Tomb of Meru: latest ancient discovery open to public in Egypt

In Egypt everything old suddenly seems new again. The Tomb of the Middle Kingdom of Meru, the oldest publicly accessible archaeological site in Luxor’s West Bank, opened to visitors on Thursday, February 9. It joins a growing list of local discoveries and exhibits that offer a fresh look at an ancient world.

Meru was a senior official in the court of King Mentuhotep II of the 11th dynasty (ruler until 2004 BC); His tomb in the necropolis of North Asasif was built amid burial sites for some of the Middle Kingdom’s most prominent royal courtiers.

The tomb, known to archaeologists since at least the mid-19th century, was restored by the Polish Center for Mediterranean Archeology at the University of Warsaw and the Supreme Antiquities Council of Egypt.

“This is the first site from such an early period in western Thebes to be opened to visitors,” said Fathi Yassin, director-general of antiquities in Upper Egypt, in a ministry statement.

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The tomb is one of many blockbuster monuments recently unearthed in Luxor, where royal burials took place in 2100 BC. have begun. In January, authorities said they had found dozens of New Kingdom-era burial sites dating from 1800 B.C. to 1600 BC Ruins of a Roman city from the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD have been uncovered nearby.

These discoveries cover a small fraction of Egypt’s newest Old World treasures. From outdoor boardwalks to mammoth museums, here are the latest additions to the country’s collection that visitors shouldn’t miss.

Artifacts in the open air

In 2021, Luxor’s 1.7-mile (2.7 km) Avenue of the Sphinxes reopened to the public after decades of renovation and excavation. Also known as the Road of the Rams, the walkway connects the Karnak Temple (home to the massive Amun-Ra Temple) with the Luxor Temple. The site is often referred to as the world’s largest open-air museum, and with good reason: over 1,000 statues of sphinxes and rams amaze on both sides of the sandstone-paved path.

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Wonderful mummies

Explore ancient Egypt while braving the desert heat at Cairo’s National Museum of Egyptian Civilization, which opened in 2017 and covers local history from prehistory to the present day. In 2021, the museum became the new resting place for 22 royal mummies – including Ramses II, the “great builder” of antiquity.

A mega museum and more

When the Grand Egyptian Museum opens as promised in 2023, Cairo’s mummified kings will be fighting for their money. GEM, an apt acronym for what will become the world’s largest archaeological institution, will house over 100,000 artifacts – including all 5,000 relics from King Tutankhamen’s tomb.

The museum is in a prime location for history buffs. The Pyramids of Giza are a few miles away, and it takes an hour’s drive to reach Saqqara — a vast cemetery where archaeologists recently uncovered two ancient tombs and a gold-leaf-covered mummy sealed in a sarcophagus that wasn’t had been opened 4,300 years.

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And that hardly scratches Sakkara’s surface. The ancient necropolis is the country’s largest archaeological site and the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities estimates that only 1% of it has been excavated.

The Egyptian government hopes these discoveries could revitalize the country’s tourism industry, which has suffered from political unrest, the coronavirus pandemic and the war in Ukraine over the past decade. (Russia and Ukraine account for about a third of all foreign tourists in peak years.) Perhaps the secret of Egypt’s tourist comeback lies in the hieroglyphs.