DURING A VISIT TO the vast basement storerooms of Cairo's Egyptian Museum, while searching for ancient objects, such as jars and coffins, that had never been opened, Cairo University radiologist Sahar Saleem found a plain wooden coffin with an arched lid. The museum's records contained scant information about the coffin, which held one of the thousands of mummies excavated in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that have never been displayed or studied. The only detail Saleem was able to discover in the archives was that the coffin had been excavated in 1916 at Nag el-Hassaya, a cemetery seven miles south of the ancient city of Edfu in southern Egypt. This necropolis was the burial site for the city's residents during the Ptolemaic period (304-30 B.C.), when a dynasty of Macedonian royals named for their first pharaoh, Ptolemy I (reigned 304-284 B.C.), ruled Egypt. No further information about the coffin's original context is known, and there are no records of other objects having been found alongside it, or even in the same section of the cemetery. "When we removed the lid of the coffin, it was probably the first time it had been opened in 2.300 years." Saleem says. "Inside was a beautiful gilded wood inner coffin. After we removed that, a wrapped mummy with a golden mask appeared."
This story is from the September/October 2023 edition of Archaeology.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Sign In
This story is from the September/October 2023 edition of Archaeology.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
Digs & Discoveries - A Friend For Hercules - Archaeologists discovered a finely carved head depicting Apollo, god of the sun, music, and poetry.
While digging at the crossroads of the two main streets in the ancient city of Philippi in northern Greece, archaeologists discovered a finely carved head depicting Apollo, god of the sun, music, and poetry.
Digs & Discoveries - A Fortress Sanctuary - A sprawling 2,000-year-old fortress in the Zagros Mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan appears to have included a sanctuary dedicated to the ancient Persian water goddess Anahita.
A sprawling 2,000-year-old fortress in the Zagros Mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan appears to have included a sanctuary dedicated to the ancient Persian water goddess Anahita.
Like Cats And Dogs – Archeologist fund the skeleton of a male Eurasian lynx (Lynx lynx), a notoriously shy creature.
Оn the periphery of Zamárdi, an ancient lakeshore settlement in west-central Hungary, archaeologists uncovered a nearly five-foot-deep beehive-shaped pit with the skeletons of four adult dogs buried in successive shallow layers.
A Dynasty Born In Fire- How an upstart Maya king forged a new social order amid chaos
At the beginning of the Terminal Classic period (ca. A.D. 810-1000), many of the great kingdoms of the southern Maya lowlands-among them Tikal, Palenque, and Calakmul-were being abandoned or collapsing. For many years, scholars have assumed that most, if not all, the other kingdoms across the Maya world must have also been in steep decline.
Medical Malfeasance - Archaeologists uncovered two coffins during excavations of a nineteenth-century cemetery in Quebec City that provide evidence of the illicit practice of diverting corpses for the study of human anatomy.
Archaeologists uncovered two coffins during excavations of a nineteenth-century cemetery in Quebec City that provide evidence of the illicit practice of diverting corpses for the study of human anatomy. Starting in 1847, medical students were required to have practical experience studying human anatomy, but legal options to procure cadavers were limited
RISE AND FALL OF TIWANAKU
New dating techniques are unraveling the mystery of a sacred Andean city
Making a Roman Emperor
A newly discovered monumental arch in Serbia reveals a family's rise to power in the late second century A.D.
The Assyrian Renaissance
Archaeologists return to Nineveh in northern Iraq, one of the ancient world's grandest imperial capitals
Java's Megalithic Mountain
Across the Indonesian archipelago, people raised immense stones to honor their ancestors
THE SONG IN THE STONE
Located in a desert gorge in southern Peru, Toro Muerto is one of the richest rock art sites in South America. It includes at least 2,600 boulders bearing petroglyphs, many featuring figures known as danzantes who appear to be dancing.
