How a sarcophagus fragment helped solve an ancient Egyptian mystery

Fragment of the sarcophagus bearing the name of Menkheperre, the high priest of Amun-Ra, the ancient Egyptian god of the sun and the air, who ruled the south of Egypt between 1045 and 992 BC. (Photo by Kevin Cahail)
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Updated 30 June 2024
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How a sarcophagus fragment helped solve an ancient Egyptian mystery

  • A humble piece of granite in the floor of a monastery was found to bear the name of one of Egypt’s most famous rulers
  • Ramses II, who ruled from 1279 to 1213 B.C., is regarded as one of the most powerful warrior-pharaohs of ancient Egypt

LONDON: During excavations carried out at the ancient site of Abydos in Egypt in 2009, archaeologists made an unexpected discovery — the remains of a lost Coptic monastery, believed to have been founded in the fifth century by the leader of the Coptic church, Apa Moses.

That was fascinating enough, but even bigger surprises would emerge.

Deep within the excavated ruins of the monastery, archaeologists from the Egyptian Ministry of State for Antiquities made a discovery that shone a light on the tensions that existed between the early Coptic church and the remnants of Egypt’s “pagan” past.

Pressed into service as a humble doorstep within the monastery was a piece of red granite, 1.7 meters long and half as wide.




The sarcophagus of Merenptah. (Photo courtesy: Frédéric Payraudeau)

A partial inscription revealed it was part of the sarcophagus of Menkheperre, the high priest of Amun-Ra, the ancient Egyptian god of the sun and the air, who ruled the south of Egypt between 1045 and 992 B.C. 

The find seemed to solve one mystery ­— where Menkheperre had been buried. Previously it was thought that he must have been entombed near his power base at Thebes, in a grave yet to be discovered. Now, it seemed, he had been laid to rest in Abydos.

The existence of a fragment of his sarcophagus, set within the floor of the monastery, as the authors of a paper published in 2016 surmised, owed something to Apa Moses’ “persecution of local pagan temples,” and was “perhaps the result of the fervor with which his followers dismantled pagan structures and tombs throughout Abydos.”

And that is where the story might have ended, but for Frederic Payraudeau, an Egyptologist at Sorbonne University in Paris.




Frederic Payraudeau, an Egyptologist at Sorbonne University in Paris. (Supplied)

Ayman Damrani and Kevin Cahail, the Egyptian and American archaeologists who had discovered the fragment, recognized from the outset that the sarcophagus had another occupant before Menkheperre. 

They saw that earlier inscriptions had been overwritten and suggested the original owner might have been an unknown royal prince.

The fragment, made of hard red granite, represented “a much greater allocation of time and resources involved in its construction,” they wrote, than would have been expended on the sarcophagus of even a high official. 

This suggested the original owner “had access to royal-level workshops and materials,” and might, they concluded, have been a prince by the name of Meryamunre or Meryamun.




In this photo taken on May 11, 1976, Egyptian Ambassador Naguib Kadry and Egyptologist Christiane Desroches-Noblecourt attend the opening of the sarcophagus of Pharaoh Ramses II during an exhibition dedicated to him at the Grand Palais in Paris.  (AFP/File)

“When I read this article, I was very interested because I am a specialist of this period,” said Payraudeau, “and I was not really convinced by the reading of the inscriptions.”

He added: “I already suspected that this fragment was from the sarcophagus of a king, partly because of the quality of the object, which is very well carved, but also because of the decoration.”

This consisted of scenes from the Book of Gates, an ancient Egyptian funerary text reserved almost exclusively for kings.

“It is known in the Valley of the Kings on the walls of the tombs, and on the sarcophagi of the kings, and it was used only by one person, who was not a king, in a later period.

“But this is an exception, and it would have been very strange for a prince to have used this text — and especially a prince that we hadn’t heard of.”

The photographs published with the paper were of too low quality to confirm his suspicions, so he asked the author to send him high-resolution copies. “And when I saw the enlarged photographs of the objects, I could clearly see the cartouche of a king.”




The royal cartouche, or inscription, including Ramses’ name. (Photo courtesy: Frédéric Payraudeau)

A cartouche is an oval frame, underscored at one end and containing a name written in hieroglyphics, that was used to indicate royalty. This one read “User-Maat-Ra Setep-en-Ra.” 

Translated roughly as “The justice of Ra is powerful, Chosen of Ra,” it was the throne name of one of the most famous rulers of ancient Egypt — Ramses II.

Ramses II, who ruled from 1279 to 1213 B.C., is regarded as one of the most powerful warrior-pharaohs of ancient Egypt, famed for having fought many battles and created many temples, monuments and cities, and known to generations of subsequent rulers and their subjects as the “great ancestor.”




