Posted on 02/10/2007 11:37:43 PM PST by NormsRevenge
CAIRO (AFP) - A Japanese archeological team has discovered three painted wooden coffins in Egypt, including two from the little-known Middle Kingdom period dating back more than 4,000 years.
The sarcophagi were found in tomb shafts in the vast Saqqara necropolis south of Cairo, Zahi Hawass, the director of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, said on Saturday.
"It is significant because of the discovery of two sarcophagi from the Middle Kingdom," said Japanese team leader Sakuji Yoshimori.
The Saqqara burial grounds which date back to 2,700 BC and are dominated by the massive bulk of King Zoser's step pyramid -- the first ever built -- were in continuous use until the Roman period, three millennia later.
While the vast cemeteries have yielded numerous discoveries from the Old and New Kingdoms, artifacts from the Middle Kingdom of around 2,000 BC are comparatively rare.
One of the Middle Kingdom coffins, inlaid with black glass, was found inside a brilliantly painted outer box and dedicated to a man called Sabak Hatab. The other sarcophagus was for a woman named Sint Ayt Ess.
The third, which dated back to the New Kingdom's 18th dynasty of around 1,500 BC and contained a mummy, was coloured black and decorated with images of the four sons of the god Horus.
The Japanese began work in the area in the late 1990s and are comparative newcomers to excavations in Saqqara, which is already host to teams from Poland, Italy, Germany and France as well as Egypt.
Undated picture handed out by the Egyptian Antiquities Department shows a sarcophagus dated from the Egyptian Middle Kingdom. A Japanese archeological team has discovered three painted wooden coffins in Egypt, including two from the little-known Middle Kingdom period dating back more than 4,000 years.(AFP/HO)
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WOW! That sarcophagus would make an interesting conversation piece in my living room.
"WOW! That sarcophagus would make an interesting conversation piece in my living room. "
Drinks and snack bowls keep rolling off it though.....
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That's OK, just take a plunge router and notch out a couple of cup holders then stain it to match the surrounding area,...I think I saw a show on DIY that did that very thing on on eof those other older sarcophagi. Nothin' to it. ;^)
Very interesting. Thanks for posting.
You're most welcome, the area this was found in has even further 'treasures' to be revealed, due to the dryness of that area, a lot of the finds will be well preserved if they haven't been looted and contaminated.
That's in better shape than my furniture. Helluva find.
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They certainly don't make sarcophagi like they used to.
Beautiful
What a cheat! They were in EGYPT!
And, they ain't ball players, neither!
Yeah, it's not that surprising. "Rugby team finds hamburgers in McDonalds."
Hmmm, I thought the mummiform (man-shaped) type of coffin that we associate with Egypt didn't appear until the XVII dynasty, a few years before the New Kingdom started. The Middle Kingdom sarcophagi that I've seen elsewhere were simple rectangular boxes, with hieroglyphics and a pair of eyes painted on the outside. Do you think the picture from that article was mislabeled?
And I resent them saying that the Middle Kingdom was a little-known era. It may not have been as glamorous as the Old Kingdom with its pyramids, or the New Kingdom with all the accomplishments of its pharaohs, but the best Egyptian literature was written during the Middle Kingdom. Nowadays, if you learn hieroglyphics, it's likely you'll be given Middle Kingdom texts to study/practice with. And we certainly know more about the Middle Kingdom than we do about any of the intermediate periods, or the archaic era before the first pyramid was built.
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