New Archeological Discovery in Minia Announced

 

By: Ali Abu Dashish, Yassmine ElSayed

CAIRO, Feb. 2 (SEE) - Moments ago, Minister of Antiques Dr. Khaled ElAnani announced the first archaeological discovery for this year 2019 in the area of ​​Tuna Al-Jabal in Minia Governorate. A joint archaeological mission between the Ministry of Antiquities and the Research and Archaeological Center at Minia University revealed three burial wells, leading to rocks housing many mummies.

The announcement was attended by the Minister of Tourism Dr. Rania Al-Mashat, Minya Governor Qassem Hussein, Dr. Mustafa Waziri, general secretary of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, Dr. Mostafa Abdel Nabi, Minia University president, and members of the Lower House of Minya, as well as a number of foreign ambassadors and cultural advisors for 11 countries. These include Spain, Malta, Lithuania, Kazakhstan, Czech Republic, Ireland, Poland, Serbia, Belarus and China, attending along with some of their families who are always keen to attend all like events organized by the Ministry, to transfer the significant moments from the ancient Egyptian unique civilization.

In his speech, the Minister welcomed the attendees, and said that this is the third year respectively, that the ministry announces a new archaeological discovery in Minia, promising of more archaeological discoveries during 2019.

He also said that the ambassadors expressed their pleasure to directly see the mummies in their original burial places, as they always were seeing them in museums The foreign envoys described this moment as amazing.

He explained that these graves are family tombs that belong to the middle or upper middle class. Several burial chambers included 40 mummies for people of different ages in a good state of preservation, among them 10 mummies for children, some of which are wrapped in linen rolls. Others includes writings in demotic scripts. In addition, there were a number of mummies for men and women, some with colored cardboard cartons, others with demotic writings beneath the feet.

On his part, Dr. Waziri explained that the methods of burial varied within these graves between burial in stone coffins, or wooden, or buried on the floor of the cemetery, and found also buried in Nishat, noting that it was also detected some oestracts and parts of the papyrus which dated back, according to studies made, from the beginning of the Ptolemaic period to the early Roman period and the Byzantine era.

On other hand, Wajdi Ramadan, head of the archaeological mission, said that the mission started its work at the end of November to complete the excavation work for its first season which began in February 2018 and continued until the end of April of the same year. During this work, the mission was able to uncover a cemetery that is carved into the rock and consists of an entrance that leads to a staircase carved into the ground leading to a rectangular hall with a number of walls. In the west hall there is a rectangular room with a number of mummies and a large stone coffin. A room containing a number of stone coffins placed inside Nishat was found in the direction of the north. “This burial technique is unique in the Tuna mountain region,” he added.

On his part, said Fathi Awad, director of the region of the tuna algabal said that the area of has been used  as cemeteries for the fifteenth province since the end of the modern state and the beginning of the late era, whose capital is Ashmounin. The area is famous for containing many important archaeological sites, including the cemetery of Petosiris, which was discovered in 1919 By Gustav Lefevre, the Roman legion, and the Holy Grave for the burial of animals and birds of the goddess Thoth, namely the ibex, the baboon monkey, the Isabura cemetery, and the Roman cemetery. The area also contained two border plates of King Akhenaten as part of the boundaries of the city of sister of Atun.