The agency said that the discovery, made by a team from the Supreme Council of Egyptian Antiquities, could be dated back to the Old Kingdom (3,000 B.C.) -- the golden age of pyramid building in ancient times.
The team "has found what could be a royal complex of 13 tombs of different shapes and sizes that could have belonged to high officials from that period or people who contributed to building these tombs," MENA said.
The agency said that human bones were found inside the coffins, although it did not specify how many coffins were discovered.
What an amazing place. I posted some photos a few weeks ago from my visit to Saqqara last August and was in awe of the beauty throughout that site. The video links on the article page say the pyramid was hidden for years because villages were on top of the old site. While in Luxor, I was told that there are many more important tombs yet to be discovered because of small villages overhead. What will they re-discover next?
Although archaeologists have been exploring Egypt for some 200 years, Hawass says only a third of what lies underground in Saqqara has been discovered.
"You never know what secrets the sands of Egypt hide," he said. "I always believe there will be more pyramids to discover."
So much of what we take for granted had to be started somewhere. In architecture/construction, this is what we believe to be the site of firsts. It's neighbor, Giza, tends to get the majority of the visitors and press but Saqqara and Dhashur are where the first pyramids were constructed. Saqqara is also where the first stone columns were built as well as the first stone frieze and the first stone arch that we know of today. The first stone building complex (that we know of) on the planet were constructed here.
The architecture throughout this site reminded me of Art Deco style, but perhaps there is a historian out there that knows more and could expand in the comments. More from Saqqara after the jump. The main (current) entrance at Saqqara. It's hard to believe it's over 4000 years old. A partially restored building inside the complex.
Another partially reconstructed building at Saqqara. Look at the beauty of those lines. This site is ancient yet the style could easily fit in the 20th century. The Greeks later borrowed heavily from the Egyptians though less from Saqqara and more from later sites.
Closeup of one of the columns.
Ongoing digs are everywhere though this was from August, so it's painfully hot and not as busy in the summer. Modern graffiti on the newly restored temples. Nothing says world history appreciation quite like scratching graffiti onto a temple. The scratchings are in all languages proving yet again that ignorance and stupidity isn't limited to any one country.
View looking at the pyramid where we entered. From the ground level, it's not obvious just how high the entrance is. This was good news since I'm not keen on heights. The car is an old model that is refitted to run on natural gas. Egypt has very little oil though it does have large quantities of natural gas.
Instead of going in the pyramids at Giza we opted to go inside here where fewer tourist buses were around. The smell inside was terrible, like a mix of bat poop, four thousand year old sweat and ammonia. The following day our legs were in pain after the awkward angle (and stooping) to go down and back up from the tomb. Well worth the experience though.
[I]n Egypt, Facebook is the stage for the latest twist in the generation gap, playing host to politically hungry young Egyptians eager to take on their aging leader.
On May 4, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak turns 80. To mark the big day for the man who has ruled them for 26 years, Egyptians who have known no other leader and who are increasingly going online to challenge him have urged their compatriots to go on strike, wear black, and write “No” to Mubarak on their money.
I know all of this, not through news stories, but because activists publicized the details and demands of the strike on Facebook....
A group promoting the May 4 strike has almost 74,000 members, up from about 60,000 a month ago....
To understand how rattled Mubarak’s regime is by the increasing popularity of what one young man called the “Political Party of the Internet,” look no further than Egypt's queen and king of Generation Facebook: Esra Abdel Fattah, 27, and Bilal Diab, 20.
Esra was detained for more than three weeks for forming a Facebook group calling Egyptians to take part in an April 6 general strike. Her group collected more than 60,000 names. She was released after her mother personally appealed to Mubarak and his wife.
What but desperation would inspire a regime with 26 years under its belt to detain a 27-year-old over a Facebook group?
Well, I think the writer is being a bit cavalier, and undercutting her own story. There's little difference, in terms of the threat they pose a repressive regime, between a woman running a Facebook group and an opposition newspaper editor. I'm not saying the woman should be arrested, but don't discount the power of the Internet. Facebook may be "cute," but it and online networking are powerful forces. That's the point of the entire story. So it's not "desperation" that's making the government detain her. It's the real power of the Internet to threaten corrupt regimes in closed societies.
This is one of numerous cats we met while in Sinai last summer. They were all the most lovable cats you could meet. You can see a few cuts in her ear, one of which came from a sun down battle with a moray eel in the shallows. As the sun goes down the eels and other fish swim through the shallows looking for food and she thought she struck gold and went for an eel who bit her ear and tried to drown her. Somehow she made it and now sticks to hunting unguarded dinner plates.
A very early (for me, at least) morning today due to a trip to the vet. My cat girl Nasdaq (the black cat) is sick and has an early appointment to get checked out. A few months ago she had a nasty cough but it was resolved with some medication but unfortunately the cough/wheeze is back which might be a sign of asthma. The vet told us before that asthma would be much trickier to treat because cats detest having anything over their face. She's already pretty good at avoiding any pills but we'll know more later.
Meanwhile, some cat friends from my favorite beach spot, Rock Sea in Nuweiba, Sinai. Rock Sea had the nicest bunch of lovable cats who were always happy to greet you and they love you even more if you order the fresh fish. The mostly black cat in the photo has a big slash on her ear from one of her low tide fishing expeditions at sun down. She thought she had the fish of a life time but ended up wrestling with a sea eel who bit her and tried dragging her into the Sea of Aqaba.
