A trove of 225 funerary figurines has been unearthed inside a tomb in Tanis, the ancient Egyptian capital in the Nile Delta, a discovery experts call a rare breakthrough that also resolves a long-standing archaeological puzzle.
Finding intact figurines in a royal tomb in Tanis hasn’t happened since 1946, according to French archaeologist Frederic Payraudeau, who leads the Tanis excavation team. Such a finding is unprecedented farther south, in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings near Luxor, aside from the tomb of Tutankhamun excavated in 1922, because many royal tombs have suffered looting over the centuries, Payraudeau explained.
The remarkable discovery was made on the morning of October 9, Payraudeau noted. The team had already cleared three corners of a narrow tomb housing a large, unnamed sarcophagus when they spotted a cluster of figurines and realized something extraordinary was unfolding. Payraudeau recalled sprinting to inform colleagues and officials, then enduring a tense push to continue the work into the weekend. Lights were set up to work through the night, and it took ten days to carefully excavate all 225 small green ushabti figurines.
The figurines are arranged in a star pattern around the sides of a trapezoidal pit and in neat horizontal rows along the bottom, Payraudeau described. Ushabti were funerary helpers meant to accompany the deceased into the afterlife. Notably, more than half of the figures depict women, an especially unusual detail for such assemblages.
Tanis, located in the Nile Delta, was established around 1050 BCE as the capital of Egypt during the 21st Dynasty. At that time, the Valley of the Kings—already looted in earlier dynasties—was abandoned, and the royal necropolis effectively moved to Tanis.
The newly found royal insignia on the figurines helps identify who was interred in the sarcophagus: Pharaoh Shoshenq III, who ruled from 830 to 791 BCE. This is surprising because a larger neighboring tomb at the site bears his name, prompting questions about why he was not buried in the identified tomb. Payraudeau suggested that building a royal tomb is inherently risky—successors might not honor the choice—and the new evidence shows such bets do not always pay off.
Shoshenq III’s four-decade reign was marked by turmoil, including a brutal civil war between upper and lower Egypt with several pharaohs contending for power. Thus, the royal succession may not have unfolded as planned, or the remains could have been moved later due to looting. Still, reassembling a 3.5-by-1.5-meter granite sarcophagus in a much smaller chamber would be highly unlikely if it had been relocated.
After completing their analyses, the excavated figurines are slated for display in an Egyptian museum, Payraudeau said.
Egyptian authorities confirmed the discovery as a decisive advance in solving a long-standing mystery. The Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities noted that Tanis still holds many undiscovered secrets. The ministry also indicated that the chamber’s interior patterns offer new insights into burial practices of the period and that it remains unclear whether the king was buried directly in Osarkon II’s tomb or whether funeral items were moved to protect the burial site. Further research is needed to answer these questions.
The announcement arrives shortly after the grand opening of the Grand Egyptian Museum, a $1 billion project and one of the world’s largest museums, dedicated to ancient Egypt and spanning roughly 7,000 years of history from prehistory through the Hellenistic era around 400 CE.
