- Cairo Museum -

Two Sarcofagus

Taking pictures inside the Cairo Museum is prohibited and requires a special permission. Therefore, in this photo report we shall focus only on two items, located outdoors of the Museum building. The first one is a two-chamber quartzite sarcophagus, and the second one - is a granite sarcophagus with the artifacts of curved drilling.

Two-chamber quartzite sarcophagus

Inner dimensions of the large chamber:
(two measurements, because of diviation)

Length - 2,418 / 2,421 m
Width - 0,915 / 0,916 m
Height - 0,915 / 0,916 m

Inner dimensions of the small chamber:

Length - 0,668м
Width - 0,696м
Height - 0,611м

Internal dimensions of the sarcophagus were measured and rechecked for several times. The width diviation makes 3 mm, and the height diviation - is about 1 mm.

            

            

            

            

            

            

            

            

The geometry of the interior of the sarcophagus is absolutely perfect, but the inscription, carved along the edge of a large chamber around the inner perimeter of the sarcophagus is skewed. While measuring the sarcophagus, we found that the inscription is affixed with an error of about 1 cm. The error of line of this inscription is 10 times higher the accuracy of geometrical proportions of the sarcophagus. This fact causes an assumption, that the inscription was applied at a later time.

            

            

Here is the sketch of this inscription.



Lets note, that this sarcophagus has a lot of similar technological details with quartzite sarcophagus, found in South Saqqara, near the railways. Both sarcophagus are carved from the quartzite rock. The outer surface of these two sarcophagus is not processed, except the "rim" bounding the internal chamber. Both of them have small rectangular notches on the outside surface.

The next object, that attracted our attention, was a granite sarcophagus with two grooves on the surface of its lid.
As you can see from the photos below, the second groove as well as the first one (which is safe), also had two outlets or drains on its both ends. Right drain is shown in the last picture of the first row. It is straight and and does not cause any problems.

            

Left drain causes the special interest by its artifacts of curved drilling. See the details on the following pictures.

            

            

            

            




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