City Of Mummies

It's not hard to be superstitious when you spend your life excavating Egyptian tombs. But even Zahi Hawass, one of Egypt's leading archaeologists, was not prepared for the apparition that visited him one night last spring, shortly before he entered the tomb of Zed-Khonsu-efankh, the most powerful governor of the Bahariya Oasis during the 26th dynasty. In the dream, Hawass was trapped in a large room filled with dense smoke. He tried to call for help, but no one heard him. Suddenly, a man's face--looking for all the world like a carving from a sarcophagus--came swimming at him through the haze. Hawass cried out and forced himself awake.

Hawass is not the only explorer haunted by the tombs of Bahariya. The sleepy backwater 230 miles southwest of Cairo was largely overlooked by archaeologists before 1996. That's when a donkey belonging to an antiquities guard fell into a hole that led directly to an undiscovered tomb filled with gold-covered mummies. Since then, Hawass and his team have been digging extensively in Bahariya, turning up hundreds of mummies and treasures beyond imagination. Some of their findings appear in Hawass's Valley of the Golden Mummies (Abrams; $49.50; 224 pages), a richly illustrated text due in bookstores this month. Others, unearthed after the book was finished, appear on these pages.

The bulk of the tombs in Bahariya represent one of two periods: the 26th dynasty (6th century B.C.), when the town first became an important trading and agricultural center; and the 1st and 2nd centuries A.D., by which time Egypt was ruled by Rome. The Zed-Khonsu-efankh site, which Hawass opened last April, hails from the earlier era and took even him by surprise.

Beginning his dig in a tomb that others had already explored, Hawass spied an opening in a chamber wall. When he and his team excavated the rubble that lay beyond, they found anterooms filled with paintings of religious scenes and inscriptions from the Book of the Dead. In the adjacent burial chamber, which swirled with a yellow powder reminiscent of Hawass's dream, they discovered a limestone sarcophagus. When they dusted off the lid and uncovered the famous name Zed-Khonsu-efankh, Hawass recalls, "we all screamed."

Less ancient but more glamorous wonders are being unearthed in 1st and 2nd century tombs. The sites Hawass opened in 1999 became known as the Valley of the Golden Mummies, for the gilded masks and chest plates that cover many of the interred. An additional seven tombs opened this year revealed 102 more gilded or painted remains. Copper bracelets, obsidian decorations and even what appears to be gaming pieces and dice have been uncovered as well. All told, more than 10,000 mummies may be buried in the ancient necropolis.

Hawass plans to return to Bahariya next month for another round of digging, but he has no reason to believe his work there will be done any time soon. Thoroughly exploring this city of golden mummies, he estimates, will take at least 50 years.