Egypt has restored, documented and opened to vacationers the Middle Kingdom tomb of Meru, the oldest website online obtainable to the general public on Luxor’s West Bank, house to a few of its maximum impressive Pharaonic monuments together with the Valley of the Kings.
Meru was once a high-ranking respectable on the court docket of the eleventh Dynasty King Mentuhotep II, who reigned till 2004 BC and who, like Meru, was once buried on the necropolis of North Asasif, the ministry mentioned in a commentary on Thursday, February 9.
Meru’s rock-hewn tomb was once restored by means of the Polish Centre for Mediterranean Archaeology on the University of Warsaw and Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities.
“This is the first site from such an early period in Western Thebes to be made accessible to visitors,” the ministry commentary quoted Fathi Yassin, General Director of Antiquities in Upper Egypt, as announcing.
The tomb, which confronted the procession street to Mentuhotep II’s temple, accommodates a hall resulting in an providing chapel with a distinct segment for a statue of the deceased. A burial shaft descends to a burial chamber with a sarcophagus.
“This is the only decorated room of the tomb, with an unusual decoration of painting on lime plaster,” Yassin mentioned.
Meru’s tomb were recognized since a minimum of the mid-Nineteenth century, consistent with the Polish Egyptian archaeological project. Italian conservators wiped clean one of the vital wall art work in 1996.
Some of the Middle Kingdom’s maximum outstanding officers had been buried at North Asasif, the commentary mentioned.
Top: An Egyptian worker works on the 4,000-year-old tomb of Meru. Photo courtesy of the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities/Handout by way of Reuters.
