Six tombs shed light on Egypt’s golden age
Saqqara, Egypt ? Archaeologists have unearthed six 3,500-year-old tombs they believe reveal important details about the structure of government in a period considered Egypt’s golden age, the nation’s top archaeologist said Thursday.
Zahi Hawass, head of Egypt’s Supreme Council of the Antiquities, also discussed an exhibit of Egyptian treasures to tour the United States beginning June 30 at Washington’s National Gallery of Art. The exhibit is bigger than the blockbuster King Tut show of the 1970s.
Archaeologists and other workers are seen near Saqqara Pyramid, in background, in Giza, Egypt. Egyptian archaeologists have unearthed six 3,500-year-old tombs they believe reveal important details about the structure of government in a period considered Egypt's golden age.
Earlier this week, archaeologists working on a dig supervised by Hawass just outside Cairo, found the six tombs at the foot of the famous third dynasty Step Pyramid, believed to be Egypt’s first.
The tombs belonged to government officials who worked in northern Egypt at the end of the 18th dynasty and early 19th dynasty (1567-1200 BC), when the seat of power was in southern Egypt, not the north.
One of the tombs was capped with a 15-inch block of limestone carved in the shape of a pyramid, a characteristic of New Kingdom burials that is unusual in northern Egypt.
Hawass said the discovery was further proof of government decentralization during the New Kingdom.
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“Those buried here were in charge of the Delta,” he said.
The six buried in the tombs included at least one royal scribe and a temple scribe. Archaeologists were still trying to determine the roles all those buried played, but believed they were administrators.
“It enlarges our knowledge of the government” structure at the time, Hawass said, with its two branches, one in the north and another in the south.