Monitoring Desk
CAIRO: Egypt has restored and opened to tourists the Middle Kingdom tomb of Meru, the oldest site accessible to the masses on Luxor’s West Bank, center of some of its magnificent Pharaonic monuments including the Valley of the Kings.
Meru was a top-ranking official at the court of the eleventh Dynasty King Mentuhotep Two, who ruled until 2004 BC and who, like Meru, was buried at the North Asasif’s necropolis.
Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities and the Polish Centre for Mediterranean Archaeology at the University of Warsaw restored the rock-hewn tomb of Meru.
General Director of Antiquities in Upper Egypt Fathi Yassin said in a statemnt that this “was is the first site from such an old period in Western Thebes to be opened for tourists.
A decorated tomb
The tomb, which is near to Mentuhotep Two’s temple, contains a corridor leading to an offering chapel with a niche for a statue of the Meru.
Yassin said that there was some decoration in the tomb made with lime paster or painting.
According to the Polish Egyptian archaeological mission, the tomb of Meru had been known since at least the mid-nineteenth century. The conservators from Italy cleaned some of the wall paintings in 1996.
It is to be noted, that North Asasif was used as a burial place for some of the Middle Kingdom’s most prominent officials.
