Bawiti There are numerous ancient sites around the town of Bawiti, the principal town of the oasis. Since Bahariya’s fame which came with the discovery of the ‘Valley of the Golden Mummies’ some of the other monuments are now beginning to open up to visitors. At the Antiquities Department in Bawiti, visitors can buy one ticket which gives access to most of the open sites, with the exception of the ‘Golden Mummies’ tombs. Behind the Antiquities Department a small museum housed in a former warehouse contains five of the gilded Graeco-Roman mummies preserved in glass cases, as well as a small collection of other artefacts found in the oasis. Among the ancient ruins still visible in the streets of Bawiti is an impressive system of aqueducts (called manafis) which runs for almost 3km through the town to gardens and a spring called Ain el-Hubaga. The spring and the aqueducts, which would have supplied water to the town in ancient times for use in the cultivation of crops, were still in use until the 20th century. It is usually assumed that the aqueducts are Roman in origin, but Ahmed Fakhry believed them to date back at least as far as Dynasty XXVI and were probably extended during the Roman occupation. Many of the ventilation shafts can be seen amongst the houses at Ain el-Hubaga. A little to the north of Ain el-Hubaga on a ridge is Qarat Qasr Salim, where during his excavations in 1938, Fakhry discovered four tombs dating to Dynasty XXVI, two of which were well preserved and decorated. The first of the two inscribed tombs belonged to Djedamun-ef-ankh, an apparently wealthy landowner or merchant of Bahariya and though he held no priestly or political titles he was able to commission a large and elaborate tomb, complete with unusual (for Bahariya) round pillars, several painted false doors and extensive religious scenes. Djedamun-ef-ankh is depicted offering to the gods in his burial chamber and the ceiling is painted with representations of the goddess Nekhbet as a vulture in a starry sky. The tombs are reached via an iron ladder down a deep shaft
Posted on: Thu, 06 Mar 2014 00:39:23 +0000
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