Cairo [Egypt], December 8: A French team of excavators found hundreds of funerary figurines in a pharaoh's tomb in Tanis, Egypt, in early October, uncovering a long-standing mystery of who was buried in the sarcophagus.
A treasure trove of 225 funerary figurines has been discovered inside a tomb in the ancient Egyptian capital of Tanis in the Nile Delta, a rare find that has also solved a long-running mystery.
"Finding figurines in place inside a royal tomb has not happened in the Tanis necropolis since 1946," French egyptologist Frederic Payraudeau told reporters in Paris on Friday according to AFP.
Such a find has also never happened before further south in Egypt's Valley of the Kings near modern Luxor - apart from the tomb of the famous boy king Tutankhamun in 1922 - because most such 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 excavated the other three corners of a narrow tomb occupied by an imposing, unnamed sarcophagus.
"When we saw three or four figurines together, we knew right away it was going to be amazing," Payraudeau said.
"I ran out to tell my colleagues and the officials. After that it was a real struggle. It was the day before the weekend - normally, we stop at 2pm. We thought: 'This is not possible.'"
The team then set up lights to work through the night. It took 10 days to carefully extract all of the 225 small green figurines.
They were "carefully arranged in a star shape around the sides of a trapezoidal pit and in horizontal rows at the bottom", Payraudeau said.
The funerary figurines, which are known as ushabti, were intended as servants to accompany the dead into the afterlife.
More than half the figurines are women, which is "quite exceptional", Payraudeau said.
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 looted during the reign of pharaohs including Ramses - was abandoned and the royal necropolis was moved to Tanis, Payraudeau said.
The royal symbol on the newly discovered figurines also solves a long-standing mystery by identifying who was buried in the sarcophagus.
It was Pharaoh Shoshenq III, who reigned from 830 to 791 BC.
Experts in Egypt confirmed the discovery marked "a decisive step in solving a long-standing archaeological mystery," the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities said in a Facebook post.
In the Facebook post, Dr. Mohamed Ismail Khaled, Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Archaeological, said the discovery "confirms that the Tanis site still holds many secrets that have not yet been discovered."
Mohamed Abdel-Badii, head of the Egyptian Archeological Sector, pointed out that the mission also revealed previously unknown patterns within the chamber itself, shedding light on burial methods during that period.
Source: Emirates News Agency
