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Egyptomania June 28, 2000
by Angela M.H. Schuster

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Illustration by Ray Bartkus

There has been no shortage of news coming out of Egypt in recent weeks. Several discoveries were announced at the Eighth International Congress of Egyptologists held in Cairo, among them:

  Two previously unknown vaulted chambers and two corridors within the Dynasty 4 pyramid at Meidum, 50 miles south of Cairo, which the pharaoh Snefru completed sometime after his ascension to the Egyptian throne in 2575 B.C. Undecided as to what the pyramid should look like, Old Kingdom architects began with a steep-sided step pyramid--each step a separate layer--and later encased it in a smooth covering of limestone. Architecturally unstable from the onset, the 330-foot-tall pyramid appears never to have been used for burial. Its outer casing collapsed early on leaving only the step-pyramid core which is visible today. What is interesting about the chamber-and-corridor system, discovered by a French-Egyptian team using an endoscope, a 100-foot-long probe inserted between construction stones, is that it resembles that found in Khufu's pyramid built ca. 2550 B.C. "Until now," says Gaballah Ali Gaballah, Secretary General of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, "it was believed that Khufu's tomb was the first with this type of interior architecture. We now know it began a generation earlier in his father's reign."

  Foundation stones of a pyramid belonging to Queen Ankh-sn-Pepi, wife of Pepi I (reigned 2289-2255 B.C.) at Saqqara, 20 miles south of Cairo. Discovered by French team led by Jean Leclant, the burial is the first belonging to a woman to have prayers known collectively as the Pyramid Texts inscribed on the walls. Until now, the prayers, which protect the deceased and ensure a safe journey into the afterlife, have only been found in the tombs of kings.

  A new painted tomb, dated to ca. 600 B.C., and 102 more mummies at Bahariya Oasis, 250 miles southwest of Cairo. Discovered in March and revealed to the public May 23 amid much fanfair on Fox TV, the "new-found" tomb is, according to site excavator Zahi Hawass, that of the Dynasty 26 governor, Djed Khonso Ankh Euf, whose mummified remains were buried in a stone sarcophagus.

  New "avenues of sphinxes" have been found at the New Kingdom capital of Thebes, present-day Luxor, similar in form to the double row of sphinxes that runs the 1.6 miles from Luxor to Karnak temples. The new avenues, found between 1992 and 2000 at seven sites along the Luxor-Karnak thoroughfare, appear to run north, south, and east to all of the city1s ancient temples. Another avenue runs west toward the Nile, and continues on the other side of the river. According to Mohammed el-Saghir of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, the avenues were built over a 500-year-period by different rulers, each of whom had their names inscribed on the statues. While many of the sphinxes are complete, others are broken into pieces or are represented by only fragments of bases.

  More recently, an Italian team announced the discovery of a third- to second-century B.C. temple-farm at Narmuthis in the Faiyum, where crocodiles were hatched, raised, and later mummified and sold as offerings to the crocodile god Sobek. According to archaeologist Edda Bresciani, the team unearthed a brick-and-limestone temple, with one room that had 30 crocodile eggs carefully placed in a hole in the floor, another with a perfectly preserved pool. "While the new discovery is interesting," says Egyptian animal mummy expert Salima Ikram of the American University in Cairo, "such farms for raising crocodiles and other sacred animals are quite common in the Faiyum." (For information on animal mummies in the Cairo Museum, see www.animalmummies.com.)

  Meanwhile conservation efforts continue throughout Islamic Cairo, including the refurbishment of a fourteenth-century minbar, or pulpit, at the Mosque of Saleh Tala'i and several nineteenth-century houses with ornate wooden balconies by the American Research Center in Egypt with funds from USAID; and the restoration of a twelfth-century aqueduct that carried water from the Nile to the citadel of Saladin, the Muslim ruler who fought the Crusaders to recapture Jerusalem.

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© 2000 by the Archaeological Institute of America
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