Popular MechanicsScientists Found an Ancient Egyptian Tomb. It Contained the Wrong Body.Elizabeth Rayne
Tue, December 16, 2025 at 9:30 AM EST
4 min read
Experts Found an Egyptian Tomb—With the Wrong Body SW Photography - Getty ImagesHere’s what you’ll learn when you read this story:
*Shabti, the ancient Egyptian funerary figurines that were supposed to work for the deceased in their afterlife, have revealed the identity of a pharaoh in an unnamed sarcophagus.
*Pharaoh Shoshenq III had been buried in this tomb even though he had already built a larger one elsewhere in city of Tanis.
*It is now thought that his successor, Shoshenq IV, may have had him buried in this smaller tomb (which already belonged to someone else) and taken the larger one for himself.
Being a pharaoh in ancient Egypt meant existing as a living god. Everyday tasks were beneath someone who had been transmogrified into a divine being. Once the scepter passed to him, he had command of courtiers and servants who toiled at everything, from cleaning to farming to laboring on building projects and funerary monuments, just to appease him.
When he died, he wanted these servants to join him in the afterlife.
Though the pharaohs of the First Dynasty demanded that some of their servants be sacrificed upon their death, later dynasties found no reason to lose loyal servants if figures made in their image could stand in for them. This was how shabti (also known as ushabti and shawbti) came to be. Spells written directly on the shabti told them what they were tasked with. Sometimes, there was even an overseer shabti who managed the others. Known as “The Answerers” because the Egyptian swb, which translates to “stick,” corresponds to wsb, which means “answer,” they would answer to the pharaoh’s every whim, both in his earthly life and the next.
The city of Tanis, now an archaeological site in the northeastern Nile Delta, was once the capital of the Egypt during the 21st and 22nd Dynasties. Today it might be best recognized as the Lost City of Indiana Jones fame. Among the ruins of its royal necropolis, Egyptologist Frederic Payraudeau and his team discovered a cache of 225 shabti arranged in a star formation, just as they had been when the pharaoh they were supposed to serve was buried. This is somewhat unusual since shabti from around this period were usually placed in a special wood and plaster box that was inscribed with spells and painted with images of the gods.
Shabti were each given specific tasks to free the hands of the deceased in the afterlife. While they started out exclusive to royalty, methods of mass production eventually made them attainable by anyone, and some Egyptians even made their own out of mud or clay. The shabti found at the Tanis site are made of faience, a type of ceramic glazed a bluish-green color that represented death and the god Osiris, ruler of the underworld. Faience shabti first appeared during the 19th Dynasty. While shabti for royals were often handcrafted, faience shabti that were molded and glazed to be sold at temples were accessible to almost everyone.
Because of their flat backs and identical details, the mummiform shabti found at this site appear to have been molded. What was especially surprising to Payraudeau was that more than half of them were women. While their intended purpose is unknown, women in ancient Egypt were allowed to join the workforce, becoming scribes, priestesses, oracles and even dentists or physicians. They could also own their own businesses and do everything from making textiles to brewing beer. It is possible that, in life, the pharaoh who commissioned the shabti was served by many capable women. Now, these shabti women have performed a final task for that pharaoh, revealing his identity to modern Egyptologists.
These shabti were inscribed with a cartouche, the oval symbol in which the names of royals and high-ranking officials were written in hieroglyphs. That cartouche revealed that they served Pharaoh Shoshenq III (also Sheshonq III). This puts an end to the mystery of who was supposed to be buried in the tomb’s unnamed sarcophagus. Shoshenq’s tumultuous forty-year reign was stained with blood from a civil war between upper and lower Egypt during a time when the country was not unified. He was still a prolific builder who raised many monuments within Tanis.
There was, however, something strange about his burial. He was ultimately interred in that small and narrow tomb where the shabti were discovered, even though his name was already on the walls of another, larger tomb which he had built.
Burials sometimes took an unexpected turn when shifts in power were involved. The tomb Shoshenq III is buried in actually belonged to Osorkon II, who died before him. It is thought that Shoshenq’s successor, Shoshenq IV, may have moved the mummified remains of his predecessor to the smaller tomb. It is even suspected that the successor of Tutankhamun, Ay, purposely had him buried in Osorkon’s tomb so he could take the larger royal tomb for himself. Battles for the throne, evidently, did not end after death.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/scientists-found-ancient-egyptian-tomb-143000153.html
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