The lid was still sealed onto the sarcophagus with mortar, exactly as it had been left there some 4,300 years ago. Zahi Hawass peers into a sarcophagus found at the bottom of a deep vertical shaft in Saqqara, near Cairo, in a photo shared with CBS News on January 26, 2023, by Ali Abu Desheesh, one of the archaeologists on Hawass' team. Zahi Hawass, the director of the Egyptian excavation team at the Gisr el-Mudir site in the ancient city of Saqqara, told CBS News. 'The sarcophagus was about 45 tons and the lid was about 5 tons,' Dr. One of the most important was a large, rectangular limestone sarcophagus found at the bottom of a vertical shaft about 50 feet deep. Cairo - Egyptian archaeologists who have spent years meticulously excavating a site amid the ancient ruins of Saqqara, near Cairo, announced a number of major discoveries on Thursday dating to the fifth and sixth dynasties of Egypt's 'Old Kingdom,' more than 4,000 years ago.
