Described
for the first time, the 4,000-year-old "rabbit's warren" represents
one of the largest groupings of Middle Kingdom burials.
For
thousands of years, a necropolis has been lurking under the desert near the
village of Lisht in Egypt, just south of Al Ayyat. Located at the edge of the
Sahara, the ancient cemetery is no secret; today, a pair of pyramids rises
above the landscape in the north and south of the burial grounds.
But
many of the site's ancient tombs have long been concealed under feet of
sand—until now.
In
just a single field season, a joint expedition between the University of Alabama-Birmingham
and the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities mapped out a whopping 802 tombs at
Lisht. These newly described tombs date back roughly 4,000 years and were
previously unknown to Egyptologists, according to an announcement from Khaled
El-Enany, Minister of Antiquities, and Mostafa Waziry, Secretary General of the
Supreme Council of Antiquities.
“What
we have at the site is one of the largest corpuses of Middle Kingdom tombs in
the entire country of Egypt,” says archaeologist Sarah Parcak, a National
Geographic Explorer and professor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham
who co-led the expedition with Adel Okasha, Director of the Pyramids Region.
While
the tombs were largely looted before the expedition started work, they still
offer many insights into the lives of the people who once bustled in the
ancient city nearby, believed to have been the Middle Kingdom capital of
Itj-Tawy.
Middle
Kingdom Riches
Spanning
from roughly 2030 to 1650 B.C., the Middle Kingdom is a period marked by
flourishing art and culture. “You see this blossoming during the Middle
Kingdom,” Parcak says.
Much
of what we know so far about Lisht during this period comes from extensive
excavations conducted since the early 1900s by researchers with the
Metropolitan Museum of Art. Per museum policy, Met curator Adela Oppenheim
declined to comment directly about the new research. But she notes that
artifacts from this period seem to reflect a greater awareness of the human
condition, which is part of what makes the Middle Kingdom so fascinating.
Met
teams have primarily focused their efforts on documenting and mapping the two
pyramids—built for the kings Amenemhat I and Senusret I—as well as the
surrounding royal tombs. But there's still much more to learn from the rest of
the site's resting places.
“From
this area, there really aren't very many tombs that are known, except for the
royal tombs there,” says Kathryn Bard, an archaeologist at Boston University
who was not involved in the work. “That's why this cemetery is important.”
Underground
Network
The
latest work began in 2014 when Parcak and her colleagues noticed evidence of
looting pits in high-resolution satellite images. From 2009 to 2013, the dark
pockmarks multiplied in the images. But from the sky, Parcak notes, the team
couldn't be sure where the holes led.
Since
then, work on the ground that was partially funded by National Geographic
revealed that most of these pits led to tombs. At each site, the team carefully
documented features of the tombs, collecting images and GPS coordinates to
assemble a database for the region.
Many
shaft tombs had places for up to eight burials, which means the interlocking
mortuary system likely housed at least 4,000 individuals in the afterlife.
“They
used all the space they could get their hands on,” says Parcak, who compares
the dense system of graves to the winding tunnels of a rabbit warren. “Many
would have been reused by families or grandchildren, or great-grand children,
or third cousins three times removed.”
Fragments
of Information
By
the time the researchers arrived on the scene, looters had emptied most of the
tombs. Parcak's work previously suggested that looting intensified in Egypt
during the economic instability that followed the 2009 recession and the 2011
revolution. Lisht seemed to be no exception.
But
Bard and other Egyptologists believe that there's still information to glean.
“I
think it was a good first step,” Mark Lehner, director of Ancient Egypt
Research Associates, says of the mapping and documentation efforts. Pottery
shards, fragments of wall murals, human remains, and even the tomb structures
themselves can help researchers learn more about the health, economic status,
and mortuary practices of the people who once lived in the capital.
“This
is really, to me, where the value is of this work,” says Parcak. She adds that
these latest finds are limited to the southern part of the site, and the team
hopes to continue work in the northern regions next season.
“Like
all these other sites in Egypt,” she says, “there’s a lot left to map and
discover.
