Saqqara is a village in Egypt , about 30 km south of Cairo . It contains the oldest necropolis of the capital of the Old Kingdom - Memphis . Its name comes from the name of the god of the dead - Socar .
| Locality | |
| Saccara | |
|---|---|
| A country | |
| History and Geography | |
| Center height | |
| Timezone | |
 | UNESCO World Heritage Site No. 86 Russian • English • fr. |
Content
Necropolis
The length of the Memphis necropolis from north to south is seven kilometers; the width is 1500-500 m. There are 11 royal pyramids in total, for the most part these are the pyramids of the pharaohs of the VI dynasty , among them the burials of the pharaohs Aunt , Pepi I and Pepi II stand out. The central structure is the step pyramid of Djoser , the pharaoh of the 3rd dynasty , although the royal burial was carried out here during the 2nd dynasty , and the first mastabs belong to the period of the 1st dynasty .
Although the Pharaohs were not buried in Saqqara after Pepi II, the burials of less important people continued here in all subsequent periods, right up to the Roman era . The famous usurper Horemheb prepared a tomb for himself here before he even became a pharaoh. One of the features of the necropolis is the Serapeum , on the way to which in the Hellenistic period statues of the great Greek philosophers were placed.
Excavations
Excavations in Saqqara were carried out continuously; systematically led the case of Mariette , whose house is preserved in the northern part of the desert. A huge system of burial chambers in the vicinity of the Step Pyramid was discovered only in 1924.
At the end of 1996, a French expedition led by Alain Zivi discovered the tomb of the nurse Tutankhamun named Maya . According to the inscriptions and drawings in the tomb, work on the tomb continued after the death of Tutankhamun [2] [3] .
In 2006, the Imhotep Museum appeared on the territory of the necropolis.
On July 14, 2018, during excavations in the historical district of Saqqara, a workshop was discovered in which in the era of Ancient Egypt the bodies of dead, high-ranking persons of the era of the Pharaohs were embalmed. In the workshop at a depth of 30 meters, many special surgical instruments and vessels with residues of substances used in the process of mummification were preserved [4] . In one of the necropolises of Saqqara, archaeologists from Italy discovered cheese made simultaneously from goat, sheep and cow milk between 1290 and 1213 BC. e. In addition, bacteria causing Mediterranean fever were detected in cheese [5] .
On December 15, 2018, the burial of a priest of one of the temples of the pharaohs of the V dynasty of Ancient Egypt was discovered, the age of the tomb is approximately 4.4 thousand years, length is about 10 m, height - 3 m. Scientists managed to determine the name of the ancient minister of worship, his name was Vakh- T [6] .
See also
- Sakkar list - one of the oldest surviving documents of historical content
- “ Bird from Saqqara ” - one of the famous finds made in Saqqara
Notes
- ↑ archINFORM - 1994.
- ↑ Alain-Pierre Zivie. La Tombe de Maia, Mère Nourricière du Roi Toutankhamon et Grande du Harem. (Les Tombes du Bubasteion à Saqqara. Nr. 1). - Caracara: Toulouse, 2009.
- ↑ Marianne Eaton-Krauss. The Unknown Tutankhamun. - Bloomsbury Publishing, 2015 .-- S. 13, 28. - 209 p. - ISBN 9781472575630 .
- ↑ In the vicinity of Cairo, they found an ancient embalming workshop (Russian) , TASS . Date of treatment August 7, 2018.
- ↑ Media: in Egypt, excavations uncovered cheese over 3200 years old , TASS . Date of treatment November 28, 2018.
- ↑ In Egypt, discovered the tomb of an ancient priest over 4 thousand years old
Links
- Saqqara on Wikimapia
- http://www.egyptology.ru/sites/Saqqara.htm
- Sakkara // Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary : in 86 volumes (82 volumes and 4 additional). - SPb. , 1890-1907.