Scientists have discovered on the territory of Saqqara, the oldest necropolis of Egypt, a kind of "mummy factory" of the last dynasty of independent pharaohs, three dozen of its "clients" and many artifacts associated with the process of embalming bodies. The results of the excavations are reported by the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities.
“The discovery of only one precious mask in this workshop in itself was a unique event for us, since all such artifacts, with the exception of two finds in the first half of the 20th century, were stolen by tomb robbers in antiquity,” Ramadan Hussein said (Ramadan Hussein), head of the excavation and professor at the University of Tübingen (Germany).
Hussein and his colleagues have been excavating the Sakkara area for several years using the most modern methods of natural sciences, including 3D laser scanners and radars.
Two years ago, his team began excavations in the south of this necropolis, where the tombs of the 26th dynasty of the pharaohs, who ruled Egypt after its liberation from Assyrian rule and during its conquest by the Persian Empire, are located.
Fabrics coated with instructions for mummification / Ministry of Antiquities.
The rulers of this dynasty, according to the scientist, tried to restore the former power and glory of Egypt by restoring old cultural and religious traditions, including the construction of rich tombs, temples and other religious buildings, taking as a model the construction and deeds of the pharaohs during the Ancient Kingdom.
Such measures helped to unite the country and expel the Assyrians, but literally a hundred years later Egypt was captured by the new "superpower" of antiquity - the Persian Achaemenid Empire, which put an end to its independent history.
Initially, as noted by Hussein, his team tried to find several famous tombs of the pharaohs of this dynasty, discovered at the end of the 19th century and buried under new layers of sand and other sediments.
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Near the tomb of one of the officials of Pharaoh Amasis II, their radar discovered a rather strange square-shaped room that did not look like typical tombs of the 26th dynasty. It was located at a depth of 13 meters and was approximately five meters long and wide.
Shawabti figurines from a mummy workshop found in Saqqara / Ministry of Antiquities.
When scientists entered this mysterious room, they discovered that it was not a tomb, but a unique “mummy workshop”. Inside this workshop, they found 35 prepared mummies, five sarcophagi, many precious or simply interesting artifacts, including dozens of ushabti funerary figurines symbolizing the servants of the departed, linen shrouds, oils for mummification, a bath for soaking bodies in alkali, a golden mask and instructions by mummification.
As Hussein notes, the chemical composition of these oils is virtually identical to those of the embalming materials found in the tomb of KV63 in the Valley of the Kings, presumably belonging to Ankhesenamun, the wife of Tutankhamun.
Now chemists, Egyptologists and other scientists are studying in detail all the finds from this "workshop". Their analysis, historians hope, will help to understand how the traditions of mummification changed over thousands of years of ancient Egyptian history and why this workshop was built underground, and not on its surface.
