29 March - 4 April 2001
Issue No.527
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Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 29 March - 4 April 2001 Issue No.527 |
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Mummies and family
A new set of gilded mummies has been discovered in the Bahariya oasis, famous for its recent yield of a vast hoard of treasures. Nevine El-Aref reports on the elaborately-wrapped remains in a large family tomb
A sad family tale came to light quite literally last week with another remarkable discovery in Bahariya oasis. Archaeologists excavating the area around the Valley of the Golden Mummies unexpectedly came upon yet another tomb containing gilded mummies -- the 16th so far.
Objects from the tombs excavated this season in the necropolis at Bahariya Oasis. Clockwise from left: a gold ornament of Horus and gold ornamental fragments; Shawabti figures from the tomb of Na'assa, wife of a Graeco-Roman governor of the oasis; the face of a sad child, perhaps in mourning for his parents beside whose bodies he was found in the Valley of the Golden Mummies and the lid of a canopic jar.
Zahi Hawass (centre) examining one of the objects
"All the mummies found in this remarkable trove are wrapped in linen and covered with cartonnage decorated with traditional mortuary scenes," Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) General-Secretary Gaballa Ali Gaballa said.
The glitter of gold has an enduring appeal, and it is clear, from the layer covering their torsoes, that some of the dead were wealthy dignitaries. The faces are moulded with gypsum, and most are in an excellent state of preservation with the contours of the eyebrows, eyes, nose, and mouth carefully drawn. In some cases, the painting is so well preserved as to appear as though painted only yesterday.
Zahi Hawass, director-general of Giza plateau and Bahariya oasis, who supervised the earlier discoveries at Bahariya, says two of the mummies have especially impressive and lifelike features. One of these is that of a child, which lies beside the mummies of his father and mother. "The image clearly shows the child, who was three years old, crying;" Hawass says. This raises the possibility that the child may have survived his parents, but not for long. The second remarkable mummy is that of a woman whose face is masked by a layer of painted plaster showing clearly her beautiful features.
"The first impression you have of her is that you stand before a beautiful, fully made-up woman with red lipstick and eyes outlined with kohl," Gaballa said.
The tomb, which is six kilometres from Bahariya's capital, Bawiti, was found by chance late one night when antiquities inspector Tareq Al-Awadi was wandering about the site and got his foot stuck in a hole. Next day, Al-Awadi and his colleagues unearhed the entrance to a rock-hewn chamber. "We could tell the site was intact because we found the handprints of the builders who sealed up the tomb impressed in the sand." Al-Awadi said.
They found a long corridor leading to a rectangular room with four burial pits, where they found 11 well-preserved mummies, their gilded torsoes decorated with winged sun discs, religious symbols and figures of deities. They appeared to be members of a single family which lived in the oasis 1,800 years ago.
This is the third batch of its kind to be unearthed in the place now known as the Valley of the Golden Mummies. The first hint of a necropolis appeared in 1999, when a donkey belonging to the ghafir, the antiquities guard, fell into a hole, revealing no fewer than 105 gilded mummies.
Hawass says that was when he became hooked on mummies. "All my life I have excavated around the pyramids of Giza and made major discoveries, such as the tombs of the pyramid builders, small pyramids and tunnels. But when I started working at Bahariya I realised I had another passion: mummies.
"Considering the rate at which graves have been robbed since antiquity, right up to the present day, it is remarkable that such a pristine site can still be found undisturbed."
Hawass estimates that the entire cemetery, which may cover nearly four square miles, contains up to 10,000 mummies and will keep archaeologists busy for 50 years.
Barely a year has passed between the donkey's inadvertent discovery and the latest buried treasure find. Like those found elsewhere in the necropolis, the new gilded mummies also belong to the Graeco-Roman period. However, the tomb contained more than the richly-preserved remains. "Mummies with plain linen wrappings and unpreserved skeletons were stacked in every inch of the tomb," Al-Awadi said. He believes that while there is no indication that these were servants, they may have been poorer members of the family.
Beside the mummies were numerous artefacts, including a collection of pottery and amulets of different deities, faience and red carnelian necklaces, earrings and copper bracelets, Graeco-Roman coins, toys and statuettes of professional mourners. Surprisingly, a winery with a complete set of tanks, blenders and grape-pressing machines was also found.
Bahariya oasis, it seems, has slumbered for more than 2,000 years on an unimaginable treasure trove. The earliest tomb in the necropolis dates from 664 BC, during the XXVIth Saite dynasty. Hawass says the group of gilded mummies found last year along with bronze coins, wooden stelae and pottery, and this new discovery, bring the total number of mummies excavated so far in the Valley of the Golden Mummies to 219.
A second find was made by an Egyptian mission working in another part of the oasis this season -- at Al-Sheikh Sobi, site of the tomb of an ancient Bahariya governor, Jed-Khensu-Iufankh, on whose mummy Hawass carried out a study last year. They came across two more tombs: those of Jed-Khensu-Iufankh's wife, Na'assa, and of his parents.
Na'assa's tomb is a small, sandstone construction containing a burial chamber where a limestone sarcophagus and a single canopic jar were found. Beside the sarcophagus were 222 inscribed and well-preserved faience shawabti figures, placed there to serve the deceased in the afterlife. The sarcophagus is in poor condition; it appears to have been opened in Graeco-Roman times, and the mummy is missing.
On the northern side of Na'assa's burial chamber is a small room with a domed limestone ceiling, which Hawass thinks may have been used as storage for Na'assa's funerary collection.
The tomb of the governor's father Badi-isis, a priest, and his mother, also named Na'assa, contained an anthropoid sandstone sarcophagus and 28 blue faience shawabti figures. A seven-centimetre-long gold adornment featuring a son of Horus was among the treasures unearthed there. Since the sons of Horus always appear in fours, the archaeologists looked for the other three, but failed to find them. Badi-isis's tomb was also opened in antiquity. The sarcophagus has not yet been opened.
Hawass' studies of inscriptions engraved on the walls of Jed-Khensu-Iufankh's tomb revealed, surprisingly, that some verses from the mortuary treatises known as the Book of the Gates and the Book of the Dead were wrongly inscribed on the tomb's walls. This suggests that sample texts of the traditional literature might not have been available in distant Bahariya oasis, and that the verses were cited from memory -- an interesting possibility.
"Such discoveries are the dream of Egyptologists," Hawass said. He added that many scholars, notably the late Ahmed Fakhri, whose books on the oases of the Western Desert have become classics, had searched for such tombs for decades.
There is little doubt that the new discoveries in Bahariya will change the status of the oasis on Egypt's tourist map. "It will contend with such well-known archaeological sites as the Valleys of the Kings and the Queens in Luxor," Hawass said.
The newly-discovered mummies will be restored and moved to a similar tomb nearby where they can be displayed in safety, as their original resting place is in some danger of collapse. Only one has been taken away. The very well-preserved and richly-decorated mummy of the woman with the beautiful make-up has already been transferred to the Bahariya Oasis Mummies Hall.
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