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Burial chamber of an ancient Egyptian priestess is discovered after 4k years

Idy, the daughter of a wealthy governor who lived around 1880 BC, was found in a coffin within another coffin in a tomb in the city of Asyut, 200 miles south of Cairo.

'The uncovering of this shaft began in 2022, took three excavation campaigns and has now ended with a sensational discovery – the burial of Idy in two nested wooden coffins with numerous grave goods,' Professor Kahl said. Typically, mummification in ancient Egypt then involved desiccating the body with a mixture of salts and then wrapping it in cloth soaked in a balm of plant extracts, oils, and resins. 'After an initial conservational consolidation of the wooden objects in the burial chamber and the subsequent laborious recovery from the narrow, 14-metre deep shaft, the finds will be handed over to the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities and Tourism,' he added.

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