CAIRO: Egyptian archaeologists have unearthed a 3,300-year-old tomb on an ancient mayor just south of Cairo. According to the country's Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) said that the area had been lost since 19th century treasure hunters first stole some of the artifacts. Ptahmes, the mayor of ancient Memphis also served as army chief, overseer of the treasury and royal scribe under Seti I and his son and successor, Ramses II, in the 13th century B.C., researchers said. The discovery of his tomb earlier this year in a New Kingdom necropolis at Saqqara, south of Cairo, solved a riddle that had bewildered Egyptologists since 1885, when foreign expeditions made off with pieces of the tomb and the location was soon after forgotten. “Since then it was covered by sand and no one knew about it,” said Ola el-Aguizy, the Cairo University archaeology professor who led the excavation. “It is important because this tomb was the lost tomb.” A number of the artifacts ended up in museums in the Netherlands, the United States and Italy as well as the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, providing the only clues about the missing tomb, the team said. The inner chambers of the large, temple-style tomb and Ptahmes' mummy remain undiscovered. In the side sanctuaries and other chambers they uncovered, archaeologists found a vivid wall engraving of people fishing from boats made of bundles of papyrus reeds. There were also amulets and fragments of statues. BM
