Just a stone's throw from King Tut's tomb, archaeologists have unearthed the pyramid of a never-before known ancient Egyptian queen; a cache of coffins, mummies and artifacts; and a series of interconnected tunnels.
For the past two years, archaeologists have been working at Saqqara, an archaeological site in Giza, about 20 miles (32 kilometers) south of Cairo. Recently, they discovered a trove of coffins and mummies, which may belong to some of King Tut's closest generals and advisors during his reign (1333 B.C. until his death in 1323 B.C.). Archaeologists also focused their attention on a nearby pyramid, which belonged to Teti, the first king of the Sixth Dynasty of Egypt.1
Buried within these shafts, archaeologists found a "huge limestone sarcophagus" along with "300 beautiful coffins from the New Kingdom period," Hawass said.2
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- 1. "Teti was worshipped as a god in the New Kingdom period, and so people wanted to be buried near him," Zahi Hawass(opens in new tab), an Egyptologist who is working on the dig and who formerly served as Egypt's Minister of Antiquities, told Live Science in an email. "However, most burials known in Saqqara previously were either from the Old Kingdom or the Late Period. Now we have found 22 [interconnected] shafts, ranging from 30 to 60 feet [9 to 18 meters deep], all with New Kingdom burials." (Also known as the Egyptian Empire, the New Kingdom period lasted from the sixth century B.C. to the 11th century B.C.)
- 2. "Burials from the New Kingdom were not known to be common in the area before, so this is entirely unique to the site," Hawass said. "The coffins have individual faces, each one unique, distinguishing between men and women, and are decorated with scenes from the Book of the Dead [an ancient Egypt funerary text]. Each coffin also has the name of the deceased and often shows the Four Sons of Horus, who protected the organs of the deceased."
