TOMB BIG AS A TEMPLE

Hawera Star, Volume L, 26 April 1930, Page 16

TOMB BIG AS A TEMPLE

A TOMB recently discovered close to the Sphinx by Egyptian excavators, writes a correspondent in the ‘‘Daily Mail,” appears to have belonged to* "a Pooh-Bah of ancient Egypt. The inscriptions reveal that it contained the remains of Pa Ouer, High Priest of Nckhe.b, Goddess of Upper and Lower Egypt. R a Ouer, it is revealed, was an intimate friend of the King, Master of the Royal Wardrobe, Major-domo of the Palace, the King’s Barber, Keeper of the Royal Ablutionary Water, a priest of the God Mena, and filled many other posts. The tomb i s remarkable for the fact that, it is the largest ever found in Egypt; so large, in faet, that it resembles" a temple. It has an entrance {>3 feet long, followed by a long subterranean passage leading to three largo halls, whose walls almost reach the Sphinx. The tomb consists of 80 small cham-

bers and 30 serdabs or labyrinthine places for the. erection of statues of the dead.

Eorty-'fivc ‘ such statues have been recovered,* mostly in perfejet condition, and two of them are of the high priest. For the first time in the history of

Great Egyptian Find

Egyptology, three statues have been found of one person, all cut out of one piece of stone. 1 Another interesting find consists of two flint razors, apparently emblems of the high priests’ tonsorial duties. These were still sharp enough to cut hair on the excavators' arms. One sensational discovery was that of a man’s dismembered band inserted in the coffin of a mummy which con. i tainod a beautiful necklace in precious ’ stones. A further search revealed the ; man’s skeleton, minus the hand, on the ■ground near the sarcophagus. Ra Ouer lived during the reign of the third king of the fifth dynasty •Neiferririka.-ra, who died in 2730 B.C. The Kings of’ the fifth dynasty wor- . shipped the sun .as their ancestor, and . the Goddess Kokhcb was regarded as the protecting deitv’ - of their Upper Egypt domain. She was represented either as a vulture ,or as a woman

wearing a crown. Priestly influence was very strong at their courts and • the chief events recorded for the dynasty are gifts and endowments’for the temples. Papyrus documents narrate - that three of the Kings of the dynasty were born of a priestess of the Sun.