The royal cartouche, or inscription, including Ramses’ name (Photo courtesy: Frédéric Payraudeau)

His was the longest reign in Egyptian history, and he is depicted in more than 300 often colossal statues found across the ancient kingdom. 

On his death, after a reign that lasted 67 years, he was buried in a tomb in the Valley of the Kings. Because many of the tombs were later looted, one of his successors, Ramses IX, who ruled from 1129 to 1111 B.C., had many of the remains moved for safekeeping to a secret tomb in Deir El-Bahari, a necropolis on the Nile opposite the city of Luxor.

There they lay undisturbed for almost 3,000 years until their chance discovery by a goat-herder in about 1860. 

It was not until 1881 that Egyptologists got wind of the extraordinary find, and there among the more than 50 mummies of pharaohs, each labeled with the details of who they were and where they had been originally buried, was Ramses II.

He was in a beautifully carved cedar-wood coffin. Originally, this would ordinarily have been placed inside a golden coffin — lost to antiquity — which in turn would have been housed within an alabaster sarcophagus, which itself was then placed inside a stone sarcophagus.

Small fragments of the alabaster sarcophagus, which had presumably been shattered by looters, were found in his original tomb in the Valley of the Kings. Of the granite sarcophagus, however, there was no sign — until now.




A head believed to be that of 19th Dynasty Pharaoh Ramses II which was discovered in Cairo is seen March 1, 2006. An ancient solar temple has been discovered beneath a flea market in a Cairo suburb. The temple was found embedded in green shist rock beneath the market. Royal statues in pink-colored granite, probably from the time of Ramses II (13th century BC) and weighing five tons, were found in the temple. (AFP/File)

The looting of graves and the reusing of sarcophagi was a result of social and economic upheaval in ancient Egypt. “The sarcophagus was intended to be used by the owner for eternity,” said Payraudeau.

But with the death of Ramses XI in 1077 B.C., at the end of a long period of prosperity, there was a civil war and then a long period of unrest, he said.

“This was the Third Intermediate Period, which saw much looting of the necropolizes because the Egyptians knew that there was gold, silver and other valuable materials, such as wood, in the tombs.”




Drawing from the temple of Khonsu in Karnak. Closeup of pharaoh Ramesses XI while taking a sort of "shower of Life" performed by two gods. (Karl Richard Lepsius/Wikimedia Commons)

In addition to ordinary grave robbers, even the authorities took part in the looting, recycling sarcophagi for their own use. That is how Menkheperre came to be buried in a sarcophagus previously used by Ramses II.

Payraudeau is not convinced that the use of a fragment of the sarcophagus in the building of the fifth-century Coptic monastery was necessarily an act of disrespect.

“When they built this monastery, they didn’t know that they were reusing the sarcophagus of Ramses, because by this time no one had been able to read hieroglyphs for about 500 years.”

It would be 1799 before the discovery of the Rosetta Stone, which, with a royal decree written in three languages, including ancient Greek, provided the key to deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphic script.




The Rosetta Stone, shown here on display in the British Museum in London, carried three versions of inscriptions of a decree issued in 196 BC during the Ptolemaic dynasty of Egypt, on behalf of King Ptolemy V Epiphanes. The top and middle texts are in Ancient Egyptian using hieroglyphic and Demotic scripts, and the bottom is in Ancient Greek. The inscriptions enabled archaeologists to decipher ancient Egyptian scripts. (Photo by Hans Hillewaert / Wikimedia Commons)

The one remaining mystery now, said Payraudeau, was where in Abydos Menkheperre was originally buried.

“Somewhere there must be the undiscovered remains of the tomb of the high priest,” he said.

“Maybe it was completely destroyed. But I can’t let go of the idea that perhaps they reused the parts of the sarcophagus which were suitable to use as pavements and so on, and that the lid, which would have been far harder to reuse, might still be lying intact somewhere in Abydos.”

In 1817, about 3,000 years after the death of Ramses II, archaeological discoveries in Egypt inspired the English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley to write a sonnet reflecting on how the once seemingly eternal power of the great king the ancient Greeks knew as Ozymandias had turned to dust.

Reflecting on an inscription on the pedestal of a shattered, fallen statue, part of the poem reads: “My name is Ozymandias, king of kings. Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair! Nothing beside remains, round the decay, of that colossal wreck. Boundless and bare, the lone and level sands stretch far away.”




Panorama of the Valley of the Kings, the burial place of the royals of ancient Egypt. (Nikola Smolenski/Wikimedia Commons)

In fact, not only has Ramses II’s fame grown in the 3,236 years since he was entombed in the Valley of the Kings, he has also become the most traveled of the ancient pharaohs.

In 1976, after it was noticed that his mummified remains were starting to decay, Ramses was sent to the Musee de l’Homme in Paris for restoration, along with a whimsical “passport” that gave his occupation as “King (deceased).”

