Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Story of the Deir el Bahri Cache

drhawass.com (Zahi Hawass)

I recently visited the Deir el-Bahari cache, which is a very difficult tomb to enter. It is down a 15-meter deep shaft, and you must be lowered down by rope into the shaft. From the vertical shaft is the entrance into the tomb: a few stairs down into a roughly cut passage through the rock, which leads to more stairs and ends in a large room where the royal mummies were hidden by priests in the 21st Dynasty. Now we close up the entrance to the tomb so that no one may enter, although there is nothing left inside. The reason for this is to show the importance of this tomb, because inside was found one of the most important discoveries, which is, in my opinion, even more important than the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun in 1922.

The story of the discovery of this cache is amazing. A young man named Ahmed, a member of the famous Abdel Rassul family was leading his goats in the hills near the temple of Hatshepsut at Deir el-Bahari, when one of them escaped.

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