 The priestess Thenu, whose sarcophagus was made from a hollowed-out palm tree.
Scholars in Beijing have unearthed ancient Egyptian treasures, collected by a diplomat of China's last emperor, that have lain forgotten for almost a century.
In 1906, ambassador Duan Fang, an antiquarian of some renown, purchased a number of Egyptian artifacts while passing through Cairo. In 1911, he was assassinated; his collection was later bought by the Chinese government.
Three years ago, Willy Clarysse of the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium and Yan Haiying of Beijing University found some Egyptian funerary stelae with hieroglyphic texts in the Museum of Beijing University, registered under the name of Duan Fang. That set off a hunt for the rest of the collection. They ultimately found three sarcophagi, some 50 stone slabs, and more than 60 rubbings made from them at the museum, as well as in the storerooms of the Forbidden City and the National Library. The stelae range from the Old Kingdom to the early Christian Coptic period and have never been published, says Clarysse. He adds that most of the stelae are actually casts, but inscriptions by Duan Fang suggest that the originals must be somewhere in China: "So the search for the originals has just started." |
