It has been uncovered in Saqqara, near the Step Pyramid. 'One of the tombs was for a priest who was in charge of the pyramids complex of King Unas, the last king of the 5th Dynasty.A Pharaonic tomb containing a mummy wrapped in a gold-covered leaf may be the oldest and most complete mummy found in Egypt to date. 'Today's discovery tells us more about art in the Old Kingdom, mummification, and also about the people who worked there,' Hawass said. 'This is the first time in this century that such a large number of statues was found in Saqqara.' 'These statues are quite unique,' Hawass said. Zahi Hawass, a veteran Egyptian archaeologist, admires stone statues found by his team in a vertical shaft some 33 feet deep at the Gisr el-Mudir dig site in Saqqara, outside Cairo, Egypt, which date back to the 'Old Kingdom,' or the Age of the Pyramids. The famed Giza Pyramids are nearby, within the UNESCO World Heritage site of Memphis.Īmong the items displayed by Hawass, a veteran Egyptian archaeologist, and his team on Thursday were 14 stone statues found in another a shaft, about 33 feet deep, dating back to the 'Old Kingdom,' or the Age of the Pyramids, between 27 BC - possibly even older than the mummy of Hekashepes. It took the archaeologists about two hours of careful work to crack it open.īut while Hekashepes will earn his place in the history books, the gold-wrapped mummy wasn't Hawass' favorite new discovery at Saqqara, which is part of a sprawling necropolis that used to be the capital of ancient Egypt, known as Memphis.

The lid was still sealed onto the sarcophagus with mortar, exactly as it had been left there some 4,300 years ago. Zahi Hawass peers into a sarcophagus found at the bottom of a deep vertical shaft in Saqqara, near Cairo, in a photo shared with CBS News on January 26, 2023, by Ali Abu Desheesh, one of the archaeologists on Hawass' team. Zahi Hawass, the director of the Egyptian excavation team at the Gisr el-Mudir site in the ancient city of Saqqara, told CBS News. 'The sarcophagus was about 45 tons and the lid was about 5 tons,' Dr.

One of the most important was a large, rectangular limestone sarcophagus found at the bottom of a vertical shaft about 50 feet deep. Cairo - Egyptian archaeologists who have spent years meticulously excavating a site amid the ancient ruins of Saqqara, near Cairo, announced a number of major discoveries on Thursday dating to the fifth and sixth dynasties of Egypt's 'Old Kingdom,' more than 4,000 years ago.

Mummy gold sarcophagus AND Griggs