CAIRO –
Egypt on Monday unveiled a number of ancient artifacts dating back 2,500 years, which the country’s antiquities authorities said were recently discovered in the famous Saqqara necropolis near Cairo.
The artifacts were on display at an impromptu exhibition at the foot of Djoser’s stepped pyramid at Saqqara, 24 kilometers (15 miles) southwest of the Egyptian capital.
According to Mostafa Vaziri, head of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, the find includes 250 painted sarcophagi with well-preserved mummies inside, as well as 150 bronze statues of ancient deities and bronze vessels used in rituals of Isis, the goddess of fertility in ancient Egyptian mythology. the late period, around 500 BC
A bronze headless statue of Imhotep, the chief architect of Pharaoh Djoser, who ruled ancient Egypt between 2630 BC. and 2611 BC.
The artifacts will be transferred for permanent display to the new Great Egyptian Museum, a mega project still under construction near the famous Pyramids of Giza, just outside Cairo.
The Saqqara site is part of a sprawling necropolis in the ancient Egyptian capital of Memphis, which includes the Pyramids of Giza and the smaller pyramids of Abu Sir, Dahshur and Abu Ruwaish. The ruins of Memphis have been declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in the 1970s.
Egypt is actively promoting recent archeological finds, hoping to attract more tourists to the country. Its tourism sector, a major source of foreign exchange, has suffered years of political turmoil and violence since the 2011 uprising that toppled autocrat Hosni Mubarak.
The sector has recently begun to recover from the coronavirus pandemic, only to be affected again by the effects of Russia’s war against Ukraine. Along with Russia, Ukraine is a major source of tourists visiting Egypt.
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