Egyptian Tomb May Contain Scribe's Many Wives

A newly excavated Egyptian tomb contains fascinating art objects but lacks just a couple of things—like a mummy and the pyramid that once stood above it, LiveScience reports. Looted at least twice in antiquity, the 3,300-year-old tomb at Abydos still has a red sarcophagus painted with Egyptian Gods, and hieroglyphs designed to help the deceased in the afterlife. But the 23-foot-high pyramid that once stood at its entrance—and probably included a small mortuary chapel and engraved names of people buried below—is long gone.

Archaeologists are puzzling over the skeletal remains of 10 to 12 women and at least two kids found at the site. They could be multiple wives of the deceased—a scribe and another man named Ramesu—or maybe the tomb was used by further generations of the same family. Among other items in the tomb: shabti figurines to do the deceased's work in the afterlife, and a heart-shaped amulet likely related to an Egyptian belief that after death, a person's heart was weighed against truth and justice. The same US archaeological team recently dug up another tomb that was ransacked ... by other pharaohs, reports Penn Museum. (More Egypt stories.)