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Middle Kingdom tomb with fine jewelry found in Luxor necropolis
A 4,000-year-old tomb from the Middle Kingdom (1938 B.C.-1630 B.C.) has been discovered in the South Asasif necropolis in Luxor, Egypt. The tomb consists of 11 burials, several of them still sealed, of men, women and children. The female burials contain fine jewelry in excellent condition, including amulets, rings, necklaces and bracelets made from beads of semi-precious stones.
Among the finds are beautiful necklaces, bracelets, armlets, scarab rings and girdles made of amethyst, carnelian, garnet, blue-green glazed faience, and feldspar. The amulets incorporated into the jewelry include hippo heads, hawks, ba amulets, wedjat eyes, Taweret amulets, and a snake head, among others.
A necklace of 30 amethyst barrel beads with an amazonite ba amulet in the center, and a girdle of carnelian ball beads connected by double strings of blue faience ring beads are some of the most exquisite pieces among the found jewelry.
While looters may not have broken the seals of the burials, the elements did. Ancient floods damaged the wooden sarcophagi and the linen wrappings, but the artifacts made from inorganic materials were well-preserved. Funerary furnishings were found in tombs 2, 4, 6, 8, 9 and 10. Burial 9 belonged to an adult male who was the only man in the group buried with jewelry. He was wearing a large necklace made of 40 faience ball beads separated by a faience cylinder bead. On the back was a hippo head amulet flanked by two cylinder carnelian beads.
Two of the female burials contained rare copper mirrors with carved ivory handles. One of the mirrors has a lotiform (lotus-shaped) handle, while the other has a more intricate and rare design of a four-faced woman representing the goddess Hathor. The faces are intense with a straight mouth and penetrating, direct gaze.
Another important find is a green-blue glazed faience fertility figurine with truncated legs. It is well-modelled and decorated with a variety of jewelry and lozenge markings on the legs and torso. Her cropped hair is painted black. The head is pierced with holes arranged in three sections. The holes were intended for the attachment of “hair”. Almost 4000 mud beads found next to the figurine constituted her original hair.
An offering tray associated with the burials is of a square shape with a low border and a water channel in the middle surrounded with relief representations of a bull’s head, ribs, leg, loaf of bread and other offerings.
A joint Egyptian and American mission discovered the tomb while clearing the tomb of Karabasken, a 25th Dynasty official. On the south side of the 25th Dynasty tomb’s superstructure, the excavation uncovered the Middle Kingdom tomb, the first from the period to be found in the South Asasif necropolis. Archaeologists believe it was a family tomb, that the people buried there were all members of the same family buried in the tomb over generations from the early 12th through the early 13th Dynasty.
The discovery of a multi-generational Middle Kingdom tomb in the Theban necropolis with so many fine surviving grave goods adds significantly to our knowledge of burial practices, art and craftsmanship from the period.
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