An ongoing excavation in Damietta, Egypt, has revealed 63 tombs from more than 2,500 years ago, as well as a trove of gold artifacts, coins and pottery.
The artifacts could provide more information about the “secrets of ancient Egyptian civilization,” including the funerary practices of the time, as well as the coastal city’s role in ancient foreign trade, according to the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities of Egypt, what announced the discoveries on July 23rd.
Among the 63 tombs, excavators found funerary amulets, charms thought to protect the dead, and ushabti statues, also designed to accompany the deceased in the afterlife, dating to the 26th Dynasty of the Late Period (664 to 525 BC). .
The excavation also revealed 38 bronze coins — kept inside a ceramic vessel — from the Ptolemaic era, one of the dynasties that reigned after the death of Alexander the Great, from 323 to 30 BC
The excavation site, known as Tal al-Deir, is called a necropolis, the term used for an elaborate cemetery of an ancient city. The cemetery was especially important during the 26th Dynasty, but remained in use throughout the Roman and Byzantine era, according to the ministry.
The discovered artifacts provide “a lot of information” about the later periods of Egyptian history, said Salima Ikram, a distinguished university professor of Egyptology at the American University in Cairo who was not involved in the excavation.
“Based on the type of objects, especially the gold amulets, it can be seen that this was a rich necropolis and obviously the city attached to it had a large social (stratification) (a hierarchy of people in a society that is determined based on social and political factors),” he added in an email.
Inside Tal al-Deir, archaeologists also unearthed a large tomb that contained burials of individuals with high social status, Kotb Fawzy, an official at the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities who oversees the excavation, said in a statement. The bodies were buried with gold foil figures depicting ancient Egyptian religious symbols and idols.
Ancient Egyptian burials reflect condition and wealth
The excavation and mission to explore the necropolis has been ongoing for years. In 2019, the ministry announced the discovery of seven gold coins dating to Egypt’s Byzantine period (284 to 641 AD), as well as a collection of ushabti statues engraved with the name of King Psamtik II of the 26th Dynasty.
Three years later, the ministry announced the discovery of 20 tombs that contained a trove of tinfoil figurines representing Egyptian deities such as Bastet, the goddess who often took the form of a cat and was believed to guide people in life after death. death, and Horus, who was often represented as a falcon and was a symbol of protection.
This 2022 discovery featured tombs that included simple pits and mudbrick tombs — an air-dried brick made from a mixture of mud and other natural components — as well as some made of limestone that are assumed to have been created for the wealthier deceased. .
The recent discovery of 63 tombs consisted mainly of mudbrick tombs, as well as some simple burials, according to a ministry statement.
“One of the most interesting aspects of this ongoing government-sponsored excavation at Damietta is that the burials document a wide range of burial techniques within the same cemetery precinct: from placing the deceased in a simple pit burial to burial within of a mud brick structure,” said Lorelei Corcoran, professor of art history and director of the Institute of Egyptian Art and Archeology at the University of Memphis in Tennessee, in an email. Corcoran was not part of the excavation.
“This, along with the discovery of gold leaf amulets in the shape of Egyptian deities and hordes of coins, also illustrates a dichotomy in the wealth and status of the individuals buried here,” he adds.
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