Since then, he has been seen by hundreds of thousands of visitors to numerous exhibitions around the world, including a return visit to Paris last year.

If the lid of his sarcophagus were discovered, it could be reunited with the mummy and its coffin, and the Ozymandias show would doubtless grow ever more popular, continuing to confound Shelley’s poetic prediction that the Great Ancestor would be forgotten, swallowed up by the sands of time.
 

 


Israel’s daily pauses fall short of easing Gaza suffering: UK

Updated 5 sec ago
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Israel’s daily pauses fall short of easing Gaza suffering: UK

  • Food airdropped over besieged territory
  • 38 Palestinians, 3 Israeli soldiers killed

LONDON, GAZA: Israel’s decision on Sunday to pause military operations for 10 hours a day in parts of Gaza and allow new aid corridors falls short of what is needed to alleviate suffering in the enclave, Britain’s Foreign Secretary David Lammy said.

Lammy said in a statement that Israel’s announcement was “essential but long overdue,” and that access to aid must now be urgently accelerated over the coming hours and days.
“This announcement alone cannot alleviate the needs of those desperately suffering in Gaza,” Lammy said. “We need a ceasefire that can end the war, for hostages to be released and aid to enter Gaza by land unhindered.” 

FASTFACT

Lammy said that access to aid must now be urgently accelerated over the coming hours and days.

The Israeli military said the “tactical pause” in Gaza City, Deir Al-Balah and Muwasi, three areas with large populations, would increase humanitarian aid entering the territory. The pause runs from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. daily until further notice.
Jordan said it carried out three airdrops over Gaza, including one in cooperation with the UAE, dropping 25 tonnes of food and supplies on several locations.
“Whichever path we choose, we will have to continue to allow the entry of minimal humanitarian supplies,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement.
Despite the annouoncement of temporary pauses, Israeli strikes killed at least 38 Palestinians from late Saturday into Sunday, including 23 seeking aid. 
An airstrike on a Gaza City apartment killed a woman and her four children. Another strike killed four people, including a boy, his mother and grandfather, in the eastern Zaytoun neighborhood.
US President Donald Trump said Israel would have to make a decision on next steps in Gaza, adding that he did not know what would happen after moves by Israel to pull out of ceasefire and hostage-release negotiations with the Hamas militant group.
Trump underscored the importance of securing the release of hostages held by Hamas in Gaza, saying they had suddenly “hardened” up on the issue.
“They don’t want to give them back, and so Israel is going to have to make a decision,” Trump told reporters at the start of a meeting with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen at his golf property in Turnberry, Scotland.
Two Israeli soldiers were killed in combat in southern Gaza on Sunday, the military said, a day after confirming another soldier had died of wounds sustained last week.
The two soldiers, aged 20 and 22, served in the Golani Infantry Brigade’s 51st Battalion.
Israeli military sources said they were killed when their armored vehicle exploded in the city of Khan Yunis.

 


Two Palestinian families in Jerusalem self-demolish their homes to avoid Israeli fines

Updated 4 min 34 sec ago
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Two Palestinian families in Jerusalem self-demolish their homes to avoid Israeli fines

  • Israel denies building permits to Palestinians in Jerusalem in most cases, while it carries out planned expansion of Jewish settlements in the city
  • In the case that Israeli authorities carry out the destruction, the families will be required to pay for the cost of the demolition, which could vary and may total hundreds of thousands of Shekels

LONDON: Two Palestinian families in occupied East Jerusalem have self-demolished their homes to avoid steep financial penalties imposed by the Israeli municipality for building without a permit on Sunday.

Israel denies building permits to Palestinians in Jerusalem in most cases, while it carries out planned expansion of Jewish settlements in the city and the occupied West Bank.

From 1991 to 2018, Israeli authorities approved only 16.5 percent of building permits in Palestinian neighborhoods, while the remaining permits were issued for Israeli neighborhoods in West Jerusalem and settlements, according to the organization Peace Now.

The Palestinian Authority’s Jerusalem Governorate said that the Quraan family was forced to demolish their home in the Jabal al-Mukabbir neighborhood on Sunday. Meanwhile, the Halawanis also demolished their residential building, comprising six housing units, in Beit Hanina, located north of Jerusalem. As a result, around 30 individuals, including children, have been left without homes.

In the case that Israeli authorities carry out the destruction, the families will be required to pay for the cost of the demolition, which could vary and may total hundreds of thousands of Shekels.

The Jerusalem Governorate said that this is part of an Israeli “systematic policy of displacing” Palestinians from the city.

“Palestinian families in occupied Jerusalem are frequently denied building permits by Israeli authorities, leaving many with no legal option but to build without authorization,” it added.

Human Rights Watch and other groups have criticized Israel’s home demolition policy in Jerusalem as “discriminatory.”

