Talking Pyramids

Some of the sarcophagi inside the newly discovered tomb at Saqqara have been opened.

Yesterday international media were allowed into the tomb to film the opening.

Inside the chamber, 22 mummies lay covered only by sand in four niches dug into the chamber’s walls. Most were badly decomposed, showing only skulls and parts of skeletons, with decayed mummy wrappings. The sarcophagi were placed throughout the room.

A dog’s mummy — possibly of a pet — was also found along with mummies of children, prompting speculation the chamber holds the remains of a large family, with the richer, more prominent members, buried in the sarcophagi.

“Only the rich could afford to have sarcophagi made of limestone from Thebes,” said Hawass. Thebes is an ancient city on the west bank of the Nile, hundreds of miles to the south in what is today’s Luxor. “The owner of the dog could have asked that his faithful companion be mummified and accompany him into the afterlife.”

Hawass said he believes the mummy in the limestone sarcophagus belonged to a nobleman, but so far the mummies’ identities remain a mystery.

Video 1 | Video 2 | Audio

The storeroom was found next to an even older cemetery dating to the 4,300-year-old 6th Dynasty of the Old Kingdom, a few hundred yards (meters) away from Saqqara’s two most prominent pyramids – the famous Step Pyramid of King Djoser and that of Unas, the last king of the 5th Dynasty.

The find reflected the fact that the area was used for burials in both the Old Kingdom and 2,000 years later when these mummies were buried.

The lid of the limestone sarcophagus opened Wednesday had been broken in antiquity “likely by workers carrying it down into the chamber” and resealed with mortar, Hawass said, tracing the crack. Hawass added that he plans to scan the mummy soon, a complicated process that requires the mummy to be removed from the tomb. He believes there could be gold amulets inside meant to “help the deceased in the afterlife,” a common practice in pharaonic times.

Also Wednesday, Hawass opened another sarcophagus in the storeroom, a wooden coffin with an inscription in hieroglyphics on the lid that exposed another mummy, but stopped short of opening a third, also a wooden one, because of its poor condition. All eight sarcophagi in the storeroom are believed to hold mummies, said Abdel Hakim Karar, chief archaeologist of Saqqara but so far only three were opened. The first sarcophagi was opened Monday.

Sources:
BBC Video 1 | BBC Video 2 | BBC Audio
Associated Press (Article contains several photoos of the opening)
Sky News (Article contains a video)
Xinhuanet (includes photo gallery)
MSNBC (story includes another video)
Guardian (another video)

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Tags: mummies, Saqqara, sarcophagus