CAIRO, EGYPT—According to an Ahram Online report, Mostafa Waziri of the Supreme Council of Antiquities announced that Egyptian and German researchers from the University of Tübingen discovered an additional burial chamber at the bottom of a communal burial shaft in Saqqara. The burial shaft is connected to a mummification workshop and five other burial chambers dated to the 26th Dynasty (688–525 B.C.), which were unearthed in 2018. Four poorly preserved wooden coffins were found in the sixth chamber. Ramadan B. Hussein of the University of Tübingen said one of the coffins belonged to a woman named Didibastett, who was buried with six canopic jars. Ancient Egyptians were usually buried with four canopic jars, Hussein explained, which held the embalmed lungs, stomach, intestines, and liver of the deceased. Computerized tomography scans of Didibastett’s two extra jars suggest they contain as yet unidentified human tissue. Waziri added that chemical analysis of artifacts recovered from the mummification workshop by scientists from the University of Tübingen, the University of Munich, and the Egyptian National Research Center has detected traces of bitumen, cedar oil, cedar resin, pistachio resin, beeswax, animal fat, and possibly olive oil and juniper oil. For more, go to "Mummy Workshop," one of ARCHAEOLOGY's Top 10 Discoveries of 2018.
