AFRICA ( commonwealth Union ) _ A menagerie of mummified animals was discovered during excavation work by an American expedition from New York University at the Ramses II temple in Abydos. This discovery offers previously unreported proof of cultic worship throughout the years.
According to Mostafa Waziri, secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, the site has more than 2,000 mummified ram heads from the Ptolemaic era, as well as additional mummified ewes, dogs, wild goats, cows, gazelles, and mongooses. In the temple’s northern precinct, one of the recently uncovered magazines contained the mummified bones, some of which were still wrapped in linen.
The discovery of so many mummified rams inside the temple, perhaps as votive gifts, according to the mission’s leader Sameh Iskander, indicates an unheard-of cult of rams in Abydos during the Ptolemaic era. It shows that Ramses II’s legacy was still honored at Abydos a millennium after his death. (1303-1213 BC).
A massive palace with an uncommon architectural design and walls around five meters thick was also uncovered by the expedition. This construction is unique to Abydos and dates to the end of the Sixth Dynasty (about 2181 BC) of the Old Kingdom.
The knowledge provided by this edifice on the activities of the Old Kingdom in Abydos will be significant, fascinating, and spectacular, offering up crucial new views that will help restore the impression of Abydos’s historic environment that existed prior to the construction of the Ramses II temple, according to Iskander.
The mission was also successful in clearing the northern enclosure walls and its various structures, which clearly define the boundary of the temple’s domain and aid in our understanding of daily life in the precinct, as well as its administration and cultic activities, according to Mohamed Abdel-Badei, head of the central department of Upper Egypt Antiquities.
This will force a reevaluation of the temple’s appearance and the specifics that have been known about it since its discovery more than 150 years ago. A number of statues, papyri, fragments of old trees, leather clothing, and shoes were also found during the mission. It is a great deal about the temple’s location along the Nile, more than 400 kilometers south of Cairo, according to the fresh discoveries to the Sixth Dynasty through the Ptolemaic period, a time span of more than two millennia.
