After the world deeply followed the skulls inside the sarcophagus found in Alexandria earlier this month, the Ministry of Antiquities announced on Sunday the results of studying the three found skeletons revealing that they belong to two men and a young woman who belonged to the Ptolemaic era.
The first skeleton was detected to belong to a young woman at the age range from 20 to 20 with a height from 160-164 cm, while another belongs to a man between the age of 35 to 39 years old, with a height ranging between 160 to 165.5 cm, while the third skeleton is of a man between the age of 40 and 44 years old and his height was between 179 to 184.5 cm
The announcement came in a press release, whereby the ministry’s official Facebook page posted it, in which it stated that the relation between the three persons have not been detected. Nonetheless, the gender and age range of each has been reached through the preliminary studies carried out by a team of researchers headed by Zeinab Hasheesh, director of the Department of the Skeleton Remains Studies at the Ministry of Antiquities.
Nadia Kheider, head of the Central Department of Antiquities of Lower Egypt said that oldest man skull contains a rounded cavity of 17 cm wide. Studies showed that the man lived with the cavity for a long time, which reveals that it had been done with a surgery. The studies show that the man had lived with this cavity for while before his death.
“This is probably the ‘Trepanation’ surgery where a burr hole is drilled or scraped into the human skull. This surgery is the oldest surgical intervention ever known since pre-history, but was rare in Egypt,” Hasheesh said in the press release.
She added that, “few skulls with this surgery were found in Egypt among those found in Qasr Al-Eini Hospital museum and both skulls found in Maya and Merit’s tombs in Saqqara Necropolis.”
The sarcophagus was found earlier this month in Sidi Gaber district in Alexandria. It caused a wide range of global concerns for rumours that it contains the remains of Alexander the Great.
