![]() The ministry’s announcement arrives at a critical time for Egypt’s tourism industry. They then used these objects to “sign” official documents and drawings. As Owen Jarus reports for Live Science, ancient Egyptians crafted seals by stamping decorated stones into clay. One child was laid to rest in a small clay sarcophagus.Īrtifacts found at the site include pottery, scarab amulets and jewelry.Īrtifacts recovered from the rectangular graves include silver rings, funerary vessels and a seal bearing a hieroglyphic inscription. According to Egypt Independent, the deceased were buried faceup in an “extended position,” with their heads pointing westward. The richest array came from the Hyksos tombs, most of which are semi-rectangular pits ranging in depth from around 8 to 33 inches. In addition to the burials, notes Egypt Today, the researchers unearthed cylindrical and pear-shaped vessels, as well as a bowl adorned with geometric designs. Two boast a layer of clay protecting their sides, bottom and roof. Like the Buto tombs, the five Naqadda graves are all oval-shaped pits carved into the sand. “But there’s always the interpretation that the jar is almost like a womb, so basically the idea is to return baby back into Mother Earth, or into the symbolic protection of his mother.” “You might go to the practical thing and say that the bodies were so fragile, they felt the need to protect it from the environment, even though it is dead,” archaeologist Yoav Arbel, who was part of a team that studied a similar ancient burial found in the Israeli city of Jaffa, told Live Science’s Laura Geggel last December. (The team also found a second infant interred in a jar in the Hyksos section of the cemetery.) ![]() Among the deceased was a baby who’d been buried in a jar-a relatively common funerary practice that nevertheless continues to puzzle researchers. The majority of these individuals were interred in a squatting position with their head pointed to the west. Grave goods recovered at the archaeological siteĮgyptian Ministry of Tourism and AntiquitiesĪs archaeologist Ayman Ashmawi explains in the statement, the 68 oval-shaped predynastic graves appear to be linked to the Lower Egypt civilization of Buto. Other finds made during the dig include remnants of stoves and ovens, the foundations of ancient brick buildings, pottery, scarab amulets that symbolize renewal and rebirth, and jewelry. “ are working to understand how the Egyptians and the Hyksos lived together and to what degree the former took on Egyptian traditions.”Īrchaeologists discovered the tombs at the Koum el-Khulgan archaeological site in Egypt’s Dakahlia Governorate, around 93 miles northeast of Cairo, reports the Associated Press (AP). “This is an extremely interesting cemetery because it combines some of the earliest periods of Egyptian history with another important era, the time of the Hyksos,” says Salima Ikram, an Egyptologist at the American University in Cairo who wasn’t involved in the recent excavation, to Reuters’ Patrick Werr. (For comparison’s sake, the Pyramids of Giza date to about 2500 B.C.) During this period, the enigmatic Hyksos dynasty ruled for more than a century before ceding control to the returning pharaohs. Five date to the Naqadda III culture, which rose to prominence in the decades preceding the unification of Egypt in 3000 B.C., while the other 37 represent an intermediate era (roughly 1782 to 1570 B.C.) between the Middle and New Kingdoms. Per a statement from the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, 68 of the burials date to the late Predynastic Period (around 3300 B.C.), when the Nile Valley was still split into Upper and Lower Egypt. The three newly discovered tombs, however, are reportedly different.Excavations along the Nile Delta have unearthed 110 tombs spanning three eras of ancient history, reports Mustafa Marie for Egypt Today. ![]() ![]() Previous excavations of the site uncovered some 20 tombs built in the style of catacombs, a widespread architectural practice during the 27th Dynasty. "This fact suggests that the area was a large cemetery over a long period of time," said Ayman Ashmawy, head of the Ministry of Antiquities’ Ancient Egyptian Sector, to Ahram Online. The fragments indicate that the tombs span the 27th Dynasty (525 - 404 B.C.), when Egypt first became a province of the Persian Achaemenid Empire, as well as the period of Greco-Roman Ptolemaic rule that began nearly a century later. ![]() Ministry officials told the Egyptian news outlet Ahram Online that the tombs contain multiple sarcophagi of various sizes, as well as clay fragments. The trio of tombs were found about 125 miles south of Cairo, in an area called El-Kamin El-Sahrawi near the city of Samalut. The Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities has announced the discovery of three rock-cut tombs in northeast Egypt, each more than 2,000 years old. ![]()
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