Activity: Talk or presentation › Oral presentation › Teaching
Description
Tanis (Djanet) is located in the north-eastern part of the Nile Delta and was the residence and burial place of the kings of the Twenty-first and Twenty-second Dynasties. In the late 1930s and early 1940s Pierre Montet excavated the remains of the temple of Amun at Tanis and underneath the building made the discovery of a lifetime. He unearthed a complex of royal tombs some of which were found to be intact. Within them were three remarkable coffins of solid silver, four gold masks, gold and silver vases, superb gold and lapis-lazuli bracelets and a spectacular collection of jewellery. The magnificence of these artefacts invites comparison with the splendours found in the tomb of Tutankhamun, yet they remain largely unknown to the general public. Importantly, the inscriptions, particularly on the gold vessels, allowed the genealogy of the kings of the Twenty-first Dynasty to be established.