Archaeological expeditions unearthed treasure-troves in Alexandria, Siwa and Minya during the spring-summer season. Nevine El-Aref has a peek at the discoveries Archaeologists and their teams working through the spring-summer excavation season, which lasted from March through July, made many important discoveries at sites around the country. At Abu Sir necropolis, 45 kilometres west of Alexandria, a Hungarian archaeological team from Pàzmàny University, Budapest stumbled upon a cache of gold items from the Byzantine era while conducting routine cleaning near the acropolis which Ptolemy II had built during the fourth century BC. The newly discovered treasure-trove consists of five gold coins minted in Constantinople and a gold bracelet decorated with nine crosses. "The discovery at Abu Sir necropolis was peerless," said Minister of Culture Farouk Hosni, adding that they were the first gold objects to be found in the area. The Hungarian team had previously unearthed a number of household items made of bronze as well as some granite statues of the goddess Isis. Mohamed Abdel-Maqsoud, head of antiquities for Lower Egypt, said two of the coins bear the bust of the Byzantine Emperor Maurice Tiberius who ruled from 582 to 602 AD. Another is graced by the Byzantine Emperor Hercules on one side and his son Hercules Constantine on the other. The Byzantine Emperor Phocas, who ruled from 602 to 610, appears on the other two coins. Abu Sir, which is rich in Ptolemaic and Graeco- Roman monuments is spread over an area two- kilometres square and was built on a limestone ridge. The cult of Isis was strong in this city by the sea whose name at the time of founding was Taposiris Magna. Among the city's many claims to fame is that it is home to the oldest known wine press and one of the earliest constructed bridges. Heading west towards Siwa, but stopping 150km east of the oasis, one happens upon the site of the Italian archaeological mission of Turin University located on the shore of a salt lake now known as Bahrein. That expedition uncovered the remains of a Pharaonic temple dated to the 30th dynasty. A boon to Egyptologists and aesthetes alike, the walls are covered with intricate reliefs. "It is a wonderful discovery for both scientific studies and the history of art," said Hosni, adding that it would add greatly to Egyptologists' understanding of life in the oasis during the fourth century BC. Although the temple seems to have been dedicated to the god Amun, all the major deities of the Ancient Egyptians are represented on the reliefs of its collapsed walls. A naos (a small shrine) that was constructed and decorated by King Nectanebo I (380 to 360 BC), was completely excavated. "It is a very significant discovery from a historical perspective," said Zahi Hawass, secretary- general of the Supreme Council for Antiquities (SCA), who pointed out that in addition to being the first known monument built by Nectanebo I in Siwa oasis, it attests to his political will to develop the oasis and Egypt's western flank and improve caravan links with the Nile Valley. Paolo Gallo, the head of the mission, said inscriptions on the temple's walls provided Egyptologists with Bahrein's ancient name, Imespep. Mahmoud Afifi, who runs the SCA's technical office, said Imespep was originally a city on the route between Bahariya and Siwa oases. The site is located in a part of the Western Desert called the Great Sand Sea, thought to be the burial place of Persian Emperor Cambysis and his army who invaded the area in 525 BC. It was while searching for evidence of that campaign, Afifi said, that an Egyptian archaeological mission came across a stela depicting King Nactanebo I making an offering to Siwa's local deities -- the first finding to show that the king had been in the area. In fact, little is known about Siwa Oasis during the Ancient Egyptian era. No artefacts have been found dating to the three major Egyptian dynasties -- the Old, Middle or New -- although there is some evidence to suggest that Siwa, along with another oasis, came under the sway of Ramses III. Looking south, excavations at Deir Al-Barsha in Minya, where a team of Belgian archaeologists working for the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven toiled away this spring and summer, yielded what are believed to be two Middle Kingdom tomb complexes. The tombs contain artefacts that evidence burial practices followed by people from various social strata. "The find did not come wholly unexpectedly," explained Harco Willems, field director of the Belgian mission. Willems said the team conducted a magnetometric survey of the area to see what lay beneath Deir Al-Barsha cemetery. Such surveys detect deviations in the magnetic field that are usually the result of human intervention in the natural landscape, for instance mud brick walls. "At first, the results of the survey -- the largest carried out in Egypt -- seemed disappointing, but at the north-western corner of the investigated area, a rectangular structure measuring approximately 20 metres by 20 metres appeared," Willems told Al-Ahram Weekly. Excavations this year confirmed the results of the survey with the discovery of a rectangular wall containing the entrance to a tomb shaft. Although some of the previously discovered tombs at the site had been looted, those discovered this year appeared to have been untouched for some 3,500 years. "We cannot yet tell how large the inviolate area is, but we expect it to be much larger than what we have unearthed so far," Willems said. Hawass said that among funerary items found inside the Middle Kingdom (200 BC) tomb were pottery vessels, jewellery, bronze objects and a gilded funerary mask. The Old Kingdom tombs likewise contained a variety of alabaster pots, head rests, funerary masks, painted canopic jars and pots, some of which were still sealed. "That is not all the Hungarian mission found," said Samir Anis, director general of antiquities of Middle Egypt, adding that findings include two wooden models of boats from the Middle Kingdom along with a pair of gold bracelets and a number of scarabs. Willems said that excavations thus far show that although the people buried in Deir Al-Barsha were not poor, their tombs were much smaller than others previously found at the site. "We think that what we found was the cemetery of the middle class in the Middle Kingdom," he said, adding that the items in the tombs supported that view. As an example, Willems said the coffins in the larger tombs were made of costly cedar wood imported from Lebanon, while those in the smaller tombs were made of a cheaper lower quality wood, although they had been covered with a veneer of cedar wood. Anis added that the mission had also cleaned the open court of Gihuti Hetep, a Deir Al-Barsha governor during the Middle Kingdom, and uncovered a collection of painted limestone blocks featuring Gihuti's daughters and a stela dated to the eras of kings Nectanebo I and II. Mohamed Isamil, director of scientific research at the SCA's technical office, told the Weekly that although archaeologists have long known that Deir Al-Barsha was a site rich in artefacts, excavations have been conducted only sporadically since the late 19th century. Starting in the early 20th century, said Magdi El-Ghandur head of the SCA's foreign missions, the tombs suffered extensive looting and many of their artefacts found their way to various Western museums.
