The top of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities Mohammad Ismail (middle) talks with an archaeologist about stone fragments bearing scenes of rituals in properly preserved colours, displayed on website throughout a media occasion to announce new discoveries by an Egyptian archaeological mission at Queen Hatshepsut’s Valley Temple in Deir El-Bahari on the Nile’s west financial institution in Luxor on January 8, 2025. —Pictures by Khaled Desouki/Agence France-Presse
CAIRO, Egypt — Egypt on Wednesday unveiled new archaeological discoveries, together with the 4,000-year-old tombs of high-ranking officers and art work from the time of Queen Hatshepsut, at an historical necropolis within the famed metropolis of Luxor.
The artifacts, unearthed throughout a three-year-long excavation, have been present in Deir al-Bahari space within the necropolis of Thebes on the west financial institution of the Nile, famend Egyptologist Zahi Hawass, who led the mission in cooperation with Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, stated in an announcement.
The findings date from the time of the fifteenth dynasty (1650-1550 BC) to the highly effective 18th dynasty (1550-1292 BC), which included pharaohs akin to Queen Hatshepsut and King Tutankhamun.
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The staff unveiled an intact a part of the foundations for the valley temple of Queen Hatshepsut’s funerary advanced in addition to intricate art work rendered in vivid bas-reliefs and inscriptions with remarkably preserved colours.
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Among the 1,500 adorned blocks depict the queen and her successor, Thutmose III, performing sacred rituals.
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“(It’s) essentially the most stunning scene I’ve ever seen in my life,” Hawass, who personally unveiled the brand new discoveries on the temple, stated.
“That is the primary time that we’ve got a closing program of the ornament of a temple relationship to the 18th dynasty,” he advised reporters.
A show showcases a stele and a number of artifacts unearthed throughout a partial excavation of the Assassif Ptolmaic necropolis, throughout a media occasion to announce new discoveries by an Egyptian archaeological mission at Queen Hatshepsut’s Valley Temple in Deir El-Bahari on the Nile’s west financial institution in Luxor on January 8, 2025.
Beneath the temple’s basis, archaeologists additionally found a pristine set of ceremonial instruments inscribed with Queen Hatshepsut’s title.
Different main finds included the rock-cut tombs of high-ranking Center Kingdom officers and an 18th-dynasty tomb of “the Overseer of the Palace” of Queen Tetisheri.
Tetisheri was the grandmother of King Ahmose I, who expelled the Hyksos, a Western Asian individuals who invaded Egypt and managed the Nile Delta for practically a century.
Additionally uncovered have been burial shafts containing wood coffins marked with a feather emblem of the seventeenth dynasty in addition to kids’s graves full with toys.
Wednesday’s announcement got here as Egypt ramped up eforts to revive its tourism sector, a key supply of overseas forex for the nation’s struggling financial system.
Final yr, Egypt acquired 15.7 million vacationers and goals to draw 18 million this yr. —Agence France-Presse