The Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities on Saturday revealed details on recently discovered animal mummies, saying they include two lion cubs as well as several crocodiles, birds and cats.
Items from the new find, including 75 wooden or bronze statutes, were displayed at a makeshift exhibition at the famed Step Pyramid of Djoser in Saqqara, south of Cairo, near where mummies and other artifacts have been found in a vast necropolis.
“We are finding here hundreds of objects,” Egyptian Minister of Antiquities Khaled el-Anany said. “All of them are very interesting from the Egyptological point of view to know better this area.”
Photo: Reuters
He described the discovery as “a [whole] museum by itself.”
The Saqqara plateau hosted at least 11 pyramids, including the Step Pyramid, along with hundreds of tombs of ancient officials, ranging from the 1st Dynasty (2920 BC to 2770 BC) to the Coptic period (395 to 642).
Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities Secretary-General Mostafa Waziri told reporters that local archaeologists found a cache that includes hundreds of mummified animals, birds and crocodiles.
He said that among the mummified animals were two lion cubs and radar scans were needed on three others to determine that the mummies were also lions.
Archaeologists frequently find mummified cats, but the recovery of a lion is rare.
In 2004, the first lion skeleton was found in Saqqara, revealing the sacred status of the animal in ancient times.
Archaeologists also found wooden and bronze cat statues representing the ancient goddess Bastet and a rare large stone scarab, which Waziri described as “the largest all over the world.”
They also displayed two mummies of ichneumon, or the Egyptian mongoose, wrapped in linen bandages and wooden and 11 tin-glazed statuettes of the goddess Sekhmet, the warrior goddess of healing, represented as a woman with the head of a lioness
Academics say Sekhmet (1390 to 1252 BC) was the destroyer of the enemies of the sun god Re.
There were also strips of papyrus with depictions of the goddess Taweret depicted as a hippopotamus with the tail of a crocodile.
Markings on the displayed artifacts show that they date back to the Late Period (664 to 332 BC).
The trove also boasts a collection of ancient Egyptian deities in the form of 73 bronze statuettes depicting the god Osiris and six wooden statues of Ptah-Soker.
The Saqqara discovery is the latest in a series of new finds that Egypt has sought to publicize in an effort to revive its key tourism sector, which was badly hit by the turmoil that followed the 2011 uprising that toppled then-Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak.
Additional reporting by AFP
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