In a bid to preserve the 3,000-year-old Step Pyramid of Djoser, Cintec, a British engineering firm from South Wales has been called in to keep the pyramid standing, which almost collapsed in 1992 after being hit by an earthquake.

The engineers will use self-inflating water-filled bags to bolster against the collapse of a damaged ceiling inside the pyramid.

Stainless steel structural reinforcement anchors will also be implemented in a bid to secure the strength of the building’s central chamber.

Daily Mail

A statement said they were found by an expert from the University of Barcelona. The artifacts had been on sale priced between 2,000 and 10,000 euros ($2,600; £1,700 and $13,000; £8,400).

They will now be returned to the Egyptian government.

BBC

Two rock-hewn painted tombs considered as two of the most distinguished tombs ever found from the Old Kingdom were discovered last week at Saqqara necropolis.

The tombs were found during a routine excavation carried out by an Egyptian mission in an area west of the Step Pyramid of Djoser. Dr. Zahi Hawass, Secretary General of the SCA, who is also the leader of the excavation mission, said that the tombs belong to a father, Shendwa, and his son, Khonsu. The father’s tomb consists of a painted false door depicting scenes of the deceased seated before an offering table. The door also bears the different titles of the tomb’s owner who was a top governmental official during the Sixth Dynasty (2374-2191 BC). He was the head of the royal scribes and the supervisor of the missions as well as other honorary titles. The tomb’s burial shaft is located directly beneath the false door, meters below the ground level.

The tomb was intact and had not previously been plundered by tomb robbers. Unfortunately Shendwas’s wooden sarcophagus had disintegrated due to humidity and erosion. Beside the sarcophagus, a collection of limestone jars was found including five offering vessels carved in the shape of a duck.

Next to the father’s tomb, excavators discovered Shendwa’s son Khonsu. It is a beautifully painted tomb with a false door bearing Khonsu’s different titles. It appears that Khonsu inherited the same titles as his father. Excavators located an offering table just opposite to the false door as well as a stone lintel on the floor.

Luxor News

Photo SCA

A 19th dynasty tomb that had been missing since the late 19th century have been rediscovered by an Egyptian archaeology team working in the ancient necropolis of Saqqara, led by Cairo University archaeology professor Ola el-Aguizy.

The tomb belongs to an ancient mayor of Memphis, called Ptahmes, who also served as army chief, overseer of the treasury and royal scribe under Seti I and his son and successor, Ramses II, in the 13th century B.C.

Back in 1885, treasure hunters took some artifacts and wall fragments, objects which ended up in museums in the Netherlands, the United States and Italy as well as the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, providing the only clues about the missing tomb.

The sand revealed several fragments of the statue of Ptahmes and his wife. A painted head depicting a female – most probably the mayor’s wife or one of his daughters – was unearthed, along with a limestone
statue that belongs to the deceased. The archaeologists also unearthed clay vessels, shabti figurines and amulets.

The inner chambers of the large, temple-style tomb and Ptahmes’ mummy remain undiscovered.

Google News

Such is the story of Userkare, second pharaoh of the 6th Dynasty who ruled between Teti and Teti’s son Pepi I. He took power after Teti was murdered, perhaps in a conspiracy he himself had maneuvered.

The pyramid of this obscure pharaoh has been missing for some 4,300 years.

Giulio Magli, professor of archaeoastronomy at Milan’s Polytechnic University, asserts that the lost pyramid of Userkare lies in the intersection of a series of invisible lines in South Saqqara. Using new astronomical and topographical research, Magli has devised a grid that connects up some of the major pyramids at Saqqara and South Saqqara.

Magli suggests that Userkare’s tomb is located approximately in the middle of the line connecting Pharaoh Pepi I and Pharaoh Merenre’s diagonals, in alignment with Djoser’s pyramid.

Another Egyptologist, Vassil Dobrev from the French Institute of Archaeology in Cairo has been looking for Userkare’s tomb and believes it will be discovered at South Saqqara but not in the area where Magli expects to find it. Dobrev has already uncovered a number of tombs of 6th Dynasty priests in a 15-hectare area in Tabbet al-Guesh. Priests and officials were usually buried close to the tomb of their king, thus indicating the proximity of the lost tomb of the murderer pharaoh.

Sources: Discovery News and Talking Pyramids

Both tombs are cut into the hills and, despite of being looted in the 5th Century AD, the excavators found coffins, skeletons, mummified eagles and pottery.

