CAIRO: Japanese archaeologists have unearthed four ancient wooden sarcophagi, all of them empty, in an Egyptian tomb that had long ago been looted, antiquities chief Zahi Hawass said on Thursday.
The coffins, some embossed with images of Pharaonic gods, were in the Dahshur necropolis south of Cairo, Hawass said in a statement.
Coated in black resin and bearing yellow inscriptions, they belonged to a man, Tutpashu, and a woman named Iriseraa, the statement said.
The archeologists also found three wooden canopic jars, which the ancient Egyptians used to store the entrails of their mummified dead, and four ushabti boxes containing wooden figurines.
The coffins, dating to the Ramesside era, are about 3,300 years old. -AFP
