One of a group of recently unearthed wooden statues from the necropolis at Saqqara, Egypt. The statue, which depicts a divine record-keeper named Ka-Hay, has revealed a new side to this ancient city of the dead.
Credit: AP
SAQQARA, Egypt: The tombs of a Pharaonic butler and scribe, buried in the desert for nearly 4,000 years, were unveiled yesterday by Egyptian archaeologists.
The tombs, along with the painted coffins of a priest and his girlfriend, were discovered early this year at Saqqara, an ancient necropolis south of Giza on the Nile River near Cairo. The ancient 'city of the dead' is located near the Step Pyramid of King Djoser, the oldest of Egypt's more than 90 pyramids.
"The sands of Saqqara reveal lots of secrets," said Egypt's antiquities chief, Zahi Hawass, as he showed reporters around a 4,000-year-old tomb of mud bricks that belonged to Ka-Hay, a scribe of divine records, and his wife.
"It doesn't look great because it was built from mud brick and not built of limestone, but I really believe that this tomb is very important," said Hawass. "This type of tomb could enrich our knowledge about the people who actually surrounded the kings of Saqqara, especially the people who lived 4,200 years ago."
The scribe's tomb featured a dark wooden door, which ancient Egyptians believed would be used by the souls of the dead. The door bore engravings in hieroglyphic text and pictures of the scribe and his wife.
South of the Step Pyramid, archaeologists unveiled a second tomb, which belonged to a butler who died 3,350 years ago. Carved out of limestone, the tomb contained murals that showed scenes of people performing rituals and monkeys eating fruit. The blue and orange colours of the paint were surprisingly well preserved.
"This is a very, very lively scene," said Maarten Raven, the excavation's director and a curator at the National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden, Netherlands.
Raven said he believed other tombs from the New Kingdom, similar to those of the butler and scribe, had yet to be uncovered in Saqqara, which is famous for Old Kingdom antiquities. Many New Kingdom tombs, which date from 1570 B.C. to 1070 B.C., can be found in the Egyptian city of Luxor, far to the south along the River Nile.
"We hope one day this area will be open to visitors so people can see that Saqqara is not only Old Kingdom but New Kingdom as well," Raven said.
Hawass also unveiled two 4,000-year-old wooden coffins which were found south of the Step Pyramid. The coffins, painted light orange with blue hieroglyphics, each contained another human-shaped coffin known as an anthropoid, in which lay the mummies of a priest and his girlfriend, Hawass said. The ancient Egyptians believed anthropoids acted as a substitute body for the dead.
Although archaeologists have been exploring Egypt intensively for more than 150 years, Hawass believes only 30 per cent of what lies under the sands at Saqqara has been uncovered.
Saqqara, about 19 kilometres south of Cairo, hosts a collection of temples, tombs and funerary complexes. Its Step Pyramid is the forerunner to the more sophisticated pyramids in Giza, which are believed to have been built about a century later.
