Treasure trove found in Egyptian tomb solves ancient mystery

A hoard of 225 funerary figurines has been discovered in a tomb in the ancient Egyptian capital of Tanis in the Nile Delta, a rare find that experts say has also solved a “long-standing archaeological mystery”.

“Finding figurines in place inside a royal tomb has not happened in the Tanis necropolis since 1946,” French archaeologist Frédéric Payraudeau told the press on Friday.

Such a discovery has never taken place before, further south, in The Valley of the Kings in Egypt near modern Luxor – with the exception of the tomb of the famous young King Tutankhamun in 1922 – because most of these sites have been looted throughout history, he added.

Payraudeau, who leads the French Tanis excavation mission, said the remarkable discovery was made on the morning of October 9.

The team had already searched the other three corners of a narrow tomb occupied by an imposing unnamed sarcophagus.

“When we saw three or four figures together, we immediately knew it was going to be incredible,” Payraudeau said.

“I ran to tell my colleagues and those in charge. Afterwards, it was a real struggle. It was the day before the weekend, normally we stop at 2 p.m. We said to ourselves: ‘It’s not possible.'”

The team then set up lights to work through the night. It took 10 days to carefully extract all 225 small green figurines.

They were “carefully arranged in a star shape on the sides of a trapezoidal pit and in horizontal rows at the bottom,” Payraudeau explained.

Funerary figurines, known as ushabti, were intended to serve as servants to accompany the dead into the afterlife.

More than half of the figurines are women, which is “quite exceptional”, according to Payraudeau.

Located in the Nile Delta, Tanis was founded around 1050 BC as the capital of the Egyptian kingdom during the 21st dynasty.

At the time, the Valley of the Kings, which had been plundered under the reign of pharaohs including Ramses, had been abandoned and the royal necropolis had been moved to Tanis, specifies Payraudeau.

“Many secrets that have not yet been discovered”

The royal symbol on the newly discovered figurines also solves a long-standing mystery by identifying who was buried in the sarcophagus. This is Pharaoh Shoshenq III, who reigned from 830 to 791 BC.

It was “astonishing” because the walls of another tomb at the site – and the largest sarcophagus – are named after him, Payraudeau said.

“Why isn’t he buried in this grave?” » asked the expert.

“Obviously, for a pharaoh, building a tomb is a gamble because you are never sure that his successor will bury him there,” he says.

“Obviously, we have new proof that these bets do not always succeed,” Payraudeau said with a smile.

Shoshenq III’s reign, which lasted four decades, was turbulent, marked by a “very bloody civil war between Upper and Lower Egypt, with several pharaohs fighting for power”, he said.

It is therefore possible that the royal succession did not take place as planned and that the pharaoh was not buried in the tomb he had chosen. Another possibility is that his remains were later moved due to looting.

But it is “difficult to imagine that a granite sarcophagus measuring 3.5 meters by 1.5 meters could have been reinstalled in such a small place,” Payraudeau said.

Once studied, the figurines will be exhibited in an Egyptian museum, Payraudeau said.

Egyptian experts confirmed that the discovery marked “a decisive step in solving a long-standing archaeological mystery”, Egypt’s Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities said in a Facebook post.

In his Facebook post, Dr. Mohamed Ismail Khaled, secretary general of the Supreme Council of Archaeology, said the discovery “confirms that the Tanis site still holds many secrets that have not yet been discovered.”

Mr Mohamed Abdel-Badii, Head of Egypt’s Archaeological Sector, highlighted that the mission also revealed previously unknown patterns within the chamber itself, shedding light on burial methods during this period.

“It is still unclear whether the king was buried directly in the tomb of Osarkon II, or whether his funeral collectors were moved there to protect him from theft,” the ministry said in its Facebook post. “We still have a lot of work to do to answer these questions.”

The discovery was announced just weeks after the billion-dollar project’s official opening ceremony. Grand Egyptian Museum. The GEM is one of the largest museums in the world, and the largest dedicated to a single civilization: ancient Egypt. Its subject matter spans some 7,000 years, from prehistory to the end of the Greek and Roman eras around 400 AD.

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