As the sun warmed the air at Tuna El-Gebel necropolis in Minya governorate on Saturday morning, several of media and officials congregated to witness the statement of the earliest finding of 2019. Over the last two years, several discoveries in Egypt have caught worldwide attention.
Source: Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities
At the site, Minister of Antiquities Khaled El-Enany claimed that the Ministry, together with the Research Centre for Archaeological Studies at Minya University had come across a group of Ptolemaic-period Mummy-Filled Burial Chambers with distinctive sizes and genders.
Source: Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities
The ceremony also saw the attendance of Egypt’s Minister of Tourism, Governor of Minya, Head of Minya University, Secretary-General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, members of Parliament from Minya, together with ambᴀssadors and cultural attachés from 11 foreign countries.
Source: Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities
El-Anany said this is the first discovery to be announced in Minya since the start of his incumbency, pledging for more findings to come. He also indicated that he was informed by the ambᴀssadors of their appreciation towards mummies on display in museums, but to encounter them with bare eyes in situ is a completely different experience.
Source: Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities
Source: Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities
“The newly discovered tombs are a familial grave which was probably for a family from the upper middle class,” El-Enany said, stressing the well-preserved 40 mummies, including some covered with linen or adorned with Demotic handwritings. Some of them still have fragments of colored cartonnage wrapping their feet.
Source: Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities
“The methods used in burying the mummies inside the maze of tombs varies in style,” Mostafa Waziri, Secretary-General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, revealed. He clarifies that some of the mummies were contained within stone or wooden sarcophagi, while others were buried in sand or laid on the tomb floors or inside niches.
Source: Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities
There were also ostraca and pieces of papyri presented, suggesting that the tomb could be from the Ptolemaic, early Roman and Byzantine periods.
Source: Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities
Wagdi Ramadan, the leader of the team of researchers, said that the work first began in Tuna El-Gebel in February 2018 when they found a tomb encased in rock containing a corridor leading to sloping stairs that opened to a rectangular chamber full of burials.
Source: Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities
Another chamber was also found at the western side, contains a vast number of mummies and large stone sarcophagi, which were also discovered inside niches of a third chamber at the northern side. This is the common burial style in Tuna El-Gebel, once the necropolis of Egypt’s 15th nome during the late New Kingdom and the start of the New Intermediate Era.
Source: Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities
Fathi Awad, director of Tuna El-Gebel, said that the archaeological site has several tombs, among them the tomb of Petosiris, the Isadora tomb, a sacred animal ceremony, a Roman cemetery and two frontier reliefs of Akhenaten. Al-Mashat said that the event was an important message to the whole world that Egypt “has it all.”
Source: Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities
Source: Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities
Source: Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities
