Photo of one of the tombs unearthed on the site of Al Ghoreifa (Egypt), containing several sarcophagi. – / AP / SIPA
Several tombs of high priests, around 3,000 years old, were discovered in Egypt. Sixteen graves containing twenty stone and wooden sarcophagi were exhumed at the site of Al Ghoreifa, 300 km south of Cairo, the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities announced on Thursday.
These tombs house the remains of several great priests of the god Thoth, with the body of a man and the head of an Ibis, and a few remains of important Egyptian dignitaries. Some sarcophagi are engraved with hieroglyphs.
A New discovery of tombs of high priests of the God Thot, with big coffins and sarcophagi, and thousands of statuettes and amulets, in Tuna El-Gabal in Minya. pic.twitter.com/DM2RBI9UJG
– Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities (@TourismandAntiq) January 30, 2020
Pure gold amulets
One of the stone sarcophagi is dedicated to the god Horus, the head of a falcon, son of Isis and Osiris. Engraved on the stone, a representation of the goddess Nut, mother of all the stars, spreads its wings over the entire sarcophagus.
Archaeologists also discovered 10,000 blue and green earthenware figurines, 700 beetle-shaped amulets, some of them pure gold, and one winged cobra-shaped amulet. Canopic jars, intended to accommodate the viscera of the deceased, were also exhumed.
–
