In July of this year, a giant black sarcophagus and the head of a huge white alabaster statue were discovered in Alexandria. Two weeks later, the sarcophagus had to be opened at the site of the find - lifting a 30-ton granite "coffin" from a five-meter depth was too difficult an engineering task.
An autopsy revealed that the outwardly intact sarcophagus was filled with a smelly reddish liquid: sewage penetrated through a small crack and flooded its contents. In this ignoble slurry floated the heavily decomposed remains of not one, but three people.
This was unexpected: the impressive dimensions of the granite sarcophagus (265 cm long, 185 cm high and 165 cm wide) and the giant white head found nearby, in every possible way hinted at a single VIP burial.
Photo: Egypt Ministry of Antiquities.
Mostafa Waziri, general secretary of the Supreme Council for Antiquities of Egypt, was quick to point out that none of the decomposed bodies belonged to either the royal family of the Ptolemies or the noble Romans. The reason for this statement was the absence of any inscriptions or nominal cartouches on the external and internal surfaces of the sarcophagus.
No valuable artifacts, hinting at the status and occupation of the deceased, were also found during the first examination. However, now, after a more thorough study of the contents and filtration of the fluid that filled the sarcophagus, scientists still “fished out” gold from it: several thin gold plates about 5 * 3 cm in size, covered with symbolic and quite realistic images (see the title photo).
According to Vaziri, the images may indicate the military rank of the men buried in the sarcophagus. However, the first laboratory studies of the remains showed that the third skeleton in the "brotherly" burial belonged to a woman, reports the Egyptian publication Ahram Online.
The cleaning and examination of the remains was led by bioarchaeologist Zeinab Hashish, who heads the Department for the Study of Human and Animal Remains at the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities and Cultural Heritage. The sex and age of the deceased were determined in the classical way: by the bones of the skull, as well as by the pelvic and long (tubular) bones.
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The first skeleton belonged to a young woman: age 20-25, height 160-164 cm. The second - a man 35-39 years old, height 160-165.5 cm.
The remains of a woman (top photo) and one of the men (bottom photo), found in a black sarcophagus. Photo: Egypt Ministry of Antiquities.
The data for the third skeleton turned out to be the most interesting. He was a tall man (179-184.5 cm tall) who died at the age of 40-44. A hole about 17 mm in diameter was found in his skull, made some time before his death. “Perhaps this is the result of a surgical operation known as craniotomy,” suggested Zeinab Hasheesh.
A hole in the skull of a third man from a black sarcophagus. Photo: Egypt Ministry of Antiquities.
In itself, this discovery is not unique: people have mastered the operation to open the cranial cavity back in the Neolithic. Archaeologists know many examples of more or less successful operations, demonstrating the skill of ancient surgeons in the absence of anesthesia, antiseptics and antibiotics.
However, in ancient Egypt, despite the highest level of medicine at that time, this type of surgical intervention is extremely rare. In the medical papyrus of 700 BC (the so-called Edwin Smith Papyrus), a copy of an older document describing surgical practice, trepanation is not mentioned at all. Egyptologist and physician Grafton Elliot Smith, who worked in Cairo at the beginning of the 20th century, examined 15,000 mummy skulls and found no traces of trepanation on any of them. The number of ancient Egyptian heads with traces of the operation performed can be counted on the fingers of two hands - for example, one such skull was found in the tomb of the treasurer under the eighteenth Mayan dynasty and his wife Merit, three skulls are kept in the Museum of Medicine at the University of Qasr al-Aini …
Thus, the skull of a man from a black sarcophagus is of particular interest to modern scientists, as well as the fact that the operation, most likely, was successful: the man lived with a "hole in his head" for a long time. It is unlikely that she was the cause of his death.
Mostafa Vaziri reported another curious detail, however, leaving it without explanation: it seems that the burial process was carried out in stages, since the bodies in the sarcophagus were stacked on top of each other.
According to Ayman Ashmawi, a spokesman for the Ministry of Antiquities, all bones from the sarcophagus have been removed, accounted for and cleaned. The ominous reddish color of the liquid filling the sarcophagus probably has the simplest explanation: it is the color of the sewage that entered through the crack. Drinking the smelly red liquid, as required by the international petition, which has collected more than 30 thousand signatures, is not recommended for anyone. Sewage has already caused irreparable harm to the contents of the sarcophagus - according to Ashmavi, aggressive sewage drains destroyed the burial clothes of the deceased. Particles of tissue and other ancient organics, scientists hope to discover by analyzing the composition of the fluid that filled the sarcophagus.
Sewage pumping from the sarcophagus. Photo: Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities.
These are the data of the first stage of research. The inhabitants of the mysterious sarcophagus have yet to undergo computed tomography, genetic and isotope analyzes, tests to determine kinship and determine the cause of death. The date of the burial has not yet changed: the Ptolemaic era (332 - 30 BC) or the Roman period (30 BC - 642 AD). The study of the giant white alabaster head found next to the sarcophagus, apparently, will begin later.
Mostafa Vaziri took advantage of the scientific pretext to calm the exalted audience (the curse of the pharaohs, the end of the world, the revenge of Alexander the Great, emphasize the necessary): “Well, we have opened it. And the world has not yet plunged into darkness."
