Leather Chariot Fragments Rediscovered at Egyptian Museum

CAIRO, EGYPT—Egyptologists Salima Ikram of the American University in Cairo and Andre Veldmeijer of the Netherlands Flemish Institute in Cairo tracked down a collection of 300 leather fragments in the store rooms of the Egyptian Museum. The extremely rare, embellished leather pieces represent all of the parts of an Old Kingdom royal chariot. “The fragments are in a much better shape than we originally anticipated, and we were able to achieve a sense of how the leather unfolds,” Ikram said. The team plans to build a reconstruction of an ancient chariot next year.