are well preserved and colorful, and the portraits of the dead on the coffin are still vivid. “These coffins belonged to the very wealthy elite at the time, including priests and senior officials,” Waziri told NBC.
The expert who scanned the mummy at the press conference was Waziri. The scan results showed that this was a man, who could be between 40 and 45 years old and his teeth were intact.
All this shows that he is very rich, in addition to his intact teeth in middle age, but also because of his arms crossed on his chest, which was used in imitation of the ancient Egyptian Pluto Osiris, usually for the burial of royal family members. Vaziri said that the deceased probably lived in the early Ptolemaic dynasty.
Since September, the archaeological team has gained a lot. In early September, Egypt found 13 wooden coffins in the area, followed by 14 wooden coffins in the same month.
In October, they also found 32 marble coffins, 28 Puta Seck statues, and a bronze statue of the god Nefertum, which is 35 cm high and set inlaid in The jewels are embedded, and the owner’s name, Badi-Amun, is engraved on the base. He was a priest before he was alive.
The newly discovered cultural relics came from three shafts 12 meters deep. Waziri described the situation when they found these shafts: “full of coffins, golden and magnificent, beautifully decorated.”
Experts believe that the coffins were buried in the later period of ancient Egypt, from the late period (664-332 BC) and the Ptolemaic period under the Greek rule as pharaohs (305-30 BC).
Egyptologists are excited about this discovery. Salima Ikram, an archaeologist at the American University of Cairo, who works in Sakara, said it is “extremely important” to find the unstolen bones of this period.
These artifacts will be stored in four museums in Egypt in the future, including the Greater Egypt Museum, which will open next year.
Meanwhile, Smithsonian Channel is producing a documentary called Tomb Hunter, which will tell the story of archaeologists digging up the artifacts, which is scheduled to be broadcast in 2021.
Mysterious Saqqara Cemetery
Saqqara is located about 20 miles south of Cairo. It is part of Memphis, the capital of ancient Egypt, where the pyramid of Djoser is located. With a history of 4,700 years, it is the oldest extant ladder pyramid in Egypt, about 200 years before the Great Pyramid of Giza.
More than 3,000 years ago, the ancient Egyptians began to build a cemetery in Sakara. Archaeologists say that even for people at that time, the ladder pyramid has existed for more than 1,000 years and has become a sacred monument.
It is regarded as a place of pilgrimage, and pilgrims come not only from Egypt, but also from other countries on the east coast of the Mediterranean Sea.
In ancient Egypt, people generally regarded Pharaoh as the incarnation of God. Therefore, the place where Pharaoh is buried is also the place where God is buried. People believe that there is also divine energy to help them enter the afterlife, so they hope that they can also be buried here.
Through instrumental detection, archaeologists found that many temples were buried under the desert. There are even millions of animal mummies, including dogs, cats and birds.
In 2019, the discovery of a group of cobras, crocodiles, cats and even two cubs shocked the archaeological community. These animal mummies were sacrifices of that year.
Interestingly, in April this year, archaeologists also found an anticorrosion “studio” underground in Sakara, reflecting the prosperous funeral business here more than 3,000 years ago.
The studio even undertakes coffin and mask production on different budgets, obviously with a large number of customers.
This cemetery is stacked layer by layer. Aidan Dodson, an Egyptologist at the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom, told the Smithsonian Institution that because there are too many people to bury here, it is a difficult problem to find a suitable cemetery here, and some people directly place the cemetery under the pyramid.
It is common practice that later buryers will directly use the tombs of the past, or put the tombs that have been stolen and excavated into new coffins.
For example, north of the pyramid of Djoser, a temple dedicated to the ancient Egyptian cat god Bastet was recently discovered, where the old tomb was reused and hundreds of cat mummy dedicated to the goddess was put.
Just on October 28, Netflix just broadcast the secret of the tomb of Sakara, a documentary related to Sakara, which tells the story of a group of Egyptologists
Archaeologists and anthropologists who excavated the tomb of a deceased named Wahtye, an ancient A famous priest in Egypt.
Source: Egypt government Egyptain media
