| Valley of
the Golden Mummies, Bahariya Oasis Dr. Zahi Hawass Recently we discovered two intact tombs from the Greco Roman Period in the Valley of the Golden Mummies. I decided that I wanted the world to join us on this great adventure so we arranged with the Discovery Channel to film the opening of these tombs and have the show live from Bahariya for four nights airing in America during prime time and it was shown live one night in England on Channel 5. These tombs represent the lower class burials in the cemetery. They contained skeletons of the deceased, pottery and a sarcophagus made of pottery. |
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| Sheikh Soby, Bahariya Oasis | |
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This season we continued work at the site of Sheikh Soby, in the town of el-Bawiti, where we had previously found the tomb of a governor of Bahariya during the 26th Dynasty, Djed-khonsu-euf-ankh, his wife Naesa II, and his father, Badi-Isis. This season we were looking for the tomb of his grandfather, Iru-aa, the first governor Sheben-khonsu, and Djed-khonsu-euf-ankh’s mother, Naesa I. Recently, we found two sealed shafts. |
| The room at the bottom of the shaft was filled with stone rubble, which I crawled over for about 15 meters. This was dangerous, but fun. To my astonishment, this room opened into a second, which lay at the bottom of the other sealed shaft. At one end of this second room was an anthropoid sarcophagus. I had hoped it would belong to one of the missing members of the family. When I read the hieroglyphic inscription on the sarcophagus, I found that this man was Badi-her-khieb, son of Badi-Isis and brother of Djed-Khonsu-euf-ankh. His job was evidently to perform an important ritual involving the wedjat eye (the eye of Horus) inside the temple, but we do not known anything else about this man. Surrounding the sarcophagus were numerous ushabti statuettes and several large clay pots. | |
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