Mummification Workshop

Top 10 Discoveries of the Decade January/February 2021

Saqqara, Egypt, 2018
(Ramadan Hussein, Saqqara Saite Tombs Project)
SHARE:

Mummification is among the best-known religious practices of the ancient Egyptians, yet apart from a few textual descriptions and tomb paintings, very little is known about the facilities where this process took place. That changed when archaeologists discovered a unique series of rooms dating to the Saite-Persian period of the mid-first millennium B.C. “The whole complex could be looked upon as a funeral home of sorts that provided the service of mummification along with burial compartments and equipment,” says Ramadan Hussein of the University of Tübingen. The facility includes a subterranean chamber at the bottom of a 40-foot-deep shaft that was used by embalmers. There, they laid bodies out on a rock-cut bed, drained them of fluids, and prepared them for burial. Hussein’s team also found ceramic vessels labeled with substances’ names and instructions for how each should be used in the mummification process. Just feet from the embalmer’s room, the team located a 100-foot-deep shaft that contained six different tombs holding 59 mummies.

MORE FROM Top 10 Discoveries of the Decade

  • Top 10 Discoveries of the Decade January/February 2021

    Grave of the “Griffin Warrior”

    Pylos, Greece, 2015

    Read Article
    (griffinwarrior.org, Jeff Vanderpool/ Courtesy of the Department of Classics, University of Cincinnati)
  • Top 10 Discoveries of the Decade January/February 2021

    Regio V Excavations

    Pompeii, Italy, 2018

    Read Article
    (Pasquale Sorrentino)
  • Features January/February 2021

    Top 10 Discoveries of the Decade

    The best finds of the past 10 years

    Read Article
  • Features January/February 2021

    Return to the River

    Members of Virginia’s Rappahannock tribe are at work with archaeologists to document the landscape they call home

    Read Article
    (Courtesy Julia King)
  • Letter from Woodhenge January/February 2021

    Stonehenge's Continental Cousin

    A 4,000-year-old ringed sanctuary reveals a German village’s surprising connections with Britain

    Read Article
    (Photo Matthias Zirn)
  • Artifacts January/February 2021

    Inca Box with Votive Offerings

    Read Article
    (Courtesy Teddy Seguin/Université Libre de Bruxelles)