These numbers are truly staggering and tend to defy imagination. But we must ponder and study and discover.
Will archaeologists ever be able to uncover the answer to “The Million Mummy Question”?
Nearly 4,600 years ago a third dynasty pharaoh named Snefru launched one of the greatest construction projects in human history.
He decided, for reasons that are unknown to us, to build four pyramids scattered at different places across Egypt. He constructed two of them at Dashur (the Red and Bent pyramids), one at Meidum and another at a place called Seila. Together they used up more material than Khufu’s pyramid at Giza.
Casing stones were used to give them a smooth appearance in other words make them into “true pyramids.” This was the first time in Egyptian history that this was done.
Today a team from Brigham Young University, in Utah, is investigating these pyramids, trying to figure out why Snefru would build four of them in the way he did.
One of the puzzles the team is trying to decipher involves a cemetery not far from the Seila Pyramid. It’s a 40 minute hike away and research indicates that it has an enormous number of mummies. “We estimate over a million bodies in this cemetery,” said Professor Kerry Muhlestein in an interview with Heritage Key. It’s “very very densely populated by mummies.”
Only a small percentage of them have been unearthed. “We’ve been digging there for 30 years and we could dig there for a hundred more and still have only done a small percentage,” said Muhlestein.
Results indicate that the cemetery was not in use during Snefru’s time. In fact the earliest burials appear to be from the Middle Kingdom at least 600 years after the Seila pyramid was constructed. Furthermore most of the burials are even later than that.
“For the most part the cemetery is Graeco-Roman period, from the Ptolemaic era down to the end of the Byzantine era,” said Muhlestein. This period started when Alexander the Great entered Egypt in 332 BC.
So the question is why did so many people who lived long after Snefru’s reign choose to be buried so close to the Seila Pyramid?
A sacred place
Making this question more enticing is that this wasn’t just a local cemetery. People seem to have come some distance to be interned here.
“It’s such a huge cemetery it’s hard to account for where all these people would have lived the population centres around there don’t seem to substantiate that many burials,” said Professor Muhlestein.
“Maybe these are people coming from a variety of communities, all around, being buried in this place. We’re not sure what would account for such a large number of burials.”
Could there be a connection to the pyramid? Despite the fact that it was built thousands of years before most of these people were buried? Muhlestein believes that it’s a real possibility but one hard to prove unless textual evidence is found. “It probably is at least partially responsible for why there’s a cemetery there,” said Muhlestein.
“It seems very reasonable to suppose that the pyramid designated that as a sacred place,” he said. “Once that place is a sacred place it typically will remain a sacred place.”
My guess is that it is a form of ancient Egyptian Arlington Cemetery.