Excavation work led by the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute team has unearthed a large urban villa dating back to the early New Kingdom, about 1500-1450 B.C.E. The findings at the site of Tell Edfu in southern Egypt include a large hall containing a rare and well-preserved example of a domestic shrine dedicated to family ancestors.

“It has been more than 80 years since such a shrine for the ancestors was discovered in Egypt, and the ones we did have were rarely within an undisturbed context,” said Nadine Moeller, associate professor of Egyptian archaeology at UChicago, who leads the Tell Edfu Project excavation with Oriental Institute research associate Gregory Marouard.

Located about 400 miles south of Cairo in the Nile Valley, the ancient city of Tell Edfu was a provincial capital occupied for nearly 3,000 years. The archaeological fieldwork has excavated settlement remains and monuments from Egypt’s Old Kingdom (ca. 2400 B.C.E.) Read more.