Word: bahariya
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...superstitious when you spend your life excavating Egyptian tombs. But even Zahi Hawass, one of Egypt's leading archaeologists, was not prepared for the apparition that visited him one night last spring, shortly before he entered the tomb of Zed-Khonsu-efankh, the most powerful governor of the Bahariya Oasis during the 26th dynasty. In the dream, Hawass was trapped in a large room filled with dense smoke. He tried to call for help, but no one heard him. Suddenly, a man's face--looking for all the world like a carving from a sarcophagus--came swimming at him through...
Hawass is not the only explorer haunted by the tombs of Bahariya. The sleepy backwater 230 miles southwest of Cairo was largely overlooked by archaeologists before 1996. That's when a donkey belonging to an antiquities guard fell into a hole that led directly to an undiscovered tomb filled with gold-covered mummies. Since then, Hawass and his team have been digging extensively in Bahariya, turning up hundreds of mummies and treasures beyond imagination. Some of their findings appear in Hawass's Valley of the Golden Mummies (Abrams; $49.50; 224 pages), a richly illustrated text due in bookstores this month...
...bulk of the tombs in Bahariya represent one of two periods: the 26th dynasty (6th century B.C.), when the town first became an important trading and agricultural center; and the 1st and 2nd centuries A.D., by which time Egypt was ruled by Rome. The Zed-Khonsu-efankh site, which Hawass opened last April, hails from the earlier era and took even him by surprise...
Hawass plans to return to Bahariya next month for another round of digging, but he has no reason to believe his work there will be done any time soon. Thoroughly exploring this city of golden mummies, he estimates, will take at least 50 years. --Reported by Andrea Dorfman/New York
...surprising, given their dating, that the mummies and their accoutrements have both Egyptian and Roman characteristics: the hairstyles on the anthropoid coffins are Roman, but the style of decoration is Egyptian. The richness of the tomb decorations, Hawass notes, indicates that the inhabitants of Bahariya were prosperous. Indeed, the city flourished on its renowned wine, made from dates and grapes, which it exported throughout the Nile Valley...