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According to CNN, this is the tomb of a royal priest dating from the 7th century BC, believed to correspond to the 5th Dynasty of the Old Kingdom. The tomb is quite unusual because its facade and doors are still intact, meaning the artifacts inside may remain undisturbed. Khaled El-Enany, Egypt's Minister of Antiquities, stated that the items unearthed from the tomb alone could fill an entire museum.
The findings included 25 wooden sarcophagi with hieroglyphs on the outside and mummified cats inside. Mixed in with the dozens of mummified cats were 100 gilded wooden cat statues and a bronze statue of the cat goddess Bastet.
Cat statues were found in ancient tombs.
Mostafa Waziri, Secretary-General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities of Egypt, announced that one of the most remarkable discoveries was the mummified remains of five big cats. After putting them through magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), archaeologists identified two of them as lion cubs. Waziri said that further research would be conducted to learn more about these two lions.
Mummified lions were found in the tomb of the royal priest.
Cats were often revered by the ancient Egyptians and mummified for burial alongside their owners. However, the discovery of mummified lions is extremely rare.
Previously, French Egyptologist Alain Zivie also discovered the mummified remains of a male lion near the site where the aforementioned tomb was found, El-Enany stated, noting that lions played a particularly sacred role in the life of ancient Egypt.
Other notable findings at the ancient tomb included two mummified scarab beetles in a rectangular marble sarcophagus, the lid decorated with three black-painted scarab beetles, along with a crocodile statue containing the mummified remains of a crocodile.
Dozens of statues of ancient Egyptian gods and mummified cobras were also found in this excavation, including 73 bronze statues of the god Osiris.
The excavation site for this tomb is located in the Saqqara cemetery, near the Giza pyramids, south of Cairo, Egypt. The tomb was discovered and excavation began last year.
Recently, the Egyptian government has been continuously announcing remarkable archaeological discoveries in an effort to revive tourism after international visitor numbers declined due to prolonged political instability over the past decade.
