Archeologists Find 4,300-Year-Old Tomb in Shadow of the Pyramids

A tomb built 4,300 years ago for a palace official and his two wives has been found in the shadow of the Giza Pyramids, the first unknown tomb discovered on the plateau since the mid-1950s.

“This is the first time we’ve seen such a tomb,” said Zahi Hawass, director general of the pyramids area. “We can find no parallel to this tomb during the Old Kingdom.”

Giza inspector Mahmoud Hassan Afife found the new tomb in October when he chanced upon the edge of a limestone wall. “We looked at the old records to see what early excavators had recorded in this spot. There was nothing.”

Hieroglyphics revealed the tomb owner’s name, that he was a “purification priest” who handled religious rituals and that he was a palace official.

Hawass dates it to the end of the 5th Dynasty, about 200 years after the death in 2528 BC of Pharaoh Cheops, builder of the Great Pyramid.

Built of limestone blocks, the 26-foot by 66-foot oblong tomb, called a mastaba , stands over a shaft 23 feet deep that was sealed with mud bricks after bodies were lowered into it. The mastaba had no inner chambers.

On one side, ancient artists carved two false doors with the owner’s name, Per-N-Ankh. The doors face a courtyard with six limestone columns describing him and his wives Mitrt Nefer and N-Hwy.

The winter archeology season was a month old when Afife found the tomb, and vigorous excavation has continued since. On a recent morning, a sandstorm so engulfed the dig that workers used rubber buckets to shield their heads from the sand. Debris cascaded onto the tomb’s base faster than diggers could dig.

Suddenly, from deep in a shaft, a workman yelled, gumgumah , Arabic for “skull.” As a man above slowly turned a pulley, a reddish-gold skull creaked its way up the pit. It appears to be that of a female, in excellent condition.

Such a find testifies to the site’s value. Nearby pits have yielded piles of pottery shards, bones and wooden pieces that officials said might be part of a bed or other funerary furniture to accompany the dead into the afterlife. In an adjacent tomb were two limestone statues of wives of Pharaonic officials.

Hawass said he knew valuable leftovers would emerge from re-excavation of the vast Western Cemetery, begun in the fifth year of Cheops’ reign. Officials and their families used the cemetery over the centuries, building limestone and mud-brick tombs along avenues of various sizes.

“Some Egyptologists thought the area wouldn’t give anything else, but they’re wrong. Early excavators were in a hurry, Indiana Jones-style. Some even used dynamite,” he said. “This tomb lies at the edge of the cemetery. Earlier this century archeologists dumped their dirt onto these hills without checking to see if anything interesting lay underneath.

“Chances are even more tombs still lie just over there.”

Excavating leftovers is “never a waste of time, never busywork,” said Amal Samuel, Giza’s chief inspector, who estimates that as many as 4,000 tombs and pits exist in the area known as the Western Cemetery. “When people dug in the past they only searched for treasure. Today, we’re looking for history. We never think if we’ll find something or not.”

Last spring archeologists clearing another part of the cemetery found the well-preserved, gypsum-masked head of a female mummy from about the same period, her faint smile reminiscent of the Mona Lisa.

Giza Plateau has two great cemeteries: the Eastern, between the Great Pyramid and the Sphinx, and the Western, wedged between the pyramids of Cheops and Chephren. Generally, queens and royal offspring were buried in the Eastern Cemetery, officials and their families in the Western.

The cemeteries of mastabas were arranged in parallel rows several feet apart, with ownership planned carefully. Everybody wanted to be buried in the pyramid area, seeking special benefits in life after death. Over the years, as demand increased, the symmetry went askew. Small tombs of officials and priests were placed among the once neat rows until the area was honeycombed.

“We have to think of these cemeteries as a community that surrounded the king with the same feeling as when he was alive,” said Hawass. “At the top of his pyramid is the Pharaoh, the head of his country. Around him lay those who would have been near him, his family and officials. . . . Those closest are in the Eastern Cemetery, just like in a palace.”