Excavation in Egyptian necropolis uncovers 63 ancient tombs and a trove of gold artifacts

An ongoing excavation in Damietta, Egypt, has uncovered 63 tombs from more than 2,500 years ago, alongside a trove of gold artifacts, coins and pottery.

The artifacts could provide further insight into the “secrets of the ancient Egyptian civilization,” including the burial practices of the time, as well as the coastal city’s role in ancient foreign trade, according to Egypt’s Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, which announced the findings July 23.

Among the 63 tombs, the excavators found funerary amulets, charms that were thought to protect the dead, and ushabti statues, also designed to accompany the dead in the afterlife, dated to the 26th Dynasty of the Late Period (664 to 525 BC). The excavation also revealed 38 bronze coins — held within a ceramic vase — from the Ptolemaic era, one of the dynasties that reigned after the death of Alexander the Great from 323 to 30 BC.

The excavation site, known as Tal al-Deir, is referred to as a necropolis, the term used for an elaborate cemetery of an ancient city. The cemetery was especially important during the 26th Dynasty but remained in use throughout the age of the Romans and Byzantines, according to the ministry.

The uncovered artifacts provide “a great deal of information” about the later periods of Egyptian history, said Salima Ikram, a distinguished university professor of Egyptology at the American University in Cairo who was not involved with the excavation.

“Based on the kind of objects, especially the gold amulets, one can see that this was a wealthy necropolis and obviously the city attached to it had a great deal of social (stratification) (a society’s hierarchy of people that is determined based on social and political factors),” she added in an email.

Ancient Egyptian burials reflect status and wealth

The excavation and mission to explore the necropolis has been ongoing for years. In 2019, the ministry announced the discovery of seven gold coins dated to Egypt’s Byzantine period (AD 284 to 641) as well as a collection of ushabti statues engraved with the name of King Psamtik II of the 26th Dynasty.

Three years later, the ministry announced the uncovering of 20 tombs that held a trove of gold foil figures that depicted Egyptian deities such as Bastet, the goddess who often took the form of a cat and was believed to guide people in the afterlife, and Horus, who was often depicted as a falcon, and was a symbol of protection.

This 2022 discovery featured tombs that included simple pits and tombs of mud brick — an air-dried brick made of a mixture of mud and other natural components — as well as some made of limestone that were assumed to be for the wealthier deceased. The recent find of 63 tombs consisted of mostly mud-brick tombs as well as some simple burials, according to a ministry statement.

Within Tal al-Deir, archaeologists also unearthed a large tomb that held burials of individuals with a high social status, said Kotb Fawzy, an official with the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities who oversees the excavation, in a statement. The bodies were buried with gold foil figures that depicted religious symbols and ancient Egyptian idols.

“One of the most interesting aspects of this on-going, government sponsored excavation at Damietta, is that the burials document a wide range of funerary techniques within the same cemetery precinct: from placing the deceased into a simple pit burial to interment within a mud-brick structure,” said Lorelei Corcoran, a professor of art history and director of the Institute of Egyptian Art and Archaeology at the University of Memphis in Tennessee, via email. Corcoran was not part of the excavation.

“This, together with the discovery of gold foil amulets in the shape of Egyptian deities and coin hordes, also illustrates a dichotomy in the wealth and status of the individuals buried here,” she added in an email.