Archaeologists have discovered a 3,200-year-old cemetery in Saqqara, Egypt. The site served as a cemetery for the important city of Memphis and highlights the burial practices of the ancient Egyptian elite.
Lara Weiss from the National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden in the Netherlands and Christian Greco from the Egyptian Museum in Turin in Italy led the excavations alongside researchers from the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities. Leiden archaeologists announcement the discovery on April 11.
The team was able to decipher details about the lives of the people who were buried there. The largest tomb belonged to Panahsy, who oversaw the temple of Amun. He probably had no children but had a wife, who is depicted on his tombstone and described as the “singer of Amun”. The large site of Panahsy includes a temple, three small chapels, a courtyard with columns and underground burial chambers.
The site also has four smaller funerary chapels. One belonged to a man named Yuyu, a gold leaf maker for the royal treasury. Yuyu’s parents, brother, children, grandchildren, and wife are depicted in the chapel. Weiss pointed out that a “huge procession” of mourners is also set in stone. Another series of sculptures shows a cow, the animal form of the goddess Hathor, aboard the boat of Sekera god of the underworld who ruled over the Memphis burial site.
Another chapel describes the family relations of its owner but does not identify them by name, and the other two chapels bear no inscription.
Weiss pointed out that the sculpture reliefs in the unmarked grave were inspired by a group of statues nearby which have been part of the collection of the National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden since 1829. The owners of these sculptures were Merit, a high government official, and his wife Maya, who lived about 50 years before the anonymous Egyptians whose chapel was recently discovered. . Weiss said the decision to copy Maya and Merit’s grave suggests their burial style may have been ongoing.
“So what fascinates me the most is studying daily life in this Egyptian cemetery,” Weiss said. Hyperallergic. Her research focused on social dynamics in ancient Egypt. “The choices people made in decorating their graves, how they were inspired by others, and what all of this says about people’s social relationships.”
Excavations (and looting) at Saqqara have been going on for centuries. In January, the Egyptian authorities announced the discovery of a 4000 year old mummy it is perhaps the oldest in the country. Other artifacts from the site are held in museum collections around the world.
