Source::AP
CAIRO
An Egyptian archeological mission working in Saqqara necropolis near the Pyramids of Giza announced on Sunday the discovery of the funerary temple of ancient Egyptian Queen Neit, wife and daughter of King Teti, the first pharaoh of the Sixth Dynasty that ruled Egypt over 4,300 years ago.
The discovery introduces the name Queen Neit for the first time in ancient Egyptian history, as King Teti was known before the discovery to have had only two wives: Iput I and Khuit II. "Our archeological mission discovered a pyramid in this place in 2010 but we didn't know the name of the owner. Only yesterday we discovered the funerary temple and found inscriptions showing that it belonged to a queen named Neit, wife and daughter of King Teti," Egyptian top archeologist Zahi Hawass, head of the mission. "Queen Neit is a new name to be written in the history of the Old Kingdom of ancient Egypt," Hawass, also a former antiquities minister, emphasized.
The archeological site is located near the Pyramid of Teti, and Neit's funerary temple is opposite to the remains of her pyramid that is also near the remains of another two pyramids of the Teti's other two wives. The mission also found 22 burial shafts, with one of them alone containing 54 colorful coffins, besides the discovery of dozens of mummies, funerary figurines known as ushabtis, pots, stelae, miniatures of wooden boats with sailors onboard and a 5-meter tall papyrus, all dating back to the New Kingdom some 3,000 years ago.
The joint mission is composed of Zahi Hawass Center of Egyptology, which belongs to Bibliotheca Alexandria, and the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) of the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities.
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