20/04/2024
The Serapeum of Saqqara is home to 26 massive granite coffins, exquisitely crafted. The lid of each coffin weighs 30 tons, and the body itself 70 tons. This means that moving each box would require about 500 men. However, the question arises: why were these coffins made, for whom, and why were they all empty and sealed except for one?
Why was no mummy or body of the Apis bull found in any of the coffins, as claimed by Auguste Mariette Pasha, the discoverer of the tomb?
Who made them, how, and why were they created? Why are they so massive, and ultimately, how were they moved into the narrow corridors and tunnels of the Serapeum?
The Serapeum catacombs themselves are a perplexing puzzle. In the summer, they are cool, and in the winter, they are warm enough to make you sweat. The tunnels, 400 meters long, are carved into the rock of the Saqqara plateau, not in the sand. The tunnel descends via a stepped ladder, and if you look at the map below, you will find many branches.
In the main tunnel, at the spaces shown on the map, the boxes are located. There are also other branches. Looking at the main passage, we find it perfectly straight. Could such a long tunnel have been dug only with pickaxes?
The Serapeum tunnels have only one door, which serves as both the entrance and exit. The vision inside the tunnels is very dim, even with sunlight. Did they dig all that distance at that depth in the dark and remove tons of debris by the light of torches? It's strange that there are no traces of torches on the tunnel walls. Using torches at that depth with debris and dust would be a strenuous and suffocating task.
Considering the tunnel's curvature and straightness, could a human hand have dug a tunnel with such precision and straightness over this distance? It can be said that this is impossible without a drilling machine, especially since the tunnels are not carved in sand but in the rocks of Saqqara, which would undoubtedly require an incredible effort, not believable to be done by human hand alone. Strong and advanced machines must have completed this work. Even in our contemporary civilization, to dig a tunnel like this, we would need a tunnel boring machine.
Then we come to the Serapeum coffins themselves, which are considered a scientific and engineering marvel even in our current time. These coffins were not built but carved, each consisting of four sides, a base, and a lid.
The body of the coffin itself was carved by cutting out a solid block of granite of various types from quarries in the south of the country, such as Luxor, Aswan, Sudan, Sinai, the Red Sea, and Faiyum. After cutting out the block, estimated at about 80 tons from the quarry, it is then hollowed out, polished, and then the lid is carved.
All the coffins are made from very hard rocks (red granite, black granite, basalt, schist, quartz), which can only be dealt with using diamond cutters. It is inconceivable to say that they were carved with the tools used in the era of the dynasties, which are, in order, stone, copper, bronze, and then iron in later ages. None of these could handle such rocks, let alone polish them in this manner!
Certainly, pickaxes and primitive striking tools could not produce such a unique engineering product. All the internal and external angles of the box are a perfect 90 degrees, not 90.1 or 89.9. Also, the flatness coefficient has an error rate of less than 0.02%, a degree that cannot be achieved in the modern era except by using high-precision machines or optical light technology like lasers to achieve perfect flatness.
Then we come to the most important question:
How were these giant coffins placed inside the tunnel, which has a very narrow single entrance?
It is worth mentioning that King Farouk tried to remove one of the coffins from the tunnel and enlisted many workers and mules, but he could only move it a few meters, and it remains in place to this day!!
This is the Egyptian civilization with its knowledge and sophistication. They are our great ancestors. This is ancient Kemet, and we are the descendants of the greats. ❤️
