A 3,300-year-old sword engraved with the name of Egyptian Pharoah Ramses II was recently discovered during an excavation of an ancient military barracks in the Nile Delta region, Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities said earlier this month.
Ramses II, also known as Ramses the Great, ruled for more than 60 years during the 13th century BC and oversaw major military conquests and monumental construction projects, while also finding time to father more than 100 children.
He also is commonly thought to be the pharaoh who was in power during the biblical Book of Exodus, which tells the story of the Israelites leaving Egypt under the leadership of Moses after years of slavery.
The site, at Tell Al-Abqain about 30 kilometers (18.6 miles) south of Alexandria, was part of a ring of military outposts that protected the Egyptian New Kingdom from Libyan and seafaring raiders, the Council of Antiquities statement said.
The New Kingdom period, usually dated from the 16th to the 11th centuries BCE, was the height of ancient Egypt’s power and cultural influence. Largely a period of prosperity and stability, the New Kingdom saw the Egyptian empire spread northwards into the Levant (including what is now Israel and Syria), and south into Nubia, a region that now straddles southern Egypt and northern Sudan.
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The sword was discovered in unusually good condition, and was likely a “marker of status and prestige” that belonged to “someone of relatively high rank,” Oxford University Egyptologist Elizabeth Frood told the Washington Post.
Egyptian carved scarabs discovered at an ancient military site in the Nile Delta, in an undated photo. (Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities)
Frood, who was not involved in the research, called the sword a “very striking and a truly remarkable find.”
The dig also yielded numerous personal items that belonged to the soldiers stationed there, including a collection of carved scarab beetles, cooking utensils, jewelry and an ivory tool used to apply kohl, which was used by both men and women in ancient Egypt to protect the eyes from the sun and to repel insects, as well as for aesthetic purposes.
A statue depicting Ramses II, from the Ramesseum in Thebes, on display at the British Museum in London. (Pbuergler / Wikipedia)
The excavated military barracks consisted of several mud huts, a building for storing weapons and equipment and a central cooking area with several clay ovens, all laid out in a well-organized fashion, the Egyptian statement noted. Food remains, mostly fish and animal bones, were discovered in several large ceramic storage jars.
AFP contributed to this report.
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