59 Preserved Coffins Discovered At An Ancient Egyptian Necropolis

Colorful and well-preserved Egyptian coffins have been discovered at the necropolis of Saqqara, just south of Cairo. Even if the wooden coffins are around 2,600 years old, the coffins still display painted decoration and hieroglyphic inscriptions. Preliminary investigations suggest that the individuals buried in these coffins were priests and high officials, as The Art Newspaper details:

The Egyptian team, led by Mostafa Waziry, secretary general of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, began excavating the burial shafts two months ago. The three shafts so far uncovered are between 10 and 12 metres deep, with the coffins found divided between them. Among the finds were 28 wooden statuettes of Ptah-Sokar, a god of the necropolis, and a bronze statuette of Nefertum, a god who represented the lotus blossom from which the sun god rose, which had an inscription on its base identifying its owner as the priest Badi-Amun. There were also amulets and shabtis—small figurines believed to magically perform agricultural work for the dead in the afterlife.

“We know from geophysical surveys that there was a vast network of temples, in addition to tombs, here, and [the discovery of the coffins] will be valuable to expand our knowledge of the cults that operated at Saqqara based on the inscriptions,” says Campbell Price, the curator of Egypt and Sudan at the Manchester Museum. “Coffin caches of this type are far from exceptional, but they tend to come from Luxor in the south. The real value of the recent find is the light these examples throw onto northern coffin styles, and no doubt also names and titles that previously have not been firmly associated with the Saqqara area,” Price adds.