Hommam Al Nassim 
A team of archaeologists has found a piece of a long-lost sarcophagus belonging to ancient Egypt’s most powerful pharaoh, more than 3,000 years after his death.
Scientists re-examined the granite artifact that was found in 2009 inside a Coptic building in Abydos, an ancient city in east-central Egypt.
The research team was led by archaeologists Ayman Al-Damrani and Kevin Cahill, and they concluded that the coffin carried two people at different times.
The research team was able to identify Menkheperre, the “high priest of the Twenty-First Dynasty” who lived in 1000 BC, according to a translated statement from the French National Center for Scientific Research.
However, the initial owner of the coffin remained a mystery, but archaeologists knew that it belonged to “a high-ranking figure of the New Kingdom era.”
Egyptologist Frédéric Bairraudeau, a teacher and researcher at the Sorbonne University in France, succeeded in linking Ramses II to the sarcophagus by deciphering a discarded cartouche, which is an oval-shaped inscription representing the name of the Pharaoh “Ramses II himself.”
It is noteworthy that Ramesses II, the third ruler of the Nineteenth Dynasty in ancient Egypt, ruled from 1279 to 1213 BC, and was known for expanding the Egyptian Empire to what is now known as modern Syria, and for the construction projects he undertook, including the expansion of the Karnak Temple.
The mummy and coffin of Ramesses II were found in 1881 in a “secret” cache in Deir El-Bahri, a temple complex outside Luxor, which contained the remains of 50 other members of the nobility, including his father.
His ornate coffin is considered “one of the most prominent coffins in ancient Egypt,” according to the American Research Center in Egypt.
Before being placed in the newly discovered sarcophagus, Ramesses II was buried in a golden sarcophagus that is “now lost,” and was transferred to an alabaster sarcophagus that was found destroyed in his tomb, and was later transferred to a granite sarcophagus, which Menkheper took to Abydos to use for himself, according to La Brújula Verde.
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