Her team will now study it to uncover the full story of Ptah-em-wia’s life. She added that the sarcophagus is inscribed with emblems of deities, including the sky goddess Nut on the lid, covering the chest with opened wings to protect the deceased. She said that Ptah-em-wia’s titles listed in the hieroglyphs emphasise his closeness to the king, proving that he had “a very important role in the administration of that time”. Sometimes the sarcophagus is for a different person of a later period, when the tomb was used in later periods. El Aguizy told the Observer: “The discovery of this sarcophagus in its original place in the burial shaft was very exciting because it is the sarcophagus of the owner of the tomb, which is not always the case.
National Geographic cameras captured everything while shooting the latest excavation season for an eight-part documentary series, Lost Treasures of Egypt, which begins in the UK on 2 October.įinding a complete sarcophagus in its original tomb is incredibly rare. At the bottom, she was astonished to find the sarcophagus. El Aguizy then squeezed herself into that bucket and made a dangerous, slow descent down the shaft. But that shaft proved so deep, at 8 metres, that it took a week just to remove all the sand, using a bucket attached to a hand-operated rope winch. Prof El Aguizy is lowered into the shaft where the sarcophagus was discovered.Īt the centre of the tomb’s courtyard, El Aguizy’s team spotted the top of a vertical shaft, which suggested a passage to a burial chamber.
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