False portal discovered in Luxor
Discovery News (Rossella Lorenzi)
With photo. Unfortunately not big enough to see the hieroglyphs.
An Egyptian excavation team has unearthed a 3,500-year-old door to the afterlife from the tomb of a high-ranking Egyptian official near Karnak temple in Luxor, Egypt's Culture Minister Farouk Hosni announced on Monday.
Engraved with religious texts, the six-foot-tall red granite door belonged to the tomb of User, the chief minister of Queen Hatshepsut, the long-ruling 15th century B.C. queen from the New Kingdom.
The door, known as a false door, was meant to be a threshold that allowed the deceased and his wife to interact with the world of the living.
This "interaction" was not eternal for User. More than 1,000 years after his death, during the Roman period, the massive false door was removed from the tomb and used in the wall of a Roman structure.
The uncle of the well-known Rekhmire, who was King Tuthmosis III's chief minister, User was a powerful man.
Yahoo! News
Archaeologists have unearthed a 3,500-year-old door to the afterlife from the tomb of a high-ranking Egyptian official near Karnak temple in Luxor, the Egyptian antiquities authority said Monday.
These recessed niches found in nearly all ancient Egyptian tombs were meant to take the spirits of the dead to and from the afterworld. The nearly six-foot- tall (1.75 meters) slab of pink granite was covered with religious texts.
The door came from the tomb of User, the chief minister of Queen Hatshepsut, a powerful, long ruling 15th century B.C. queen from the New Kingdom with a famous mortuary temple near Luxor in southern Egypt.
User held the position of vizier for 20 years, also acquiring the titles of prince and mayor of the city, according to the inscriptions. He may have inherited his position from his father.
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