Egypt restores, documents and opens Meru’s Middle Kingdom tomb to tourists, oldest site accessible to the public LuxorKa’s West Bank is home to some of its most spectacular Pharaonic monuments, including the Valley of the Kings.
The ministry said in a statement on Thursday, February 9, that Meru was a high-ranking official at the court of King Mentuhotep II of the 11th Dynasty, who ruled until 2004 BC, and who, like Meru, was buried in the necropolis of North Asif.
Meru’s rock-cut tomb was restored by the Polish Center for Mediterranean Archeology at the University of Warsaw and the Supreme Council of Egyptian Antiquities.
“This is the first site in western Thebes to be accessible to visitors from such an early period,” the ministry statement quoted Fathi Yassin, general director of antiquities in Upper Egypt, as saying.
The tomb, which faces the processional way to Mentuhotep II’s temple, has a corridor leading to an offering chapel with a niche for a statue of the deceased. A burial shaft descends into a burial chamber with a coffin.
“This is the only decorated room in the mausoleum, with its unusual decoration of paintings on lime plaster,” Yassin said.
According to the Polish Egyptian Archaeological Mission, Meru’s tomb was known from at least the middle of the 19th century. Italian conservators cleaned some of the wall paintings in 1996.
Some of the most prominent officials of the Middle Kingdom were buried in northern Asif, the statement said.
Above: An Egyptian worker works on Meru’s 4,000-year-old tomb. Photo courtesy of Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities/Handout via Reuters.