Since Israel attacked Gaza in October 2023, authorities in Jerusalem have demolished 623 houses and other commercial facilities belonging to dozens of Palestinian families.


Sudan’s paramilitaries launch parallel govt, deepening the crisis

Updated 22 min 54 sec ago
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Sudan’s paramilitaries launch parallel govt, deepening the crisis

  • The RSF grew out of the notorious Janjaweed militias, mobilized two decades ago by then-President Omar Bashir against populations that identify as Central or East African in Darfur

CAIRO: A paramilitary group and its allies in Sudan said they formed a parallel government in areas under the group’s control, which are located mainly in the western region of Darfur where allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity are being investigated.
The move was likely to deepen the crisis in Sudan, which plunged into chaos when tensions between the country’s military and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, or RSF, exploded into fighting in April 2023 in the capital, Khartoum and elsewhere in the country.
The RSF-led Tasis Alliance appointed Gen. Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, the commander of the paramilitary group, as head of the sovereign council in the new administration. The 15-member council serves as head of the state.
The RSF grew out of the notorious Janjaweed militias, mobilized two decades ago by then-President Omar Bashir against populations that identify as Central or East African in Darfur. The Janjaweed were accused of mass killings, rapes and 
other atrocities.
In the current war, the RSF has been accused of numerous atrocities. The Biden administration slapped Dagalo with sanctions, saying the RSF and its proxies were committing genocide. The RSF has denied committing genocide.
The alliance spokesman Alaa Al-Din Naqd announced the new administration in a video statement from the Darfur city of Nyala, which is controlled by the RSF and its allied Janjaweed.
Mohammed Hassan Al-Taishi, a civilian politician who was a member of a military-civilian sovereign council that ruled Sudan following the 2019 overthrow of Al-Bashir, was named as prime minister in the RSF-controlled government.

Rebel leader Abdelaziz Al-Hilu, who commands the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-N) which is active in the southern Kodrofan region, was appointed as Dagalo’s deputy in the council. The SPLM-N is a breakaway faction of the SPLM, the ruling party of neighboring South Sudan.
The announcement came five months after the RSF and its allies signed a charter in February in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, with the aim of establishing a parallel government in RSF-controlled areas.
At the time, many countries, including the US, rejected the RSF efforts and condemned the signing by the paramilitary group and its allies of what they called “transitional constitution” in the Kenya-hosted conference.
The Foreign Ministry of the internationally recognized government in Khartoum condemned the announcement in a statement. It called it a “fake government” and urged the international community to not engage with the RSF-led administration.
The RSF-led move was likely to deepen the division in Sudan. Yasir Arman, a rebel leader, said the move is likely to prolong the conflict and divide Sudan between two rival administrations.

 


Syria expected to hold parliamentary election in September, official says

Updated 27 July 2025
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Syria expected to hold parliamentary election in September, official says

DAMASCUS: Syria is expected to hold its first parliamentary election under the new administration in September, the head of the electoral process told state news agency SANA on Sunday.

Voting for the People’s Assembly is expected to take place from September 15 to 20, added the official, Mohammed Taha.

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Iraqi police clash with paramilitary fighters who stormed government building

PMF is an umbrella group of mostly Shiite paramilitary factions that was formally integrated into Iraq’s state security forces.
Updated 27 July 2025
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Iraqi police clash with paramilitary fighters who stormed government building

  • PMF fighters burst into the building during an administrative meeting, causing panic among staff who alerted police
  • Security sources and three employees at the scene said the fighters had wanted to stop the office’s former director from being replaced

BAGHDAD: A gunbattle erupted in Iraq’s capital on Sunday between police and fighters from a state-sanctioned paramilitary force that includes Iran-backed groups, killing at least one police officer and leading to the arrest of 14 fighters, authorities said.
The clash broke out in Baghdad’s Karkh district after a group of fighters from the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) stormed an Agriculture Ministry building as a new director was being sworn in, the Interior Ministry said in a statement.
The PMF, known in Arabic as Hashd Al-Shaabi, is an umbrella group of mostly Shiite paramilitary factions that was formally integrated into Iraq’s state security forces and includes several groups aligned with Iran.
According to the Interior Ministry, the PMF fighters burst into the building during an administrative meeting, causing panic among staff who alerted police.
Security sources and three employees at the scene said the fighters had wanted to stop the office’s former director from being replaced.
A statement from the Joint Operations Command, which reports directly to Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al-Sudani, confirmed that the detainees were PMF members and had been referred to the judiciary. At least one police officer was killed and nine others were wounded, police and hospital sources said.
Sudani ordered the formation of a committee to investigate the incident, the command said.
The arrested fighters belong to “PMF brigades 45 and 46,” the statement added. Both brigades are affiliated with Kataib Hezbollah, an Iran-aligned Iraqi armed group, according to Iraqi security officials and sources within the PMF.