In a November 24 post on the Egyptian Antiquities Ministry Facebook page, Dr. Mahmoud Afifi said that the ancient city dates back to the Early Dynastic Period, more than 4,500 years ago.
The size of the city is not clear but photos released by the ministry show the remains of decayed buildings that had been made of mud bricks and organic materials, along with stone tools and pottery. There was also a necropolis (cemetery) that had at least 15 burials, including one grave containing the remains of a person lying in a fetal position.
The remains of the newly discovered city are located about 400 meters (1,312 feet) south of the Memorial Temple of Seti I, who ruled from 1290 to 1279 BC. It is thought that the newly found dwellings and cemetery could be part of a long-gone capital or possibly a separate village swallowed up by later structures.
The area is in the southern province of Sohag, in Upper Egypt, home also to the city of Luxor, and the Mortuary Temple of Seti I. Luxor is one of the country’s most popular tourist sites, but all Egypt’s tourist attractions have been suffering because of the political unrest in the Middle East.
Fox News also cited the Antiquities Ministry as saying that a number of Egypt’s earliest kings appear to have been buried at Abydos, a city founded by predynastic rulers, about six miles from the Nile River and 250 miles South of Cairo. “This discovery can shed light on a lot of information on the history of Abydos,” Afifi was quoted as saying.
The occupants of the city are thought have been high officials and grave builders. It is possible that these people oversaw the building of the royal tombs near Abydos, and as Science Alert puts it, based on the size of the newly discovered graves, the occupants of the city didn’t want to “slum it for all eternity, either.”
Egyptologist Chris Eyre from the University of Liverpool in the UK, while not involved in the excavation at Abydos told the BBC, “About a mile behind where this material is said to be we have the necropolis with royal tombs going from before history to the period where we start getting royal names, we start getting identifiable kings.”
The 15 graves in the necropolis are called mastabas, ancient Egyptian tombs with a rectangular shape, made with sloping walls and a flat roof. Lead researcher Yasser Mahmoud Hussein says the mastabas are now considered the oldest tombs we know about, predating even the mastabas found in Saqqara, which served as the necropolis for another ancient Egyptian city, Memphis.
Many news sites have reported the newly discovered city is 7,000-years-old. That is incorrect. The city is closer to being 5,000-years-old. The error may be due to mistranslating the Arabic language news release. At one time, the Antiquities Ministry issued news releases in both Arabic and English. “The ministry’s increasingly limited ability to communicate with media, particularly English language outlets, may have contributed to the confusion,” reports Live Science.