Egyptian archaeologists have discovered a Greco-Roman necropolis at the archaeological site of Kom Aziza in the western Nile Delta region. The burials methods are unusually varied, and even more unusual is the presence of several complete wild boar burials.
The presence of this animal in funerary contexts of ancient Egypt is extraordinarily rare due to the negative symbolic association of the boar, linked in the pharaonic religious imagination to the deity Seth, the force of chaos and the disturbance of cosmic order.
The excavation leaders have indicated that this isolated occurrence might point more to an economic or domestic activity developed at the site during one of its occupation phases, rather than to a deliberate ritual practice, although the definitive interpretation awaits further analysis.
The human remains found at the site were buried individually and collectively, in north-south and east-west orientations, with arms crossed over the pelvis, straight alongside the body, or crossed over the chest in the classic Osirian position of arms crossed across the chest. Some of the deceased were buried directly into pits, others in mudbrick frames, inside painted plaster coffins and large barrel-shaped pottery coffins. The variety of burial types indicates a multiplicity of funerary practices and rituals took place at the Kom Aziza necropolis.
The stratigraphy of the site revealed that the cemetery was built on much older settlement layers. Materials confirm a history at the site going back at least 3,000 years to the Old Kingdom. Everyday use objects recovered from the previous settlement layers include ceramic and stone vessels, break-making molds, stone tools and ovens. A large number of animal bones — fish, birds, mammals — found there will give archaeologists the opportunity to reconstruct the diets of the settlement occupants over the generations.
The Director General of Beheira Antiquities and head of the excavation mission, Mr. Khaled Abdel Ghani Farhat, stressed that the site represents a unique model of a multi-phase location, where residential and productive activities succeeded one another from the dawn of ancient Egyptian history until later periods when the area was transformed into an intense funerary zone.
* This article was originally published here
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