Huge limestone blocks inscribed with coloured decorations dating from the 22nd Dynasty have been unearthed north of the Delta town of Zagazig, Nevine El-Aref reports French archaeologists have made a major discovery at the San Al-Hagar archaeological site, 70 kilometres north of the town of Zagazig. San Al-Hagar, site of the ancient city known to the ancient Egyptians as Djanet and the Greeks as Tanis, contains the ruins of a number of temples that can be seen in what during the Third Intermediate Period was an important royal necropolis, and is now an outdoor museum. The French archaeologists were conducting routine excavations in search of the sacred lake of the temple to the goddess Mut. During the course of their work, which commenced last year, the team early this month stumbled upon what are believed to be some of the blocks that once formed the lake's enclosure wall. Of the 120 blocks that the French team has cleaned so far, two thirds bear inscriptions. They expect that further excavations will reveal more blocks. The minister of state for antiquities, Zahi Hawass, said that early on-site studies revealed that the blocks were engraved with coloured decorations depicting royal figures, which indicated that they dated to the reign of the 22nd (Libyan)-Dynasty Pharaoh Osorkon II. Hawass explained that the blocks could originally have been part of a temple or chapel of Osorkon II and were reused in the construction of other edifices during the Late Period and the Ptolemaic era. Following restoration, the French team will reconstruct these blocks according to their decoration. Hawass likened this to fitting together a jigsaw puzzle in an attempt to find the original building they once formed. Philip Brissaud, head of the French team, wrote in his report that the 78 blocks cleaned so far have very distinguished coloured engravings. Two other blocks are inscribed with the names of pharaohs Osorkon III and IV and of Mut, "the lady of Lake Ashur". This meant, Brissaud said, that the sacred lake, which is 12 metres wide, 30 metres long and six metres deep, still existed during the 21st and 22nd dynasties, and that this pointed to the temples' being as important as those at Karnak in Luxor. Mohamed Abdel-Maqsoud of the antiquities minister's office described the discovery as "very significant", and added that it would augment the knowledge about San Al-Hagar. He said the reconstruction of the edifice reminded him of the work at Karnak, also carried out by a French team, to reconstruct the chapel of King Senusert I and the Hatshepsut's Red Chapel. Abdel-Maqsoud said the Ministry of State for Antiquities was developing San Al-Hagar as a more tourist-friendly archaeological site. The first phase of the project has already begun with a budget of LE50 million and includes the reduction and control of the subterranean water derived from the neighbouring agriculture land and urban settlements. A visitor centre and a visitor route will be also constructed. Tanis was built on the Tanitic branch of the Nile, which has long since silted up. It was founded in the late 20th Dynasty and became the political capital of Egypt during the 21st Dynasty. It remained an important commercial and strategic town until it was threatened with inundation by Lake Manzala in the sixth century AD and was abandoned. On display on the site are the ruins of a number of temples, including the main temple dedicated to the chief deity, Amun, and the very important royal necropolis of the Third Intermediate Period. Many of the stone blocks used to build these temples originated from the old Ramesside town of Qantir, ancient Per-Ramses. It was the existence of this town that led many former Egyptologists to believe that Tanis was, in fact, Per- Ramses. However, when the burials of three 21st Dynasty and 22nd Dynasty Pharaohs were discovered intact by French Egyptologist Pierre Montet in 1939 -- all of which had survived the depredations of tomb robbers throughout the centuries -- they were found to contain a large number of gold, jewellery, lapis lazuli and other precious stones, including the funerary masks of the three Pharaohs, that identified it as Djanet. All these treasured items are now on show in the Egyptian Museum in Tahrir Square in Downtown Cairo.