One of the tombs is the largest one discovered so far in this area, with rock-hewn hallway, small chambers and corridors. The smaller tomb is made of mud brick.

Source: Heritage Key and other sources

“These tombs belonged to middle class Egyptian families, not royalty, and had no names on them. They were reused by many people and can give us lots of information on burial customs and religion at the time.” Zahi Hawass, Egypt’s head of antiquities who led the all-Egyptian archaeological team, told Reuters.

abcNews

Djoser permitted 11 of his daughters to be buried in his pyramid, which makes the Step Pyramid the only pyramid of the Old Kingdom that was used for the burial of the king and his royal family. Why not also allow his architect Imhotep to be buried with him? Could it be possible that Imhotep was buried in the pyramid with his king? We know that he was very close to the king, that he was the one who designed the king’s tomb to be of stone for the first time in history. His name was also written on the base of a statue of Djoser, implying that he was very important to the king. Since he designed the pyramid for the king and his family, and he may have been as close as family to the king, it could be a possibility that he was allowed to be buried within the pyramid. In my opinion, that is one possibility, and we hope to find some answers when we excavate the shaft.

drhawass.com

Muhammad Zakaria Goneim was one of a few Egyptian archaeologists of his time. His excavation work at Saqqara in 1954 led to a major discovery – a buried unfinished step pyramid belonging to Sekhemkhet, son of Djoser.  Goneim found a spectacular cache of gold jewelry- 20 pieces of gold in bracelets and beads, but his most promising find was a fine alabaster sarcophagus in sealed condition, which might contain the undisturbed mummy of the pharaoh.

The ceremony of the opening of the sarcophagus was attended by the media and by President Gamal Abdel Nasser, the hero of the 1952 revolution. Unfortunately, the sarcophagus turned out empty, possibly a decoy to hide the real burial place.

Goneim went on to lecture outside the country and published a book called “The Buried Pyramid”. He was later assigned in charge of a storehouse of artifacts at Saqqara. At this time, things turned for the worse for the famed Egyptian archaeologist, who was falsely accused of trafficking with missing antiquities.

Muhammad Zakaria Goneim was found drowned in the Nile on January 12. 1959, apparently a suicide. Two days later, the missing objects were discovered in storage at the Egyptian Museum.

drhawass.com

We are also working now to restore the Serapeum at Saqqara. The Serapeum was discovered by Auguste Mariette in 1851, and consists of a series of huge underground galleries for the burial of the sacred Apis bulls. Burials of sacred cult animals were very common in Saqqara until the end of the Ptolemaic Period. We hope to open the Serapeum to the public in the coming December. The site of Saqqara was very important to the ancient Egyptians, and many of the monuments are in need of conservation and restoration. The SCA is dedicated to preserving these monuments so they may share the magic of ancient Egypt with the world.

drhawass.com

The Saqqara plateau served as a burial site to the ancient Egyptians for over three thousand years. It is home to pyramids, private tombs and temples, and is even the burial place of sacred animals. The most famous of the animals buried at Saqqara were the Apis bulls.

From the ancient evidence we know that there was only ever one Apis bull at a time and that each bull was associated with the king when alive and with the god Osiris after death. In the Ptolemaic Period the cult of the Apis was combined with that of a variety of Greek gods; it was then known as the cult of Serapis.

The story of the discovery of the Serapeum is as exciting as any Hollywood movie. The Greek writer Strabo, who lived in the First Century BC, described a road of lonely windswept sphinxes, some half submerged in the sand, stretching out across Saqqara to a temple of the god Serapis. Nearly two thousand years later a young man named Auguste Mariette was sent to Egypt by the Louvre to buy manuscripts for the museum’s collection. On a visit to Saqqara he noticed a sphinx emerging from the sand. Suddenly the words of Strabo entered his mind and he realised that if he followed the row of sphinxes he would find the long lost Serapeum.

The row of sphinxes led to the remains of two pylons. In turn, these had originally led to a temple, of which virtually nothing now remained. However, one of the chambers in the temple led to a vast subterranean vault. Here Mariette knew that he would find the sacred tombs of the Apis bulls.

The bulls were buried at the Serapeum for over one thousand years, from the Eighteenth Dynasty to the Ptolemaic Period, amid great mourning and ceremony.

Despite being an important and unique monument, the Serpaeum has been closed to visitors for many years as it was deemed unsafe. When conservation work is complete, the Serapeum will be opened to the public again so that all visitors to Saqqara can visit this unique and mysterious monument.

drhawass.com