Archaeologists Discover 20 Sealed Ancient Egyptian Coffins
rchaeologists have unearthed 20 intact ancient coffins near the Egyptian city of Luxor, the country’s antiquities ministry announced this week in a statement lauding the find as “one of the largest and most important” in recent years.
According to CNN’s Oscar Holland and Taylor Barnes, researchers discovered the coffins in Al-Assasif, a necropolis on the Nile River’s West Bank. Once part of the ancient Egyptian capital of Thebes, the site stands in what is now Luxor.
As Lateshia Beachum reports for the Washington Post, the coffins—decorated in shades of red, green, white and black—were found stacked in two layers in a giant tomb. The wooden sarcophagi are particularly impressive due to their colorful, well-preserved paintings and inscriptions, as well as the fact that they are still sealed—a rarity in Egyptian archaeology.
Although the antiquities ministry did not specify what time period the sarcophagi date to, BBC News notes that the majority of tombs in the necropolis hold the remains of nobles and government officials buried during Egypt’s Late Period, which lasted from 664 to 332 B.C.
There are, however, some exceptions to this trend: namely, tombs dating to the earlier 18th dynasty. Spanning the period of 1543 to 1292 B.C., this royal line included such pharaohs as Ahmenhotep I, Tutankhamun, and Hatshepsut, the so-called “queen who would be king.”
For now, information on the find remains scarce, but as a ministry statement notes, more details will be shared at a press conference this Saturday.
Ancient Egyptian coffins Luxor 2
The wooden coffins are still sealed––a rarity in Egyptian archaeology (Ministry of Antiquities-Arab Republic of Egypt)
The cache of coffins isn’t the only recent find to come out of Luxor. Last week, archaeologists announced the discovery of an ancient “industrial” zone in the Valley of the Monkeys, a sprawling site neighboring the famed Valley of the Kings.
According to a government statement, the team unearthed 30 workshops, many featuring pottery dating to the 18th dynasty. Each shop had a different purpose—for example, producing pottery or gold artifacts—but all were assigned to the general task of creating funerary goods for Egyptian nobles and wealthy individuals. In addition to these workshops, the researchers found an in-ground water tank that likely held workers’ drinking water, a scarab ring, hundreds of inlay beads and gold foil used to decorate royal coffins.
“This is unprecedented,” archaeologist Zahi Hawass tells CNN’s Julie Zaugg and Nourhan Moustafa. “Up until now, everything we knew about the [Luxor region] came from the tombs themselves, but this new discovery will allow us to shed a light on the tools and techniques used to produce the royal coffins and the furniture placed in the tombs.”
The ministry also announced the discovery of a grave in the East Valley, or as it’s more commonly known, the Valley of the Kings. Per Ahram Online’s Nevine El-Aref, the tomb, called KV 65, boasts tools used during its construction.
Egypt is currently conducting the largest excavation of the valley since 1922, when Howard Carter stumbled upon Tutankhamun’s incredibly well-preserved tomb. Archaeologists are hoping to find still-undiscovered royal crypts, including the final resting places of Queen Nefertiti, Tut’s widow Ankhsenamun, Amenhotep I, Thutmose II and Ramses VIII.
etween two steep cliffs in China’s Hebei province stretches the Hongyagu Bridge, a shudder-inducing structure built from thousands of panels of transparent glass. The bridge stretches for 1,600 feet and was, until recently, the world’s longest glass bridge—a title that was scooped this summer by another landmark in the Huangguoshu Scenic Area. But amid a series of disconcerting accidents around the country, Hebei has closed Hongyagu Bridge and all of its other glass attractions, reports Hannah Ellis-Petersen reports for the Guardian.
In total, the province shuttered 32 bridges, walkways and mountain viewing platforms, with the closures taking place over the past 18 months, according to the Independent’s Cathy Adams. But these represent just a small fraction of similar structures in China, where glass attractions have become a bonafide craze.
The country is home to 2,300 glass bridges and “an undetermined number of glass walkways or slides,” according to the state media publication ECNS. Not for the faint of heart, these destinations are meant to entice thrill-seeking tourists; special effects make one bridge in the province of Hubei, for instance, seem as though it is cracking beneath visitors’ feet. But there are real dangers associated with China’s glass structures, some of which have been linked to injuries and fatalities.
In Hubei in 2017, a tourist died due to an accident on a glass slide. Earlier this year, reports the BBC, six people were injured and one person died in the Guangxi province after falling from a glass side, which had become slippery in the rain; the man who died crashed through a guardrail and suffered lethal head injuries.
Another frightening incident occurred in 2015 in the province of Henan, where a glass bridge is suspended more than 3,500 feet over a canyon. Just two weeks after the site opened, one of its panes cracked, the damage reportedly caused by someone dropping a stainless steel mug onto the bridge. Only one of the pane’s three layers broke—but panicked tourists were sent scrambling.
According to the BBC, the Chinese government has called on local tourism officials to conduct “comprehensive safety assessments” of glass structures. But ECNS reports that Hebei has been the first to introduce “regional requirements on construction materials, design and visitor numbers” amid “a lack of national standards and supervision over such facilities.”
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