Burial site near Cairo adds buzz to new dig

CAIRO – Czech archaeologists have unearthed the 4,500-year-old tomb of a Pharaonic princess south of Cairo, in a finding that suggests other undiscovered tombs may be in the area, an official from Egypt’s antiquities ministry said Saturday.

Mohammed El-Bialy, who heads the Egyptian and Greco-Roman Antiquities department at the Antiquities Ministry, said that Princess Shert Nebti’s burial site is surrounded by the tombs of four high officials from the Fifth Dynasty dating to around 2,500 BC in the Abu Sir complex near the famed step pyramid of Saqqara.

“Discoveries are ongoing” at Abu Sir, El-Bialy said.

The Czech team’s discovery marks the “start of a new chapter” in the history of the burial sites of Abu Sir and Saqqara, Antiquities Minister Mohammed Ibrahim Ibrahim said.

The discovery comes weeks after the Egyptian government reopened a pyramid and a complex of tombs that had been closed for restoration work for a decade.

Egypt’s vital tourism industry has suffered from the country’s internal unrest in the wake of the 2011 uprising that toppled autocratic leader Hosni Mubarak.