Faulty reasoning signals

• Confirmation Bias - 13.6% (100 hits)
• Anchoring Bias - 5.3% (39 hits)
• Availability Heuristic - 14.6% (107 hits)
• Representativeness Heuristic - 15.2% (112 hits)
• Hindsight Bias - 8.6% (63 hits)
• Overconfidence Bias - 4.9% (36 hits)
• Framing Effect - 1.5% (11 hits)
• Loss Aversion - 0%
• Status Quo Bias - 0%
• Sunk Cost Effect - 0%
• Optimism Bias - 22.2% (163 hits)
• Pessimism Bias - 0%

Article text

These 5,000-Year-Old Tombs May Hold the Secret Origins of the Pyramids

Every year, millions of tourists walk the scorching sands of the Giza plateau to stand in the shadow of the Great Pyramid of Khufu, next to the pyramids of Khafre and Menkaure.

Most of the visitors gazing in wonder would never think that the monumental tombs piercing the heavens there had their foundations in much less impressive structures that rose out of the desert thousands of years before Pharaoh Khufu ascended the throne.

Egyptian civilization didn’t begin with a pharaoh draped in gold, though.

Narmer, who’s widely regarded as the first king of a unified Egypt, came to power around the dawn of the Early Dynastic Period, though rulers of his era would not be called “pharaohs” for at least another 1,500 years.

While Narmer’s reign marked the beginning of dynastic rule, he predated the pyramids by centuries.

Tombs, in fact, appeared in Egypt several millennia before they would ever reach the monumental heights seen at Giza.

And recently, at the Jabal al-Tayr archaeological site in Egypt's Minya Governorate, a team from the Supreme Council of Antiquities has unearthed two Early Dynastic tombs that haven’t seen the light of day in 5,000 years.

Jabal al-Tayr may not be as famous as the Valley of the Kings, but excavations beneath its sands have revealed that the site served as a burial ground from Predynastic times—before Narmer—until the Late Period (roughly 664–332 B.C.), when the last native pharaohs ruled Egypt.

The ancient resting places at Jabal al-Tayr are shedding new light on how Egyptian tomb architecture evolved before the pyramids were built.

Around 3100 B.C.E., the first tombs appeared as simple pits that were lined with bricks and plastered over.

By the time of Narmer and the First Dynasty, larger and more lavish tombs housed the bodies of royals in Abydos, while nobles were interred at Saqqara.

Like their predecessors, these grander tombs featured subterranean burial chambers, but they also boasted aboveground structures known as mastabas—storehouses for grave goods that signaled the status of the deceased.

The newly unearthed tombs at Jabal al-Tayr show striking similarities to the tomb of King Hor-Den at Abydos, which was built around 2950 B.C.E.

Hor-Den’s tomb was the largest one from the First Dynasty, with a ritual annex, two spacious storage rooms, and 133 other chambers surrounding the main burial chamber.

The Jabal al-Tayr tombs have features that mirror Hor-Den’s, which may be evidence that early tomb architecture spread throughout Egypt even before the north and south were unified.

As archaeologists dusted off the first tomb at Jabal al-Tayr, they were struck by how its walls appeared to have been purposely built broader and thicker at the bottom and gradually thinner until they reached the top.

This suggests that its builders understood how to distribute structural weight.

These early builders couldn’t have dreamed of the pyramids, but they may have been unknowingly laying the foundations for them.

Mastabas were structures of mud brick or stone.

Both of the Jabal al-Tayr tombs were made of stone blocks that workers pushed or carried to the site with the relentless Egyptian sun beating down on their backs.

Some of the blocks from the first tomb were later removed and probably reused, but the remaining ones were intact enough for the archaeological team to observe oxide lines formed by cutting and shaping the stone.

Its walls were also reinforced with wooden supports—some holding up individual segments, others spanning the full length of the wall.

The second tomb survived with most of its stones still in place.

Further research may reveal more about the people who built it.

These tombs aren’t the only recent finds at Jabal al-Tayr.

Nearby, archaeologists discovered Predynastic burials containing crouching, mostly skeletonized remains wrapped in plant mats, with pottery vessels placed beside them.

The vessels were rimmed in black, typical of the Naqada II and Naqada III periods that preceded the First Dynasty.

Burials from the Late Period with remnants of wooden coffins also emerged, suggesting that the site was used to inter the dead throughout many different eras.

More tombs and artifacts may be waiting to see the light of Ra again.

As excavations continue, the Ministry of Tourism explains in a Facebook post that “Work is underway at the site to reveal more of its secrets.”

The mysteries of Egypt’s deep history continue to unfold before our eyes.