COSI’s Lost Egypt Exhibition

Look for Edfu to the south of Luxor on the map – in southern or “Upper” Egypt. It was considered Upper Egypt even though it was to the south because the Nile flows north, so Lower Egypt is the region where we find Cairo and the Delta today.

The Earth Times reports the following:

CAIRO – A US archaeological team uncovered an ancient Egyptian administrative building and silos dating back to the 17th dynasty (ca. 1665-1569 BC) along with an older columned hall in the southern Egyptian town of Edfu, Egypt’s antiquities department announced Tuesday. With sixteen wooden columns, the layout of the mud-brick hall shows that it might have been part of a governor’s palace, the Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, Zahi Hawass, said.

The hall, which predates the silos, had been used by scribes for accounting, opening and receiving letters, Hawass explained.

Pottery and seals that date back to the 13th dynasty (c. 1786-1665 BC) were discovered in the hall.

“Scarab seals found inside the hall are decorated with spiral patterns and hieroglyphic symbols including the ankh sign, also known as the key of life,” said head of the American mission, Nadine Moeller.

The discovery reflects the Egyptian political situation at the time when the small kingdom of Thebes controlled Upper Egypt, Moeller said.

This is a photo we took when we were in Egypt at the Tomb of Ipuy (TT217) in Deir El-Medineh, the Valley of the Workers. It shows the ankh symbol, which represented “life” to the ancient Egyptians. The symbol is mentioned above as being found on the scarab seals in Edfu.